Dallas ? Rock ‘n’ roll flourished in the Aquarian age of free love and low-priced concerts. But the cheap thrills are long gone.

Concert ticket prices are skyrocketing especially for bands born in the anti-materialist ’60s. The Rolling Stones are charging a jaw-dropping $350 for the best seats to their U.S. tour; the top tickets on Paul McCartney’s just-ended tour sold for $250.

The Rolling Stones' airship, bearing the band's tongue and lips logo, lands in South Florida for an announcement that concerts tickets will soon go on sale. The Stones are charging up to 50 a ticket for this fall's concert tour.

And as prices rise, so does tension between disgruntled music fans who cry “sellout” and the musicians who say they’re just going by supply and demand that if they don’t charge these prices, scalpers will.

“We’re selling out concerts in 17 minutes, so somebody must think the prices are reasonable,” McCartney says. “We’re not twisting anyone’s arm.”

“I’ve lost a lot of respect for Paul McCartney,” says George Hutton, a 51-year-old Dallas music fanatic who remembers paying $10 to see the Beatles. “When your reward for more than 30 years of loyalty is a $250 ticket, you know you’ve put way too much adulation on your favorite artists.”

Concert ticket prices have shot up 54 percent in the last five years, compared with only 24 percent for movie, sports and theater tickets, according to a new study by Princeton University economics professor Alan Krueger. Concert prices are rising in every seating category: Even a last-row nosebleed seat at Sir Paul’s shows cost $50.

Krueger blames the price jump largely on the boom in ultra-pricey “gold circle” seats.

“The artists have started pricing tickets like the airlines do, charging more to the people who are less sensitive to price, the ones who value sitting up close,” he says.

Figuring out why, exactly, ticket prices are soaring when the economy’s still shaky is a tricky task. Some claim it’s the inevitable result of rock’s aging fan base.

“The boomer market has more discretionary income, so they can afford to pay more,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert business magazine Pollstar.

Others point to the late economist Sherwin Rosen’s report, “The Economics of Superstars,” which contends that fans will pay disproportionately more to see rock’s royalty than to see an act one notch lower on the star scale.

“That’s why Paul McCartney can charge 10 times as much as someone else,” says Krueger. “When people want to see the best, cost isn’t an issue.”

Also driving up demand and prices is the fact that many rock legends seldom perform live. McCartney has only toured the United States four times in the last 36 years. (His previous tour was in ’93.) And before Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunited two years ago with a top ticket of $201 the four hadn’t toured since the days of Watergate.

Special-event concerts range even higher: The Who is charging $505 for top tickets to its July 1 show at the Hollywood Bowl. And on New Year’s Eve 1999, tickets for Barbra Streisand’s Las Vegas concert hit $2,500.

‘Hell’s’ gold circle

The Eagles ushered in the era of the $100-plus ticket in 1994, when they re-formed after 13 years for their “Hell Freezes Over” tour. Those shows also introduced “gold circle seating” into the rock lexicon. But like a lot of advertising-speak, the term is misleading.

Promoters sell up to 10 percent of a venue’s seats in the highest-priced category.

Confusing matters is the fact that bands and promoters often play hide-and-seek with gold circle prices advertising the lower price categories but omitting prices for the good seats that everyone covets.

The Rolling Stones used this PR strategy last month when they announced their U.S. tour. A press release said tickets would “average $85 for stadium shows, $100 for arenas.” But the most desirable seats were actually $350 a fact that fans didn’t find out until they tried to buy tickets.

Artist concern

Fans aren’t the only ones miffed about escalating prices. Tom Petty whose tickets this summer average $29.05 for the cheap seats and $51.75 for the best sings about concert-business greed on his upcoming CD, The Golden Circle.

“I’ve (looked) into the whole golden circle thing, and it drives me nuts,” he told Rolling Stone.

Fellow rocker Lenny Kravitz is adamant about not “gouging” concertgoers. Most of his shows top out at less than $60.

Hip-hop artists and other youth-oriented pop acts also shy away from gold circle prices.

Multiplatinum singer-rapper Pink is charging an average of $28.34 for the cheap seats and $32.76 for the best ones on her ongoing U.S. tour. Country artists also rarely charge exorbitant prices, Krueger says.

But so far, the boomer rock legends are doing just fine at the ticket office despite the sky-high prices.

McCartney grossed $53 million on his recent 27-date U.S. tour, according to Billboard. The Stones have sold more than 500,000 seats 98 percent of the available tickets for the first 23 shows of their upcoming tour, according to the band’s publicist.

And as long as fans keep paying the piper, the prices aren’t likely to drop.

“I don’t pay that kind of money to see music in basketball stadiums, and maybe everybody should not, and then it would stop happening,” says Elvis Costello, whose average ticket prices this summer range from $34.12 for the worst seats to $52.80 for the best.