Live Aid
- The Time Chair
- Oct 2
- 7 min read
Memory is a peculiar thing. When I try to recall experiences from my childhood, instead of a linear progression or a play-by-play recollection, I tend to remember clumps or chunks of events that I think happened very close together, but in reality they were quite far apart. It’s almost as if the emotionally charged bits were stored next to one another; but the everyday boring bits in-between were discarded.
This is certainly the case for me when it comes to Live Aid. I was born and brought up in Merseyside in the North West of England during the 1970s and 80s. A couple of months prior to July 13th 1985, the football FA Cup final took place between Everton and Manchester United. If you lived in Merseyside at the time, then you pretty much only had two options when it came to supporting a football team. Liverpool or Everton. I supported Everton, and their defeat at the hands of Manchester United that year forms part of my memory clump which includes Live Aid. For some reason I always thought that the cup final took place on the same day as the concert, but in reality, they were separated by almost two months.
Live Aid was monumental in terms of both its organisation and transmission. You might think that today’s world is technologically advanced, but compared to the 1980s, our current rate of progression doesn’t even come close. A bold statement, I know, but bear with me.
If you compare technology from the 1980s to that of the decades that followed, then it will become apparent that the 80s paved the way for pretty much all of the technology we are still using to this day. In fact, you’d be hard-pushed to think of something genuinely new that has been invented since the end of the 1980s. Miniaturised and streamlined, yes, but genuinely new? You could argue, as some Futurists do, that we have in fact been stagnating or even going backwards compared to 40-years’ ago.
The 80s was a decade of firsts. Never before had a television channel given up virtually all of its schedule to one event, but this is what the BBC did in the summer of 1985. In addition to this, the largest satellite link-up in history would provide a communications link enabling 1.9 billion people to tune into the Live Aid concert. That represented almost 40% of the world’s viewing population at the time.
The Live Aid concert came off the back of two charity singles that were produced to raise money for African famine relief. You might recall Michael Buerk's news report in October 1984 during which he used the phrase, "Biblical famine" to describe the horrific situation in Ethiopia. I remember the report being broadcast at around tea time in the UK, basically when most of us would have been eating our easy-to-get-hold-of food at tea time.
After seeing the report, Bob Geldof, a musician and front man for the band the Boomtown Rats, began to assemble a line-up of some of the biggest music stars at the time with the aim of producing a charity single to raise money for the plight of the Ethiopians. To do this he effectively bypassed the usual channels of going through record labels and agents, and contacted the artists directly. Midge Ure from the band, Ultravox would be the brains behind the arrangement and production of the charity single. Because they wanted the record to be released in time for Christmas to maximise emotional impact, a 24-hour recording session was scheduled to take place on November 25th at Sarm West Studios in London.
The single, Do They Know it’s Christmas by Band Aid, was officially released in the UK in December 1984. I found myself in a bit of a dilemma at the time because the song would keep Wham’s, Last Christmas from the number one slot, and let’s face it, Last Christmas is the greatest Christmas song ever written, even if its chord progression does sound suspiciously like Barry Manilow’s, Can’t Smile Without You. I quickly forgave Band Aid’s intrusion due to its noble cause, and besides, George Michael was part of the line-up, so all was well.
Do They Know it’s Christmas would soon be followed by USA for Africa's, We Are the World, which was released in March 1985. Looking back, the US line-up seemed a lot more impressive than the UK’s, although at the time, the US had more than established itself in the global music charts via the likes of Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Kool and the Gang and Madonna, most of whom had songs charting in the UK at the time.
Live Aid was a global event, but its two main locations were Wembley stadium in London, and John F. Kennedy stadium in Philadelphia. Both original stadiums have long since been demolished, and if I'm being completely honest, the replacement Wembley stadium doesn't come close in terms of atmosphere when compared to the original, but even concrete decays eventually.
The Live Aid performances I remember the most were by Status Quo who opened the show with, Rocking All Over the World, Queen, Simple Minds, Dire Straits and David Bowie, although I never fully got the Bowie thing when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong, I liked some of his songs and I certainly remember his Dancing in the Streets duet with Mick Jagger, but I might have been a bit young to understand the complex nuances of his personas. I tend to remember him more for his portrayal of Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth and his introduction to the US version of The Snowman than I do Life on Mars or Starman.
The official UK number one at the time of Live Aid was, Frankie, by Sister Sledge. Other notable songs in the charts were the Eurythmics’, There Must be an Angel and Duran Duran’s, A View to a Kill, and if you were a movie-goer that summer, then you would have been treated to Michael J. Fox’s first outing as Marty Mc Fly in, Back to the Future, Rambo: First Blood Part II and The Goonies. If you could afford them (or one of your friends or cousins had them), then you might have been playing the Grandstand Firefox F7 video game or with a Cabbage Patch Kid. Eighties-wise, 1985 was an incredible year to be a youngster.
For me, Live Aid was the first real event in my lifetime which demonstrated what is actually possible when everyone pulls together. We’d had the Thames Telethon in 1980 and Children in Need, but this was different. There were fundraising events everywhere and it had its very own atmosphere thanks to its clear and sustained branding. I also recall the brilliance behind the design of the Live Aid logo. To have the neck of a guitar form the I’s in the words ‘Live’ and ‘Aid’, and the body of the guitar in the shape of Africa was a stroke of genius. It’s one of those things that were you to try to do it again and had an infinite amount of time to do it, you still wouldn’t better the original.
I must admit that when the concert finally got underway and it dawned on me just how long it was going to take, when a band I didn’t know or like came on, I took the opportunity to nip outside into the street. The weather that day was beautiful, and to my amazement, most of my friends had the same idea meaning we could exchange a running commentary as the concert progressed. The temperature was well in the twenties and school was almost finished for the summer break. The feeling of experiencing something of that magnitude knowing that is was only a short time until the start of the school holidays was fantastic.
Connecting the live performances together were a variety of anchors, VT’s and interviews which, as you might expect for such a large event put together in such a short time period, weren’t as smooth and polished as an idealist would hope for. The key moment which would go on to cement a caricature of Bob Geldolf in the minds of millions was his call to action in the studio whilst sat next to The Cult’s Ian Astbury casually holding a cigarette.
Whilst banging the table to the rhythm of the words, “Give – me – the - money”, a suggestion was made that the Live Aid Appeal addresses should be given out, to which Geldolf replied, “No, let’s fuck the address, let’s get the numbers. Cos that’s how we’re gonna get it.” Even Billy Connolly shuffled in his seat.
When Geldolf swore, even at a young age I knew what the gig was. Pretty much all of us did. The press would have a field day with it for sure, but the reality was that us 80s kids were well on to how the establishment media worked. The idea that millions of viewers might be offended (particularly pensioners) was ridiculous. Almost everybody swore, but within the holy chapel of live television, such a basic fact was ignored. Forget the countless films we shouldn’t have been watching but did, and the banter in the playground which was awash with coarse language. This was live television don’t you know! Truth be told, I was more embarrassed for the BBC and its Pubic Service Broadcasting presumption that viewers would give a shit.
Perhaps the most memorable act from Live Aid was Queen. It is often cited as one of Freddie Mercury's best ever performances, however, in terms of utilising the technology available at the time, it has to be Phil Collins's transatlantic double performances. After completing his set in London, he was transported in Noel Edmond's helicopter to Heathrow airport where he boarded Concorde, flew to New York and then on to Philadelphia to perform with Led Zeppelin.
Like so many firsts, we weren’t aware at the time that we were genuinely part of a truly important historic event. Today’s overuse of the word “unprecedented” in an effort to turn the most mundane of things into memorable moments seems to achieve the exact opposite. It will be interesting to hear what childhood memories today’s younger generations will have when they reach 50.
Which performances do you remember from Live Aid?
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