“It’s twelve noon in London, seven AM in Philadelphia, and around the world it’s time for: Live Aid….”
To this day it is the benchmark for all charity concerts: Live Aid. On July 13, 1985, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organized events at London’s Wembley Stadium and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia; at the simultaneous concerts, lasting a total of 16 hours, an unprecedented number of stars gathered to call for donations for famine relief in Ethiopia. Almost two billion people in 150 countries watched.
🌇 View pictures from “Live Aid 1985: Dylan, Queen, U2, Bowie, Jagger – the photos” here
Queen, U2, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Sting, the Beach Boys, Tina Turner, The Who, Led Zeppelin, George Michael, even Paul Weller and Elvis Costello… almost everyone who was born in 1985 (still ) had a big name – the notorious truants Michael Jackson, Springsteen and Prince excluded – were there.
Phil Collins even boarded the Concorde after his performance in London in order to be able to sit down at the piano on time in Philadelphia and to add an American “In The Air Tonight” after the British “Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)”. play. The technology of the time made it possible – the lightning-fast Concorde no longer exists today. But thanks to the year 1985 and the poorer communications technology that went with it, we were spared the worst: a duet between Bowie and Jagger controlled by satellite transmission. The two wanted to perform their Zappelphilipp cover version of “Dancing in the Streets” as a piece sung intercontinentally, which did not work due to the transmission rate of image and sound and therefore had to be rejected as an idea in advance.
phone, no internet
The dates that were coordinated during both concerts, the performances, announcements, and that only with telephone and satellite lines: In the age of the Internet, that is hardly imaginable. And the donations were even collected over BBC phone lines.
So Phil Collins flew across the pond once. But other performances have also gone down in the history of live music. The more memorable moments clearly took place in London. But many fans and critics praise Queen’s mini set of all things. A very painstakingly rehearsed quasi-medley of six songs in 20 minutes that lacks spontaneity and unfortunately doesn’t give you the feeling of being able to attend a concert of many friends with unexpected live pairings (more like a Freddie Mercury celebration in Time lapse). Queen had rehearsed for 20 minutes for their friends; After their perfectionist Live Aid performance and thus the best advertising for themselves, they were on everyone’s lips again.
David Bowie and U2 outdid everyone. An elephant-grey blazer-clad Bowie daringly opened his set with the anti-television song “TVC 15,” remodeling it from passive-aggressive pop into a party anthem. Worked. But above all it was “Heroes”, which since then simply fits into every stadium situation, and with its dramatic, defiant increase from the middle of the song, Bowie captivated his audience. U2 did a similar thing, and most of the flags could be seen in the crowd when they performed. And with the angry “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and a much longer than planned “Bad” – the band had to do without the third song, “Pride”, because Bono wanted to jump into the audience again – sparked an unexpected surge of energy. That afternoon it became clear that U2 would soon play an even bigger role thanks to their ability to communicate with the crowd. The following Dire Straits had no chance.
Live Aid in Philadelphia had a somewhat less spectacular cast, but offered the funnier anecdotes. Mick Jagger, for example, didn’t want to appear with the Rolling Stones because he could imagine a career of his own with his first solo album, “She’s The Boss”. For the solo pieces “Just Another Night” and “State Of Shock” he brought in Tina Turner. Jaggers Stones colleagues Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, on the other hand, had the great misfortune of having to play the quasi-finale – the last appearance before the “USA For Africa” finale of all musicians – with Bob Dylan.
To this day, different versions exist as to what and why the three of them looked so bad, played so badly and sweated so profusely; Broken guitars, torn strings, Wood had to play air guitar for a short time, which is hard to imagine. The bad sound, maybe dope, a perpetually erupting, unrhythmic Richards… their three-song set is an unintentionally funny lesson in how badly three stars can harmonize together.
If you look closely at the hidden object on stage during the last Philadelphia song of the evening, “We Are The World”, you will also see a totally broken Keith, who sits on the monitor box with his back to the audience to finally rest while the other hundred musicians arm in arm with a view of the spectators swaying. Richard’s horny-delivered smile freezes as soon as a steward asks the crooked Stones man to please move back into the rocking circle, because getting limp is not.
And then Live Aid was already over.
Current estimates are that Live Aid has raised around £150 million in donations (today’s equivalent: around €175 million). Criticism of the events was directed primarily at the planners of the line-up. Andy Kershaw from the BBC argued that African bands in particular should have been asked to take part in the concerts. Instead, Geldof and colleagues presented “classic old rock aristocracy”. In fact, Run DMC were the only artists who used rap to represent a musical direction that was more novel than the mix of rock, soul and folk usually represented in London and Philadelphia.
live 8
And from Live Aid became live 8: 20 years after the spectacular benefit concerts in London and Philadelphia, Bob Geldof organized another music event on July 2nd, 2005 to draw attention to the famine in Africa.
The demand: “Make Poverty History” – “Make poverty a thing of the past” was addressed to the G8 member states (hence the pun with the eight), whose government representatives would meet from July 6th to 8th in Gleneagles (Scotland). Debt relief and development aid for Africa were to be negotiated in Gleneagles; Geldof and his co-organizer this time, U2 singer Bono, hoped to put pressure on politics with the concerts. In the end, a petition with more than 24 million signatures was handed over to the G8 heads of state. Unlike Live Aid, Live 8 was not considered an event to collect donations, but votes. Geldof: “We don’t want your money, we want your name!”
Around 170 bands and artists performed in eleven locations – London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Philadelphia, Barrie/Toronto, Chiba, Johannesburg, Moscow, Cornwall, Edinburgh – on four continents, including 21 who had also performed with Live Aid in 1985 had been there.