Forget the day the music died. This was the day music changed the world... Well music and mullets seeing as the latter seemed to be the hairstyle du jour back then! My mate Pancakes recently referred to me as a 'music buff'. Well I don't know about that but I do know that I love my music - especially live music; going to gigs and seeing my favourite bands play. That is why I'm so annoyed at having missed out on what many of us consider to be the greatest musical event to have taken place EVER - Live Aid!!! It happened thirty five years ago - and it was all for a good cause....
'35' very much seems to be the magic number for a lot of things this year. Both Neighbours and EastEnders have celebrated their thirty-fifth anniversaries; Hollywood megastar, Keira Knightly, who looks as though she drinks from the fountain of eternal youth, turned thirty five this year; the world's first successful artificial heart transplant happened back in 1985... And then there was Live Aid... 1985 was a bloody good year
I am grateful that despite the fuzzy memories, I did get to experience this musical extravaganza even if it was only via the box in the corner of the living room. Many people around the world were not able to attend this fantastic event but they were content enough just to watch Live Aid on the telly. Pretty much all day in fact! But of course at the time I was far too young to understand what a big deal this benefit concert was - an event held in order to raise money to help those affected by the famine in Ethiopia. I just thought it was some kind of all day Top of the Pops with a whole bunch of my fave artists! I didn't realise that via my TV set, I was witnessing musical history in the making, so I really do envy all those people who actually got to be there and experience everything for real.
But then having said that - would this heatwave-hating girl have been able to stand out in the hot sun all day in that mammoth crowd? The people who were there have described the intense heat; sitting in traffic for what seemed liked eternity; feeling crushed by the crowd; dodgy bogs that weren't all in working order, and warm cans of extortionately priced coke... I more than likely would have been one of those people who had to be carried out of the crowd - but I'd still like to have been there! The atmosphere must have been absolutely electric.
My memories of Live Aid are quite hazy. I just remember it being a Saturday and I was at home with my mum watching pop act after pop act appear on screen. I very much remember Paul Young being there as well as Nik Kershaw (or as my little sister called him - Nik Kassaw!) What I didn't know was that the European part of the event was being held in Wembley - the place we would be moving to less than a decade later. What I also didn't know was that my uncle was just down the road watching the event while feasting on fish and chips as well as kebabs - and didn't think to invite me! Then Dad came home in the evening, and being a pop and rock fan himself, settled down to watch the evening performances.
It's too bad that my infant school self was too young to understand or appreciate certain key events at Live Aid. I didn't realise how awesome it was that Phil Collins was the only artist to appear at both the Wembley and Philadelphia venues; that because of Live Aid, bands who had previously disbanded, reunited once again. I didn't understand the furor over Led Zeppelin's performance - for which a hardworking Phil Collins who made a whole lotta effort was unfairly blamed (I'm a Led Zeppelin fan but seriously - LEAVE PHIL ALONE!!!) And I didn't know anything about Duran Duran's bum-note catastrophe! Another thing I was too young to appreciate was that for just over twenty one minutes, Britain was ruled by a new reigning monarch (wonder what Charles and Di - who were in attendance - made of that!)
Wouldn't It Be Good to see Nik Kershaw on stage again?
I'm not able to recall that iconic Queen performance. As someone who grew up listening to Queen, why it took the movie Bohemian Rhapsody to bring it to my attention again, I have no idea. Neither The Fella nor I remembered this performance so we checked it out for the first time in years and were totally blown away by it. We didn't know the story behind Queen's appearance at Live Aid: that they hadn't performed together in years; had fallen out, and were a very late addition to the event. So late in fact, that they didn't have much rehearsal time but still managed to steal the show and give a performance that has gone down in music history. We will rock you, indeed! But why no Mercury and Bowie Under Pressure duet? Hmmm... did the organizers miss a trick there???
But I have to say that after watching the broadcast of Live Aid, I never really gave the event much thought after that. I knew what it was; I'd seen it on the telly, and whenever people mentioned it, I felt I had something to add to the conversation but it wasn't until the release of Bohemian Rhapsody - the movie not the track - that I started watching the footage and reading articles about Live Aid and I realized just how many gaps there were in my memory (well I was only little) and that I had been unaware of information and speculation (mostly behind the scenes) that seemed to be common knowledge to a lot of other people. Though what I still don't get is how one of the biggest names in music, Cher, did not know anything about the biggest gig of the year! Why did Cher not get the memo? No one knows! Had she not bumped into Phil Collins on the Concorde flight Phil was using to rush over to Philadelphia, she would never have made it to the concert finale. But seriously - how did Cher not know???
It's been great watching the performances again. Not only did I get to see an event that I had near-forgotten about but I was instantly transported back to the eighties again and my childhood years. Plus I got reacquainted with the music of bands I hadn't listened to in years and I had totally forgotten how good it all was. I say this all the time but the calibre of artists that you got back then just doesn't exist today. Everyone can say what they like about Led Zeppelin's Live Aid performance but Led Zeppelin at their worst was still a thousand times better than a lot of today's artists giving it their all. And no, I will not take that back!
George and Elton with Andrew and Kiki won't let the sun go down on them
My good friend MJ revealed that he has the Live Aid boxset (why does that not surprise me??? It's a boxset - of course he has it!) But he's suggested that one day we need to get together with snacks and cider and watch it from start to finish. He might have just been messing but I like the idea. In fact I'm going to take it one step further by having Live Aid parties every year where everyone turns up in eighties gear OR as one of the performers and we just celebrate great music and all that was fab about the mid-eighties. People have cheesy Eurovision parties all the time - why not a Live Aid one?
And I have to say it's been great chatting to MJ as well as other family and friends about their memories of Live Aid and just life in general at that time. A lot of us look back at the past just a little too fondly (or so I'm told) with nostalgic rose-tinted glasses. But hearing everyone talk about their memories and experiences made me super wistful for the eighties - a decade I'm already madly in love with. It's not even a case of blindly believing what I've been told - I was around in the eighties after all! But listening to them talk about life back in the day and their love of music back then only reminded me of things I had known but had long forgotten. How I would give anything to climb into a time machine and experience it all again...
Thanks to all those who shared their memories.
So check out our post about the world's greatest 'Musical Jukebox' peppered with memories shared by music fans and what they remembered and liked most about Live Aid.
Photos: Youtube
Word Cloud: Angel Noire
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