If Charles and Di attended an event together, then you know it was a long time ago! Those famous opening words, spoken thirty five years ago by British broadcaster Richard Skinner, were heard all around the world on 13th July 1985 as the biggest, grandest and most ambitious of benefit concerts in the history of benefit concerts began, with rockers Status Quo being the first act on stage to perform.
What was this Live Aid about?
Tagged as the 'Global Jukebox,' Live Aid was a benefit concert held in the summer of 1985 as part of an ongoing musical fundraising scheme, held in order to raise money for relief of the famine in Ethiopia. The concert was the brainchild of Boomtown Rat Sir Bob Geldof and Ultravox's Midge Ure (Ohhhhhhhhhh Viennaaaaaaaaaa!) And they organized that huge-scale event in just ten short weeks.
The show's organizers: Bob Geldof and Midge Ure
So this wasn't held at the village church hall, then!
Last time we checked, Wembley Stadium was no church hall! And actually this event was held on the same day at two locations. And they weren't around the corner either! The European part of Live Aid was held at the world famous Wembley Stadium in London, and was attended by around 72,000 pop and rock fans. Whereas across the Atlantic, that's right the Atlantic, in John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, US, nearly 90,000 fans were eagerly awaiting performances by their musical idols.
And let's not forget that on that same day, many other musical events - inspired by the initiative - were held in other countries across the world: Canada; the Soviet Union; Australia; Japan; Yugoslavia; Austria and West Germany. Clips from these other international musical events were shown on the big screens at Wembley and Philadelphia. At the time, the scale of Live Aid's satellite link-ups and television broadcasts was one of the largest EVER!!! It's believed that an estimated audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 countries, watched the live broadcast. Back then that was almost half the world's population.
So how did the idea for Live Aid come about?
Well everyone knows about Sir Bob and Midge Ure being key players and the organizers in the event. But a lot of people don't know that Michael Buerk and Boy George also played pivotal roles in all of this.
You mean the news reporter and the bloke from Culture Club? How?
Many of us who lived throughout the mid-eighties will remember all those horrific images we saw on TV of the famine in Ethiopia. The BBC News team were among the first to highlight the plight of the people in Ethiopia, and it was Michael Buerk's reports in the autumn of 1984 that broadcasted devastating images of people starving to death in Ethiopia to a horrified nation in the UK, in what Buerk described as 'the closest thing to hell on Earth." Deeply shocked by what they had seen, the British public started to dig deep into their pockets in order to donate to humanitarian aid organizations.
The now Sir Bob and his then wife, Paula Yates, had also seen the reports on the Six O' Clock News, with Sir Bob saying that Paula had been in tears. Motivated to do something about the crisis, Sir Bob decided to call upon his old mate Midge Ure with whom he had previously done some charity work.
So together they started to organize Live Aid?
No! Together they started to organize Band Aid!
When Geldof and Ure got together in the autumn of 1984, they quickly co-wrote a song of which the proceeds from sales would go towards the famine relief. Then they contacted their mates in the music industry and asked them to record the single under the name Band Aid. It's been well-documented that when it came to getting people to sing on the track, Geldof was very persistent and didn't take no for an answer. As Midge Ure explained in the BBC documentary Against All Odds: The Making of Live Aid:
"I was the producer, the guy dealing with the music. He was the guy rounding up the crowd."
And so began Do They Know It's Christmas? - the song where Bono had the best line and has since been played every Christmas without fail! For us eighties' kids, it was very exciting as we'd never seen a collaboration like this before which was like a who's who of eighties pop: Wham! Bananarama, Paul Young, Spandau Ballet, Kool and the Gang, Culture Club... the list went on. We had got a glimpse of Bob and Midge's phone books - and we were dead jealous!
The song became a smash hit and unsurprisingly, was the Christmas number one that year, staying at the top spot for five weeks. But more importantly it raised around nine million pounds, and ultimately paved the way for Live Aid.
So after they had a hit single, they decided on a sell-out concert!
That's right. And funnily enough the idea to hold a concert to raise more funds for Ethiopia actually came from Culture Club's Boy George, who had been part of Band Aid. After recording Do They Know It's Christmas? Boy George went on tour with Culture Club, and on the final night of the tour in Wembley, fans saw some of the other members of Band Aid join Culture Club onstage to perform Do They Know It's Christmas? Totally moved by the performance, Boy George told Geldof that they should consider organising a one-off fundraiser concert.
And so it began... But if Boy George thought Bob was considering a two-hour long gig for an audience of three thousand or so, he was very much mistaken!
Bob had in his mind an idea for a dual venue concert, where they would continuously flick to either side of the Atlantic throughout the concert, and at first it seemed that, aside from Wembley, the other likely venue was going to be Madison Square Gardens in New York, although they eventually secured John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. And one by one, Bob's music industry mates agreed to perform - mainly because once again, Bob was not giving them the option of saying no!
The Highlights
Broadcast on the BBC, and on ABC and MTV in America, the fact that people are still talking fondly about the Live Aid gig proves that there were many great moments throughout the show, starting with Status Quo's very energetic opening to performances by musical heavyweights such as The Who, Tina Turner, George Michael, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney - to name just a few - to that great grand finale on stage where they performed Do They Know It's Christmas? which looked a lot like a fun karaoke night at the local pub with all your mates - but sounded a million times better. How many times have you sang karaoke with David Bowie, Bono, Freddie Mercury, and Elton John?
Over seventy five artists took part, not only across the two main venues but at the other international locations too. What was also amazing were Phil Collins' appearances at both the Wembley and Philadelphia venues. That's right - straight after collaborating on stage with Sting, Phil made it across to America via Concord.. and Noel Edmonds' helicopter! How rock n' roll can you get!
And let's not forget that Queen performance...
Check out the second part of our post The Day The Music Changed The World: 35 Years since Live Aid
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