The absolute very first time I saw Live Aid was, well, live on July 13th 1985. I’d finished school the year before and had just returned from a ‘gap yah’ round Asia where I’d contracted dysentery and dengue fever before limping home, exhausted and half-starved, to be met with an event which, to all extents and purposes, looked like it was being staged specifically on my behalf. I never saw a bloody penny though. That Irish bloke must have kept the lot.
As most people know, Michael Buerk’s feature on the Ethiopian famine inspired Bob Geldof & Midge Ure to launch Band Aid but the idea for Live Aid seems to have come from Boy George after Culture Club played Wembley Arena and some of their Band Aid chums joined them on stage for an encore rendition of Do They Know It’s Christmas.
It’s difficult for kids today to understand just how unusual and ground-breaking Live Aid was in 1985. For a start, it lasted 16 hours from midday in London to the close in Philadelphia. And it was shown live on the BBC - yes, real 'live' not TOTP miming 'live'. You didn't get Glasto live-streamed in those days so this was at least 15 hours more than the Beeb had ever devoted to music in one go before. Up until then, their gig output consisted solely of the Old Grey Whistle Test which the stuffed shirts at the BBC did their utmost to deter young people from watching by hiding it late at night on BBC2 (in our day, 10pm was late at night and no one under the age of 25 watched BBC2 except for half an hour at 9pm) and choosing a name which their research confirmed was the least likely to reflect the content of the show.
The hype about the event had even reached my quiet middle England market town but, in those pre-social media days, it was hard to find out the line-up unless the Radio Times happened to print it which would've been far too helpful and so highly unlikely. I was praying the Smiths might get a shot (although I suppose ‘Big Mouth Strikes Again’ might not have gone down well at a fundraiser for famine support) but Bob chose legendary chart-toppers Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw instead.
The weather was surprisingly good for a July in the UK, leading one newspaper to comment that even God was on Bob’s side although, if that was the case and given his omnipotence, we might have hoped for a better divine contribution to famine relief than decent weather for the benefit concert.
Here are the highlights:
* Status Quo opened the Wembley event at midday with Rockin All Over The World - you've got to love Francis, Rick and the boys haven't you?
* Multi-million sellers Adam Ant & Elvis Costello only got to do just one song each while Nik Kershaw was offered 4 (yes, FOUR) which pretty much used up his entire singles output up to that point. Ultravox were also allowed 4 and even the Boomtown Rats got to do 3 - hmmm, I wonder how those two bands managed to sneak onto the line-up?
* Howard Jones only got to do a single song too but, for some reason, chose the one with the poorest chart position in the UK and which the Americans hated so much it didn't even make the Billboard 100
* Adam, slightly misreading the publicity opportunity of playing to 1.9 billion people, decided that his one song would be a future single which no one knew and was crap anyway. You had ten Top 10 hits to choose from, mate, were you nuts? What was that? Oh, sorry to hear it
* Bryan Ferry, forgetting he'd been a member of Roxy Music with unfettered access to their full back catalogue of chart-toppers, decided instead to perform 2 unknown tracks off his latest album and ignore the obvious merits of 'Let's Stick Together' at an event to unite the global community
* In contrast, Queen took the whole thing deadly seriously and hired out a small theatre in Kings Cross for a week to nail their set. They squeezed 6 songs into the same timeslot in which others sang 4 and were rightly acclaimed as the best performers on the day
* Elton John & David Bowie only turned up because Bob told each of them that the other had already agreed to play. Elton spat out his dummy after the Queen set, accusing 'those bastards of stealing the show' which he subsequently insisted was just a light-hearted joke. That's the Elton John of an alternative universe who's more famous for his banter than his tantrums and hissy fits
* Phil Collins jumped onto Concorde and flew to the US so he could play both stages, no doubt sticking his hand in the fund-raising pot so the Ethiopians could cover the costs of the flight
* U2 only did 2 songs because Bono decided to dance with a member of the audience for over 10 minutes instead of squeezing in a third song. In fact, he only danced for 20 seconds but it took him 10 minutes to pick someone he fancied. He'd never last long on Love Island
* The Who had technical issues, losing the sound, ironically, just as Rog was singing ‘why don’t you all f-f-fade away’. And Macca had his usual glitch too (remember the sound loss at the London Olympics?). You could almost hear John Lennon sniggering up there on the right hand of his slightly less popular mate
The acts were punctuated (I mean unecessarily-interrupted) by contributions from Germany, Holland, Yugoslavia, Russia, Norway and Japan to make the event appear global rather than merely transatlantic. In those days, they were the slots which signalled a tea or loo break but nowadays they’d be the headline acts.
The US line-up was absolute pop royalty but their section didn't go quite as smoothly as the UK (come on, be honest, we were secretly pleased weren't we?). It was the same with the Band Aid vs We Are The World singles - OK, they raised a bit more cash than us but our song was far better than their effort and that was all that really mattered surely?
* They had Madonna, Beach Boys, a chronically under-rehearsed Led Zeppelin, Mick Jagger & Tina Turner (plenty of sex but no sexual chemistry – like watching your parents grope each other in public while slightly tipsy), Bob Dylan (who took the opportunity to criticise the event – nice touch) and, er, the Thompson Twins who, much as I have a soft spot for them, proved they weren't exactly a stadium band
* The moving video of the famine, set to the Cars' Drive soundtrack, had the biggest impact on UK donations but the US networks didn't show it because they decided it was too depressing for an entertainment show. I think they missed the whole point of the event.
* Prince and Michael Jackson failed to turn up and look how God dealt with them later in life
The UK event finished at 10pm so we could watch a few acts from the States and still be tucked up in bed nice & early. A little known fact is that Cliff Richard who, as some of you know, I have a love/hate* relationship with (*ok, I guess that's only half-true) was relegated to 2 o’clock in the morning in the BBC chat room to sing something called ‘a world of difference’ which the lack of an audience made into a world of indifference. Luck of the draw perhaps? Or was it that sizeable pledge from a market town in middle England on the one condition that Cliff got the graveyard slot? Moo-ha-ha.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...BRITISH KIDS TV
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