Live Aid

This was probably the greatest gathering of rock talent since the halcyon days of pop festivals in the 1960's. Just imagine a bill featuring everyone from Run D.M.C. to Led Zeppelin. This was perhaps the greatest show in the history of popular music and all the musicians played pretty much for free and made it one of the most memorable events not only in music history, but in the history of the world. Too bad that spirit didn't carry over into the 90's. Maybe the world would be a better place.

I was just a young pup with barely enough allowance to cover a movie. I never could have bought the pay per view. Now that I'm an adult I'm paying a fortune for bootlegs and authorized versions.

That's the thing about nostalgia, what seemed unimportant as a child becomes the stuff that dreams are made of sitting in a cubicle all day. Still, the official release is worth picking up.

I'm disappointed some acts chose not to participate in the re-release. I guess Led Zepplin doesn't need any new publicity but if I was the Hooters I'd be begging for a chance to get back into daylight, never mind the spotlight.

I was there at the Wembley Live Aid show.

Being that I was one of the last few to buy my ticket at the company that takes you on their coaches to concerts. The last four or six I think, you could only come to their office and buy them in person.

As I was and still very much so a big fan of The Who, I wasn't a Mod, and knowing that they had "retired" this would be or could be the only chance to get to see them. I had a friend who was watching it at home recording their section on VHS for me. Then it happened, the satellite feed broke just as they started My Generation, I sometimes wonder if it was because the rest of the World were using to much power at that time that the system couldn't handle it all at once. Shame, and yes I did Pete Townshend fall over.

The weather was stunning, just as Elton John came on it started to drizzle lightly, but not for long, it was needed, the drizzle not Elton. Queen was amazing; three friends & I saw their very last show as a group a year later at Knebworth House, 120,000 people were also there too!

RIP Freddie, what a Showman.

When we were leaving through our side of the Wembley tunnels the atmosphere was electric, we were singing "Feed the World". During the coach ride home we could make out sets from Sabbath and others on the radio.

Its a shame that in twenty years nothing much has changed for the African people, such as Politics and war.

I have three used T Shirts, a little small for me now, that came in sealed bags and two mint Programmes and a mint Live Aid: The Concert book that came out very shortly after the gig. The Wembley Live Aid concert ticket stub is still in good condition in the photo album.

What a fantastic piece of History, 1 out of 72000 people seeing the real deal out of 1.5 to 2 billion watching on their telly's. When people talk about it and you mention that you were there they tend to look at you like you are lying, at first they just don't believe it, you really do, sometime's, have to prove it. It does fill me with pride to know that I was at a very Historical Musical event.

... Give or take a few hours of course but I still have vivid memories of this ultimate concert . As soon as it was announced I wished I could have attended it but as you can imagine tickets for the Wembly gig were somewhat difficult to get your hands on . I did hear via a friend of mine Rab Kincaid that his sister Vicki got a ticket and would be going to London on the 13th of July , I did feel some self sorrow because the previous Summer my sister acting as courier wanted to know if I wanted to go out with Vicki but I turned her down . She was a very nice girl with a highly developed body for a teenager but from the neck upwards she looked disturbingly like Celtic footballer star Maurice Johnstone with a mullet hairstyle . i wasn't and never will be the sort of guy who'd ever go out with a girl for ulterior motives but it did flash through my mind in the early Summer of 1985 that if I'd been going out with Vicki I might have been able to get a Live Aid concert ticket

Still not to worry it was going to be broadcast live on television and I was really looking forward to seeing my musical heroes U2 perform . I kept rubbing my hands wondering what their set list was going to be while I played their live LP Under A Blood Red Sky to death , I was really hoping they were going to perform I Will Follow . So on the day of the concert I was wishing the dross supporting acts like Status Quo , Howard Jones , Paul Young and Adam Ant ( Who played the title track of his new album ! ) would just go away and let Bono and the boys show the audience how it's done . At 5 O'clock the transmission alternatively switched from Wembley to JFK Staduim Philidelphia where we saw the Bryan Adams set . Jack Nicholson said we're going back to London to hear a band who aren'1t afraid to speak their mind and U2 came on to perform the appropriate Sunday Bloody Sunday . Unfortunately their second track was Bad a song I've never taken to and Bono spent so much time jumping into the audience to get a girl to dance with him that they had to scrap their third track Pride . In fact I thought their whole set was a major disappointment that I couldn't believe the positive feed back they got in the press later and there was no one more surprised than the band themselves !

Major disappointment aside I still stayed in to watch the rest of the concert most of which I watched on my sister's portable black and white TV and it wasn't until a few days later that I started digesting what a monumental event it was where Queen stole the show with their medley , where Bob Geldof swore live on air ( In those days bad language on television was still very rare ) , the dominance of British music that saw every act at Wembly hail from the British Isles and where a third of the acts at the American concert were also British , and the strange fact within a couple of years many of the acts at Wembly had disappeared from the charts altogether . But without doubt the abiding memory for me was the entire lack of cynicism . Artists went out of their way to give a concert while people went out of their way to put their hands in their pockets . Even if you want to be cynical then you can't deny that money was raised and it went to humanitarian Non Governmental Organisations ( NGOs ) that saved countless human lives . That was the difference between Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005

Queen's twenty one minute performance, which began at 6:41 PM, has been voted - by more than 60 artists, journalists and music industry executives - the greatest live performance in the history of rock. Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury at times led the crowd in unison refrains, and his sustained note during the a cappella section came to be known as "The Note Heard Round the World". The band's six song set opened with a shortened version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and closed with "We Are the Champions". Mercury and fellow band member Brian May later sang the first song of the three-part Wembley event finale, "Is This the World We Created." At the conclusion of the Wembley performances, Bob Geldof was raised onto the shoulders of the Who's guitarist Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney. Live Aid eventually raised $127 million in famine relief for African nations, and the publicity it generated encouraged Western nations to make available enough surplus grain to end the immediate hunger crisis in Africa. It's also worth noting that the official Live Aid DVD is the only authorised video release in which proceeds go directly to famine relief, the cause that the concert was originally intended to help.

Courtesy of Neville Cawas Bardoliwalla OBE