Live Aid

...as New Wave peaked, rap was starting to emerge slightly, and hard rock was ascending to dominate the airwaves the next few years, along with dance pop. This review basically turns into a review of the DVD set, since that is the only way I know you can see the event in its entirety.

The mammoth charity rock concert was held on two continents simultaneously. Organized by Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof after seeing a BBC news story about famine in Ethiopia, this was preceded by two smash hit charity singles: "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in the UK, and "We Are the World" in the US. The videos for each precede the concerts on the DVD's as well. The concert started early morning in London's Wembley Stadium, and as the morning broke in the US, the American half started in Philadelphia's JFK Stadium. They would alternate back and forth, with each country's performances being shown in the other's stadium on Jumbotron-type screens. The event is spread across 4 DVD's.

The first disc features artists such as The Staus Quo, The Style Council, The Boomtown Rats, Adam Ant, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Nik Kershaw, Sade, Sting, Phil Collins, Howard Jones, Bryan Ferry, Paul Young, Alyson Moyet, and Bryan Adams. The closers for disc 1 are by far the best: U2, on the precipice of becoming one of the biggest bands of the decade, blow the preceeding artists off the stage.

The second disc includes The Beach Boys, Dire Straits, George Thorogood, Simple Minds, Joan Baez, Pretenders, The Who, Kenny Loggins, Elton John, and George Michael. The best of this disc are David Bowie, who does a great 4 song set, and Queen, showcasing Freddie Mercury's command of the stage to great effect.

The third disc has Madonna, Paul McCartney, a group performance of the "Do They Know..." song as the British half of the concert ends, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Black Sabbath (with Ozzy), REO Speedwagon, Crosby Stills & Nash, Judas Priest, The Cars, Neil Young, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, Patti LaBelle, and Phil Collins, who flew on the Concorde from the British concert to perform in Philly as well. The best of the disc was Eric Clapton, who does fine versions of Cream's "White Room" and Derek & the Dominoes "Layla".

The fourth and final disc wraps up the concert with Hall & Oates performing with members of The Temptations, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan with Keith Richards and Ron Wood, and finally everyone on stage to close out the show with "We Are the World". Also included on the fourth disc are extra performances that were shown via remotes such as INXS in Australia, B.B. King at a Dutch jazz & blues festival, Teddy Pendergrass, Run-DMC, and Cliff Richard.

All told, it ran about 9+ hours. I saw bits when it was on back in 1985, since it was broadcast on a few stations. This DVD set allowed me to see the whole thing (as far as I know).

Finally, we got the DVD! I bought it 2 days ago and watched it almost the whole Sunday. I was turning 19 that year and the event meant nothing but the brightest gem on the gleamy crown of the 80's optimism, happiness, joy, global spirit and most of all - search for ultimate humanity. There's no need to emphasize that LIVE AID (and everything else connected to it) is the singular event of the rock'n'roll history, greater then anything seen before or after. Not only for the plead of the spectacular names that joined the effort, but mainly for the cause and the relevance of it. It's probably the only time in our history when people joined hands globally to help people in need. Thank Sir Bob for the good you brought us and unforgettable moments of our lives.

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.

... 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