Live Aid, The Day The Music Changed The World

Thirty-five years ago today, around 1.9 billion people were Rockin' All Over The World at Live Aid.

Thirty-five years ago today, Midge Ure and (now) Sir Bob Geldof raised around £150million - albeit this was with the combined sales of the charity single Do They Know It's Christmas?

Live Aid was the first charity concert, and so it made history just because of that. It had most of the biggest acts of the day playing it; Queen, Status Quo, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Madonna, The Beach Boys, and so many others. It took place simultaneously in two different countries on two continents; Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Stadium, and London's Wembley Arena. However, on the same day, other concerts inspired by the cause also happened in other countries such as the Soviet Union, Japan and Australia.

13th July 1985 was truly the day that music changed the world, though there are many different theories as to why it did.

And it all started because of a BBC documentary. In October 1984, Bob Geldof, famous for singing with the Irish rock band, The Boomtown Rats, saw Michael Buerk's documentary on the famine in Africa, and from then on, he knew that he had to do something about it. A fortunate meeting between then-girlfriend Paula Yates and an old friend of Geldof's, Midge Ure (of Ultravox) led to a telephone conversation between Geldof and Ure, and from then on, some would say that magic happened.

They started working on a charity single almost immediately, and then getting artists to record it - one or two lines each. A month later, Boy George of 'Culture Club' invited some of the artists onto stage with the band at Wembley Stadium. They sang the charity single, and it was there that the idea of Live Aid was born.

It quickly became clear that Live Aid was going to be like no other concert. In an interview with 'Melody Maker' (UK music magazine) in January 1985, Geldof said, "the show should be as big as is humanly possible. There's no point just 5,000 fans turning up at Wembley; we need to have Wembley linked with Madison Square Gardens, and the whole show to be televised worldwide."

The world would never be the same again.

13th July 1985 started just like any other day, though slightly earlier than usual, perhaps, for the artists, Pete Briquette, who performed with his band, The Boomtown Rats, remembers, "it started at 5:30 in the morning with a helicopter ride to the stadium" It was warm weather, and the world was buzzing with excitement. History would be made. The 2018 biopic film of Freddie Mercury's life, Bohemian Rhapsody, opens with these words, "it's 12:00 noon in London. 7:00 a.m. in Philadelphia. And around the world, it's time for Live Aid. Wembley welcomes their Royal Highnesses... the Prince and Princess of Wales."

Wembley welcomed everybody, not just royalty. Thirteen satellites beamed a broadcast to more than one billion viewers in over 110 countries.

And indeed, it seems that many people were watching the clock. Deborah Portman was at the London concert that day, she said, "there seemed to be something special about that day. I remember that. It was electric. I got the bus in, and everybody was talking about it."

I can only imagine the atmosphere on that day.

However, I'm not here to tell you the exact history of Live Aid. I want to tell you why the music changed the world that day.

It was because of everybody there. Everybody watching. Everybody playing. And yes, even those who still buy and listen to the official Live Aid album today.

The music, perhaps then, didn't change the world - but rather, it changed the people.

Did we open our hearts that day and let the music in? Did we hear the cries of help from those in Africa who were starving? The Boomtown Rats bassist, Pete Briquette, believes that the people heard the cries of help from Africa before 13th July 1985, "before Live Aid, which was also before the internet, people mistakenly thought famine and hunger were a thing of the past. So when that news item came on the TV, a lot of people were genuinely shocked. A year later, we had Live Aid."

Status Quo opened the show with what became the concert's unofficial anthem, 'Rockin' All Over The World'.

Among the 72,000 people at Wembley Stadium on 13th July 1985 was then-fourteen year old Suzanne Frederick. She attended with a friend, and at the time was a big fan of Duran Duran, who were playing at John F. Kennedy Stadium that day. I've been speaking with Suzanne on-and-off about her experiences of that day for about a year, trying to glean every last detail about Live Aid from her, living that day through her words. "Music united the people and people united the music. Live Aid was something different."

Playing the role of Debbie in 2018's Freddie Mercury biopic blockbuster, Lottë Rose Middleton had a close up which made the final cut, and spent days filming the Live Aid scene which both starts and finishes the film, "filming Live Aid felt special. It almost felt like you were a part of the past, and something as extraordinary as the day the music changed the world."

Everybody has a favourite part of the day, and for Briquette it was "watching McCartney play... [as The Beatles] inspired the music of The Boomtown Rats, along with, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones." And for Lottë and Suzanne, it was watching Queen, "I landed up with a group of people and they kept telling me that Queen would be the group to look out for.. something just changed when Queen came on. Everyone just got totally involved. Freddie worked the crowd and the whole place just came alive." With a smile, Suzanne tells me this over Facetime. And though Lottë had yet to have been born, she still loves Queen's performance just as much, "I grew up on Queen, so I've been watching those videos since they came out. Shooting Bohemian Rhapsody really made it all the more special because it made me feel so included." 

YouTube is all you need to be at the best live concert that the world has ever seen, right?

Well, actually, Led Zeppelin performed at Live Aid, but none of their performance can be found on the official Live Aid YouTube channel. In a 1988 interview with 'Rolling Stone Magazine', Robert Plant said, "it was horrendous... Emotionally, I was eating every word that I had uttered. And I was hoarse. I'd done three gigs on the trot before I got to Live Aid. We rehearsed in the afternoon, and by the time I got onstage, my voice was long gone." Nearly twenty years after the event, Led Zeppelin declined to release footage of their performance on an official Live Aid DVD.

But regardless of whether or not Led Zeppelin did a good set or not, Live Aid was - and still is - a resounding success, with its effect still felt today, "for the first time ever", Briquette wrote in an email interview I did with him, "we had the technical capability to come together and do something positive for the world, and we as musicians did. This has continued to this day with many more massive world concerts and charity records, leading into the 'Me Too' movement and Black Lives Matter, and so on."

So Live Aid changed the world on 13th July 1985, but did it change the people?