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A terrible concert (except for Queen) with dreadful sound and a load of wankers pretending to care as funds were diverted from better run charities like Oxfam and Save The Children into the pockets of corrupt officials. Whilst smug mini pop stars and wankers of the public fell for Bob's crap hype. As I said at the time.
50 years ago today. Bloody hell. I was 21 with a mullet. Without Queen it would have been completely forgettable. I do enjoy watching the audience footage though. No mobiles. As all concerts should be now. Who on earth wants to be at a live concert and watch it through a tiny screen? Nuts.
Live Aid gave a lot of their money to existing charitable organisations like Oxfam and Save the Children. They never became organisational
Most people who were involved, or who watched it on tv or live enjoyed it and thought it was a great day. The biggest tv audience ever for a concert if not for any kind of event.
Status Quo, Bowie, Sting, Phil Collins, and the Who. U2 were made by the event, previously they were a relatively small group.
Some of the synth groups didn't work too well. Utravox sounded quite tinny, and Howard Jones sang a crap little-known song. These kind of groups don't work well in a stadium.
Those who weren't asked to take part, often sneer at the event, but probably secretly wish they had taken part.
Downing Street Cat wrote: 50 years ago today. Bloody hell. I was 21 with a mullet. Without Queen it would have been completely forgettable. I do enjoy watching the audience footage though. No mobiles. As all concerts should be now. Who on earth wants to be at a live concert and watch it through a tiny screen? Nuts.
Forty years ago dsc, and it doesn't even seem like that long ago. As David Hepworth pointed out on BBC breakfast all the stars that were big then are the same stars that are big today. Elton, MacCartney, U2, and Sting would still be headliners in live aid 2025. However it was a different world. No mobile phones, you could smoke on the London underground and tickets cost £25.
I had phone calls from the heads of the giant charities telling me Live Aid (and Band Aid) were crippling their efforts as donations were simply being switched away from them into the badly run AID hypes and that much of the monies were being filched by corrupt officials. Live Aid caused many more deaths than it prevented.
I am in the cynical camp re Live Aid. Both in terms of the charities it diverted from and for musical reasons. Musically, the concert breathed life into some aging dinosaurs, and stifled new content...
robbiex wrote: Downing Street Cat wrote: 50 years ago today. Bloody hell. I was 21 with a mullet. Without Queen it would have been completely forgettable. I do enjoy watching the audience footage though. No mobiles. As all concerts should be now. Who on earth wants to be at a live concert and watch it through a tiny screen? Nuts.
Forty years ago dsc, and it doesn't even seem like that long ago. As David Hepworth pointed out on BBC breakfast all the stars that were big then are the same stars that are big today. Elton, MacCartney, U2, and Sting would still be headliners in live aid 2025. However it was a different world. No mobile phones, you could smoke on the London underground and tickets cost £25.
I only watched it mainly for Phil Collins. A friend was pissed off that Phil Collins was on too many songs. I tried to explain Phil's drumming and he is a stadium drummer even back in the 70s. He still does not know which is Genesis of a Phil Collins solo number.
You can watch gigs 24 hours after a concert has finished, fans upload the footage on their Youtube channel. I do wonder why there are not copyright infringement.
Wyot wrote: I am in the cynical camp re Live Aid. Both in terms of the charities it diverted from and for musical reasons. Musically, the concert breathed life into some aging dinosaurs, and stifled new content...
If you watch the documentary, you will see that heads of charities were cynical at first, but then found that Bob was prepared to listen to them and get their help. The title of the post is very loaded and provokes negativity. As for the music, it did revive all dinosaurs like The who, the Beach Boys, Status Quo (Dinosaurs at 35, the same as Ed Sheeran today), but there were many new acts too. Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, U2, Sade, Alison Moyet, George Michael etc etc. Queen are not to my taste, but they stole the show on that day.
When I slagged off Band Aid in my column in the Sun we got 18.600 letters (still a record). I was the only one to criticise Live Aid (Bob was furious with me). The response was 50-50.
Live Aid didn't kill pop music. It was already on decline by 1985, peaking IMHO in 1982 with the likes of ABC, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Culture Club, the Associates, Duran Duran and Japan all having their finest year, if not their first year of success. By 1985 all these groups had run out of ideas and were in decline, as most pop groups are after a few years. What followed was the vacuous formulaic sound of Stock, Aitken, and Waterman.
Live Aid wasn't exactly the first big outdoor concert. Glastonbury had already been running for 15 years, and Reading festival too had been going for a while. I agree with the spectator in that the New Wave pop acts don't really work in a stadium, and this is why Queen, Quo, and the Who excelled at live aid, but then again small venues aren't going to generate global tv audiences of 2 billion people.
robbiex wrote: Wyot wrote: I am in the cynical camp re Live Aid. Both in terms of the charities it diverted from and for musical reasons. Musically, the concert breathed life into some aging dinosaurs, and stifled new content...
If you watch the documentary, you will see that heads of charities were cynical at first, but then found that Bob was prepared to listen to them and get their help. The title of the post is very loaded and provokes negativity. As for the music, it did revive all dinosaurs like The who, the Beach Boys, Status Quo (Dinosaurs at 35, the same as Ed Sheeran today), but there were many new acts too. Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, U2, Sade, Alison Moyet, George Michael etc etc. Queen are not to my taste, but they stole the show on that day.
Beach Boys were pretty old hat by the end of the 1970s. Their 80s albums The Beach Boys, Keepin' The Summer Alive and Still Crusin' are very forgettable. Summer In Paradise from 1992 is garbage.
When new artists emerged like Kershaw, Jones, Sade and U2 they came out with fanfare and made an impression right away.
I am not the target market for Ed Sheeran so I don't get why he is popular, my daughters (both American) are near the same age as Sheeran. I remember asking them on a drive if they were fans of him, to make conversation. They both pretended to barf in the car. I don't remember Status Quo ever going away - but I could take or leave them. In the 1980s I was buying Pete Townshend records, when Townshend recorded Slit Skirts he was going through a midlife crisis even at 34.
I do love these lyrics.
And girls who lost their children cursed the men who fit the coil
And men not fit for marriage took their refuge in the oil
No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned
From all this you'd imagine that there must be something learned
Watching the concert on iplayer, it's interesting to see the links and Richard Skinner showing the donation address, with a warning at the bottom of the screen saying that the address is no longer active, as if people will try to donate to a 40-year-old concert. I'm glad that they show some of the backstage links as I have the DVD which contains most of the performances.
JK2006 wrote: When I slagged off Band Aid in my column in the Sun we got 18.600 letters (still a record). I was the only one to criticise Live Aid (Bob was furious with me). The response was 50-50.
On balance I think I agree with you JK. Maybe this was the first clear example of wokism and virtue signalling. So happy 40th to that too then!
That's fascinating JK and very insightful as you so often are.
I watched Live Aid at the time and really liked it apart from the charity angle.
There are heaps of celebs and entertainers I'm not a great fan of but I have no bad feelings about them but I certainly came to loathe Bob Geldoff and still do.
A lot of my dislike was the way he treated Michael Hutchense who I knew so well and really liked as he was such a sweet person. I only met Paula a couple of times but she seemed nice if somewhat troubled. I had a drink with Michel and others the night before he died at his hotel.
I thought the way Geldoff treated them was appalling and subsequently the awful way he treated Michael's parents who were real sweeties and so proud of Michael and obviously so distressed by subsequent events.
There is still a great mystery about what happened to $Millions Hutchence.had in a Hong Kong bank.
JK2006 wrote: A terrible concert (except for Queen) with dreadful sound and a load of wankers pretending to care as funds were diverted from better run charities like Oxfam and Save The Children into the pockets of corrupt officials. Whilst smug mini pop stars and wankers of the public fell for Bob's crap hype. As I said at the time.
I was there and it was a fabulous concert. The only sound problem was with The Who and McCartney
Like everyone else, my highlight was Queen but a close second were The Beach Boys. The USA concert was screened in the stadium. It was a hot day and everyone in Wembley danced and sung along to California Girls
You are obviously jealous that you weren't involved in any way
The distribuion of the money wasn't perfect but it was as good as it good have been given the circumstances
As Winston Churchill said "It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything"
The legacy of Live Aid is immense and twofold (1) Other charitable efforts and (2) The increase of big Stadium shows. Many people are only alive today as a result of Live Aid
Not jealous at all BB - I was never a performer. Bob said he would shake hands with the Devil to get the result and he did. The tragedies of his life since then illustrate that. You simply fell for the hype, as the majority did. And why not? The Devil works in cunning ways. Millions died who did not need to, as a result of the badly run charity taking funds away from better run services. Many corrupt officials got rich. And the concert was musically awful.
hedda wrote: That's fascinating JK and very insightful as you so often are.
I watched Live Aid at the time and really liked it apart from the charity angle.
There are heaps of celebs and entertainers I'm not a great fan of but I have no bad feelings about them but I certainly came to loathe Bob Geldoff and still do.
A lot of my dislike was the way he treated Michael Hutchense who I knew so well and really liked as he was such a sweet person. I only met Paula a couple of times but she seemed nice if somewhat troubled. I had a drink with Michel and others the night before he died at his hotel.
I thought the way Geldoff treated them was appalling and subsequently the awful way he treated Michael's parents who were real sweeties and so proud of Michael and obviously so distressed by subsequent events.
There is still a great mystery about what happened to $Millions Hutchence.had in a Hong Kong bank.
Generally the person who steals your wife, doesn't become your best friend. I don't know about a sweet person, he was a very high dangerous individual, encouraging his partners to take part in extreme sex acts. He would be cancelled today, if he was still around. His death says it all. He wanked himself to death via auto-affixiation. What an Idiot, just like the tory mp who did the same. Bob had the heart to adopt Paula and Micheal's daughter, so that they could grow up with their sisters.
Blue Boy wrote: JK2006 wrote: A terrible concert (except for Queen) with dreadful sound and a load of wankers pretending to care as funds were diverted from better run charities like Oxfam and Save The Children into the pockets of corrupt officials. Whilst smug mini pop stars and wankers of the public fell for Bob's crap hype. As I said at the time.
I was there and it was a fabulous concert. The only sound problem was with The Who and McCartney
Like everyone else, my highlight was Queen but a close second were The Beach Boys. The USA concert was screened in the stadium. It was a hot day and everyone in Wembley danced and sung along to California Girls
You are obviously jealous that you weren't involved in any way
The distribuion of the money wasn't perfect but it was as good as it good have been given the circumstances
As Winston Churchill said "It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything"
The legacy of Live Aid is immense and twofold (1) Other charitable efforts and (2) The increase of big Stadium shows. Many people are only alive today as a result of Live Aid
Well said Blue Boy, I wasn't there, but I know someone who was and she said it was a fantastic day, one never to forget. How much does anyone remember about the Live 8 gig 20 years later. Not much apart from the U2/MaCCartney co-lab.
I'm watching some of the footage on player and I have the DVD. Sade and Nik Kershaw's performances are very close to the single recordings. Everyone is in the moment, enjoying the concert, not looking through a phone, or up loading photos to Instagram. Also the documentary explains that Band Aid worked with Oxfam and Save the Children. They gave them the money and left the organisation to the big charities.
I remember the Live8 concert for more personal reasons, it was the date my father passed away in his fifties after a year long cancer battle just as the concert started. My brother went to it with his blessing and then had to be told the bad news by text as he was amongst the crowd in the stadium at the start of the show.
Late in the evening I seem to recall Pink Floyd as I sat and watched for a while, almost forgetting the loss we'd had for a few minutes. There is nothing else about the show I could even tell you. I'm just pleased it wasn't me in the stadium on that day having to watch it having just been given such bad family news.
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