Live 8: Real Serious Music

Concerts To Pressure G8 Summit Rock Four Continents And Beyond

(CBS/AP) 
Dave Matthews, who hails from South Africa, began his performance by thanking organizer Bob Geldof "for throwing a party to make a better world."

As to whether Live 8 would have any effect on the G-8 leaders, Matthews said backstage, "I think they're aware of what's going on, and judging from President's Bush's speech, he's moving in the right direction. We want him ... to move a little bit further," he said.

The day's acts were punctuated by celebrities (including Natalie Portman, Jennifer Connelly and Richard Gere) who further reminded the audience of the cause with statistics and ways to petition.

"Today's gathering is not about charity, it's about humanity," said "Rush Hour" actor Chris Tucker.

Organizers and performers said as many as one million fans were there, but that was impossible to verify and seemed overblown, with several hundred thousand seeming more accurate. Police declined to provide an estimate.

Paul McCartney and U2's Bono rocked London's Hyde Park with a rousing performance of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on Saturday to kick off the main event there.

A thunderous roar erupted from the crowd as the two iconic performers belted out the first line: "It was 20 years ago today," a nod to the mammoth Live Aid concerts that raised millions for African famine relief two decades ago.

Well, not quite. But 20 years to the month after the mammoth Live Aid concerts that raised millions for African famine relief on July 13, 1985, hundreds of musicians were taking to 10 stages from Tokyo to Toronto, Berlin to Johannesburg for a music marathon to raise awareness of African poverty and pressure the world's most powerful leaders to do something about it at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland next week.

CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports from London that more 150,000 fans crowded into Hyde Park for the show.

Organizer Bob Geldof promised it would be "the greatest concert ever."

CBS News reporter Charlie D'Agata spoke to Sting backstage at Hyde Park. The singer told him the concert is about putting pressure on the eight leaders of the richest nations of the world.

"It's about planting a seed, and those eight men, they've seen that there's a groundswell , a constituency, and we'll be watching," he said.

Other heavy hitters on the London bill were Elton John, The Who, Pink Floyd, REM, and Madonna.

The first concert kicked off in Japan, where Bjork and Good Charlotte joined local bands for a concert that failed to generate much interest in Asia's only G-8 nation. It rolled on to Johannesburg, South Africa, where 24-year-old Zambian singer Lindiwe opened before a crowd of about 500 people that was expected to swell to 40,000.

In an open letter to the G-8 leaders, which appeared in several British newspapers Saturday, Geldof said the summit would disappoint the world if it failed to deliver an extra $25 billion in aid to Africa.

"We will not applaud half-measures, or politics as usual. This must be a historic breakthrough," the letter says. "Today there will be noise and music and joy, the joy of exuberant possibility. On Friday (the end of the summit) there will be great silence as the world awaits your verdict. Do not disappoint us. Do not create a generation of cynics."