The Day That Rocked The World
My friend in Las Vegas, who always watches "Up To The Minute," will probably be horrified to realise that "Live Aid" took place nearly two decades ago.
It dates us all, even Walter Yetnikov. Those kids who sold you lemonade on street corners to help the starving in Ethiopia that long hot Saturday afternoon in 1985, are probably in their thirties now.
The concert that took place in London and Philadelphia, sprang out of two coincidences. A BBC correspondent being persuaded by an old friend in one of the aid agencies that this famine was different than all the others... and a wild haired Irishman whose pop career was over, who couldn't get arrested, watching the reports of that biblical famine, when they were screened and becoming outraged at the injustice. Then came "Band Aid," "Do They Know It's Christmas"... and then Bob Geldof's barmy idea of a simultaneous pop concert on either side of the pond.
It happened of course and pretty much all down to him and mainly because we were all scared of him. It was always easier to say "yeah, Ok" to Bob, than to have that torrent of abuse raining down on your head if you dared to say "why", or even worse "no". The atmosphere in London was certainly very different to the way things went in Philly. Here, no one dared to behave like a star… to do that would have risked the wrath of Geldof. Over there, well, the usual suspects demanded extra this and extra that and minders to walk them to the toilet.
But was the concert any good? I don't know. It was one of the best days of my life, and I can't remember all that much about it. Well, I remember how good U2 were and how subtly competitive the whole thing became.
Freddie Mercury told me that Queen rehearsed three months to get their eighteen minute set just so.
I remember the helicopter picking Elton John up from his home in Windsor and the rotors whipping his flowerbed to shreds as it lifted off… he wasn't happy. And I remember just who it was who accidentally pulled the vocal mike feed during Paul McCartney's soul searing "Let It Be", but it would cost CBS a small fortune to wrench the name from me. Bob Geldof, from whose loins all this sprang ,couldn't have cared less at the time how good or bad the concert was... he'd have happily put on Lawrence Welk if he thought that people would have paid to see him.
He was after the money to help a bit in Ethiopia and he still is. Come this December, when Bob's done the deal, you'll be able, for the first time, to buy "Live Aid" on DVD and video and all the rest and I suspect that it'll all look a bit flaky. But that doesn't matter: a few million more dollars, pounds and Euros will go out to supporting communities in the third world. But Geldof's much bigger legacy, now that he's Sir Bob, a millionaire property developer and a TV company owner …is that two maybe three generations of kids have grown up knowing where Africa is on the map... and that it matters.
By Simon Bates