Live Aid: 'Nobody knew if anybody would turn up'

"There was a sense in the place that Geldof was Geldof and had he bitten off too much this time. Could it really come together the way he hoped? Looking at the history of the event and Geldof's comments on it, he was shocked himself," says Joe Breen, former Irish Times critic, who covered the Live Aid concert in London's Wembley Stadium on July 13^th 1985.

Two years of famine in what is today Ethiopia and Eritrea had led to more than 400,000 deaths. In an effort to raise funds for relief in the ongoing famine, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure came up with Live Aid, a concert that would take place across two venues: Wembley Stadium in London, and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia.

“The whole sense of the tragedy unfolding in Africa was a huge thing at the time, it was a huge media event and Live Aid built on that whole idea of what people were experiencing. It was the idea that music could somehow contribute to it; that the music industry could pull together and do their bit, and that was what Geldof harnessed. It was an amazing thing for him to do,” says Breen.

Between the two venues, Live Aid went on for 16 hours, with events in Philadelphia screened in London and vice versa as it happened, as well as being broadcast on television worldwide. It was one of the largest scale satellite link-ups and broadcasts at the time. Almost two billion people tuned in across 150 nations over the course of the day.

Sense of occasion
"It was amazing, it really was. There was a sense of occasion, of something really dramatic happening and that continued throughout the whole day. The event just gained momentum as we went through the day. No one really knew what was going to happen. Nobody really knew if it would just fall apart. Nobody really knew if anybody would turn up. That was the dynamic. We were out in the crowd and I do remember the sense that there was a happening, that it was a real news event, just that real sense of expectation and excitement in the crowd," says Breen.

Geldof had hoped to raise £1 million for Ethiopia through Live Aid, but actually ended up raising a global total of £150 million, half of which was spent on food and the other on long-term development. However, this total was not reached for a number of weeks after the event.

For Breen, it was U2 who stole the show on the day. “U2 were a huge event; it was a big thing for us, because of the sense that this was an Irish band doing something. David Bowie was pretty impressive. Queen were huge, I was no big fan, but they were amazing on the day. U2 really were astonishing, though. It was that sense of moment, they took that moment and the song, the time, the experience, the sense of what the event was about. It seemed to all come together when they did Bad, as it seems to me when I look back on it,” he says.

To mark the 30-year anniversary of Live Aid, we have pulled the reviews of Live Aid from both London and Philadelphia, from our archive.

‘70,000 revel in

Wembley spectacle’ – Joe Breen’s review of Live Aid, Wembley

IT WAS that kind of day. The sun shone most of the time, the performances were spectacular and the audience of 70,000 or more loved every minute of the ten-hour marathon. Well, could Bob Geldof describe the Live Aid concert in Wembley and Philadelphia on Saturday as the greatest day of his life? Through sheer determination he had turned an ambitious idea into a great event.

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‘Sixties

legends come to life again’ - Sean Cronin’s review of Live Aid, John F. Kennedy Stadium, Philadelphia

MORE THAN 90,000 young people and a few who were a middle-aged or older packed John F. Kennedy Stadium, Philadelphia, for 14 hours on Saturday as rock singers and musicians, ranging from international names to relative unknowns, performed free for the starving of the world while much of America watched on television.

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* This article was edited on Monday July 13th, correcting Joe Breen's reference to the song One to the song Bad