Memories of Live Aid and a different era
National Post, 13 July 2025
Forty years ago, 40 per cent of the world's population tuned in to watch a charity rock extravaganza
Forty years ago today — July 13, 1985 — everyone who was anyone in the music world was at Live Aid, the benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. Not everyone, to be precise. The two biggest stars of 1985, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, took a pass. But everyone else was there — from the legends Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney to the then-new stars, Madonna and U2 and Bryan Adams.
The concert’s impresario was Bob Geldof, the Irish rocker-activist of the Boomtown Rats, who became passionate about the “outrage of people starving in a world of surplus.” He led the recording of the British relief song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1984 and formed Band Aid, a non-profit using the power of musical celebrity to drive private donations and government aid to alleviate starvation in Ethiopia.
The twin mega-concerts, some nine hours long, were held in London, England (Wembley Stadium) and Philadelphia (JFK Stadium). The model was the old television telethon format, where entertainers performed to attract viewers who were encouraged to make donations. And there were a lot of viewers. Some nearly two billion people watched, 40 per cent of the global population at the time.
Phil Collins performed at both shows, first in London and then taking the Concorde to New York. A chopper airlifted him to Philadelphia so that he could play on both sides of the Atlantic on the same day.
Like the Concorde, so much from 1985 now seems stranded in another era.
The London show was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales, Charles and Diana, when the latter was at the peak of her pop music celebrity fame. Adams wrote “Diana,” his ode to the princess, in 1984.
There was little cultural politics then; it was considered enough to be against famine. The song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is now considered patronizing; Africa had Christians long before Britain did.
The moment was not one of great biblical literacy in any case. The American counterpart song, modestly entitled “We Are the World,” included the lyrics, “As God has shown us by turning stone to bread.” Not really. Turning stones to bread was the diabolical temptation Jesus rejected, but no matter, it had a catchy tune.
Geldof and his earnest energy did inject a modest strain of moral urgency into foreign affairs. A line could be drawn from Band Aid to Bono’s efforts on debt relief, and even to the African Aids initiative (PEPFAR) introduced by George W. Bush (and recently dismantled by Donald Trump).
Yet it was as a cultural phenomenon that Live Aid seems from an entirely different era. Would it be possible today to assemble a cast of musicians sufficiently well known across the generations to attract the viewers that Live Aid did in 1985? The stadium show itself no longer has the cultural power it did in the 1980s, when it was a staple of summertime.
Taylor Swift’s recent tour, concluded in Canada, attracted such attention partly because it was so unusual — a pop star selling out massive stadium after massive stadium. It happens, but not like the 1980s, when Springsteen and Jackson and others packed football stadiums night after night, summer after summer — and it didn’t require debt financing for the fans to attend.
Perhaps Swift marks a return to popular live music. A new outdoor concert facility — capacity 50,000 — opened on the old Toronto Downsview airport site last month. Coldplay did four shows there, part of their multi-year Music of the Spheres tour that has now sold more tickets than any other tour in history.
But Swift and Coldplay are more likely exceptional. Which is a shame, because the joyous exuberance of the stadium tour is not replicable in the privatized music listening environment of the digital world.
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