Live Aid occurred 40 years ago last summer.
I remember Dick Clark on ABC aired a live special. I can’t remember the other channels that carried the entire event.
How important is Live Aid in your memory?
Do you have it on CD or DVD?
I’ve rewatched Queen’s 20 minute set on YouTube many times. They stole the show that day.
I honestly can’t remember what parts I might have seen live or I’m remembering scenes I’ve seen over the years since then. I was nine years old, and it’s entirely possible I’m confusing Live Aid with some other concert. For me, I suppose Live Aid isn’t a particularly important memory.
I didn’t see it live, but on one of our first dates, the young woman I was seeing at the time said ‘you gotta see this’ and popped her copy into the VCR. Unforgettable, for many reasons.
Live Aid is available on a 4 dvd set. I haven’t bought it because that’s overwhelming long.
Most of the individual acts are on YouTube.
Each act got 20 minutes. Their sound got cut after that and the next act came on.
Queen rehearsed heavily to create this 20 minute set.
I was working that day as the “rover” so I was able to drive home at lunch and catch The Who. You can imagine my disappointment when the feed went out during My Generation.
I still have my Live Aid pin, anyone else have theirs?
I watched it live. We were very excited about it, and had a gathering at a friend’s house; though I think I missed the start of the Wembley leg of the broadcast (it started at like 6am my time), we watched the rest of it. I do remember the legendary Queen performance, which was at around noon our time.
I was less than a year old during the event, although my dad did record portions of it on VHS, which I still have. It’s been too long since I last watched it to recall which performers he got on tape, but these days I find the commercial breaks that aired then more interesting.
Counterpoint: I have basically no recollection of it whatever. Had to check the thread to see what we were talking about, pretty much.
I was 24.
I was in college (working as a summer lab instructor, if I recall correctly) and didn’t have easy access to a TV to watch it. I may not have even heard about it until after it happened - my campus seemed to have a bubble of isolation around it, slowing delivery of news of the outside world to a remarkable extent.
I was fifteen years old, spending ten days with family friends who were doing a sabbatical in Toulouse, France (I’m from the US, as were the family friends). I watched much of it live, on their rented home’s small black-and-white TV. I was a big Led Zeppelin fan, and I had no idea they were going to reunite for that day, until it happened – of course, I was excited. I rolled my eyes when Robert Plant messed up the words to “Stairway to Heaven” – I thought, “my grandmother could recite those lyrics – and this is the guy that freakin’ wrote them!” 
I remember watching it in my little house on the side of a hill.
My mother had recently died, my son was 3 years old and my husband was in California on business.
I had it blasting in my living room and I danced with my little boy for a while.
I watched it (at least the Wembley leg) live, I was 17. I don’t remember all of it, especially the Philadelphia parts, maybe I missed some of that because it aired too late here in Germany and I went to sleep before it ended. I’m also always confusing it and the acts with the “Free Mandela concert” from a few years later at Wembley, though I remember that much more clearly.
For a somewhat cynical take on the event.
It was a long time ago, and my memory is somewhat hazy. But as far as I recall I watched some parts of it live, but not the whole thing. I certainly watched the opening by Status Quo and the closing by Band Aid. Other than that I think I watched it on and off. I’ve never been a huge pop music fan and several of the performers just don’t interest me.
Two of my friends got married that day. A lot of other friends came to town for the wedding, which was in the afternoon. We started the day gathered at one house and watched for a while. The wedding/reception was held at a Victorian mansion and there was a TV in one of the back rooms and we watched off and on there. Then we went back to the house and watched some more. That evening we went out to The Rendezvous downtown and it was on a couple TVs there. I don’t remember which acts I saw. There was a lot of drinking involved all day.