It’s one of the biggest memories of my youth, my brother and I went to the Philadelphia concert. It was the summer before I left for college. We arrived around 10 AM, didn’t leave until it was over. I still have my ticket stub, souvenir T-shirt (which has shrunk in the intervening years..), the concert program, and a ton of pictures we took.
ETA: Just pulled out the ticket stub, apparently the concert cost the lordly price of $35.
Bob Geldof and and Midge Ure wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas?. The super group Band Aid was formed to record the song.
Money from Do They Know It’s Christmas? helped fund the charity to raise money for the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.
It was popular at the time. I haven’t heard it in at least 20 years. I know it’s on YouTube.
I have many Christmas albums by various artists singing popular Christmas songs. That one doesn’t get covered like Wham’s Last Christmas. It’s covered by many artists.
Any radio station that does an “all-holiday” format at Christmastime, and plays more modern songs – like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and Wham’s “Last Christmas” as part of it – plays the Band Aid song in heavy rotation.
That’s about $100 today with inflation taken into account. I guess this must have been before the likes of Ticketmaster abusing their monopoly to gouge concert goers.
It’s not a good song, but I do hear it every year. But I listen to a lot of Christmas music starting December 1.
As someone who pays very little attention to music, I was unaware of it happening (though it was thrown together rather last minute, so maybe that’s forgiveable) until my older sister, who was much more music savvy, got excited about it and convinced us all to watch.
Which we did, every moment of it was on our TV, though I did sleep through some of it due to time zones.
I think my sister did record it on VHS, but I can’t recall her ever rewatching it.
It’s marked “Ticketron - A division of Control Data Corporation” on the back. I remember we had to stand outside a record store for several hours to get tickets, the standard method at the time.
I don’t remember why I didn’t watch it. I got my MTV by then. I’ve since watched Queen about a dozen times, I’m afraid to watch Led Zeppelin as I’ve heard it’s the worst performance in all of history.
Since Queen and Bowie were back to back, I think they missed an opportunity to have Under Pressure overlap both sets..
This, except I was 11 years old. Also I think we only had one TV at the time and my parents would have had first dibs on what shows to watch.
I was 15 at the time. Didn’t watch it live or anytime after. Wasn’t really into any of the bands that performed.
I really can’t remember. I had the DVD set for the longest time, and it all sort of muddles together in my memory.
I watched a goodly amount of it on MTV, then the Dick Clark special on ABC that night. I recorded (on VHS) some of the “live” performances and I recorded the entire special on ABC. Unfortunately, the VHS tape was lost in a move in the 90s. Wish I still had it.
I remember watching most all of Live Aid with my music teacher parents. It was a rare late bedtime that night!
I was 15, so at the height of my music-love phase. Plus in the UK, we only had 4 TV channels at the time, and Live Aid was broadcast live all day on the main one - BBC One. So it was kind of unavoidable and probably the most exciting thing going on in my life at that point. I think I watched the whole thing, but certainly all of the London set and some of Philadelphia.
I was at Wembley to see the UK part of it live. Until U2, Queen and Bowie came on it was fairly dull. Just about everyone lacked the presence required to play a 100K seater stadium. I was probably two thirds of the way back but fairly central and I remember being bored quite a lot of the time. Dire Straits spring to mind immediately; no doubt that Mark Knopfler is an exceptionally gifted guitarist but from about 80 yards away there was no way you could tell that so we started throwing a football around while they were playing Sultans of Swing.
Having said that, if was worth the wait to see Queen who were truly amazing. I thought U2 and Bowie were not too far behind them. Those three can all play a stadium really well so it served to highlight the gap in presence between them and everyone else.
That’s right. It was a really big thing here in the UK, and we watched it on and off all day. I thought some of the older bands, like Status Quo, were a bit boring, so I didn’t hold out much hope for Queen when they came on. But it was the most amazing set I’ve ever seen.
Queen – and Freddie Mercury in particular – were just absolutely amazing in that concert. No, I didn’t watch it live, and probably was only vaguely aware that it was happening, but today my son is such an avid fan that I managed to download a high quality video of their Live Aid performance and we’ve watched it many times.
In my fuzzy memory (which may or may not be accurate), the whole thing was carried live on MTV, and I watched a significant portion of it, though I don’t remember specifics about what I saw or what I thought about it at the time.
For me, this was the summer between high school and college, which was probably the peak of my awareness and interest in the sort of mainstream pop/rock that dominated radio and MTV, so it was a big deal to me at the time.
When the DVD set became available, I got it (and still have it somewhere) and watched it (or at least had it on in the background) over the course of several days.
I watched a lot of it on MTV. I really don’t remember any of the groups, but Martha Quinn squealing when Sting walked out to accompany Dire Straits on "Money for Nothing’ will always stick in my head.
Watched and taped on VHS in glorious MONO, commercials and insipid comments by what I reckon were the first gen VJs.
It got confusing (at least for the Philly) crowd as Phil Collins choppered in to fo his well known hit and some movie song - in TWO CONTINENTS!
Then the Philly crowd was shown Queen’s performance, so even if the next band was Led Zeppelin, they couldn’t top it. Oh yeah, they were Led Zeppelin, and they went over like…something Keith Moon said.
It’s funny to see Madonna not get the crowd going. Who is she again?
U2 from Wembley played a nice set. I think Bono was still claiming his war song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” wasn’t about war, even though the album was titled War and an event people will recall a long time.
I was 15, glued to the screen all day and I vividly recall Tracey Chapman starting her international career with huge impact (everyone asking who she was, akin to the girl in the yellow coat at Biden’s inauguration ).
I have also recall Sade, Queen of course and Status Quo trying to get the ball rolling as warm up act.