Music In My Shoes
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Music In My Shoes
E87 Live Aid - July 13, 1985: Rockin' All Over the World
The day the world stopped to listen. July 13, 1985 stands as a pivotal moment when music transcended entertainment to become a global force for humanitarian change. Live Aid connected London's Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia's JFK Stadium through groundbreaking satellite technology, reaching nearly 2 billion viewers.
What made Live Aid revolutionary wasn't just its scale but its immediacy. Unlike Woodstock or other historic concerts we experience through curated footage, Live Aid happened in real-time before our eyes. From Status Quo kicking off with "Rockin' All Over The World" to the "We are the World" finale, we witnessed music history unfiltered—technical glitches, microphone failures, and all. This raw authenticity created an unprecedented shared global experience.
The performances ranged from career-defining triumphs to disappointing reunions. U2 transformed from cult favorites to superstars with their electrifying 11-minute rendition of "Bad," featuring Bono's spontaneous rescue of a fan from the crushing crowd. Queen delivered what many consider rock's greatest live performance, with Freddie Mercury commanding 72,000 people like a conductor before his orchestra. Phil Collins made the impossible happen—performing in London, flying on the Concorde to New York, and helicoptering to Philadelphia to play with Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin all in the same day.
Beyond raising millions for Ethiopian famine relief, Live Aid fundamentally changed how we understand music's potential impact. It created the blueprint for benefit concerts that continues today, proving that artists could mobilize massive global action. Four decades later, in our fragmented media landscape, Live Aid's achievement seems even more remarkable—a singular moment when music united humanity across continents, cultures, and borders for a cause greater than ourselves.
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He's got the feeling in his toe-toe.
Speaker 2:He's got the feeling and it's out there growing. Hey everybody, this is Jim Boge, and you're listening to Music In my Shoes. That was Vic Thrill kicking off episode 87. As always, I'm thrilled to be here with you. Let's learn something new or remember something old. 40 years ago, on July 13th 1985, Live Aid took place in London and Philadelphia. First of all, it's hard to believe 40 years.
Speaker 1:Is it, though? I mean, I think we've established that, like, 40 is okay for the 80s, 30 is not okay for the 90s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right about that, Jimmy. You are right about that. So concerts formed to continue to raise money for the famine in Ethiopia and there was the famine. I think it was from like 1983 to 1985. It starts back in November 84. Band-aid has the famine. I think it was from like 1983 to 1985. It starts back in November 84. Band-aid has the song, the charity song. Do they Know it's Christmas? And in March 1985, usa for Africa did their charity song we Are the World.
Speaker 1:So the London concert began at noon their time, London time, whatever that's called and it was gmt, I believe they call it greenwich mean time.
Speaker 2:Oh, there you go. Yeah, it was 7 am my time, eastern time. I was living in new york at the time, so I set my alarm for 6 am so I wouldn't oversleep and miss anything Like. I was really amped up and couldn't wait and notice. I said, my, you know my alarm, it was my alarm clock. It wasn't like you know your phone or anything, you had an actual clock that you needed to make sure.
Speaker 1:Was it a digital one, a beep one, or was it a actual, like it had a bell in it that rang digital one, a beep one, or was it an? Actual, like it had a bell in it that rang.
Speaker 2:It had the bell. Yeah, it did have the bell. So I bought a box of 10 TDK cassettes and you know I was ready to record the whole day. Like I said, set my alarm for six o'clock and it was going to be broadcast first of all on MTV, all day on MTV here in America, all different stations throughout the world, and then, I believe, ABC in America was going to do like the last three hours of the show On radio.
Speaker 2:It was on New York radio station 92.3 K-Rock and it was the former disco station 92 KTU, which was this, you know, first big station in New York that went all disco after a guy spent, you know, station manager, spent a bunch of time at Studio 54. And he's like, why is there no radio station that plays this music? And then it became contemporary hit radio and then at midnight the night before Live Aid, it goes off the air and then when it becomes K-Rock, the first song they play is Long Live Rock by the who Okay, which I think is pretty cool. I mean, it's something I've remembered for 40 years. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Which is funny because 96 Rock in Atlanta. The first song they ever played was a who song.
Speaker 2:Bob O'Reilly, really, yeah, something about the who makes you want to have that as the first song. So you know, I mentioned that it was broadcast on MTV and this is the first time that a big event can be watched and listened to globally. You know, when they had a few years earlier, they had the Us Festival, but it was kind of like a syndicated best of package that they broadcast on the radio. Maybe you could have bought the video, I don't remember, but this was free. You know, yeah, mtv cost if you had cable, but for the most part it's considered free.
Speaker 1:And it was broadcast live like really live, Correct?
Speaker 2:Really live broadcast. You know everywhere, throughout the entire world, and I just thought that was super cool because you know I'm a big Woodstock fan and you know Woodstock is just watching the video footage of film that they made or whatever. You know what people wanted you to see and that's my interpretation of what it is, whereas here you're watching it live and you know I form my opinions on what was actually happening and not someone telling me you understand what I'm saying. I do, yeah, so I thought that was pretty cool. Almost 2 billion people were watching this at one point. Amazing, it's insane. It's absolutely insane. I just find that you know something that you can't believe you couldn't.
Speaker 2:That wouldn't happen today. You can't get that many people to be on one topic. Almost 40 percent of the world's population had Live Aid on July 13th 1985. Wow, so in 2000, yeah, I mean seriously like to think about that. In 2016, I wrote on social media some of my thoughts on Live Aid and then I reposted and updated a couple of times afterwards and I'll share some of those thoughts, some of the comments that people made. You know, as I'm talking about Live Aid. So I put a cassette tape in my boom box and I started recording. 16 hours later. When it was done, I had listened to and watched some pretty good bands and some good bands who sounded terrible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bands and some good bands who sounded terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all in all, you know, as a music fan, it was definitely worth the hype, it was definitely worth everything.
Speaker 1:I thought it was super cool because it was something I had never experienced before and most people hadn't, and because it was really live, you had all those technical problems and, you know, made it more real.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, definitely made it real. I wish I made it to Philadelphia. I don't really know why I didn't even really try that hard to go to Philadelphia and you know I kicked myself that I wish that I did. But at the same point, by watching it on TV, I got to see the best of you know everything from London, from Philadelphia, right there in my own living room.
Speaker 1:So didn't they show the people in Philadelphia all the London stuff too? I mean, wasn't there a screen there that they were watching it on?
Speaker 2:There was, but it wasn't all shown and I might have it backwards, but what they didn't really think about is that the video went satellite and then the sound went under the ocean cable or vice versa. So it wasn't you know it wasn't in sync.
Speaker 2:It wasn't in sync. So they had to put it in sync, because the timing was off by the time they would get each one, in order to be able to put it together then to show it over in London. So there was definitely some technological issues that they had with it. So I'm going to start. I'm going to talk about London. I think it's easier.
Speaker 1:Let's just hit.
Speaker 2:London, go through London and then go to Philadelphia. Now again, for those of you not familiar with Live Aid, that's not how it happened. It did start in London. A couple hours later it started in Philadelphia. At times, you know, you kind of had bands playing in both of them. Sometimes it would just be London, sometimes it would just be Philadelphia. But really, to kind of make it simpler, I figured let's just start with London. So, prince Charles, princess Diana, you know, they make their way to the Royal Box at Wembley Stadium. That's really the opening of Live Aid. And then Diana died in a car crash in 1997. And Charles became the King of England in 2022.
Speaker 2:Just to kind of give you a little history lesson of from the beginning of Live Aid, british broadcaster Richard Skinner started it all off by saying it's 12 o'clock noon in London, 7am in Philadelphia and around the world, it's time for Live Aid. And with that, status Quo opens the show with what I think is a fantastic choice of songs rocking all over the world. A John Fogerty cover that kind of says it all. Oh, here we are and here we are, and here we go all around and we're hitting the road. And here we go all around and we're hitting the road. Here we go, rocking all over the world.
Speaker 2:I had never heard the song before that day and I was singing along within no time because, you know, they kind of repeat all the lyrics. All of England knew who they were. I knew them, you know, I had heard about them when they did the Do they Know it's Christmas. Some of the members you know took part of that. But what a fantastic song to open up something that is worldwide, rocking all over the world. I just loved it. Just loved it, thought it was so cool. So Paul Weller, formerly of the Jam. He had a new band out at the time, the Style Council. They played next, followed by the Boomtown Rats, fronted by Bob Geldof, who was really the main organizer, mid-jour of Ultravox, organized with him, along with Do they Know it's Christmas and Band Aid. But, bob, it was really his pet project.
Speaker 1:Definitely Bob's project, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they did an excellent version of I Don't Like Mondays and they sounded great. Boontown Rats absolutely sounded fantastic at the show and I was just like I remember thinking like man, this is unbelievable. Atta man played. Atta man only played one song. Then Ultravox came out and they did Reap the Wild Wind and Dancing with Tears in my Eyes. That were just highlights for me.
Speaker 2:I really love both of those songs and Midyore. You know he can hit the high notes. It's not one of those things where they sing, but they're live and it doesn't sound as good as the record. Really good. Spandau ballet, elvis Costello, nick Kershaw, then Sade. In 2016,.
Speaker 2:I wrote about Sting and Phil Collins. While I'm not a big Phil Collins fan, phil Collins While I'm not a big Phil Collins fan alternating between each other's songs made me think that was kind of cool, you know. So Sting starts first and then he has Phil join him a couple of songs later and then they go back and forth playing their own songs and then at the end, they play two songs together and they have Brantford Marsalis with them. And we talked about Brantford Marsalis back on episode 72 for one of the iconic Grateful Dead shows in 1990 at the Nassau Coliseum. Five years earlier he's playing there with Sting and Phil Collins at Live Aid. So it was cool. You know, it was definitely cool. Too many cameras and not enough food, because this is what we've seen Driven to tears. So that song Driven to Tears a police song came out in 1980, and it was due to commercials that Sting was seeing here in America about people starving over in Africa. And five years later, here he is part of Live Aid.
Speaker 1:That is, you know, the same premise you know, yeah, so it was a good song choice.
Speaker 2:Good song choice. Phil Collins comes out, plays Against All Odds on piano. He actually hits the wrong chord at one point and makes a face. That's a premise of things to come. Sting does Message in a Bottle, you know, Phil Collins does In the Air Tonight, and then both of them on Long, long Way to Go and every breath you take, and it was still cool, even though it was a little bit slow, but because it was Live Aid, you know you give some, uh, some room to people you know to do things. Yeah. So the set ends and Phil Collins makes his way to the airport. He actually hops on a helicopter at Wembley Stadium, goes to London Heathrow and he gets on a Concorde plane, british Airways Concorde. You remember the Concordes?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, they don't fly them anymore. Yeah, and I want to say it was like a three-and-a-half-hour flight from London to New York and while, you know, I had MTV on MTV like sometimes all of a sudden would just show like Phil Collins sitting in the you know helicopter, and then it would be him at the airport and then he's on the Concorde and they just kind of followed him throughout the whole thing. Oh there's Phil, he's sleeping, he's getting some rest. Before you know, he gets over to America, because he ended up going and playing on the same day in America, played some of the same songs and wanted to make some history do something kind of cool. Again, I might not be a big fan, but I think that's cool. Sure, my hat's off to you. So Howard Jones comes on. He plays one song.
Speaker 2:Brian Ferry of Roxy Music takes the stage with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd on guitar and it was really cool because he didn't play all the solos. The regular guy from Brian Ferry's band would play some of them, but as soon as David Gilmour would play his, you know he's bending the strings like he's doing a Pink Floydyd. Like it was cool, like I really enjoyed. It was not expecting it, so it was fun, really cool to see uh that happen. Paul young does a few songs and then you two took the stage. So I had seen you two with my brother in december 84, radio city and then at the Garden that's Madison Square Garden for those of you who don't know in April 1985.
Speaker 2:We've talked about that before, but nothing prepared me for their performance at Live Aid. Okay, I was like that's what I'm waiting for, like U2 is the big first thing that I'm hoping that's going to be, you know, like this really cool thing. And it was like hello world, we are U2. And you will know who we are after today and I truly believe that that was like that pinnacle moment for them that so many people got to know who they were. You watch the performance and my favorite views are in the day and when they had the camera behind the band so that you could see the audience, and that I really dug. I thought that was so cool. Now, at nighttime, when they would do it, it wasn't that good. You didn't see anybody, oh right. But in the day you could see the audience react and the audience was just really into it.
Speaker 1:So one thing about U2's performance is you think, okay, we're this band that the average person still doesn't know who we are, right, and we've got a 15-minute slot and so let's put our best songs, like let's play, I Will Follow, let's play, like the greatest hits of all these songs, so people know who we are. No, no, they come out and they do an 11-minute version of the slowest song from their latest record, bad.
Speaker 2:Right, which I thought when that album came out. That song was bad, you know.
Speaker 1:I didn't, but yeah.
Speaker 2:But through their live performances, radio City. The first time I saw them it was good, but then, when I saw them, even in know what is that? April, uh, four months later, they did even better. Now we're talking, you know, three months after that, and it was unbelievable what they had made, the song, and that, you know, it was just insane. I mean, it's just to me, it's just powerful. That song was powerful. You know, bono was powerful.
Speaker 2:Bono jumping off of the stage onto that platform that was below for the TV cameras. And just so you know, the TV cameras were actually on wheels. They were these big, huge things that they would have to turn. I don't know if you remember what the TV cameras were like. It's not like today, these tiny little small things, or you know, you can just do something from your computer. Back then this thing was tremendous, you know. So they had to build a platform for them.
Speaker 2:And you know he's just trying to get closer to the audience and you know bad you talk about. It starts off with Lou Reed's Satellite of Love and he sings a couple of words, a couple of lines from that and then, if you twist and turn away, if you tear yourself in two again. I mean, it's just so powerful and the audience is reacting, reacting the TV shots of Bono, like I said, from behind and panning the crowd. They're just like digging it and just loving it and having a great time, and to me that's what it's all about, you know. Is the audience enjoying it? How are they reacting?
Speaker 1:And, granted, people in England knew U2, you know the people in attendance at the concert. U2 was already a big band.
Speaker 2:Yes, and when you go to a festival and people bring those flags. There were a lot of flags that people had U2. They had made a flag, different U2 things, because when you go to the bathroom you have to be able to find your people and you have those flags and they kind of let you know hey, we're over here, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, sometimes they're because people like the band, but sometimes it's bathroom related.
Speaker 2:That's what I thought it always was. Is that it was bathroom related? You don't think it was?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there are two different things that people do. One is yeah, you're at a festival and you're trying to tell people where you are and you have a thing with like a, a troll at the top of it or whatever, and like, hey, yeah, look for that flag. But I think when you're going to see a band and you have a a flag with the band on it, that that's because you like the band. Okay, it might help with the bathroom too, though.
Speaker 2:I think it does. Okay, I think it does. So when he jumps down to the platform again and then he jumps down to crowd level, has the security people pull that one girl out of the audience and then just like—.
Speaker 1:Because she was being crushed.
Speaker 2:She was being crushed, so he gets her pulled out and then he dances with was being crushed. She was being crushed, so he gets her pulled out and then he dances with her for a few minutes and it just was like this is insane, this is so cool yeah, very, very impromptu.
Speaker 1:Right, there's no way that that was planned no, it's not, you don't know. So he goes she said he saved my life. Yeah, he goes back up. She said he saved my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he goes back up. There were two other girls that they had pulled out of the crowd before her, but that's not who he was pointing to and he kept pointing to the other. They pulled those two girls up at the stage level. Bono went over, kind of hugged them, you know, and let them just enjoy their 30 seconds of fame and then they were off. And then he's back into the song. You know. He gets back into singing the snippets of the Rolling Stones, ruby Tuesday and Sympathy for the Devil, and it's like this is so cool that he can do this with these songs and dance with these people and jump into the, you know, down by the crowd. And then, lastly, he goes into Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side and it always amazed me like he starts off with Lou Reed, he ends with Lou Reed. Holly came from Miami. Fla hitchhiked all the way across the USA. You could hear the satellite coming down Pretty soon.
Speaker 2:She was in London town, in Wembley Stadium, and all the people went do, do, do and they went with the whole thing and I just want to say chills at this point are like it's like, this is unbelievable, like the song should be over. But I don't want it to end Because he just keeps doing different things to make it just so memorable. And you know, I just think it's one of the greatest rock and roll moments, live rock and roll moments that you see. And today you can go to the Internet, you can look at it. You can keep seeing it over and over and over, but for me it is definitely one of the greatest moments of all time. So, friend of the show, chris Cassidy commented on my social media posts back in the day I'll never forget U2's performance and its impact on me, especially the song Bad, seeing them play in a stadium in broad daylight, then pulling the girl up incredible stuff. After that.
Speaker 2:Dire Straits follows up with Money for Nothing. Sting, who had just played with Phil Collins, joins them and it's really great to see them together doing the whole Money for Nothing thing. It sounded great live. You know I love live music. I really do so. When a band plays it and they can pull it off and it sounds as good as the record, I just think it's something cool. Dire Straits does Sultan's A Swing after. I just think it's something cool. Dire Straits does Sultan's A Swing after. Queen was up next with the beginning of Bohemian Rhapsody and Freddie Mercury's on piano. And if you notice, that piano has got to have like 15 Pepsi cups on it. Oh really.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's one thing that I've always noticed. I guess Pepsi was a sponsor, because when you see Philadelphia later on, on some of the pianos there's a bunch of Pepsi cups also. It was kind of crazy. It's funny how things stay in your mind through all of time. You know the Pepsi challenge. There you go. So Radio Gaga, which I was not a big fan of, no, so Radio Gaga, which I was not a big fan of, was actually pretty cool when you watch the people clapping in time as Freddie Mercury was singing.
Speaker 1:You know, I think it's something like you know all we something Radio Gaga and you know radio All we hear is Radio.
Speaker 2:Gaga and the people clapping and their arms in the air. Everyone was just in unison. It was kind of really cool how they all did it and were just so much into it more than I am.
Speaker 1:Well, and did you see the Queen biopic?
Speaker 2:I have never seen it pick.
Speaker 1:I have never seen it. So they make a big deal about this show and how freddie wasn't sure that he was going to even be able to play it, you know physically, with everything he was going through and uh, they literally decided at the, the 11th hour like they had to call Geldof and Live Aid and say we're going to do it and they had to rearrange the schedule to get Queen that set and they showed up and it was incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it was incredible. It definitely was. I did see recently I saw like a little quick five, six minute documentary on how they recreated the set and how they wanted to make sure like posters were in the same spot as where they were in Wembley and they had some of the members of Queen come and check out the whole thing and it was so cool. I mean, when you looked at the stage and it had the feed the world, that whole Live Aid thing, it looked like they had saved it from you know 1985 and actually just used it again for the movie. But they didn't, they just recreated everything. So I like the AO moment with the note heard around the world and that's when Freddie Mercury would do the AO and have the crowd do it and then, you know, continue going on and that's something that the Foo Fighters, taylor Hawkins, he would do that during shows. I've seen him do that.
Speaker 1:Billy Joe Armstrong Green Day. Yeah, you know Way too much yeah.
Speaker 2:Way too much. But it's kind of cool that people know that that was an important thing and, again, almost two billion people watched it. It was something Queen had been doing for a long time. I think they started doing it, you know, late 70s or so, and by this time they kind of perfected the whole AO thing. So, yeah, it was good. So a couple of more songs and then they finished up with we Will Rock you and we Are the Champions.
Speaker 2:Five years ago, on one of my updated social media posts, Randy, a friend of mine, commented Queen's performance has been called the best live performance of all time by some. U2's was epic as well. Could they possibly be number one and number two of all time? I responded with Live A was the beginning of U2 becoming superstars. Up until this time, I still thought of them as a band that I just listened to with my friends. That it wasn't, they weren't huge. It was my friends and I, that's, who listened to U2. That day started their rise to becoming the band that everybody started listening to. Queen was already well known and they put on a good performance, but, in my opinion, not as career-making and electric as U2 on that summer day.
Speaker 1:Well, it was kind of the beginning of U2 for a worldwide audience and it was, in a way, kind of the end of Queen, just because of where they were at.
Speaker 2:Very true. I think they only toured 1986. The following year was their last, you know, tour. That they did. Randy replies with definitely subjective. My friend and you know what. Music's not a competition. You know it's not. But you know the way that we look at things and what appeals to me and what appeals to you, jimmy, or to Randy, or to anybody, chris Cassidy, or sometimes we have these things that we think the same and sometimes we don't think the same. But that's what I love about music is that you're not gonna, you know, fight about it. You know it's not a competition, it's just cool things that happen, right. So you know, queen played earlier than what most people would have expected a big band to play. You kind of mentioned that, jimmy, but I think it almost worked into their favor by doing that, because you know people wanted to have that excitement at that time In the daylight, like I talked about. You got to see the reactions. It really worked out well.
Speaker 1:I believe True, yeah.
Speaker 2:So David Bowie he did TVC15, which I love. I love that song, I've always loved that song and it was really cool, like I was, like you know, oh, he opened up my favorite Bowie song. You know, as a kid, I was 18 at the time. Things like that matter, you know. Like you know as a kid, you know I was 18 at the time.
Speaker 1:Things like that matter.
Speaker 2:You know, like they do, rebel, rebel, modern love and a great version of Heroes. And he had Thomas Dolby on keyboards and synth and it was really cool Made sure that he announced everyone, especially Thomas Dolby, who's done a lot of great things the who. Their final tour was three years earlier in 1982. I know, I'm laughing.
Speaker 1:Who's?
Speaker 2:last. Yes, but they reunited for the show. And the funny thing is one of the things that Bob Geldof did is that when he talked about Live Aid, he said you know, elton, you know the who's playing and this band's playing. And then Elton felt like he needed to play and then he says you know, hey, queen, this band's playing. And then all of a sudden you turn around and be like hey, queen's playing. He announces that the who is reuniting and Pete Townshend says we had no plans to reunite. And that's how they actually played. They decided to come back.
Speaker 2:They did a great set, really did a great set, and Roger Daltrey looks so young, like, if you look at him, you'd think that he's from the Tommy movie. That's how he looks. He just looks fantastic. So one of the things that happened one of the technical difficulties, shall we say is that the feed was lost during the first song of my Generation. So just after Daltrey sang, why Don't you All Fade Away, all of a sudden there was like some static and that was it. They were done, you know it was over.
Speaker 1:They got Fuse Blue or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they ended up getting them back. I don't know if it was Rain Over Me that they got them back.
Speaker 1:It was Pinball Wizard.
Speaker 2:Was it Pinball Wizard? When it came back? Yeah, that was the second song that they played, but it was just so funny. The timing couldn't have been better going out. Why don't you all just fade away? Anyway, Elton John comes out, he sings I'm Still Standing Benny and the Jets Rocket man. But my favorite part is when Kiki D sang Don't Go Breaking my Heart with Elton. I was seven in 1974 when that was a hit. Ooh ooh, nobody knows it. When I was down, I was your clown. Ooh ooh, nobody knows it, Nobody knows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds so good the way you do it knows it, nobody knows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sounds so good the way you do it. I love that song. I still do. And again, you know you didn't hear a lot of rumors. In all honesty, most of the rumors that you heard didn't come true during live aid. But things like this, where kiki d shows up and you're not expecting it, I like that song and I'm sure a lot of people out there like it too, and I'll say it one more time.
Speaker 1:I'm sure Kiki D didn't have any better place to be than singing in front of Wembley Stadium.
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to go with no Ooh-hoo Anyway. So George Michael, he joins Elton and he sings Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. Elton doesn't sing it at all, he just plays piano. The Elton John band's playing, and I thought it was really cool. I thought George Michael did a really good job with it. A few years later, george Michael is on tour I think it was 91, on his 91 tour and his final show was back, I think at Wembley. I know it was in London. I think it was 91, on his 91 tour and his final show was back, I think, at Wembley. I know it was in London, I think it was at Wembley. And he has Elton John come out and they both kind of sing parts of it and they released that and it became a hit single in America.
Speaker 2:In 1992 Freddie Mercury and Brian May of Queen did another song and then Paul McCartney performed Let it Be on piano. His microphone malfunctions. You can't hear him and it was probably, like you know, a minute and a half, two minutes, but you can hear him faintly Because there's some mics off to the side that are picking up him singing. The crowd can't hear him at all, so you end up having Bob Geldof, david Bowie, alison Moyet and Pete Townsend to come out to try and sing along on different mics so that it can make some sense. But by then they got it all fixed and everything was good. Yeah, did you know that Paul McCartney went into the studio the next day and re-recorded the vocals so that if they ever had any sort of future film or documentary or whatever, they would have vocals that went to it? Oh, that's nice of him. Yeah, so if you go and watch there's a Live Aid channel film or documentary or whatever, they would have vocals that went to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice of him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you go and watch, there's a Live Aid channel. You can go to YouTube Live Aid channel and you watch it. You don't know anything about what I just talked about, because he's singing and it sounds fine.
Speaker 1:Ah yeah. So he like, matched his mouth and everything perfectly, he did.
Speaker 2:And I've watched it over and over. I'm not gonna say it's 100 perfect, but if you're not looking for it, you think that he did it right, you know. So one of the things about mtv that I didn't like is during a lot of the songs they would talk in the beginning of songs, like a band would start and they'd still be talking and then they'd finish up whatever they wanted to say. Or during the show they would say what was on their mind at that time. And at one point they kept saying that they thought there was going to be a Beatles reunion. And when Bob and David and Allison and Pete came out, I remember something like on MTV, them saying this is the Beatles reunion, or or they're walking out and things that never happen, and it just was kind of a little crappy just to keep hearing them over and over do things like that. But I'm glad they broadcast it because it was great to watch and see all of that.
Speaker 2:All the day's performers came back out on stage one last time to sing Band-Aids. Do they Know it's Christmas? And just like that the day was over in London. Moving on to the Philadelphia portion of the show, bernard Watson, who was 18, slept outside JFK Stadium in Philadelphia for a number of days before it convinced Bill Graham to let him open the show, and he did with a Bob Dylan cover. I haven't heard anything from Bernard Watson in the last 40 years and supposedly they don't even have any footage of him.
Speaker 2:The only footage that is known is someone taped it on VHS. He has it Like nobody knows of any footage of it. It's kind of crazy. So Joan Baez, a Woodstock performer, was followed by the Hooters Ennui Dance, entered the Billboard Hot 100 in August and peaked at number 21 in October of 1985. Obviously, a lot of help a band not known getting help from Live Aid. Four Tops played some of their classic songs Bernadette it's the same old song I Can't Help Myself Sugar Pie, honey Bunch, which was a number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 20 years earlier, in the summer of 1965.
Speaker 2:Billy Ocean and then Black Sabbath took the stage with the classic lineup of Ozzy, tony Iommi, geezer Butler and Bill Ward for the first time together since 1978. Children of the Grave, iron man, paranoid and Paranoid is probably the most popular song. If you go to Live Aid and want to see about Black Sabbath, paranoid actually is in their top ten. Of all the videos that have been watched of Live Aid, it was really good to see them back together. It was just fun because you didn't think it was going to happen. You know they just had broken up in. You know, not broken up, kicked Ozzy out what was in like 79 and so forth, and then Ozzy went on and did his own solo stuff and Ronnie James Dio came in as the singer and you just didn't see it happening. But it was great, really good.
Speaker 2:Run-dmc Rick Springfield, reo, speedwagon, crosby, stills and Nash, judas Priest, brian Adams, the Beach Boys I mean this is a ton of talent that was playing as part of Live Aid, george Thurgood and the Destroyers, and they had Bo Diddley and Albert Collins come out, which is cool. I love stuff like that, you know. So it was cool. Simple Minds, pretenders, santana, another Woodstock band, ashford and Simpson Jimmy, do you remember their song Solid?
Speaker 1:Solid as a rock.
Speaker 2:And now it's Solid. Solid as a rock. That's what this love is. That's what we got.
Speaker 1:Music is not a competition, but I hated that song.
Speaker 2:I just I don't know why, but I like it. It peaked at number 12 on Billboard earlier that year, in February 1985.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I heard it on the radio and I thought it was a commercial. That's how bad that song is.
Speaker 2:Oh man, oh, that's why I'm glad you're part of the show, jimmy, because here I'm talking about solid. I'm like, for some reason I like it, I don't know why.
Speaker 1:I'm sure a lot of people like it. It was a hit.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of hits, madonna was up next, and then Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They included American Girl, the Waiting Refugee, and I'm not sure if I'm 100% correct, but they weren't going to play American Girl, but they found out that they were going to be broadcast in London. So last minute they went into American Girl because they thought that would be really cool to be broadcast live in London to hear about. You know.
Speaker 1:American.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kenny Loggins, the Cars, neil Young, the Power Station had Michael DeBar as a singer and it was so-so Thompson Twins. And I mentioned Phil Collins played with Sting in London and he took a helicopter from Wembley. He got on the Concord, he gets to New York, he takes another helicopter to Philadelphia and I've got to be honest, I'm kind of exhausted just talking about all of that, so I've got to think he's pretty tired. Well, phil joins Eric Clapton as a second drummer for White Room she's Waiting and Layla. And Layla was a pretty good version that they did. White Room actually was a pretty good version. It was good. I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:After that, all right, phil Collins now does two songs solo on a piano in front of the stage. They pull the curtains over and when he's done then he announces Robert Plant, jimmy Page and John Paul Jones Wow. So he goes from one to two to three because Led Zeppelin takes the stage and they've got Phil Collins and Tony Thompson on drums. And warning, this is a low light. How could this be so bad? Robert Plant sounded terrible and I'm not really one. First of all, let me say I'm a big Led Zeppelin fan. We've talked about the many times on the show.
Speaker 1:You're wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt.
Speaker 2:I am wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt. Okay, quite candidly, jimmy Page seemed to be totally out of it. Okay, guitars out of tune. Clearly there was no practice. Now I've read that there was an hour. Maybe there was an hour and a half. Phil Collins wasn't part of it, and Phil Collins really had no clue how to play drums for some of these songs.
Speaker 1:That's weird.
Speaker 2:And you know it kind of was like how could this iconic band that hadn't played in five years, since their last show, since John Bonham died? And it was just like it was a joke that day and I know that wasn't the intention, but that's what it became and it was just kind of sad. So my friend Jim wrote on one of my social media posts Zeppelin was my favorite band at the time. I remember waiting all day for them to come on and they sucked. But I remember sitting around all day watching it. So Phil Collins tells a story because he played on Robert Plant's first two albums and he says Robert Plant said, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we got Jimmy Page and we did something for Live Aid? And you know he's like, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if we got Jimmy Page and we did something for Live Aid? He's like, yeah, that sounds good, but there was no mention of John Paul Jones, there was no mention of a Led Zeppelin reunion there was no mention of because that's a lot of pressure, you know and none of that. He thought they were going to go out, they were going to just play some, they were going to just have some fun. And he said if he had known it was going to be a Led Zeppelin reunion, he wouldn't have played at all. He just would have stepped aside because that wasn't kind of his thing.
Speaker 2:Next up Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. So they played at Woodstock. Here again, they played at Live Aid Duran, Duran, Patti, LaBelle Hall, Oates with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin from the Temptations. It was pretty cool, because I love when people acknowledge people from the past. That's always a cool thing for me. Mick Jagger he had Tina Turner. She did two songs with him, and then Bob Dylan with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones Acoustic guitars. They did a few songs. I think one of them was blowing in the wind, but I could never understand how did you just have Mick Jagger on and then, at the same stage, Ron Wood and Keith Richards comes out. Like why couldn't you get the Rolling Stones together? Like, Like, why couldn't that happen?
Speaker 1:That's strange.
Speaker 2:You know. So, finally, usa for Africa and we Are the World, and Bob Geldof. He originally told the potential performers that it was going to be this one-time thing and it wasn't going to again. But MTV decided to keep their tapes, not erase them. Abc erased them and a bunch of different media outlets around the world erased them.
Speaker 2:Mtv did not, the BBC did not, so that's how we're able to watch it, because everybody didn't listen to Bob's wishes of just get rid of it and that was never the intent to release it. It got released because bootleg copies were going out and people were making money off of it. So they finally released a DVD box set and you can go on streaming services to be able to listen to it. I have it on my phone. I listen to many of the songs and have for a number of years. But the camera lenses were affected by the high sound waves, I guess when they were close, and it caused these lines or like these bands or bars of different colors to appear, and really mostly in London. And I think it had something to do a lot when they had those TV cameras that I talked about that were on wheels, you know, because they use tubes back in the day right and the whole interaction would give it.
Speaker 2:as you're watching it live, it gave it an effect of being an old video, you understand what I'm saying yeah, yeah. So it was. You know, I never understood at the time, but then, years later, I found out what it was all about.
Speaker 1:There's also a different video standard in England than there is in America, so it could have something to do with converting from one to the other that it looks worse.
Speaker 2:Well, it was. When you watch it live, you could see the lines, but you were watching it in America.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was so it was being converted from their standard to ours. I gotcha.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, jimmy. You are the man knowing all those things, jimmy. So it was a cool, fun day that I still remember. You know, I remember so much about it. It was just kind of just stays in my mind. You know it's different bands on two different continents, one cause, and that was July 13th 1985.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:And I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it, I like, like, like, like, like. Here we go, rocking all over the world. I like it a lot and here we go, because that's it for episode 87 of Music in my Shoes. I'd like to thank Jimmy Guthrie, show producer and owner of Arcade 160 Studios located right here in Atlanta, georgia, and Vic Thrill for our podcast music. You can reach us at musicinmyshoes at gmailcom. Please like and follow the Music in my Shoes Facebook and Instagram pages and share with anyone that you think that might enjoy this show. This is Jim Boge, and I hope you learned something new or remembered something old. We'll meet again on our next episode. Until then, live life and keep the music playing. Thank you.
