The purpose of Live Aid was to raise awareness of poverty in Africa via concerts involving the great and the good of rock, a job it did rather well all things considered. It even made the cruel witch-queen, Margaret Thatcher, sit up and take notice in a way that meeting Katherine Hammnet wearing an anti-Cruise missile t-shirt just didn’t. Being leered down on by an irate Irishman with unkempt hair was almost as frightening as asking Keith Joseph to come up with a cogent economic policy or looking at Leon Brittan on a sunny day.
A happy side effect was the massive boost in profile that many of the participating legends received, for instance Status Quo, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Queen and even Spandau Ballet, who were either defunct, in terminal decline or just feeling very sleepy after partying hard throughout the 70s and early80s.
If it hadn’t happened, where would these big beasts of the Seventies be now?
1985 was a bit of a watershed for the Quo, after years of upset, wrangling and generally hokey-cokey madness, buoyed by their success at Live Aid, they went on to make ‘In The Army Now’ and enjoyed a new era of success. Now with their star back in the ascendancy, after Glastonbury this year, a dodgy ticker or two willing, the lads have kept on rocking albeit without their nasal septum which had been cast aside as unwanted fripperies in the mid 80s thanks to big piles of lovely cocaine.
Likewise Led Zep: ropey though their Live Aid showing with Phil Collins was, it nevertheless got the band back together on some level and paved the way for the early Nineties Remasters box sets and MTV UnLedded project that introduced a new generation to Zep. Without Live Aid, they might have languished in the doldrums, filed under ‘uncool’ – hard to imagine now, but Zep were never less fashionable than in the mid 80s, especially in the ever fashion-obsessed UK who preferred the music of Marilyn and Nick Kamen at the time.
Live Aid was also a massive boost for Queen and also for the sale of white vests and false moustaches as legions of Freddie impersonators found work easier to come by. Their performance at Wembley sent them into the stratosphere. Without it, rock’s loss would have been astrophysics gain: Brian May PhD might have gone back to school years earlier. It’s no exaggeration to say that the performance of ‘Radio Ga Ga’ at Live Aid set mankind’s conquest of space back by a generation. We could be living on Mars by now.
Similarly, the appearance of Keith Richards with Bob Dylan – like a couple of reanimated corpses on a day out – did magnificent work in the field of drug education, second only maybe to the heroic campaign of Zammo off out of Grange Hill. Without Live Aid, a whole generation might have been lost to drugs.
Without Live Aid, Mick Jagger would not have ripped off Tina Turner’s dress to reveal a leotard, and in doing so later inspired Justin Timberlake to get his hands on Janet Jackson at the Superbowl and we would not have had to endure the most ridiculous ‘scandal’ in recent television history (with the exception of the fake-naming of the Blue Peter cat).
Black Sabbath, whose original line-up got together for Live Aid, did wonders for the perming lotion and hair-dye industry and Ozzy appeared to be wearing a very fetching cardigan and tights combo; thus giving hope to all heavy metal middle-aged ladies that they too could be in a band.
Finally and most significantly, without Live Aid to cement their popularity and profile as one of the most enduring of the New Romantic groups, Spandau Ballet would not have been able to capitalise on their success of the time: Martin Kemp would never have been in EastEnders and Tony Hadley wouldn’t even have had the chance to compete in Celebrity Masterchef. This is arguably Sir Bob Geldof’s greatest gift to the world.
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