Random Queen Was Only One Part Of Live Aid, A Mega-Concert For Ages (13 items)

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  (#1) U2

  • Band/Musician

  While U2 had been together for nearly 10 years by the time they took the stage at Live Aid, the concert was a pivotal moment in the band's career. They had grown a faithful following across the pond, but they had yet to achieve superstardom. Starting off with their acclaimed hit “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” U2 then took a great risk by playing "Bad," an experimental and admittedly "unfinished" song from their most recent album, The Unforgettable Fire.

  After days of obsessive soundchecking and practicing, the live version of “Bad” took on a new form, empowering an uncharacteristically spry Bono to dance, howl, and jump off the stage - much to the chagrin of his bandmates.
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  (#2) Mick Jagger and Tina Turner Sang A Duet

  In the middle of Live Aid, Mick Jagger threw down a duet with Tina Turner. The performance was sultry, steamy, and completely unexpected. Jagger and Turner were already friends prior to the concert, but Live Aid gave them the opportunity to collaborate with one another. In the days leading up to the show, they carefully workshopped and choreographed their entire routine.

  The pair sought to scandalize with their on-stage chemistry, but they had to dial it down for the sake of the telecasters’ censorship requirements. In a particularly lascivious moment during “State Of Shock,” Jagger ripped Turner's skirt off to reveal a risque leotard beneath. A proto-JT and Janet moment?

  Jagger recalls, “I have to watch myself. I can’t really take it too far... We both had to say that we wouldn’t go too far, the way we normally would at a show. MTV might stay on, but I don’t know about ABC.”
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  (#3) Phil Collins

  • Band/Musician

  During his UK performance, Phil Collins dropped a selection of his solo hits, including “Against All Odds” and “In the Air Tonight”, and also provided backing vocals for the Police. The two concerts were collectively over 16 hours long, though there were hours of overlap between the two events.

  After Collins finished his performance at Wembley Stadium in London at 4:00 pm, he immediately boarded a Concorde turbojet to perform at the American show in Philadelphia, PA. In addition to an encore rendition of his set from just hours before, he also played drums for Eric Clapton and the ill-fated Led Zeppelin reunion.
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  (#4) Paul McCartney

  • Band/Musician

  Paul McCartney’s performance was almost cut short by a technical mishap. When he took the stage to sing “Let It Be,” he quickly realized his microphone wasn't working correctly. Nevertheless, he soldiered on through the performance, accompanied by Pete Townshend, Alison Moyet, Bob Geldof, and David Bowie.

  When the Live Aid recording was released on DVD in 2004, they used an overdubbed version McCartney had recorded days after the Live Aid performance.
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  (#5) Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

  • Band/Musician

  In addition to being a widely beloved classic rock standard, "American Girl" was also significant song in the life of Tom Petty. It was the opening song for his set at Live Aid, the largest show of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers's career. A week before his passing in 2017, he performed it one last time at the Hollywood Bowl as his closing number.

  For reasons unknown, Petty flipped off the audience halfway through the song. Who hurt you, Petty?
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  (#6) Bono

  • Band/Musician

  Live Aid offered U2 the chance to connect with a massive audience, and Bono made the most of the opportunity. In the middle of "Bad," Bono jumped down to pull a girl out of the crowd so she could join him onstage.

  This was an audience engagement trick Bono had used before, but his bandmates weren't prepared for five minutes of helpless vamping while their frontman was lost in an endless sea of revelers. The band initially felt the Live Aid stunt had damaged their reputation, but when the press began to roll out, Bono was lauded for his gall and determination to reach out to the audience.

  The payoff was well worth the confusion: Kal Khalique, the 15-year-old fan who was pulled onstage, was deeply grateful for an unexpected reason. When asked about her moment in the spotlight 20 years later, Khalique recalled, "The crowd surged and I was suffocating - then I saw Bono."
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  (#7) Mick Jagger And David Bowie Were Supposed To Perform An Intercontinental Duet

  The transcontinental element of Live Aid was one of its primary selling points for performers and viewers alike. The show was broadcast live to millions of people across the globe, drawing approximately 1.5 billion viewers in 110 countries. ABC and MTV aired the show in the United States, while BBC supplied the feed to the United Kingdom. In the age before the internet, there was something mystical and unifying about performing alongside someone across the ocean in one contiguous event.

  That was the logic behind the epic live duet that never was, a cover of Martha and the Vandellas’s “Dancing in the Street” performed by Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Unfortunately, primitive telecasting technology made it impossible for both feeds to remain synced without a half-second delay, and neither artist wanted to mime their performance alongside the other's live rendition. Instead, they released a studio version of the song and donated the proceeds to the famine relief.
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  (#8) Cher

  • Band/Musician

  While traveling via turbojet to Philadelphia, PA, Phil Collins spotted Cher from across the plane and decided to strike up a conversation with her. Cher asked Collins what was going on, and he asked her if she knew about Live Aid - and if she was interested in joining him.

  Collins recalls Cher was wearing "house clothes" on the flight, but that didn't stop her from showing up fully Cher-ified hours later to perform in the concert's grand finale, a star-studded rendition of "We Are The World."
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  (#9) Led Zeppelin

  • Band/Musician

  Among all of the momentous reunions at Live Aid, Led Zeppelin's disastrous performance is unfortunately quite memorable. Live Aid was Led Zeppelin's first appearance following the death of their drummer, John Bonham, five years earlier.

  There were many factors that led to their choppy, discombobulated performance. Jimmy Page's guitar was out of tune and his equipment was malfunctioning; John Paul Jones did not rehearse with the rest of the band before the show; and Robert Plant had blown out his voice in practice.

  One thing the band could agree on was the decision to throw guest drummer Phil Collins under the bus. Collins wasn’t having it, and he contested the decision years later, saying, "I find that I am usually the one blamed for it. It couldn’t possibly be the holy Led Zep who were at fault. It was that geezer who came over on Concorde who wasn’t rehearsed. He was the culprit. That show-off."
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  (#10) Ronnie Wood Gave Bob Dylan His Guitar

  Bob Dylan was slated to perform with Keith Richards during the penultimate set of the Philadelphia, PA, show. Ronnie Wood was added to the lineup at the very last moment - Dylan rolled up to his house on the morning of the event and asked, “You coming? We’re on in Philadelphia, man.”

  While walking up the stairs onto the stage, Dylan decided they would perform "Blowin' in the Wind," a song Wood had never rehearsed. Halfway through the song, Dylan broke a guitar string. In a moment of panicked providence, Wood threw Dylan his own guitar and played melodramatic air guitar for the rest of the song.
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  (#11) Madonna

  • Band/Musician

  Following a Playboy scandal just weeks prior, Live Aid was Madonna's opportunity to reclaim agency in her public narrative. Coming hot on the heels of her global debut, Live Aid was auspiciously timed for Madonna's meteoric rise. Madonna saw it as an opportunity to let everyone know she would not be silenced or shamed, and that she had a sense of humor.

  When she took to the stage, she yelled "I ain't taking off sh*t today."
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  (#12) Duran Duran

  • Band/Musician

  To put it lightly, Duran Duran’s performance at Live Aid was so tragic that they broke up immediately afterwards and did not play together again for another 20 years. Vocalist Simon Le Bon's voice cracked and screeched throughout their entire performance, and the rest of the band had trouble keeping time.

  Guitarist Andy Taylor recalled, "After the Live Aid set there were no congratulatory hugs or smiles: It was as if we were foreign from each other."
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  (#13) There's A Lot More To Read And See If You're Interested In Live Aid

  It's hard to imagine a festival as spectacular as Live Aid occurring in the 21st century. These days, even the top music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza spread their biggest acts out across multiple days and stages. Live Aid, however, loaded both its locations with the biggest names of the era then had them all perform on the same day. With so much star power packed into a single event, it spawned decades worth of stories, so there's pretty much always some new factoid popping up. 

  While it wasn't the only amazing performance, Queen's Live Aid set changed the trajectory of pop music forever and warrants its own focused investigation. For those looking to experience (or perhaps relive) the magic, a surviving copy of the Live Aid broadcast has been released on DVD, and the Band Aid Trust put out an 87-track digital compilation album in 2018. Plenty of photographers were present at Live Aid, and journalist Peter Hillmore compiled their work into a beautiful single-volume coffee table book. 

  While it's nearly impossible to top Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, and Eric Clapton, that doesn't mean some people haven't tried. On July 2, 2005, Live Aid organizers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure hosted Live 8, another one-day festival held in multiple locations to help fundraising efforts. Featuring performances by artists like U2, Deep Purple, and Will Smith, the footage from the event is now also available on DVD. 

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