LIVE AID was 30 years ago today!

Well, now I feel old. I was a kid at the time and had been looking forward to seeing Elton John, so the family set aside the afternoon to watch just so I could catch Elton. But I had an allergic reaction to some medication the night before and I was still under the effects of that, shivering underneath blankets even though it must have been 95F inside and out.

And then Elton looked like a complete dork.

Queen was AMAZING! I also loved this one. I had such a crush on Ben.

I was a kid when this was on and the two things I remember are how amazing Queen were and the duff note Simon Le Bon hit during Duran Duran's set.

R3 - Now that's "a note" that needs a link. ;)

Of all times to have throat problems...

Holy cow, I missed that epic Simon Le Bon gaffe at the time. Ouch.

This is where I first took note of Whitney Houston.

...and here is Bette introducing that embarrassing set by Madonna....

Madonna's set was fun, and this was the most iconic period of her career.

I enjoyed watching your clip, r8.

I watched for the Pretenders.

Holy cow, it was really 30 years ago?

I was at camp. I remember a whole bunch of the counselors all "called out sick" that day in order to watch. At the time, I thought they went, and was so jealous.

Great concert, but one of the most jaw dropping moments was feminist singer-songwriter Joan Baez gushingly rushing over to flavor-of-the-year heartthrob Don Johnson and saying, "Could we discuss the possibility of rape?"

Nowadays, when you attend a concert or watch a concert on youtube from the past 10 years to present; the most glaring thing is the thousands and thousands of cell phones being held up to photograph and/or video the concert. Live Aid - so great seeing no cell phones; just people enjoying the music immensely. I'd forgotten what that was like.

lmao at those amateur dance moves and flat notes during Madonna's poor performance. She really is not talented. This was her last-pre-glam appearance and boy did she look ordinary. She was no beauty.

I had to do a computer upgrade that day, I was so bummed. I didn't know anyone who watched it.

The Pretenders - Middle Of The Road (Live Aid)

I remember spending the whole day recording it on my VCR machine, so I can have it to watch years later. I did watch the whole thing over the course of another weekend once. Little did I know it would be available to buy on DVD 20 years later.

Patti LaBelle OWNED Live Aid! She definitely had the most amazing performances of the night and was clearly the best talent.

Patti "Forever Young"

simply amazing

Started watching from the get-go while doing my Saturday morning housecleaning, tuning in just in time to see Nicholson kissing Baez.

The TV stayed on all morning, and all afternoon, and most of the night. It really WAS something to see.

I remember Phil Collins preforming in London, then taking a Concorde jet to the US and performing in Philadelphia in the evening.

OP, you waited 30 years ago to diss Madonna? Was it worth it?

Sorry, R18. Queen owned Live Aid.

It was in 85, so thirty FIVE years ago, OP.

Prince gifted Madonna with that awesome coat she wore onstage.

I recall watching a lot of it at a friend’s house but I dont remember any of the acts that I watched live. I was a big Duran fan so that’s probably who I most wanted to see.

Make that 35 years ago today! And we all stopped watching while QUEEN was on stage. Most overrated band ever.

You should have checked the date of the OP before you tried snarking, R24.

I recorded all of Live Aid. I had that Duran Duran bum note on repeat for days, just playing it for my best friends and cracking the fuck up! It was amazing. Simon Le Bon really made history with that bum note.

R28 What is a bum note?

Simon's bad note is not nearly as bad as I remembered. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for live singing.

This was the sexiest moment of Live Aid by far. And also the beginning of the end of Adam Ant's career, sadly. He was fucking great. It wasn't the right time or something.

r 28 Watch the clip. Simon Le Bon's voice goes out completely in the middle of a note

R31, he went into acting for a bit, then tried a comeback in the 90s with moderate success. I loved Adam Ant and wished he had a longer set at Live Aid. Bob Geldof being the dick he is said Adam was too over the hill to get more than 1 song, or something like that.

R33 I am an Adam Ant historophile, I've done tons of research on him. Jjust crazy about him. And I agree, he got massively gypped by Bob. He was so popular at the time and could have done a full set. It was political.

I was there. London. Jealous?

I didn't watch it. By that time I had tired of "Aid" benefits and it seemed like some kind of British thing. Also, it didn't make much sense funneling any more money to a place in Africa that was basically uninhabitable.

When did Diana Ross come and push the emaciated orphan off the stage?

Maybe it was just me and my friends but Queen was a joke. Freddy Mercury was a poser. Their songs were insipid. Def the part of Live Aid where everyone was like WTF is Queen doing there? Lets chat.

The way I remember it, Queen had become a joke, but Live Aid reminded people how good they were live and how catchy their songs were. They had huge record sales after the concert. So did U2 and Madonna.

R35 I am jealous. Happy?

R26: Who is “we”? You and your rural ol’ family?

Sorry, calling bullshit. Queen literally dominated Live Aid and everyone knows it. And I'm not a huge Queen fan. But it was epic and gave me goose bumps. And they will always be known as the band that kicked so much fucking ASS at Live Aid (which otherwise was a mistake).

U2 and Dire Straits owned Live Aid bitches. Bonos mullet and schweaty balls make my life to this day!

I was there. Philadelphia.

How could you both have been there in diff cities? I’m confused.

I agree that Queen is overrated btw. And that Queen biopic was torturous.

Queen is regarded as brilliant by many, many renowned musicians. Their clever writing, with all four members penning huge hits, Freddie’s bigger-than-life stage presence, innovative recording techniques, etc.

YOU may not like them, but that doesn’t automatically disqualify the band as “overrated”.

[quote] I am jealous. Happy?

I am happy. Jealous?

No, Queen was a total joke at the time. They come off of Radio Gaga and had no credibility. It was only after Freddie Mercury died and AIDS activists needed someone that they became "respectable" again.

They were not thought of highly at the time. Just read back magazines of Billboard, they are online at Google Books.

U2 Live Aid with the Bono mullet excellence, for your viewing pleasure!

Dire Straits with Sting doing Money for Nothing aka I want my MTV...now that song about a specific time. I wonder if Millennials have any idea how big a deal MTV was back in 1985!

Madonna’s performance was boring as fuck. I never got the hype around her.

R49, Yet Queen are better liked than a lot of their more respectable contemporaries in 2020. U2’s fan base is almost entirely over 40 while Queen is loved by people of all ages but especially children.

They’re legacy will still be standing when u2’s lame white music is forgotten.. Because Queen’s music is timeless and memeoriable.

I was a teenager in the mid 80’s and I recall that the pre-show hype was all about the legacy acts like Led Zep and McCartney but that in the months and years that followed, U2.were considered the breakthrough act at Live Aid.

It seemed to me that only after Freddie’s death did Americans say that Queen was the best performance.

I was not quite a teenager but I freaking loved it, and was so glad to finally see it on YouTube years later.

My favorite performance was Alison Moyet and Paul Young. I had never seen or heard her before, but loved her voice.

I remember Madonna performing and thinking, she must be sweating like a pig in that coat!

I watched the entire day. Remember it was a super-hot day and I lived on the third floor of a brownstone with no AC.

R54, I was only 10 when Live Aid happened, but I remember vividly both U2 and Queen got a lot of attention/praise for great performances and connecting with the huge audience. Phil Collins also got a lot of attention for playing both shows. And everyone went crazy over Tina Turner joining the Rolling Stones. They all got a huge boost in their record sales after.

R56, the concert was right after Playboy published her nude pics. Madonna mentioned being hot in the coat and then said she wasn't taking it off so no one could hold it against her later. She also got a lot of attention for her performance and a sales boost.

I was 17 then and watched nearly the entire concert live on TV. It started midday here and went on till late in the night. Can't remember much, but do remember that Phil Collins performed on both concerts [thanks to the Concorde] and a very calm but also impressive performance from Tracy Chapman. Wish I could actually remember Queen.

Madonna did the first of many reinventions for this show, ditching her at that time very iconic "Desperately Seeking Susan" look to go for a more conservative appearance. Nude photos of her were also published days before, so there was a lot of controversy surrounding her. Dick Clark wanted to put one of her numbers in the prime time ABC special of the show, but executives said no, because they'd thought she would be forgotten within the next year or two. Dick thought they were foolish and did it anyway.

It's kinda ironic Alison Moyet had a hit song titled "Invisible".

Oopsie, checked Tracy Chapman again and... jeah... it was a different concert [for Nelson Mandela in 1988]. So I actually can remember- nothing! Lol. I think I'm just getting old.

Madonna had been dominating the news because of nude modeling photos surfaced from her early days. The fact that she had a lot of body hair freaked everyone out, at that exact time it was uncool to admit you liked Madonna hence her reception at Live Aid was somewhat tepid. On the other hand though, I enjoyed her performance then and still enjoy it now. She was growing as a performer, it’s nice to see how she started out. And those uncut Blatino singer/dancers....yum

I wasn't born.

It's fun that Madonna was onstage with Thompson Twins. The Madonna of 2020 would NEVER do something like that....

I watched almost all of it live that day. I remember the feeling that it was an historic moment. Never before had almost the entire roster of pop music stars gathered for one event. Much longer list of stars than Woodstock or any other event. It was an amazing day. Then, it seemed that it was all pretty quickly forgotten...

Madonna was also a background vocalist during the Thompson Twins set. The first and only time she's ever done that.

I miss early Madonna though. Her performance was rough and ragged, but there was a positive energy and spirit about her that you couldn't ignore. It's easy to understand why people didn't think she wouldn't last long at the time, but you could also get where she would be a huge sensation. She was so much fun in the eighties. She was good in the 90's, but she started taking herself too seriously, and becoming more humorless. By the 2000's forget it.

Can we sing "irony" in four-part harmony?

I asked Bob Keating, a superb young investigative reporter who had just started working with us, to look into this for a story. The assignment was simple — all this money had been raised, where was it going, was it actually doing good?

He discovered it was not doing good, but, horrifically, unimaginably, the exact opposite. The Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, until then deadlocked in the war, was using the money the west gave him to buy sophisticated weapons from the Russians, and was now able to efficiently and viciously crush the opposition. Ethiopia, then the third poorest country in the world, suddenly had the largest, best equipped army on the African continent.

I was there in Philly. It was a long ass day. The heat was relentless. The first act to get people going was (of all people) Billy Ocean. They introduced cherry coke there. Mick & tina were great. Ozzy & black sabath went over well. They played a video of sometimes it snows in april by prince. They showed some of inxs from australia. The #1 song that week was by reo speedwagon, who played it. Led zep really started up the energy. A lot of bathrooms had the pipes riped out with knee ankle deep water (gross). - if you had to piss you missed an entire act. We smoked so much reefer. Pretenders , tom petty , madonna (in a very prince like outfit) performed with thompson twins were fun. Patti labelle went on forever. We went to the jersey shore (my parents owned a place) afterward & crashed. That’s my memories. I believe the tocket was $50

Ment ankle deep water in bathrooms.

R68, what the rest of the world doesn't get about Africa and much of the Middle East is that the clan/tribe is everything and there is forever animosity between clans. The animosity varies between needing to pay off politicians and government officials if they are not of the same clan to outright murder. I'm sure the dictator's clan got very rich also.

Don’t look at me, things were fine when I was running the place.