JOHNNY BLACK
The massive Live Aid charity concert is held at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. The objective of the event was to raise money for victims of the Ethiopia famine.
Inspired by seeing a BBC report on the crisis, Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats set about the seemingly impossible task of convincing the creme de la creme of the world’s most successful musicians to play a fundraising concert for free. “You have to remember the context of it,” he subsequently revealed. “This was the 80s, a period of rampant individualism and greed.” Whatever obstacles he faced, Geldof stubbornly refused to take no for an answer and somehow charmed, cajoled and emotionally blackmailed artists of global stature including Paul McCartney, Queen, Phil Collins and Bob Dylan into taking part. He also convinced the BBC to broadcast the whole event as an all-day TV spectacle, which ultimately attracted a worldwide audience estimated at 1.9 billion. Quite apart from the supercharged musical highlights of the day on both sides of the Atlantic, Live Aid was a groundbreaking event in terms of what it achieved. The organisers hoped to raise £1 million but a few days later donations had already topped the £50 million mark.