Live Aid (1985): The Global Concert for Ethiopian Famine Relief

Live Aid was a pair of benefit concerts held on 13 July 1985 at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia to raise money for victims of the famine in Ethiopia. Organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure and broadcast live around the world, it became one of the largest television events in history. Live Aid changed the way celebrities, the media and the public responded to humanitarian disasters, and it also started a long debate about how effective such aid can be.

Background: famine in Ethiopia

From 1983 to 1985 northern Ethiopia suffered one of the worst famines of the 20th century. Drought and harvest failure played a part, but so did civil war in the provinces of Tigray and Eritrea and the policies of the military government led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, which restricted food movements and forcibly relocated people. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, from around 300,000 to as many as one million people. The wider background is covered in the article on the Ethiopian famine of 1983–1985.

On 23 October 1984 the BBC broadcast a report by the journalist Michael Buerk, filmed with the Kenyan cameraman Mohamed Amin, from a feeding camp near Korem. The footage showed thousands of starving people waiting for help, and Buerk described the scene as a biblical famine. The report was shown by hundreds of broadcasters around the world and caused an extraordinary public reaction.

From Band Aid to Live Aid

Among the viewers was Bob Geldof, the Irish singer of the Boomtown Rats. With Midge Ure of Ultravox he wrote a charity song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, and persuaded leading British and Irish pop stars to record it under the name Band Aid. The recording took place on 25 November 1984 at SARM West Studios in London, and the single was released in early December.

It became the fastest-selling single in British history up to that time and stayed the country’s best-selling single until 1997. Its success inspired American musicians to record “We Are the World”, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, under the name USA for Africa in January 1985. The money from these records was channelled through the Band Aid Trust, which Geldof chaired, but the scale of the need persuaded him that something bigger was required.

Planning a global concert

Geldof’s idea was a single day of concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, televised live across the world, with viewers urged to phone in donations. He announced the plan in early 1985 and spent the following months persuading artists, broadcasters and governments to take part, often by sheer persistence. The British promoter Harvey Goldsmith organised the London concert, while the veteran American promoter Bill Graham handled the American one.

Wembley Stadium, with a capacity of about 72,000, was chosen for London. In the United States the concert moved to John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, a large ageing venue that could hold around 90,000 to 100,000 people. Satellite links allowed the two shows to be broadcast as one continuous programme. The BBC carried the event in Britain, and broadcasters in some 150 countries showed at least part of it.

The day of the concerts

The London concert began at noon British time on Saturday 13 July 1985. After a royal salute played by the band of the Coldstream Guards, in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, the rock band Status Quo opened with “Rockin’ All Over the World”. Acts followed each other in quick succession, usually playing sets of around 15 to 20 minutes, on a revolving stage designed to allow fast changeovers.

The Wembley line-up included Sting, Phil Collins, U2, Dire Straits, Queen, David Bowie, The Who, Elton John and Paul McCartney. During U2’s performance of “Bad” the singer Bono climbed down from the stage to dance with a woman from the crowd, a moment that helped make the band international stars. Phil Collins played at Wembley in the afternoon, then flew to the United States on Concorde and performed again in Philadelphia the same day.

The Philadelphia concert began in the morning, local time, and ran late into the night. It featured, among many others, Joan Baez, Black Sabbath, Run-DMC, Madonna, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, a reunion of Led Zeppelin with Collins on drums, Mick Jagger performing with Tina Turner, and Bob Dylan accompanied by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. The London show closed with an all-star singalong of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, and Philadelphia ended with “We Are the World”.

Between the performances Geldof appeared on BBC television, angrily urging viewers to stop watching and give money. His blunt, swearing appeal became one of the most remembered moments of the broadcast, and donations rose sharply in the hours that followed. Smaller concerts and televised contributions from other countries, including Australia and several European states, were also part of the day.

Queen’s famous set

Queen came on stage at Wembley in the early evening and played for about 21 minutes. Their set was a carefully rehearsed medley of hits, including “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Radio Ga Ga”, “Hammer to Fall”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”. The band had rehearsed the set intensively beforehand, and Freddie Mercury led the crowd in call-and-response singing that was seen around the world.

Many musicians and critics later judged it the best performance of the day. It revived the band’s career, which had been flagging, and it has repeatedly topped polls of the greatest live performances in rock music. The set was recreated in detail in the 2018 film “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which brought it to a new generation.

Key people

• Bob Geldof, singer of the Boomtown Rats, was the driving force behind Band Aid and Live Aid. He received an honorary knighthood in 1986.
• Midge Ure, singer of Ultravox, co-wrote the Band Aid single and co-organised Live Aid.
• Harvey Goldsmith produced the Wembley concert, and Bill Graham produced the Philadelphia concert.
• Michael Buerk and Mohamed Amin made the BBC report that first alerted much of the world to the famine.

By the numbers

Where the money went and the debate over aid

The Band Aid Trust used the money for emergency food, trucks and ships to move supplies, medical aid and later for longer-term development projects in Ethiopia, Sudan and other countries of the Sahel and Horn of Africa. Geldof visited Ethiopia and insisted that the trust keep its own administrative costs very low.

The effectiveness of the aid was nevertheless questioned. Researchers and aid agencies argued that the famine was largely man-made, and that the Ethiopian government used relief to support its programme of resettlement, which moved hundreds of thousands of people from the north to the south of the country in harsh conditions, with many deaths. The French organisation Médecins Sans Frontières was expelled from Ethiopia in 1985 after criticising this policy.

Other critics, including the researcher Alex de Waal, argued that large public aid campaigns can simplify complex political crises into stories of natural disaster and helpless victims. In 2010 a BBC report suggested that money from Band Aid had been diverted to buy weapons for rebels in Tigray; after a complaint from the Band Aid Trust, the BBC accepted that there was no evidence for that specific claim and apologised.

Myths and facts

Myth: Geldof shouted “Give us your money” with a famous swear word on live television. Fact: Geldof did swear while appealing for donations on BBC television, but the exact words often quoted are a later simplification; recordings of the broadcast show a different wording, and Geldof himself has said that the famous phrase was never spoken in that form.

Myth: Live Aid alone ended the Ethiopian famine. Fact: The money arrived when the worst of the 1984–1985 crisis was already under way, and rains in 1985 and 1986 also mattered. Live Aid was one part of a large international relief effort involving governments, the United Nations and many charities.

Legacy

Live Aid set a model for celebrity-led humanitarian campaigns and the large televised charity event. In Britain it helped inspire Comic Relief, founded in 1985, and in later years there were further Band Aid recordings in 1989, 2004 and 2014. On 2 July 2005, twenty years after the original concert, Geldof and Ure organised Live 8, a series of free concerts timed to put pressure on leaders at the G8 summit in Scotland over aid, debt relief and trade.

The concerts are also remembered as a high point of 1980s pop culture, a day when an unusually wide range of artists shared the same stage. For historians of humanitarianism, Live Aid marks the moment when ordinary people in rich countries were invited, through television, to respond directly to a distant disaster, with all the generosity and simplification that this involved. Similar celebrity campaigns, such as the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley in 1988, borrowed the format for political causes.

Timeline

• 1984, 23 October: The BBC broadcasts Michael Buerk’s report from Korem in northern Ethiopia.
• 1984, 25 November: Band Aid records “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in London.
• 1984, December: The Band Aid single is released and tops the British charts.
• 1985, 28 January: USA for Africa records “We Are the World” in Los Angeles.
• 1985, 13 July: The Live Aid concerts take place at Wembley Stadium and JFK Stadium.
• 1986: Bob Geldof receives an honorary knighthood for his work.
• 2005, 2 July: Live 8 concerts are held to mark the 20th anniversary and press the G8 on poverty.

Why it matters

Live Aid showed that global television and popular music could mobilise millions of people to give money for a distant crisis in a single day. It raised a large sum for famine relief, but it also raised lasting questions about the politics of aid, the causes of famine and the role of celebrities in humanitarian causes.