Live Aid took place 40 years ago Sunday -- July 13th, 1985 (a Saturday) -- simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia.
The first cause-driven, satellite-delivered mega event was broadcast to a global audience of approximately 1.9 billion in 150 countries and raised an estimated $150 million for famine relief.
Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, who co-produced Live Aid with Midge Ure of Ultravox, explains the thinking behind the shows.
“It was an attempt to address clearly one of the great wounds of our time, which was the imminent death of 30 million people through starvation in a famine in Africa. And that struck me as being unacceptable and untenable that people should die of want in a world of surplus. And so you had to address the world, this was the logic. And I assumed just there were enough satellites and it turned out there was.”
Phil Collins did a set in England and then caught the Concorde to New York and a helicopter to to Philadelphia to back Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton.
Also on the bill in Philly were Bob Dylan with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, The Cars, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Hall and Oates, Duran Duran, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Pretenders, The Beach Boys with Brian Wilson, Bryan Adams, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath, in a reunion with Ozzy Osbourne.
