REMEMBERING LIVE AID

REMEMBERING LIVE AID

I remember Live Aid Day, 13th July 1985, a contemporary saint's day if ever there was one. Boomtown Rat frontman, Bob Geldof, made for a very unusual saint, as he part-inspired, part-shamed the World into giving millions towards famine relief in Ethiopia.

It was a particularly memorable year for me as I hit a creative high in making two student films, one got me an 'A' for my final year practical, the other, a collaboration between staff and students at the Polytechnic of Wales, came 4th in the National Student Film Awards. I also took and passed my final exams for a degree in Communication Studies, and then landed a first graduate job in September.

But that summer was blessed with glorious, sunny days. I had returned to my shared student house on The Broadway, Pontypridd from the glorious mud of the Glastonbury festival, followed by a film location shoot in Somerset, to await the arrival of my sister Sue Crawford and her hubby Tommy Crawford who came down from Liverpool for the weekend. We were debating where to go on our night out when Sue, to her eternal credit, said that we should stay in with a takeaway and a few tinnies to watch Live Aid and she would phone in a donation of the money we saved. I remember feeling a tingle of excitement when Status Quo opened the show with Rocking All Over the World, a feeling that something special was about to unfold...

Fast forward almost 40 years to Saturday 24th May 2025 and I'm at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London to see the stage musical Live Aid: Just For One Day.

Craig Els fs and blinds his way through it as Bob Geldof, with a credible Oirish accent, and a much better singing voice than the original. The side stories of a girl going to uni to study 'The History of the 1980s' 😄 (who sings a great version of My Generation) and her mother 'who was there', and a budding romance that blossoms on Live Aid Day, are amusing vehicles that move the story along. We get about 30 seconds of a hundred songs, plundered for their hook lines, in a head spinning collage of the soundtrack to our (over 50s) lives. Bob's energetic battle with music promoter Harvey Goldsmith lays bare the audacity and ambition of putting on the greatest show ever conceived with two events broadcast live to over 90 countries with barely 3 months preparation.

The story timeline starts in late 1984 when Geldof and wife Paula are shocked by news reports from Ethopia of an unfolding humanitarian crisis. He talks to mate Midge Ure of Ultravox about writing a fundraising song - they're musicians and this is what they do. Band Aid's 'Do they Know it's Christmas' makes No.1 that Christmas with a chastening reaffirmation of Christ's message sung by a colourful choir of leading figures in the Brit music business. USA artists soon follow with 'Feed the World'. Bob jets off to Ethiopia to see for himself and is traumatised by what he sees.

Saint Bob then does battle with Wicked Witch Margaret Thatcher over VAT charged on sales of the Band Aid single in an amusing sketch. Thatcher wins. Booooo...

Then comes the idea for a fundraising concert to be broadcast live around the world - Live Aid. Throughout the show snippets of pop song lyrics are repurposed to tug at the audience's heart strings in shameless emotion bullying. Bob finally gets one over on a bemused Thatcher who offers to match the monies raised by Live Aid with a grant from the British Government. Hurrah! (was it ever paid? 🤔)

The final joke in this brilliantly thought out musical is Bob's repeated denials that he used the phrase 'give us yer f*ing money' on live TV (he didn't, apparently).

A great show!