Fabulously Flamboyant Friday: The Day Music Died Pt 3 – Live Aid

Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.

In the first two parts of this series we examined some of the technological developments and aeronautical incidents that have had, over the years, a deleterious impact upon the world of popular music. Tonight I wish to propose another candidate for inclusion within our #FF Hall of Musical Infamy: Live Aid.

As I’m sure many of you will have noticed (given the widespread TV and radio coverage) this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of Live Aid – the truly mahoosive, transatlantic benefit concert and fundraising beano that took place on July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London, the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia and numerous other venues around the world.

The event (billed as “the global jukebox”) was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds to address the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. It was, given the technology of the time, something of a technical triumph and remains one of the largest satellite television broadcasts of all time. It pulled in an estimated 1.9 billion viewers in 150 nations, with well over a third (with some estimates putting the figure at nearly 40 percent) of the world’s population tuning in at one time or another. It also managed to raise shed loads of cash for famine relief – well over 100 million quid. That might seem like little more than a decent Euro Lottery win these days, but back then it was very substantial wedge.

Over the years there has been a great deal of debate around the question of just how effective Live Aid’s efforts were. Some have claimed the Live Aid team failed to heed warnings from Médecins Sans Frontières about the malign role of the then Ethiopian leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam, in causing, perpetuating and exploiting the famine. Others have suggested that much of the relief intended for victims was actually siphoned off to purchase arms from the Soviet Union, which in turn made matters worse for the poor sods who were supposed to be helped. It’s certainly a fascinating and convoluted tale, but it’s not the subject of our musings for this evening. Tonight we shall put such matters to one side and will firmly focus our gimlet gaze upon the musical legacy of Live Aid.

Over the years, Andy Kershaw, one of the BBC’s hosts for the event, has been heavily critical of Live Aid – particularly in his pretty decent autobiography, No Off Switch, which I am happy to commend to the house. In his autobiography Kershaw argues that Live Aid was a tedious, predictable and boring parade of over-the-hill rock aristocracy, who served up an irritating melange of shallow, sanctimonious and self-satisfied performances, smug in the delusional assumption that a bunch of largely “lamentable rock and pop floozies” were actually capable of making a noticeable difference on the world’s geo-political stage. I have a lot of sympathy for this view, but others have gone much further, arguing that Live Aid’s impact on popular music has in fact been a complete disaster.

Pre-Live Aid, one of the greatest aspects of popular music was its high rate of churn: genres, fads and styles would come and go with great regularity. Some would hang around, others would quickly fade away; some were media and industry constructs, others were organic and spontaneous movements. But the central point was that we had enjoyed a long tradition of innovation, reinvention, cross-pollination and change.

But Live Aid (along with the seemingly endless run of high-profile corporate charity concerts that it inevitably spawned) changed all that. Live Aid ensured the musical dead were raised (or, at least, the twitching near-corpses that were on career life support were re-animated) and given a whole new lease of life. Indeed, such was the power of this career reanimation, many of the old farts who performed at Live Aid are still going strong, still touring and headlining to this very day (e.g. Neil Young at Glastonbury just a few weeks ago).

I think a single and very pertinent example – Queen – will probably serve here. By the mid ’80s Queen’s star was really beginning to fade. Their albums were sliding into stale and embarrassing disco sludge (check out their 10th album, Hot Space, if you think I’m exaggerating) with both critics and fans beginning to lose interest in the band.

It was against this background of fading popularity that Queen – generating significant controversy at the time – accepted an invitation to perform a series of concerts at the notorious Sun City resort in apartheid-era South Africa. The decision to play in a country that still enforced racial segregation drew heavy criticism from activists and musicians who supported the UN cultural boycott of South Africa and the anti-Queen backlash was significant: they were fined by the Musicians’ Union, blacklisted by the UN and were even introduced by John Peel on Top Of The Pops as “The Sun City Boys”.

It was therefore a surprise to many when Bob Geldof invited Queen to perform at the London leg of Live Aid at Wembley Stadium. Surprise or not, Queen didn’t mess around. They seized their opportunity with both hands and, whatever your opinions of the band, it’s hard to argue that Freddie and the boys did anything other than completely steal the show that day.

Queen delivered what is regarded by many as one of the finest live TV performances in rock history. Their 20-minute set magnificently showcased the band’s energy, ability, showmanship and, crucially, Mercury’s uniquely charismatic stage presence. His performance captivated the massive crowd, put the band in front of a huge global audience and completely re-vitalised the band’s fortunes.

The next few years saw Queen tour the world, performing to massive crowds and huge critical acclaim. That career extension – which continues to this day – would not have happened without Live Aid. Even the 1991 death of their iconic front-man, Freddie Mercury, could not slow them down. They simply organised another massive charity event at Wembley Stadium (The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness), packed it with a shed load of established names, kick-started the next phase of their career and apparently went on to earn more money, post-Freddie, than they had ever managed with Freddie.

This was the malign effect of Live Aid. A decade earlier, Punk Rock had done the decent thing: it didn’t overstay its welcome. It blasted in, kicked over the tables, cleared out the dead wood and opened up space for a new generation of artists and musicians to thrive. After just a couple of years, it politely stepped aside and made way for the next big thing. This was the way of the rock and pop world: one movement would inevitably make way for the next. New wave, synth pop and New Romantics, all stepped up to flourish in the space opened up by punk. It was of course the usual mix of pearls and pap, but there was – as always – some very interesting stuff to examine amongst all the peripheral fluff.

But Live Aid changed all that and heralded in an era of musical regurgitation, aural nostalgia and the dominance of bland, corporate-friendly artists, who played bland, corporate-friendly gigs; artists who could be awarded gongs and knighthoods, and could be safely invited to royal garden parties without the slightest fear that they might steal the silver or bite the head off a corgi.

Of course, you can’t blame the old rockers. I’m sure they couldn’t believe their luck. Almost a decade after the spittle-flecked young upstarts of punk rock had made them look like irrelevant dinosaurs, they were suddenly back in the spotlight, performing to the biggest crowds of their careers and selling albums by the truckload. Not for nothing has Live Aid been called “the revenge of the hippies”.

Additionally, I really can’t blame Bob Geldof, either. If you are going to assemble a “global jukebox” for a gargantuan TV audience, there is very little point in hiring young, cutting-edge, inexperienced performers. No, what you need is a grizzled roster of battle-hardened old troopers, with names big enough to put eyeballs on screens and with enough experience under their collective belt to guarantee the delivery of rock-solidly professional performances, with little-to-no fear of anyone dropping the ball.

So that’s exactly what we got. Of course there were a few contemporary artists on the bill: Adam Ant, Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones, for example, all performed at the London leg. But they, and several others, simply looked lost. The stage and the scale of the production seemed to swallow them up. Huge stadium gigs were not their milieu, but the old stagers (with of course the notable and painful exception of Led Zeppelin), well they were entirely unfazed by this sort of thing and largely passed their performance tests with flying colours – and, of course, firmly cemented their financial and artistic futures as well.

Adam Ant would later write that Live Aid was “the end of rock ‘n’ roll”, and the author and journalist, Bob Stanley, would probably agree with Mr. Ant. He described Bob Geldof’s shindig as the final triumph of old rockers and conservative musical stars, adding that Live Aid effectively pulled up the drawbridge on anything musically new, daring or different. The river of constant change, it would seem, was made stagnant by the dam (or, perhaps, the musical butt plug) of Live Aid.

Post Live Aid, even when some new and interesting pop genres did emerge, they seemed to feel safe and nostalgic. Take Britpop, for example? Some cracking bands and some corking tunes – but it was hugely safe and very retrospective. Blur sounded like the Kinks, Oasis (who are still doing a roaring trade) sounded like The Beatles, and Suede channelled Bowie. It was all very nice and it was all very safe – with nice hats as well – but it wasn’t new, it wasn’t risky and it wasn’t going to frighten the horses.

Of course, not all of these problems can be laid at the feet of Bob Geldof. The adoption of CDs as the music industry’s primary distribution medium played a very big part in this artistic ossification. Once the big record companies realised they could charge fifteen quid for music their customers already owned, they couldn’t stack the shelves fast enough. Additionally, why would you worry about unearthing and developing new and untested artists when you’ve already got decades of recordings you can dust down and sell all over again for minimal outlay and maximum profit? The inevitable result was the firm and seemingly permanent entrenchment of a rock ‘n’ roll blandocracy and an era of corporatised musical sludge from which, sadly, we have never really managed to escape.

Finally, of course, we can’t mark the 40th anniversary of Live Aid without paying due deference to the mighty musical maestro, the behemoth of stage and screen, who inevitably girded his magnificent loins to bestride the Atlantic and bestride the day – I am of course referring to The Blessed Phil.

As if Live Aid wasn’t already bad enough, some bright spark (almost certainly at the BBC, methinks) clearly decided it would be a jolly good wheeze to turn the event into the Phil Collins show. Accordingly, we were treated to Phil performing at Wembley, Phil flying around in Noel Edmond’s helicopter, Phil flying on Concorde, Phil performing in Philadelphia and – catastrophically – Phil playing drums for Led Zeppelin. Oh, my days – what an utter bloody shambles that was.

I watched the horror unfold through my fingers, gaping in disbelief at what I was witnessing, and I honestly can’t bring myself to post a video of that wretched performance here. History records that Jimmy Page was very quick to lay the blame firmly and squarely upon the shoulders of one Phil Collins Esq. Now I’m a massive critic of ’80s Phil. However, in this particular case, I’m actually on his side. To blame him for that terrible performance was, IMHO, deeply unfair. The individual members of Led Zep were not necessarily in a good place at that time, and as a band they were certainly not match fit. Additionally, Collins had absolutely no time to rehearse with the band and the Philadelphia leg of the Live Aid shindig had been plagued by on-stage technical problems throughout the day. Under those circumstances, the catastrophic outcome as witnessed by a global audience should not have come as any great surprise.

So that was Live Aid. Happy birthday. I’m not sure how much good you achieved, and I suspect your impact on the world of popular music has been largely detrimental. But happy 40th nevertheless. You were an absolute whopper of an event, but it was, I fear, a case of ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’.

And I think that’s probably quite enough of my sun-soaked and gin-fueled ramblings for this week’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday. So TTFN, Puffins. May all your passages be salubrious, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.