As promised last week I’m going again with some memories of the Live Aid Concert from 13 July 1985, but this week I’m concentrating on the American event, which took place at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. One of the comments on last week’s post queried why this was chosen as the venue. The answer, albeit briefly, is given in the Wikipedia page about the day: Tony Verna, a sports broadcasting producer of whom I’d never heard, was friendly with the Mayor and persuaded him that hosting the event would be good for the city. Given that Bob Geldof had previously expressed a wish for the show to be at the Madison Square Gardens I wonder if he was disappointed? No matter, though, Philadelphia did them proud.

As with the UK event I’ve had some difficulty keeping this down to manageable numbers, but I was helped in that by leaving out one of my all time favourite bands: Led Zeppelin played the show, with Robert Plant’s throat being hoarse and Jimmy Page pissed, playing an out of tune guitar. Plant later described it as “a fucking atrocity for us … It made us look like loonies” so I think you’ll see why I’m playing others instead!

After a couple of brief songs from Joan Baez the first band to take the stage was one that I’ve always liked. They are from Philadelphia, so it was probably a good idea to start with them. They only played two songs, and this is their full set:

The video quality isn’t as good as the ones from last week, but you can probably make out that this was The Hooters playing And We Danced and All You Zombies. The band wasn’t as appreciated here as much as I felt they should have been: they made some great albums and these were two of their better known songs. But they didn’t play Satellite – I wonder why? They should have been given longer!

A general comment: the official Live Aid YouTube page is much less complete for the US show than it is for the UK event, which is why I’m having to rely on some Antipodean broadcast videos for a couple of these. It was either that or leave them out, which I didn’t want to do.

Several of the acts that appeared in the US were, like Led Zeppelin, undertaking a reunion. One of these was CSN&Y, who were rejoined by Neil Young for a couple of songs later on, but I’m playing you an epic from the CSN set:

Again, the sound quality is lacking but that was such a good version of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes that I just had to include it.

The roster for the American leg shows, I think, the relative popularity of acts over there compared with here. Patti LaBelle and Hall & Oates each played six songs, when others had much shorter sets. I guess they knew their audience, though. At least Neil Young was allowed five songs on his own before rejoining CSN later, and they let this next guy play four:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with The Waiting. A classic rock song, which has long been my favourite of all of his – which is really saying something, given how many great songs he left us when he was taken from us far too soon. RIP Tom.

Phil Collins managed to play at both events, thanks to a couple of helicopters and Concorde. He played the same two songs at both shows, and it seems only right to share one of them this time round:

In The Air Tonight was a massive hit for him when it was released as a single from his debut solo album, Face Value. He plays it live just by himself with a piano, so you don’t get those amazing drums from the recorded version, but he still gets across the power of the song – written at the time his first marriage was breaking up. I love the way he begins this: ” I was in London this afternoon. Funny old world, innit.”

I wasn’t planning on playing this next one, but when I saw the video I knew that I just had to! Two legends of music together, putting on a show and even giving us a Buck’s Fizz* moment:

Mick Jagger and Tina Turner never disappoint, and this was a bit of magic. RIP Tina.

[*Buck’s Fizz won the Eurovision Song Contest for the UK in 1981, and included the skirt stripping routine as part of their performance. Who knew Mick was a fan of Eurovision!]

Just one more band to play, and it is another of my favourites. They were allowed four songs on the day, and this is the one I liked best:

The Cars, with Just What I Needed. They also played You Might Think, Drive, and Heartbeat City, so that wasn’t an easy choice for me: they were all good! RIP Benjamin Orr.

As I did last week I’m closing with the mass singalong that closed the show. This may sound churlish, given the context, but I’ve always felt that Band Aid did the charity single thing much better than USA For Africa – we did it first, and best! But in the interests of fair play, I’m closing with your offering, We Are The World:

I find it very hard to say anything good about that, so I’ll just content myself by not saying anything bad!

Those of you who know of my fondness for the music of Bruce Springsteen may be wondering why he isn’t in this set. The answer to that is simple: he declined the invitation to play. He has since said that he regrets his mistake in doing that, and judging by some of the acts the Americans had to endure I think he should have been there to improve it!

That’s all for this week, and again I hope you’ve enjoyed this reminder of a fantastic day of music, despite the somewhat ropey sound quality of some of the videos. But it was all done with the best interests of suffering people at heart. I wonder if anything like this could be possible today? What do you think? The closest we have had was the climate change event Live Eight, another Geldof production as a tie in with the G8 Climate Summit in London – and a frightening thought is that was in 2005, and we haven’t seen much of an improvement since then.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you again soon 😊