Fact #67402

BEFORE THE BIG DAY

Research, interviews and compilation of pre-existing quotes : Johnny Black

Bob Geldof : You have to remember the context of it. This was the 80s, a period of rampant individualism and greed.

Harvey Goldsmith (UK promoter) : I didn’t really get a chance to say no. Bob arrived in my office and basically said, ‘We’re doing this.’ It started from there.

Bob Geldof : Harvey didn’t get the idea of Live Aid right away. He just looked at me and he actually said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Why what?’ he said, ‘Why are you doing two shows?’ I said, ‘It’s not two, it’s one. It’s on two continents but it’s one show.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because we can sell that as an idea.’

Harvey Goldsmith : The truth is he’s a harder, more ruthless bastard than I am.
(Source : interview with Michael Buerk, Radio Times, Dec 18, 2010)

Bruce Findlay (manager, Simple Minds) : Bob Geldof called when we were in America, one month before the actual event. He said he knew we were in America and asked if we would do it. So, of course, we agreed to do it and were the first UK act to confirm. We got in contact with Bill Graham (the promoter) in his New York office.

Bill Graham (US promoter) : Because the cause was so good, I was determined to do everything I could to work together with Harvey and Geldof. I went and looked at the joint (RFK Stadium) in Washington DC, and I looked at the Meadowlands, and I decided on Philadelphia. I had used JFK in Philadelphia for The Stones in 1981 and the backstage area was huge and the stadium held a hundred thousand people.

Paul McCartney : Originally Bob Geldof had rung me up and said, ‘We’re doing this thing, Live Aid, and we want you to be on it.’ I said, ‘No, man, I’d love to but I can’t, I haven’t got a band.’ He said, ‘Forget the band. Come on your own with a piano, do Let It Be.’ OK, he’s a fairly forceful gent, young Robert.

Hal Uplinger : When Bob called Paul McCartney on the telephone and said, "Would you do the show?", McCartney said, "Well, you know, I'll think about it and call you back." Bob said seven seconds later the phone rang and Paul said, "I don't have to think about this. Of course I'll do it. But, don't use my name because I've got a date. I've got a concert somewhere on that date. Let me change it with the promoter and when I change it I'll call you back and you can use my name." And that's what happened.

Paul McCartney : Obviously, the cause was so major, that footage coming in from Ethiopia was so horrific, that you wanted to do something.

Andy Zweck (production manager) : My memory, prior to the event, was how Bob and Harvey Goldsmith struggled to get the artists and struggled to get the show in America.

Harvey Goldsmith : He (Geldof) kept throwing these names around and I knew damn well none of them had said yes; weren’t even aware of it.
(Source : interview with Michael Buerk, Radio Times, Dec 18, 2010)

Bill Graham : Bob Geldof had a certain number of acts which had committed to him. He had no black acts. It was obvious to me right away … I contacted every single major black artist, but they all turned down Live Aid. I also turn things down. That doesn’t mean they didn’t care. But, all the major black artists? All the biggest ones? You name them. They all turned Live Aid down.

Harvey Goldsmith : To this day they (Americans) don’t know where Africa is. They think it’s a country, not a continent.

They (black American artists) didn’t want to know. They just weren’t interested – none of them. Stevie Wonder even said he wasn’t going to be a token black. It was only Lionel Ritchie who finally stood up and said he would play at Philadelphia.
(Source : interview with Michael Buerk, Radio Times, Dec 18, 2010)

Andy Zweck : Bob had to play some tricks to get artists involved. He had to call Elton and say Queen are in and Bowie’s in and, of course, they weren’t. Then he’d call Bowie and say Elton and Queen are in. It was a game of bluff.

John Deacon (Queen) : We didn't know Bob Geldof at all. When 'Do They Know It's Christmas was out, that was a lot of the newer acts. For the gig, he wanted to get a lot of the established acts, we didn't know - twenty minutes, no sound-check!

Brian May (Queen) : Our first reaction was ‘Oh, God! Not another one!’ We’d been involved in quite a few and we were a bit disillusioned as to how the whole business works.

John Deacon : When it became apparent that it was going to happen, we'd just finished touring Japan and ended up having a meal in the hotel discussing whether we should do it... and we said yes.

John Giddings (music business agent) : I didn’t like Bob Geldof, and when he phoned me about Live Aid I truly didn’t believe it would ever happen. I was representing Paul Young, Alison Moyet and Tears for Fears, and it was only a couple of weeks before the show that I thought we had better get involved. I would like to claim credit for believing in it, but actually I had no belief whatsoever, because I didn’t like Bob. I know he helped Africa and all that but it didn’t help me like him as a person.
(Source : http://www.visitilife.com/john-giddings/)

Phil Collins : Obviously, I was on the list of people to play Live Aid because I'd been on the Band Aid record, and even that, Bob called me at The Townhouse Studios in London, while I was recording No Jacket Required, and he said, "Did you see the thing on television last night?' I said, 'No'. He said, 'Well, we're going to do something about it and I need a famous drummer so I'm asking you.' I had never met him.

So Band Aid happened and when Bob started talking about the Global Jukebox I was already on tour with No Jacket Required and Sting, who I had met at Band Aid, he called me up at some hotel somewhere, and asked if I'd like to do something together with him. I said I didn't think it would ever happen. It all sounded a bit adventurous, this Global Jukebox.

But, anyway, we met up and did our rehearsals together and then I remember saying to my manager, or maybe to Harvey Goldsmith, 'Is it possible I can play with somebody?' And I was told 'No' because Eric Clapton, Robert Plant and all my other mates were in Philadelphia. Then somebody said, 'Well, you could actually get Concorde and arrive in time to play with them.'

Originally the plan was that a couple of members of Duran Duran would also fly over on Concorde to play with Power Station, but they dropped out, so it ended up with just me on the plane and a whole lot of journalists.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, June 2010, for Music Week)

Tony Thompson (drummer, Power Station) : I was on the road at the time with Power Station in Sarasota, Florida, USA. I got a call from my road manager saying Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were on the phone. I was like, "Yeah, right." [laughs] And I hung up the phone.

About a half hour later, my road manager calls back again and says, "Tony, don't hang up the phone. I have Robert and Jimmy on a three-way call from Chicago, and they want to talk to you." I was like, "Are you serious?" So I talk to them, and it turned out they were fans of my work, so they asked me if I would consider doing Live Aid with them. They said they also asked Phil Collins, but he was on the Concord flying back and forth. It turned out Power Station was also doing Live Aid. We were to go on at around six, and then I would go out with Zeppelin around eight.
(Source : online interview at http://www.moderndrummer.com/web_exclusive/900001140/Tony%20Thompson)

Andy Taylor (Duran Duran) : Robert Palmer had failed to turn up for the Power Station tour, so we'd battled on alone. Then we get a call from Bob Geldof asking us to do Live Aid. I remember we put the phone on speakerphone and just listened to this Irish voice going, 'You're fockin' doin' it!'

John Taylor (Duran Duran) : When Simon, Nick and Roger flew in, we were in different teams. Andy and I had grown our hair and were doing the US rocker thing. They were doing the esoteric European artistic thing. It was all in the haircuts. The writing was on the wall.

Andy Taylor: There was a two billion-strong TV audience and we're helping save the world, and then... anticlimax. Roger's leaving.

Bob Geldof : Paul Simon rang up. He said he was pulling out because of the way Bill Graham was behaving. Bill was very rude to Paul Simon.

Hal Uplinger (tv producer, Philadelphia) : I remember getting a call from Bowie's office in London, very upset and saying "Why is he going to be on in the afternoon in America and he's not going to be a part of the ABC network?" and I said "He is going to be part of that network. What you have is primetime throughout the world and you are going to be taped for primetime in the United States." They ended up by saying, "Don't let anyone change his time, we want to keep it right where it is." Those were some of the logistical problems we had to overcome.

Andrew Zweck : I remember a meeting at the BBC where they showed me the running order they'd made, 22 acts. They said, "At 14.17 Bob Geldof will take the stage…" And we just laughed. We said, "Listen, that will never happen. You can't make these people run on time. You're dreaming. Rock'n'roll doesn't work that way."

But they had to link up and synchronise on satellite with America so that made us paranoid about our ability to control the timing. We needed a way to scare the artists into really timing their sets and playing to a timetable.

Bernard Doherty : What Andrew came up with was the idea of traffic lights on the stage. If it goes red you've got thirty seconds before we unplug you.

Andrew Zweck : We had so many bands to get on and off the stage that I came up with this traffic lights idea. It was all about perception. We were worried that they wouldn't listen. Remember, Live Aid was before mobile phones and before even faxes, so communicating with all those bands was a nightmare.

So we wrote a letter to all the artists explaining that we would be using a traffic lights system. Green means you're good, orange means you have two minutes to get off stage and when it goes red we'll pull the plugs. It was a lie, of course, but it was all about getting them to take it seriously.

We also put signs up on the walls of every dressing room explaining the traffic light system. It was actually just three 60 watt light bulbs painted red, green and amber, at the front of the stage, but it worked, at least until Pete Townshend of The Who kicked it over.

Kiki Dee : Elton rang me excitedly to say that he had been allocated thirty minutes at Live Aid. He said he had already asked George (Michael) to do a song with him. For our own part, Elton and I had planned to duet on Dancing In The Street, before discovering Bowie and Jagger had beaten us to it. So, there we were, trying desperately to think of something new and different, while George insisted, 'Do something the public wants to hear.' In the end, he persuaded us to stick with Don't Go Breaking My Heart.

Harvey Goldsmith : At one point, Bob and I sat in my boardroom with David Bowie and Mick Jagger at the other end, trying to figure out how we could do a duet with one of them in America and the other one in the UK, and could we send one of them up in a rocket? It was just nuts.

Bob Geldof : When I announced it, the only one who was dithering, as ever, was Bryan Ferry. So I just said, ‘ … and Bryan Ferry.’ And he rang to say, ‘I didn’t say, ‘Yeah”.’ I said, ‘Well, say “No” then. You’re the one who can announce it though.’

Pete Smith : Even Paul McCartney was very nervous about playing Live Aid. Most of the artists just accepted that they’d turn up and we’d take care of them, but Paul insisted on at least two meetings in his offices in Soho Square, wanted to know every detail of how it would all work on the night.

Paul McCartney : As it got nearer, I thought, ‘I’ve never been on stage on my own with a piano before, what the hell am I doing?’ It was fairly nerve-wracking.

Pete Smith : At the end of the final meeting, when we’d sorted everything out to his satisfaction, he stopped us at the door and said, ‘I hope you realize I was going to do it anyway.’ We were stunned. He said, ‘The management have said I have to do it. If I don’t do this gig, I’ll be in deep trouble with them.’ It turned out that ‘the management’ was his children who had been doing a school project about poverty and starvation in the third world.

Bill Graham : As it grew, a lot of acts that could not be bothered now wanted to be bothered. Heavy metal acts and certain rock and roll bands suddenly wanted to be on the show. I mean like ten days out. Groups like Yes and Foreigner and … Black Sabbath was driving me crazy. Their agent would call and say, ‘Bill, I got to get my act on the show.’ Ironically, the act had been asked to do it a few weeks before, but they had said, ‘We don’t wanna do another benefit.’

Finally, I made a slot for Black Sabbath at eleven in the morning. Can you imagine looking at Ozzy Osbourne at eleven in the morning? Following the Four Tops?

Harvey Goldsmith : The night before Live Aid, Tommy Mottola phoned me up and said he was pulling out Mick Jagger and Hall And Oates unless they got a better slot on the program. I said, “If you want to pull out Mick Jagger, be my guest. I’d like to see you try. And, if you want to pull out Hall And Oates, good-bye.’ This was, I think, eleven thirty on the Friday night. That’s how bad it was. The difference between America and England.

Lesley Ann Jones (journalist) : The night before Live Aid, in July 1985, I stayed with John (John Entwistle of The Who) and Max at their home in Roehampton, South- West London, in a bizarre bedroom filled with Max's china dolls and John's train sets. The next morning,

I was summoned to their room. 'Max has got a problem,' said John, who was lying in bed, wading through newspapers. 'She can't decide what to wear.' All over the bed and hanging around the picture rails, I counted at least fifteen pairs of white shorts. Every pair looked identical.

'Damned if I know,' I said. 'Me neither,' replied John. 'Brandy, anyone?' We were sober enough as we climbed into John's Rolls estate to head for Wembley Stadium, me in the boot with Fits Perfectly.

I had never seen a Rolls-Royce that shade of green before, I told him.

'Neither has anyone,' said John. 'I took a ‘arrods carrier bag to the bodyshop when I bought the car, and told the paint sprayer to match it.' (Source : Daily Mail, 12 July 2007)


13 JULY 1985
Mark Ellen (presenter, London) : I was presenting segments of the show on tv, and my most distinct memory is of being terrified. We were all terrified. Every time we heard about Live Aid, the audience figures were going up. It started off in the low millions, then gradually escalated to one and a half billion people worldwide, a number which just boggles the imagination. The BBC sent a cab round to my flat to pick me up I remember Andy Kershaw getting out of the cab and shouting up to my flat, ‘Got your brown trousers on then?’

Paul Latham (CEO, LiveNation) : At the time of Live Aid I was the Manager of Manchester Apollo and my security team worked at most outdoor gigs.  The week before we had worked on Springsteen at Roundhay Park and we were asked if anyone wanted to give up their time the following weekend to help on Live Aid.  I had bought tickets so was going anyway and was happy to lend a hand. The ultimate irony was my primary duties were the Royal Box and my republican leanings had to be parked for the cause!! I spent the day running after Bob Geldofs child (fifi) bumming fags for Sade and chatting up girls for Andrew Ridgeley!! Surreal!!
(Source : e-mail interview quote sent to Audience magazine journalist Johnny Black, 24 Feb, 2009)


Neil Crespin (audience, London) : We queued outside for five hours, until 10am when they let us in. We were among the very first in. I remember being surprised because I expected to be standing on the turf, but they’d put down this huge red tarpaulin.

David Hepworth (presenter, London) : All of the BBC presenters were up in the old BBC sports commentary box, opposite the Royal Box, just under the roof. It was like a very small perspex box, which you could only get to along catwalks. It was incredibly hot up there. They wired you in with the radio mike, so you couldn’t get out. Going to the loo was a real problem.

Richard Skinner (presenter, London) : I was up in the commentary box when the gates were opened. I saw one bloke come in first, all by himself, and he started running across this huge space to get in the front row. Then he must have got self-conscious or something, because he slowed down and stopped, and everybody else overtook him.

Elaine Hills (audience, London) : It was such a weird feeling, running into this huge empty stadium. Halfway across, we were out of breath, but we got front row places.

10.15 (GMT)
Bernard Doherty (press officer, London) : The Americans had this obsession with getting movie stars to do the onstage links. I remember the promoter, Harvey Goldsmith, getting very frustrated about this. He slammed down the phone at one point and yelled, ‘Fucking Americans! They want to put Phyllis Diller up there next!’

11.00 (GMT)
Neil Crespin : At first, the stadium felt very empty, but after an hour or so, I remember turning round and being stunned by how many thousands of people there were behind us.

Noel Edmonds (tv personality and part-time chopper pilot, London) : My company, Helicopter Management, was providing the choppers that flew the stars into Wembley. I flew the first one in myself, to test out the route, and I’ll just never forget flying over the stadium and seeing all those people. It was incredibly exciting to feel part of it.

We had a dozen small choppers picking artists up from their homes and ferrying them to the heliport at Battersea. From there we had two big Sikorsky S76s and a Bell 222 taking them on to Wembley.

Bernard Doherty : The only place for the helicopters to land was a cricket pitch just round the back of Wembley Stadium. But the club refused to cancel their match, fair enough, so every time a chopper landed, the team would scatter to the boundary, David Bowie or whoever would come tumbling out, and then they’d nip back onto the pitch and carry on with the game.

There was even a wedding going on in the pavilion. The bride looked up and went, ‘Fuck me, it’s David Bowie!’ And got her picture taken with him.

Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet) : I flew in with the rest of the band and Kenny Jones, the drummer with the Who. It hit us then, flying over the stadium and seeing the thousands of people coming into the stadium. There was this sense of a grand event going on that could equal England winning the World Cup in 1966 or the Coronation of 1953. This was something that would be stamped on everybody. It was a day when, no matter how young you were, you remembered where you were.

Noel Edmonds : In the late morning, I encountered a girl outside the waiting room at Battersea, very flustered indeed. We’d hired her for the day to help with arrangements and she was just totally freaked out. Freddie Mercury had asked her for another salmon sandwich and Elton John was sitting by the window sipping champagne, at which point David Bowie had just walked in and smiled at her. She couldn’t believe it was really happening.

11.15 (GMT) :
Neil Warnock (agent, The Agency Group) : The point at which I became Status Quo's permanent agent was when they re-formed to play at Live Aid. Immediately before that, Rick and Francis were broke, so I was just putting them out on personal appearances, where they would sign autographs and throw records out to the crowd, just to bring some money in.

So when they formed the new line-up for Live Aid, it was a young rhythm section, and they really kicked the old boys back into shape, gave them new vitality, and off they went again.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Live UK magazine, November 2013)

Francis Rossi (Status Quo) : All the groups got moved to the conference centre behind Wembely Stadium where we had to wait to get shuttled out. I remember messing about with Freddie (Freddie Mercury of Queen), when he got me around the neck. All of a sudden I could not move. He was like, 'Hello, darling"' And I thought, 'My God, if he wanted to shag me now I would have no choice in the matter. If Freddie wanted to have you, he'd have had you. It was all very professional until then. That day I felt like we'd bonded. Wonderful.
(Source : Mojo Classic – Queen The Inside Story, 2005)

11.45 (GMT)
Jill Sinclair (producer, The Tube) : Bob Geldof and Paula got delayed on the way to Wembley, which caused problems. Their daughter, Trixie, was supposed to present Princess Diana with a bouquet of flowers, but there was no time to get it organised. So they stopped the car at a service station and bought one of those cheap bouquets wrapped in cellophane, because they had no other option.

When Trixie’s big moment came, she decided for some reason she didn’t want to do it, so Paula bribed her by saying she’d give her some salmon, her favourite food. Trixie agreed, and gave Diana the flowers, then turned round and said, ‘There, I’ve done it. Can I have my fish now?’

Bernard Doherty : I was backstage at the meet’n’greet where Charles and Di met the stars before the show kicked off. I was standing with Bob, Paula and their baby Trixie at the end of the line. Just as the Royal couple got to us, I had to duck out and make sure the tv cameramen and press photographers were in place in front of the Royal Box to catch the entry of Charles and Diana, which signalled the start of the event. This meant me sprinting down some stairs, along a corridor underneath the Royal Box and out the other side into the stadium. I was racing along the corridor, bristling with walkie-talkies and security passes, when these two big blokes with bulges in their jacket pockets grabbed me. They pinned me up against a wall and wouldn’t listen to anything I was saying.

They were Special Branch, of course, and I must have looked very suspicious to them, running along the corridor with the Royal loo in it, where they would go if they had to nip out of the box. Outside, the press corps was going crazy, screaming for me, but they wouldn’t let me go.

Neil Crespin : This huge cheer went up when the Royals arrived. I remember being surprised, because I hadn’t expected an audience of trendy rock’n’rollers to be so royalistic.

Harvey Goldsmith : The day before the concert I’d gone out and bought twenty or thirty very large clocks and just stuck them everywhere. I sent notes round to every single act saying, ‘I don’t care what time you go on. I only care what time you come off.’

Mike Appleton : The first image of Wembley Stadium, which opened the show, was a wide-angle shot, taken from a camera up on a very high crane which, in turn, was up on top of a roof. We had fifteen cameras in all. There was even one up in the Goodyear blimp.

David Croft : Set up around the stage and backstage were six pairs of big clocks mounted on boards, one pair visible wherever you stood. Each pair had one clock synchronized to London time and one to Philadelphia time. Between them was the running order on both sides of the Atlantic. They also had these time and motion slogans on them, like, ‘Kill time and you murder success.’

Peter Cook (BBC camera man) : I was above Wembley in the Goodyear Airship. The gondola is in the shadow of the helium envelope, and a door was removed for a television camera making it cold and noisy. The wind and the aero engine drowned out any vestige of music. Why was I there? I was operating the airship's TV camera for BBC. The view was amazing; I remember particularly the abundance of red cars in the car parks.

Richard Skinner : I was getting more and more tense because my producer, Trevor Dann, kept telling me how many billions the audience was and it seemed to get bigger every time. We were still writing and re-writing the opening announcement two minutes before the show started.

12.00 Noon (GMT)

Neil Crespin : When Richard Skinner made the announcement that started it all off, it was really weird because there was no-one on stage – just this disembodied voice.

Richard Skinner : I had just started the announcement – ‘It’s 12 noon in London and 7am in Philadelphia’ – when suddenly my words came blasting back at me with a delay out of the Wembley system. It put me right off my stride. Then the whole audience roared and it was incredible. I don’t think anybody noticed my moment of confusion.

12.02 (GMT) : STATUS QUO TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Brian May (guitarist, Queen) : We went down for the opening and sat in the Royal Box with Princess Diana and Charles. Then Status Quo came on and started. I thought they rose to the occasion marvelously.

Francis Rossi (Status Quo) : There was a lot of discussion about whether Rockin' All Over The World would open the show or end the show - in the end, we opened with it, or we would have had to sit around for 12 hours.
Bernard Doherty : Bob had to fight to get Rockin’ All Over The World as the opening song. Most people wanted some sort of spectacular beginning, and they weren’t impressed by Bob insisting on Rockin’ All Over The World. I don’t think they could see it, but I think Geldof knew it would be given a whole new meaning.

Mandy Jackson (nearby resident) : I had just moved into a flat about half a mile from Wembley Stadium and on the day had the tv on with the sound turned down and opened all the windows, so I got it sort-of live and it was the next best thing to being there. I remember Status Quo coming on and the noise of the crowd cheering getting louder and louder so you could hardly hear the music start, then the unmistakeable sound of 'Rockin all over the world' and I felt like the whole country was cheering.

Francis Rossi : It went in such a flash. I got my face burnt because the sun was hitting the stage. It was a scorching day, a perfect day. We came off stage and got pissed real quick.

Neil Crespin : Quo is a long way from being my favourite band, but it was just perfect when they started with Rockin’ All Over The World. It was exactly the right song.

Bernard Doherty : I was still under heavy guard in the corridor. There was a little black and white 12” tv monitor set up in there, and that’s what I saw the opening of Live Aid on. And when Quo went into Rockin’ All Over The World, it was such an emotional moment that the tears just welled up in my eyes. The Special branch guys must have thought I was a right soppy little git.

Neil Warnock (agent, The Agency Group) : Live Aid was Status Quo's wake-up call. They were in disarray and literally had to put a band together, so that they could perform on the day. They were lucky to get another bite at the cherry, but by God, have they grabbed it with both hands.
(Source : Audience magazine, Aug 2005)

12.19 (GMT) : STYLE COUNCIL TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Nigel Sweeney (radio/tv plugger) : It was sunny and it was just unbelievable. It was such a big show. Everyone was getting ready for it. It had taken over England and everyone knew what was going on.

Elaine Hill : At first I was a bit disappointed. After all that effort to get to the front, the stage was so high I could hardly see the performers.

Nigel Sweeney : The Council were the second or third band on after Status Quo had done Rockin' All Over The World. I think they did two or three numbers.

I'd organised for them to do a completely separate TV thing, so we all went down to Maidstone to do this programme, to promote Come To Milton Keynes. We had the orchestra - sixteen strings players with monks outfits - again, Paul Weller's idea. It was a really hot day and they were sweating their guts out. While we were waiting around we were watching Live Aid on the telly. We did the TV, finished at about six, went back to Wembley and Paul got up for the finale.

12.44 (GMT) : BOOMTOWN RATS TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Pete Thoms (trombone/keyboards, Boomtown Rats) : Live Aid was strange because the Rats hadn’t had a hit in some while, so they were somewhat in decline. We’d been doing a lot of gigs in small venues, colleges and things, and then suddenly because Bob was the driving force of Live Aid, we were in Wembley playing in front of millions of people.

We had a fantastic day. The atmosphere was great backstage. No-one was on a star trip. There was McCartney and Elton and George Michael just hanging out.

I remember walking out on the stage and thinking that, back in Australia, my parents could see me. That was an amazing feeling but then, Bob’s microphone cracked up, so for the whole of the first song, Rat Trap, nobody could hear a word he was singing. That seemed so unfair, because he was the guy who had made it all happen.

Bob Geldof : The noise of the crowd was physical. And I was doing a song that I'd written a long time ago, called I Don't Like Mondays - which people certainly in Britain knew. And there was a line of that which was: "The lesson today is how to die". And I hadn't chosen that song because of that line. But lots of things took on a significance that day that they otherwise wouldn't have. And I got to that line and I suddenly stopped. I pulled up sharp. I stopped dead, you know. I stopped singing the song. And the line just lay hanging in the air over Wembley Stadium, and presumably over the billion and a half people watching on television. And the crowd started going mad. The noise rose to an even higher intensity of emotion.

Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet) : Dare I say it, it was evangelical, that moment when Geldof stopped I Don’t Like Mondays and raised his fist in the air. He was a sort of statesman. A link between punk and the new romantics and the eighties. You could follow him.

13.00 (GMT) : ADAM ANT TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
David Bailey (photographer) : The atmosphere on the day was great. At one point I got a tap on my shoulder and spun round. Suddenly there was big tongue down my throat! It was Freddie Mercury.

Noel Edmonds : There’s no helicopter pad at Wembley, so we were coming down onto the London Transport cricket ground, from where police cars were picking up the stars and ferrying them to the stadium. The problem was that London Transport had a big cricket match on that day and couldn’t cancel it. So the umpire was given a whistle and, everytime he heard a helicopter coming, he blew the whistle and the players rushed off the field until we lifted off again.

13.06 (GMT) : INXS - BY SATELLITE FROM MELBOURNE.

13.16 (GMT) : ULTRAVOX TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Bernard Doherty : Backstage there was only room for six Portakabins to be used as dressing rooms. There they were with their potted plants and parasols, probably bought from BAndQ, on this ropey old green baize stretched over the smelly Wembley concrete. But there was this really gentle atmosphere. Everyone was doing it all for Bob. Almost all of the artists stayed in the backstage enclosure all day.

The strict ruling was that you were only allowed into your Portakabin thirty minutes before you went on stage and for twenty minutes after you came off – you know, to decompress.

Pete Smith : Back at the cricket, a wedding reception had started in the pavilion. Understandably, some of the revellers were not amused by all these helicopters. Somebody had the stroke of genius that if a star could be talked into going in there, it might help smooth things. In the end, David Bowie went in, shook hands with the groom, kissed the bride and wished the happy couple well. There wasn’t a word out of them for the rest of the day.

13.34 (GMT) : LOUDNESS BY SATELLITE FROM JAPAN
Richard Skinner : By about lunchtime, toilet arrangements had become quite a problem. Nobody had time to nip out for a pee. In fact, I remember one BBC producer had to pee in a bucket.

13.47 (GMT) : SPANDAU BALLET TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

13.51 (GMT) : BERNARD WATSON OPENS PROCEEDINGS IN PHILADELPHIA.
Hal Uplinger : We were standing in the compound (in Philadelphia) and a van pulled up which had gone to collect people at the airport. Coming out of the van holding two suitcases is Dionne Warwick. She comes up to me and said, "Where do I go and what do I do?" And did we use her on everything! She opened an act on stage, was a host on the American feed for several hours, and then went and did the same on the world feed. But that was exactly the kind of attitude that everybody had on this project.

14.02 (GMT) : JOAN BAEZ ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bill Graham : Jack Nicholson introduced Joan Baez as a singer whose voice was always heard when there was a just cause that needed a song. Joan said, ‘Good morning, children of the 80s. This is your Woodstock, and it’s long overdue.’ She sang Amazing Grace and we were in business. The day had officially begun.

14.07 (GMT) : ELVIS COSTELLO TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Stuart Maconie : Musically I thought Elvis Costello brought something unusual to the proceedings with his 'northern folk song'. We were watching in a pub in Wigan and we asked the landlord if we could have a whip round in the pub and he said 'NO' - I wonder if he regrets that now?


14.10 (GMT) : THE HOOTERS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.

14.22 (GMT) : NIK KERSHAW TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

14.32 (GMT) : THE FOUR TOPS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bill Graham : Larry Magid (promoter, Philadelphia) was a great help. He knew a lot of the black acts. Through Larry we got The Four tops, Teddy Pendergrass, Ashford And Simpson and Patti LaBelle.

14.38 (GMT) : B.B.KING BY SATELLITE FROM HOLLAND.

14.45 (GMT) : BILLY OCEAN ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.

14.52 (GMT) : OZZY OSBOURNE/BLACK SABBATH ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.

14.55 (GMT) : SADE TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

15.12 (GMT) : RUN DMC ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.

15.18 (GMT) : STING TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

15.27 (GMT) : RICK SPRINGFIELD IN PHILADELPHIA.

15.37 (GMT) : PHIL COLLINS TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Phil Collins : Sting and I did our set at Wembley - it was blisteringly hot, I remember that. It was a white stage and it was really, really hot.

It was so hot in London that my fingers slipped off the piano notes. I'll never forget it. It seemed that everybody had a sharp intake of breath because it was really horrible.

Pete Smith : During Phil’s set, I was in the Hard Rock with Harvey Goldsmith, when I mentioned that I had a spare ticket for Concorde, and it was a shame to waste it. Obviously we couldn’t go, and it would have to be somebody who had his passport handy. Barry Cox, the co-owner of the Hard Rock, piped up that he had his passport on him. Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way to Philadelphia.

Phil Collins : I remember coming off stage and David Bailey had this little stand to take photographs of all the performers. I had a few taken of me which I now have in my house.

Noel Edmonds : When Phil Collins came offstage, I had to fly him to Heathrow. I will never forget that moment, as this incredible sea of faces suddenly turned up to look at us. Forget your Mexican Wave, this was just unbelievable.

15.47 (GMT) : REO SPEEDWAGON IN PHILADELPHIA.

15.50 (GMT) : HOWARD JONES TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Pete Smith : People had to compromise. Howard Jones, for example, really wanted to do his set with his band, but we had a grand piano already on stage because of Phil Collins having just played. Now, you couldn’t take, say, Mark Knopfler, and ask him to do a solo slot, but Howard Jones’s songs would work with just the piano.

15.55 (GMT) : WHILE AUTOGRAPH APPEAR BY SATELLITE FROM MOSCOW, PHIL COLLINS TAKES OFF IN A HELICOPTER FROM WEMBLEY EN ROUTE TO HEATHROW, FROM WHERE HE WILL FLY BY CONCORDE TO PHILADELPHIA.
Noel Edmonds : Our chopper, with me and Phil in it, had the call sign Live Aid One. Heathrow gave us incredible treatment. They cleared the main runway, and allowed us to land beside Concorde.

In fact, it almost didn’t happen, even then. Virtually everybody co-operated, but we hit one high-ranking jobsworth who wouldn’t have it. ‘No helicopter gets clearance to land beside Concorde’. Fortunately, Prince Charles had given Geldof a number to ring if Live Aid hit any serious snags. We were at the end of our tether, so we called the number. Half an hour later – clearance.

Phil Collins : All the baggage handlers came out to wave goodbye, then we took off in Concorde. Cher was on the flight, just heading back to the States and I’d never met her before, so I went over and said hello. She asked what was going on. I told her about Live Aid and she asked whether I could get her on. I told her to just turn up.

16.07 (GMT) : BRYAN FERRY TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Bryan Ferry : I have terrible memories of it all going wrong. I’d put together an all-star band and the set was fraught with problems. We had David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) on guitar and, poor David, his guitar wasn’t working for the first couple of songs.

With his first hit, the drummer put his stick through the drumskin. And then my microphone wasn’t working which, for a singer, is a bit of a handicap. A roadie ran on with another mic so then I was holding two mics taped together and I wasn’t really sure which one to sing into.

16.17 (GMT) : CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Neil Young : The CSNY re-union was terrible, the worst thing I’ve ever seen. We sounded much better in the trailer when we were rehearsing. I’m glad we did it, but we didn’t do it very well.

16.24 (GMT) : UDO LINDENBERG BY SATELLITE FROM COLOGNE.


16.26 (GMT) : JUDAS PRIEST ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.

16.38 (GMT) : PAUL YOUNG TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Paul Young : The thing that sticks out in my memory is Bob Geldof telling me that half-way through my set, the Americans are going to switch on to us, and so all of a sudden the amount of people watching it will be practically doubled.

That kind of put me off a little bit just before I went on. It was difficult to take in the magnitude of the whole thing, and when I realised it was almost like a worldwide broadcast, it was incredible.

It was a very fast turnover backstage with the dressing rooms - I remember they were saying 'you've got 20 minutes after you come off, just to calm down and get changed, and then you've got to get out because Queen are coming in'.

And then Queen arrived and they were going 'no that's alright, you take your time'.
Everybody was really, really nice. You always hear things about egos, but I don't remember any egos. I heard there were a few on the other side of the water as regards the billing and who was going on when.

I was absolutely whacked, but the excitement of the occasion and the adrenalin rush, especially with an audience of that size, just gets rid of all that.

We had our own little problems with monitors. They had got U2's monitors switched on and their roadie was soundchecking the drum kit and it was coming straight back at us while we were playing.

So he was completely out of time with us and we were all having to concentrate like hell on keeping tempo. We were doing Come Back To Stay and he was going 'crack crack crack' on the snare drum.

16.48 (GMT) : ALISON MOYET JOINS PAUL YOUNG ON STAGE IN WEMBLEY
Alison Moyet : It was a funny thing for me, Live Aid - someone told me there was a charity gig and did I want to do it?

I'm the kind of person that, if you catch me in a good mood, I'll say 'Yes'. I just thought there would be maybe 2,000 people there - I thought why not help?

I went down to what I thought was Wembley Arena, then they put me in a helicopter and took me to Wembley Stadium - I was freaked by the lot.

Looking back, I wish I had not done that particular song (That's The Way Love Is).
It was two months after I had given birth to my first son and I was the size of a small office building.

I had been talked into peach for some reason, I don't know why. And I had done my own hair and forgot to actually do the back bit.

I just looked very, very rough and had no idea quite how massive it was going to be. I hadn't seen it as some kind of publicity event, it was just me doing a charity number.

17.00 (GMT) : BOB GELDOF WELCOMES AMERICA
Mark Ellen : Cat Stevens was down to play. I caught sight of him a couple of times wandering around in his robes, because by then he had adopted the name Yusuf Islam and had become a Muslim. But for some reason he never went on stage.

Pete Smith : I got a call from the Conference Centre, at about five, saying Cat had arrived. We rushed him in through a break in the fence backstage. He looked magical with his neat beard, and his flowing white robes, clutching his Martin guitar.

All these superstars like Elton John and David Bowie rushed out and congregated around him. They were his old mates from the days at the Speakeasy, and they hadn’t seen him since.

We dragged him away for a meeting with Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith. He said he wanted to sing an Islamic children’s song. Bob and Harvey suggested that he should do Morning Has broken, but he wasn’t having it. My biggest regret of the whole day is that, in the end, they couldn’t agree. Even so, he made a huge donation and just left.

Bono : I remember being as high as a kite on what was going on. It was as good backstage as it was front of stage. To have people whose music you grew up on come up to you and offer their support to what you were doing was amazing.

Eric Clapton : We were scheduled to go onstage in the evening, and I sat watching the performances of the other acts on TV during most of the day, which was probably a psychological mistake, as seeing all these great artists giving their best made me a hundred times more psyched out than I would have been for a regular gig. How could I ever match the performance of a band like the Four Tops, with their fantastic big Motown orchestra and all their energy?
(Source : Clapton: The Autobiography, by Eric Clapton, Broadway Books/Random House, Inc., 2007 )

17.02 (GMT) : BRYAN ADAMS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bryan Adams : It was bedlam backstage. I remember I walked up the stairs to the stage and Yoko Ono passed me. When I got to the top of the stairs someone said that I was to start after the gentleman introduced me. That gentleman was Jack Nicholson.



17.20 (GMT) : U2 TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Bono : I remember getting carried away with myself on stage. I forgot it was a tight fifteen minute thing and I thought it was just U2 playing. As a result, we didn’t get to do Pride and one song went on for seven minutes because I saw someone getting squashed down front and I was wanting to go down there. I wanted some sort of gesture that included the crowd, because they seemed as important to me as the people behind the stage.

Elaine Hills (audience) : Bono came over to the side of the stage and he pointed down at my sister Melanie. Then the security men came and pulled her out. They took her over to this ladder so she could climb up onto the stage. Then Bono started pointing at me too. I couldn’t believe it was happening.

Then we were up there on the stage. I wasn’t frightened. I remember suddenly worrying that I’d left my handbag down there. Then Bono jumped down and started dancing with another girl, so me and Melanie were left on stage, feeling like spare parts.

When he climbed back up, he gave Melanie a hug, and then came and gave me a big, wet, sloppy kiss. It should have been really exciting, but he had stubble, and his face was all sweaty. He whispered in my ear, ‘You made it.’ which I thought was really arrogant.

When I got back down to the front row, the banana that had been in my handbag had got squashed all over it. I had to throw the bag away.

Bono : The next few days were the blackest depression. I saw the tv film back and I thought I’d made a big mistake and misjudged the situation. I thought, ‘That’s it!’ I thought I had to leave the group. This thing where I was ending up in the audience had gone so wrong for me. I didn’t mean to do it at Live Aid.

17.40 (GMT) : THE BEACH BOYS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bruce Johnston (Beach Boys) : The jungle drums beat fast and furious for young people in the States. Word got out and we knew, we really knew what Live Aid was about. I think if America hadn’t understood the cause, nobody would have shown up. But we got it and it was a great thing to be doing.

17.56 (GMT)
David Hepworth : While we were doing interviews, we had what they called ‘open talkback’ in our earphones. So I’d be trying to conduct an intelligent conversation with, say, Stuart Adamson of Big Country, but all the while in my ear I could hear this absolute babble of tv engineers all over the world. ‘Moscow’s lost Tokyo’ or ‘Tell South Africa to hold until Philadelphia is clear.’

18.00 (GMT) : DIRE STRAITS/STING ON STAGE IN WEMBLEY
Pete Smith : Dire Straits biggest problem was that their slot, like everybody else’s, was twenty minutes, and very few of their numbers last much less than that.

18.26 (GMT) : GEORGE THOROGOOD/BO DIDDLEY/ALBERT COLLINS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


18.44 (GMT) QUEEN TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Neil Crespin : It was bloody hot. I was really looking forward to queen and, just as they were about to come on, my girlfriend Philippa fainted. It was this awful dilemma. Do I watch Queen or do I take her out? Of course, I carried her through the crowd and got her some water.

Brian May (guitarist, Queen) : I remember a huge rush of adrenalin as I went on stage and a massive roar from the crowd, and then all of us just pitching in. Looking back, I think we were all a bit over-excited.

Janine Carey (audience) : When Queen came on stage, my boyfriend and I were sitting down by then, and when they started playing everyone around us got to their feet and we couldn't understand why (as they were 'old hat' by then) by the end of their first song we understood why - they were such a great stadium band.

Bob Geldof : It was the perfect stage for Freddie. He could ponce about in front of the whole world.

Brian May (Queen) : The rest of us played okay, but Freddie was out there and took it to another level. It wasn't just Queen fans - he connected with everyone.

John Deacon (Queen) : It was the one day that I was proud to be involved in the music business. A lot of days you certainly don't feel that! But the day was fabulous, people forgot that element of competitiveness... it was a good morale-booster for us too, because it showed us the strength of support we had in England, and it showed us what we had to offer as a band.

Midge Ure : Queen were brilliant. They shone. You saw it reflected in the charts a week or so later. You saw all those old Queen albums going back in and, obviously, they had won the day because of their brilliant performance. That was the gauge, I suppose. I didn’t see any Ultravox stuff come back in.

Neil Crespin : We got Philippa into some shade at the back of the stadium and she came round in time to see the end of Queen’s set. I think I made the right decision, though, because we’re married now.

Brian May : I remember coming off and thinking it was very scrappy. But there was a lot of very good energy too.

Bernard Doherty : I remember Freddie Mercury coming off after Queen’s performance, towel round his neck, holding court in his Portakabin. Everyone had come straight over to congratulate him – ‘Daaahling, you were wonderful.’ Bowie, McCartney, Linda, taking pictures of the other photographers taking pictures.

Denis O’Reagan (photographer) : Out on the photographer’s platform, it was chaos. Everything was happening so fast. Bands were coming on and offstage so quickly. I realized that if I went to the loo, I could miss a whole band. In fact, I completely missed Queen. I must have blinked.

Mike Appleton : Just as Queen was ending, Geldof turned up in our control room and said, ‘I want to make another fuckin’ appeal. A Sheik from Dubai had pledged a million pounds and Bob wanted to use it as an opportunity to encourage more people to donate. The more often we could get him on the screen, the happier we were. He had the most astonishing effect in extracting money out of viewers. Every time he made a personal appearance the donations just surged – through the roof. Amazing!

19.03 (GMT) : DAVID BOWIE/MICK JAGGER VIDEO INSERT.
Kevin Armstrong : I had been working with Bowie on the soundtrack for Absolute Beginners and then one evening he asked me, very mysteriously, if I would turn up late at night at a little film studio in Wardour Street and bring a guitar. I showed up and was taken downstairs into a little room where I was greeted by Bowie and Mick Jagger and that was where we worked out the arrangement for Dancing In The Street.

David Hepworth : Guests kept coming in to the commentary box to be interviewed which was fine if they were famous or instantly recognizable but, at one point this bloke was ushered into a seat just off-camera and I didn’t recognize him. Clearly a rock star of some sort, but I wasn’t sure which one. The people who had brought him in didn’t know either. My brain started working furiously through all the people that I knew were around that day. I took a deep breath and said, ‘We appear to have been joined by Ian Astbury of The Cult.’ I was thinking to myself, ‘Please, God, don’t let him deny it.’ Fortunately, I’d guessed right.

19.07 (GMT) : SIMPLE MINDS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bruce Findlay (manager, Simple Minds) : The day that Bob called us to see how we could help, we had been in the same recording studio as the Rolling Stones, so we went to Philadelphia together with them.
Jim Kerr (Simple Minds) : We wanted to be in London … but we were number one in America at about that time and Geldof asked us to do it and when he asks you to do something, you kind of do it. And we were on our way to America at the time to record our album Once Upon A Time. But, obviously it was overwhelming. Being in America, and the way they do things in America, it even probably more over the top than here. I think the greatest thing for us was Jack Nicholson introduced us ... I also recall being on stage for a minute and thinking, 'I shouldn't have worn these trousers.' It was a bad trouser day.
Bruce Findlay : Ninety thousand people: it was unbelievable. It was quite a humbling thing - we were a small part of a much bigger thing. It was good to be a part of it.

19.22 (GMT) : DAVID BOWIE TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Kevin Armstrong : David asked me to put a band together to back him at Live Aid, which I did.

Francis Rossi (Status Quo) : Bowie was the only one sober, immaculately dressed when everyone else looked shit-faced. I never found out how he’d managed it.

Bernard Doherty : I remember how nervous Bowie was – the most nervous I’ve ever seen him (and I was his PR at the time). He’d seen the Drive video a week beforehand at Harvey Goldsmith’s office and immediately said, ‘I'll cut a song. We have to show this.’

Harvey Goldsmith : Bowie said, ‘You’ve got to put that in the show. It’s the most dramatic thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll give up one of my numbers.’

Bernard Doherty : And he did. He cut China Girl and said, ‘I want to show you something that speaks for itself.’

Kevin Armstrong : I’ll never forget standing on that stage and thinking back to how all my teachers had told me that playing guitar would do me no good, and now every one of them would be watching me up there.

Neil Crespin : It never peaked, just kept going up, higher and higher. I remember seeing Bowie and thinking, ‘What could possibly top this?’ But then, really, he was just like an opener.

Jill Sinclair : I’d been trying all day to get an interview with Bowie for The Tube. Finally, I grabbed him just as he came offstage but he was so ecstatic that he really wasn’t thinking straight. We asked what he planned to do next and he said, ‘I’m going home to have a really good fuck.’ We realized there really wasn’t much point in continuing the interview.

Bernard Doherty : He walked straight offstage and into his Portakabin. I nipped in and said, ‘That was pretty good, wasn’t it?’ He looked up at me, and looked down again, and I realized he was crying.


19.36 (GMT) : FOOTAGE OF THE FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA IS BROADCAST, SOUNDTRACKED BY THE CARS’ SONG DRIVE.
David Hepworth : When The Cars’ video came on with the footage of the children in Ethiopia, it was the most emotional moment of the day. Billy Connolly and Pamela Stephenson were sitting beside me weeping buckets.

Harvey Goldsmith : That was probably one of the most evocative things in the whole show and really got the money rolling in.

Mark Ellen : The plan was that, after Wembley closed down, the London end of the show would continue from Legends, a West End nightclub. I arrived there about 7.30. Live Aid had become the soundtrack to the day, in shops, wine bars, cars, cabs, just everywhere. Our cabbie had it on and the thing that struck me, as I got out of the cab, was that the street was deserted. Everybody was at home, or in the pub watching Live Aid.

I saw a bloke run out of a pub, scramble wildly into his car and switch the radio on so as not to miss any of it. He sat in the car for maybe a minute, just listening, before he could bring himself to drive off.

19.41 (GMT) : THE PRETENDERS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
David Hepworth : I watched The Pretenders with Connolly beside me. This was not long after James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon had both died. Billy turned to me and said, ‘Ah really like The Pretenders, but ah wouldnae join.’ I asked him why not and he said, ‘Nobody leaves.’

20.00 (GMT) : THE WHO TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Chalkie Davies (photographer) : Rolling Stone magazine had asked me to get some pictures from on the stage but, on the day, no photographers were allowed up there. Luckily, I was friendly with Pete Townshend and I told him my problem. He handed me a guitar case and said, ‘Walk on with that. You’re my roadie for tonight.’ So I walked alongside him, but the security guys still tried to stop me. Pete said, ‘How am I gonna play if I don’t have my guitar?’ so they had to let me through. As a result, I got the only onstage photos.

Bernard Doherty : I was standing at the side of the stage when The Who were on. They were a Harvey-related act and as soon as Pete Townshend saw the lights, went over and kicked out all three bulbs. Bash! Bash! Bash! Then he glowered at the side of the side with that menacing look which said, 'Nobody tells The Who when to get off the stage.' Andy Zweck, of course, had a broad grin on his face and looked at me and said, 'That's my boys!'

Roger Daltrey (The Who) : It was not fun at all. I didn’t want to do it with Kenney Jones. We got on there and all the power went off and it was a nightmare.

Brian May : I watched The Who from the side of the stage and it was obvious they weren’t getting on very well with each other. Sparks were flying – it was actually quite exciting.

Roger Daltrey (vocals, The Who) : We did not have a row backstage at Live Aid. Where it came from, we were having a photo taken by David Bailey or someone, we’d just come offstage and we were all wringing wet, and he says, ‘Well, all get in close together.’ And I made the quip of ‘What, and pretend we’re friends?’ Very tongue in cheek, and that was the ‘row’.

None of us wanted to do it as a group. We all offered to do it individually, and there was talk of Pete and I doing it with Phil Collins and David Bowie, but we didn’t want to re-form the group. The Who was finished and that was it. But Bob Geldof being the persuasive little sod he is said it would make such a difference to the charity if The Who did it, and you can’t refuse that kind of request. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to be reminded of what I’d lost.

20.20 (GMT) : SANTANA/PAT METHENY ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


20.25 : PHIL COLLINS IS INTERVIEWED LIVE FROM CONCORDE
Mike Appleton : It was the most amazing feeling of elation when we actually got through to Phil aboard Concorde. It was one of those wild ideas that had come up in the planning meetings and nobody even knew if it was possible. It was very much a Heath Robinson patchwork from the pilot’s radio through to us, but it gave us such a buzz to have pulled it off.

David Hepworth : Steve Blacknell was up in Concorde with Phil Collins. Now, Steve and I are both huge Tony Hancock fans, which is why the first words uttered from Concorde to the assembled mass of humanity on planet Earth during this historic link up were, ‘It is are not raining in Tokyo’, which would be very familiar to any Hancock fan as a line from The Radio Ham, but deeply mysterious to anybody else.



20.50 (GMT) : ELTON JOHN TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Bernard Doherty : Elton had brought this Portakabin of his own. The only place they could fit it in was between all the Edwin Shirley trucks. He had this big old barbecue going on all day. At one point he appeared in a pinny, the full monty, and started doing the cooking himself. Freddie Mercury dropped in for a veggieburger.

Pete Smith : We tried to treat everybody, no matter how big a star, the same way. I think Geldof coined that phrase about checking their egos at the door. So they all had the same dressing rooms, which were actually Portakabins left behind by Bruce Springsteen who’d played the night before, as part of his donation to the cause.

20.57 (GMT) : ASHFORD AND SIMPSON/TEDDY PENDERGRASS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.



21.05 (GMT) : ELTON JOHN AND KIKI DEE TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

21.09 (GMT) : ELTON JOHN, KIKI DEE AND WHAM! TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

21.15 (GMT) : PAUL McCARTNEY REHEARSES LET IT BE
Pete Smith : It must have been about 9.15 that McCartney did an a capella rehearsal of Let It Be. I had photocopied the lyrics given them out to Alison Moyet, Townshend, Geldof and the others. Paul was musical director.

21.30 (GMT) : MADONNA ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bill Graham : Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and Eric Clapton were standing in the backstage area when Madonna got out of her limousine with her entourage. They started walking through and her advance guys were saying, ‘Move, please. Move, please. Madonna’s coming.’ One of them touched Eric’s arm and told him to move over. Eric said, ‘What’s this? The guy said, ‘You got to look out, Madonna’s coming.’ And Eric said, ‘You must be joking!’

Robert Plant : There was absolute wonder at Madonna's arse. We watched her parade back and forth as we sat on the steps of our caravan watching Bill Graham control the world.

21.45 (GMT) : BOB GELDOF ORGANISES A REHEARSAL OF DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS.
Bernard Doherty : Bob suddenly remembered that no-one knew any of the words and got someone to photocopy the lyrics, gathered everybody together in the Hard Rock backstage, worked out who was going to sing which lines, and then started rehearsing it.

Andy Zweck (stage manager) : Bob Geldof’s assistant, Marsha, suddenly appeared backstage trying to find a photocopier. She needed 100 copies of the lyrics of Do They Know It’s Christmas, for the finale.

Pete Smith : They must have got that rehearsal going in the Hard Rock tent at about 9.45, with Bob trying to teach everyone the words, doing his Sir Malcolm Sargent bit.

Bernard Doherty : Brian Aris (photographer) fused the lights. Thought he’d fused the whole stadium for a minute.

Pete Smith : They ended up singing unaccompanied in the dark. A couple of candles appeared, and some people held up cigarette lighters.

Bernard Doherty : The whole thing happened by candlelight about 45 minutes before they went on.

Pete Smith : It was magical, one of the loveliest moments of the day.

21.48 (GMT) : FREDDIE MERCURY AND BRIAN MAY TAKE THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.

21.51 (GMT) : PAUL McCARTNEY TAKES THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY.
Paul McCartney : Live Aid was a nightmare for me personally, because my mike went down, and I didn’t know it had.

Jeff Griffin (producer, Radio One) : When McCartney started to play we had no feed.

Andy Zweck : The crowd couldn’t hear him at all, so they all started booing and jeering and throwing things. You can see how puzzled he was from the look on his face in the video.

Paul McCartney : What happened apparently was Freddie Mercury and Brian May had done their number just before I went on, and their roadies had pulled what they thought were all their jackplugs, and pulled mine as well. I didn’t have a road crew with me or anything. So there I was, on world telly. I couldn’t hear the piano. Your mind races on these things. My mind was saying, ‘Well, we haven’t got the monitors but I bet the sound’s great on telly.’ That often happens.

So I started off, ‘When I find myself in times of trouble…’ It’s not going down that well, but maybe they’ll warm up. Suddenly the terrible moment came after the first verse, when the monitors came in. Voices going, ‘You’ve got the wrong plug. That’s not your plug.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I thought. ‘I wonder if that’s coming over on the BBC?’

Meanwhile this other half of me is singing Let It Be, trying to remember the words. And I went, ‘There will be an answer,’…

Jeff Griffin : We found the feed about two minutes into the song, and then the crowd cheered.

Paul McCartney : … and I heard the crowd go, ‘Yay!’ I thought, ‘It’s OK, we’re cool.’ The speakers had come on for a moment.

Then it started to feedback, another nightmare. And I had this sudden thought, I should sing, ‘There will be some feedback, let it be.’ Then I thought, ‘No, you can’t do that, this is Ethiopia. Don’t be so facetious.’ So my brain is arguing with itself and at the same time singing this bloody song. Anyway, about half way through, the sound came on and the audience started to sing it.

Elaine Hills : We had to leave just before the finale. Our bus for South Shields left at midnight. On the way out we both went to the ladies, and it was bliss. We’d been in the front row all day without going. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and realizing my face was all sunburned.

21.54 (GMT) : DAVID BOWIE, PETE TOWNSHEND, ALISON MOYET AND BOB GELDOF JOIN PAUL McCARTNEY ON THE STAGE IN WEMBLEY, FOR THE UK FINALE.

Neil Crespin : Just about 10, this little fat man ran on stage, thanked everybody for coming and said we should drive home safely. It was Harvey Goldsmith. After all these stars it felt like he was trying to capitalize on the success of the day. It should have been Bob and Midge up there. I’ve never taken to Harvey Goldsmith since.

Bob Geldof : My back had been hurting and Bowie had been giving me a massage before I went on stage… I walked on stage and the noise hit me, and the noise was staggering. I’ve done Wembley before and I’ve done Wembley since and this was on just another level… suddenly my back wasn’t hurting as much.

At the end, Townshend and McCartney had decided they'd get behind me and grab hold of my legs and hoist me onto their shoulders. I nearly died of embarrassment. It was terrible. These people were pop greats. "Please put me down. I really don't want this." I remember thinking, it may not mean much to someone not interested in pop, but looking back, I am still embarrassed but intensely proud that I was carried on Paul McCartney's and Pete Townshend's shoulders.

Roger Taylor (Queen) : Geldof’s whole thing was magnificent. He did it out of the purest motives. I cannot believe arseholes like Jonathan King can denigrate something that’s done real good, when he’s done no good to mankind except to litter the planet with dreadful records. How dare he?

Roger Daltrey (The Who) : What was great was that at the end of it, I could accept that that was the end (of The Who). I could say, ‘Great lads, had a good time.’ I walked away from it thinking that it didn’t hurt. That was what was good about Live Aid – it was like puncturing the boil.

Mark Ellen : I did my first link from Legends just after ten. I remember trying to convince myself that it wouldn’t be so bad because I was only broadcasting to half the world by that point.

Paul McCartney : It was a great day. The truth of it was that this guy Geldof had set out to raise a lot of money for people who were dying, and it didn’t really matter if my mike went out.

Pete Smith : At the end of the day, the take in the pot at the Hard Rock in Wembley was three times as much as in the equivalent Philadelphia pot, although we had a third as many people.

Neil Crespin : It took us two hours to get out of the car park. I can’t remember ever being so knackered, but so elated at the same time. On the way home, I fell asleep in the car with the Live Aid programme on top of me as my blanket.

Phil Collins : I arrived at Philadelphia at 7pm, got to the gig at ten past and whistled round the caravans to say hello and find out what everybody was going to be playing. I knew Eric's stuff because I'd just produced Behind The Sun with him, but there was a dark cloud hanging over the Led Zeppelin caravan because when they get together they're like different people. I wasn't made to feel very welcome, in spite of the fact that Robert had asked me to get him on Live Aid in the first place.

I had said, 'Just turn up, mate, give Bill Graham a call…"

He said, 'No, you, me and Jimmy could do something together. You make the call.' So, a couple of months on it had become a Led Zeppelin reunion, and they'd rehearsed with Tony Thompson so he didn't really want me there.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, June 2010, for Music Week)


22.14 (GMT) : TOM PETTY ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bernard Doherty : There was a huge video screen in Legends so we could see the American show.

22.30 (GMT) : KENNY LOGGINS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


22.49 (GMT) : THE CARS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


23.07 (GMT) : NEIL YOUNG ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


23.43 (GMT) : POWER STATION ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


00.21 (GMT) : THE THOMPSON TWINS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Alannah Currie (Thompson Twins) : We got a lot of hate mail. They called us hypocrites. We met Madonna through Nile Rodgers who was co-producing our album, and appearing with her was a spontaneous thing because we got along well. I happen to think she's a great - well, not great...a GOOD singer, a very good dancer, and she's turning into a good producer too.

A lot of what she says is tongue-in-cheek. They ask how she got a record deal so she says 'I slept with the producer' - and they take her seriously. She's a tart with a laugh.
It's more important that we appeared with Madonna at Live Aid. If I saw two women with their arms around each other running across a stage - any two women - it would give me a surge of hooray! That's what the women's movement is about, unifying women of different sorts."
(Source : Interview with Johnny Black, Smash Hits, Aug 1985)

00.39 (GMT) : ERIC CLAPTON ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Eric Clapton : When they told me where I was going to be on the billing I didn’t get it. I thought: “What? Really?” and that really did a lot for my acceptance of myself; other people’s opinion. And that reception… actually, yeah, it was mind-blowing.’

Bob Geldof : Eric Clapton gave up a couple of nights in Caesar’s Palace and flew in to do it.

Phil Collins : I had just produced an album for Eric [Clapton] so I was well rehearsed with them, I knew all the material, so that was no problem.

Eric Clapton : By the time we got out to the stadium, I was tongue-tied. It was also boiling hot, and the whole band felt faint. In fact, bassist Duck Dunn and I later confessed to each other that we’d been close to passing out. The tunnel that we had to walk through from the dressing rooms to the stage was crowded with security, which was unnerving in itself, and things weren’t helped by the fact that we had been given different guitar amps from those specified by my roadie, who was subsequently screaming bloody murder as we reached the stage. To say the whole band was jumpy would be an understatement. As I climbed onstage, I luckily saw the reassuring presence of my old mentor, Ahmet Ertegun, who was standing in the wings, smiling broadly at me, and giving me a big thumbs-up sign.

Things got off to a shaky start. When I moved up to the microphone to sing the first line of “White Room,” I got a great big shock off it, further unnerving me, and meaning that I had to sing the rest of the show with my mouth not quite touching the mike but still close enough to hear myself, since the monitors weren’t very good. We played two more songs, “She’s Waiting,” from Behind the Sun, and “Layla,” and then we were off and it was all over. Phil Collins came on, followed by Led Zeppelin, then Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I remember very little after that, other than being herded back onstage at the end to join in the finale, singing “We Are the World.” I think I was just in a state of shock.
(Source : Clapton: The Autobiography, by Eric Clapton, Broadway Books/Random House, Inc., 2007 )

01.04 (GMT) : PHIL COLLINS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Phil Collins : I went on and did the same two songs I'd done in London, but played them a bit better, without the mistakes.

Phil Collins : The difference between the American version of Live Aid and the British one - in England, if you wanted a cup of tea, you made it yourself. If you wanted a sandwich, you bought it. In typical American style, at the American concert, there were laminated tour passes and champagne and caviar. I don't doubt anyone's moral commitment to the cause, but the caviar and the cause just didn't jibe for me.
(Source : imdb.com)

John Moore (audience, Philadelphia) : When Phil Collins did his set at JFK Stadium, he did Against All Odds and In The Air Tonight alone at a piano with no backup band or special vocal effects. At the point in In The Air Tonight where the vocals echo ("I remember...I remember don't worry (worry worry worry)"), Phil Collins just said the word once and stopped for the few beats it would take for the echo to be completed. However, the crowd added the echo for him. It was a really special moment ... nobody planned on doing it, we all just got the same idea. Once each of us realized we were not alone, the next echo was louder, and we even played "air drums" and filled in the sound of the drums later in the song ("ba-da ba-da ba-da ba-da...").

During the show they made a stage announcement that someone who was waiting for an organ transplant was needed at the main stage - they had found him an organ and they were waiting in the parking lot to rush him to the hospital. Later on, they announced the guy was found and on his way.

The audience was bored at one point (there were lulls at the stadium, and this may have been during the point where The Who set was interrupted). Someone on the other side of the stadium started the wave. But then we started to get creative with the wave ... we timed the wave to start at each end of the stadium (JFK was "U" shaped) and "crash" in the middle. Then we had the "crash" in the middle cause a wave on the ground that went from the back of the stadium to the front.

01.13 (GMT) : ROBERT PLANT, JIMMY PAGE and JOHN PAUL JONES OF LED ZEPPELIN JOIN PHIL COLLINS ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Tony Thompson (drummer) : On the day of Live Aid, I got to Philadelphia and Jimmy, Robert, and Jonsey rented out a rehearsal room and we rehearsed. I was glad we had that rehearsal. I grew up listening to Zeppelin. They were my bible when I was a kid. Now, I assumed a song like "Rock And Roll" was played a certain way. But when we started the song, Plant said, "No, that's not it" and Jonesy said, "It doesn't go like that."

Bonham had a way of playing that everyone thought was straight. You'd think "Rock And Roll" is just a big 2 And 4, but it's not like that. It's more like a Texas shuffle. I got the chance to actually play with the guys who wrote the song, who were there. Bonham was just so good. You can't copy him.
(Source : online interview at http://www.moderndrummer.com/web_exclusive/900001140/Tony%20Thompson)

Phil Collins : I’d always heard that individually these guys were great but, together, there was this black cloud that appeared. I talked to Tony Thompson, the other drummer on the day, about playing with two drummers – something I’d done quite a lot – and I really got the impression that he didn’t want me to be there. As soon as I got up on stage I could see it was going to be a weird one. Tony Thompson was just playing whatever he wanted.

John Moore (audience, Philadelphia) : When Led Zepplin was on stage, I remember Robert Plant demanding total silence before he would sing Stairway To Heaven. At first, we thought he was kidding, but when he walked back, picked up a towel, dropped it on the stage and then placed the microphone stand on it and stood there, we figured he was serious and shut up. But it was worth it - we got to see Led Zepplin play live!
Phil Collins : I was pleased to be part of it, but it was a bit of an unhappy experience. I'm proud to say, though, that I did play with them there, even if it wasn't their finest hour. That's why they refused to be in the Live Aid DVD. They knew it wasn't good.

Jimmy was dribbling and Robert's voice was not so hot. It was a huge deal, like the Second Coming, and I think they were very nervous about the whole thing.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, June 2010, for Music Week)


01.47 (GMT) : DURAN DURAN ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


02.15 (GMT) : PATTI LABELLE ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Patti LaBelle : I got out of my helicopter and put on my drag, with high hair, high heels and a black-and-white polka dot dress.

There had been a few drops of rain so when I walked down onto the stage it was all wires and water.

I stepped into the water and the security guys had a stroke, they thought I was going to be electrocuted.

But I just took those raindrops and I felt like a queen. I remember I was singing Imagine by John Lennon, then more upbeat numbers Forever Young and Stir It Up.

At the end, I joined Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and everyone else on stage to sing a better version of We Are The World.

There is no doubt it was one of the best shows of my life. Just getting out there and trying to be a little part of history, for a great cause.


02.50 (GMT) : HALL And OATES/ EDDIE KENDRICKS/ DAVID RUFFIN ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


03.15 (GMT) : MICK JAGGER ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.


03.28 (GMT) : MICK JAGGER AND TINA TURNER ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Charles Massi (fan) : There was a tree by the wooden fence that surrounded the stadium. I climbed up and looked in. Two guys on the other side saw me. I looked at them. They knew what I was up to and gave me the ‘high-sign’. I jumped and was in …

Eventually I worked my way under the stage. I was now directly under the concert, hanging out with other people - roadies and crew, girlfriends and such. Right behind me was the stairs that led to the stage. Who do you think was walking up at the time? Yes, Tina Turner! So I yelled, ‘Hey, Tina!’ She stopped. I approached her, took her hand and said, ‘Do good, baby.’ (What else to say?) She said, ‘OK, I will.’

So Tina went up and I figured I would follow. Made it to the top and security stopped me. Tina looked back and gave me one of those, ‘Oh, well,’ looks. I retreated. I went back under to the front. It was open and I had a clear view of Tina and Mick gettin’ down.

Bernard Doherty : Geldof really loved Mick and Tina. He yelled, ‘Yeah, this is what it’s all about. Fuckin’ brilliant.’

Tina Turner : The only thing I remember of the day is stabbing Mick in the foot with my high heels in the middle of It’s Only Rock’N’Roll. And then they put us on the cover of Life magazine.

03.39 (GMT) : BOB DYLAN/KEITH RICHARDS/RON WOOD ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Mark Ellen : Minutes before Dylan went on stage in Philadelphia with Ron Wood and Keith Richards, he decided he wanted to do one of his earliest songs, The Ballad Of Hollis Brown. ‘Collis Brown,’ asks Ron. ‘Isn’t that cough mixture?’

Pete Smith : The Sunday papers were delivered to Legends just as Dylan came on stage in Philadelphia. There were all these incredible headlines and pictures. That was really the first time we began to realize how important it had been.

Richard Skinner : We all thought Dylan and Keef and Ronnie were pissed. They just didn’t know what they were doing.

Bernard Doherty : I don’t think Geldof could believe how bad Dylan’s set was. It really annoyed him.

Pete Smith : What irritated Geldof was not the shambolic music, but that Dylan started going on about helping the impoverished American farmers. I think he felt that Dylan was hijacking the show, which was not in the spirit of the day.

Bob Dylan (onstage comment) : I’d just like to say I hope some of the money that’s raised for people in Africa, maybe they could take just a little bit of it, maybe one or two million maybe, and use it to pay the, uh, the mortgages in some of the farms that the farmers here owe to the banks.

Bob Geldof : He (Dylan) displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid.... Live Aid was about people losing their lives. There is a radical difference between losing your livelihood and losing your life. It did instigate Farm Aid, which was a good thing in itself, but it was a crass, stupid and nationalistic thing to say.

Robert Plant : I think the out of tune cup was probably won by Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards and Dylan. That was horrific.

Mark Ellen : A lot of people wondered why Dylan, Ron and Keith were so bad. It was mostly because, behind the backstage curtain at Philadelphia, the all-star rehearsal of We Are The World was in full swing. We couldn’t hear it on television, but to Dylan, Ron and Keith it was so loud that they couldn’t hear themselves perform. It totally threw them. It looked as if they were just pratting around.

Charles Massi (fan) : Security told me I couldn’t stay where I was. No problem. I tried another approach. I went to the back of the stage. Now I was directly behind the concert, and security was a little thick. But there was this blind spot between these two boxes. All I had to do was crawl for about fifteen feet and then walk right on stage. Holy shit! I couldn’t believe it. I went to the scaffolding that holds the stage curtains, climbed it, slid over onto the rod - I was directly above the concert. I could have jumped right on top of Bill Wyman.

03.55 (GMT) : US FINALE ONSTAGE IN PHILADELPHIA WITH Lionel Ritchie, Harry Belafonte, Dionne Warwick, Mick Jagger, Joan Baez, Patti LaBelle, Peter, Paul And Mary, Melissa Manchester, Chrissy Hynde and Sheena Easton.

Phil Collins : I’d gone back to my hotel in New York and got there just in time to catch the end of the show on tv. Everyone came on to sing We Are The World. And there, at the back, was Cher, singing along. She’d just turned up.

Bill Graham : It was chaos because Lionel Ritchie came in at the last minute to join the show. Before that I had Dylan as the closer. I didn’t want We Are The World as the last song. I wanted Blowin’ In The Wind.

Charles Massi (fan) : A photographer saw me sitting there (in the stage rigging) and said that I can’t stay there because I had no passes. This was fine, since the concert was ending. We all sang We Are The World. At this point, security locked hands and made a path for the talent to walk between as they left the stage. So I climbed down, walked right on stage and followed the gang. I had to stop at centre-stage and wave to the crowd. It was incredible. I turned and walked past security down the backstage stairs.

There was Joan Baez. I had no idea who she was. I bragged to her about what I did. She was not fazed. Then there was Harry Belafonte, nice man, we talked about his neighbourhood. Next was Cher. She was heading for the limo. We chatted about the concert.

Harvey Goldsmith : Our target, until the week of the show, was £1m. The night before the concert, Bob and I thought we might actually make £5m. Little did any of us realize just how much would come in.

I think we raised in excess of $140m. We don’t advertise, but it still comes in.

Brian May : I’ll remember Live Aid until the day I die.

Jill Sinclair : The thing I remember most from the day was people in tears. Everybody crying. Tears of exhaustion from all the hard work, frustration from the difficulty of getting things done, grief at seeing those children in Ethiopia during The Cars video, elation from having just come off stage and knowing how much money was being raised. I’ve never seen so many people crying.

Mark Ellen : At about 4am I stumbled across Andy Kershaw. He’d crashed out, sound asleep on the stairs at Legends. Totally shattered.

Neil Crespin : You know the way the Kennedy assassination is for 60s people? That’s what Live Aid is for us. We kind of measure time by it. Where were you when Live Aid was on? It’s that important.

AFTER THE EVENT
John Taylor (bassist, Duran Duran) : From Live Aid on you had to have a social conscience and we represented 80s decadence. After Live Aid, it was like U2 in, Duran out.

Bono : The whole thing of whether I wanted to be in a band or not came back to me. At Live Aid, the whole question of Africa and the idea that millions were dying of starvation brought back the stupidity of the world of rock’n’roll … and when I got back I found people were saying the bit they remembered was U2. I think everyone in the group thought it was a mistake at first, but I thought it was a big mistake.

Hal Uplinger : About two weeks after we did Live Aid, I was in London having dinner with Bob and Harvey and they said, "We're just not going to do any more shows like Live Aid because there can't be anything like it... Maybe some day but, I don't know when." And Bob said, "You know, the problem with that show is that however we can contribute in the future, whatever we do with our lives, our tombstones are gonna read: Live Aid."

Bono : For Bob Geldof, the sight of little bits of black plastic actually saving lives was something of a shock. He had always thought of pop music as something wonderful in itself, but nothing more than that. But I wasn’t quite as taken aback by the success of it all. The sixties music that inspired me was a part of a movement that eventually helped to stop the Vietnam war and there is no reason why contemporary music cannot have a similar importance.

Bill Graham : In terms of the $45m raised by Live Aid, I really don’t know how much good it did. If they had used it to build a dam to get water to those desert lands, fine. But bringing in truckloads of food was like putting a band aid on for a blood clot.

Until they learned how to do something with the land over there, until whatever dictator happened to be in charge allowed something to be done with it, Live Aid remains at best a righteous gesture by a lot of people toward other people.

What it did prove was that rock and roll is the international means of communication. By far, it is the most powerful tool. It made all of us aware of the awesome influential communicative weight of rock and roll.

Harvey Goldsmith : It changed the world’s notion of giving. It showed how to use the power of music. And, the bad side, the media took over the music business. They realised it sells papers. Now the tabloids and the glamour press decide what’s hot and what’s not. The creative juices have been sucked out of our industry; there’s no spark there any more. It’s all about business and money. It’s got a rotten core.
(Source : interview with Michael Buerk, Radio Times, Dec 18, 2010)