by those two herberts … oh, can't remember their names. Whatever happened to them?

during his Amish period, with a red Strat delivering a wonky solo version of an "old Northern English folk song"

Post Quo, made me & my brother's my day.

Seriously. I was at boarding school and heard about it after the fact.

I can still remember watching this.

in Ireland and not wanting to spend such a beautiful day in a pub watching Status Quo on the telly I took her dog for a memorable walk in the hills above Dingle.

my mate's birthday 17th (?) his parents had gone to their caravan for the weekend so after various Saturday jobs had been done we went round his house. I imagine we bought an outer of challenger bitter (24p a can a pint in our town at the time was a massive 80p) and enjoyed not only loads of music but also just something happening live on tv. We also chatted to/up girls, repelled gate crashers , pestered my mates rabbit, went to the chippy you know had a teenage party. The fact that the whole thing didn't stop until the small hours isn't amazing in a world of youtube and red button "Glastonbury" but in those days when tv stopped at 1am even at the weekend it was strangely thrilling.
Not sure we donated any money as I'm not sure any of us had a credit card or even a cheque book but we bought the singles including Cliff and the Young ones "living doll".

We were coming back from a very wet honeymoon in Ireland. We were parked up at the dock at Dun Laoghaire listening to U2 and wondering why they were noodling around for so long on 'Bad' - little did we know that Bono was making a prat of himself with a girl from the audience.

When we got on the ferry, we piled into the TV lounge where they were showing the Irish TV version. They were taking the TV feed from the BBC and it was a bit chaotic. We'd get snatches of Andy Kershaw, Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, but then the picture would cut to a group of nuns from Cork who'd sat in a bath of baked beans or something daft to raise money. Even the Taosaich auctioned off his tie for the good cause. At least the focus of the RTE coverage was about raising money, but it was often to the detriment of showing the musicians!

We listened to the American part of the show on the radio as we travelled back from Holyhead to Sheffield. Dylan was making a right Horlicks of things as we crossed the Snake Pass in a thunderstorm and nearly hit a sheep on the deserted road!

Lancaster left soon after. Coughlan had gone a few years earlier and bleach-blond Radio 2 friendly ditties followed thereupon.

... when I became convinced that Bono was a complete bell end.

The thing is that's about all I do remember.

I missed Queen having got bored and gone out, I missed David Bowie saying the "Our Father" but I did see Status Quo. The TV coverage seemed to be all links and when the DVD came out a few years ago, I watched it and thought that I didn't recall any of this. Andy Kershaw is my abiding memory of Live Aid and only because I thought he must be related to Nick Kershaw.

Was it that good really?

I was almost 11, my dad ran out and bought a load of videos to tape it. I recall we bought a soda stream that day and saw the U2 performance while sitting in the foyer of RTE in Donnybrook. My folks said I could stay up till 4am if I wanted to but I only made it to about 1.30.

These mega events all blend into one with me. You are all most likely correct.

(aside from the band of the Grenadier Guards)

Here's U2 playing Bad at Live Aid. Early thread he get's called a "Bell end" and since that time he's done and said some odd preposterous sometimes pompous things. But he is a pop star and on this film seems to do his job of playing big music to a huge stadium and even bigger tv audience. Yes his hair cut is mad and bad but again he's a pop star they have divisive haircuts same goes for pixie boots and leather kecks. He has a dance with some girls (interrupted here by a someone changing to a cartoon!) hardly a crime for a pop/rock star and really I would like to know what he should have done in the situation a tasteful acoustic set?
I know I will not win over the sceptics and cynics but still don't know what it's about him that raises such bile he's no more smug than many others in his situation, he says dumb things but the internet is full of the gnomic sayings of the famous, he raises money for charity and lives in a big house well that goes for most of the major fundraisers in the world.
But taking it all back to Live Aid with exception of maybe the finale, Queen and the cars video what other sets were memorable or caught the spirit of the day?

All grace and smooth elegance.

Then she sung the last note of "Is It A Crime?" aout half an octave flat and turned milk all around the World.

This was available on YouTube but I will spare the ears of the delicate and not post it here. Unless they'e already done the decent thing and taken it down.

Deciding to premiere material from his new album (Apollo 9?) rather than knock out Stand and Deliver, Prince Charming and Antmusic.

Thus endeth the career.

Stole the whole shebang in my opinion and I'm not being 'funny'. Just went out played his latest single, no hits, leapt around and was never heard of again until being stuck in the nuthouse.

Vive le Rock!

(Snap, SixDog)

Anyone else remember this? In the run up to the concert(s) Radio 1 was broadcasting various stories trailing what was going to happen - I'm sure they were being presented as facts, not just rumours. Anyway, one I clearly remember was that Julian Lennon was flying in to play with Macca, George and Ringo. Didn't happen obviously, does anyone know more about this?

and started the day by removing them from my Suzuki. I had to cut a flat in two of the big cross-head bolts holding the float covers on, and I even had to risk an impact driver to free one of them up, but once I finally had them off the rest of the job proceeded smoothly. I had the bike back up and running by about 2:30 in the afternoon, and after a thorough session with the Swarfega, I spent the rest of the afternoon in front of the telly, thinking, "This is quite good, actually.", especially when Bob lost it and swore.

...so of course I hated all of it (especially watching childhood hero Adam Ant make a tool of himself - twas ever thus). However, I remember nearly falling off the sofa when The Cult's Ian Astbury appeared nonchalantly smoking & making an appeal for cash in his broad northern accent (he'd yet to develop his mid-Atlantic twang). I'd have screamed "sell out!" if he didn't look so flippin' cool.

It was a proper family TV event in our house though & I watched it with my folks & various aunties & uncles. Queen elicited quite a response, in particular from my dad's sister, who thought Freddie "gorgeous".
"But he's gay!" we all chorused.
"Lucky I had him before he went that way," she replied.
"That's probably what turned him," said my dad.

must have been Messrs. Smith & Jones. Not only did Queen steal the day musically, but S&J had the best line from all the comperes:

Griff: "We've had a complaint about the noise..."
Mel: "... from a lady in Belgium!"

It was the last day of my ‘year abroad’ in Hamburg (I was studying Modern Languages) and I spent it travelling around the city, saying tearful goodbyes to the friends I’d made during the past few months. Everywhere I went, Live Aid was playing: you could hear it through the open windows as you walked by, and I watched bits and pieces in various people’s flats.

Then, in the evening, after I’d packed up my worldly possessions, I watched the coverage for about four hours, alone in my hall of residence. What with the momentousness of events in London and Philadelphia, and the significance of the day to my 22-year-old self, it was an extremely emotional day that I'll never forget. Most of the individual performances have faded from memory, funnily enough, though I loved U2’s.

Incidentally, I seem to remember the (West) Germans staged a parallel event on the same day, albeit on a much smaller scale, and the TV coverage switched to that every now and then. Can anyone confirm that? There was certainly a German equivalent to ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’, called ‘Nackt im Wind’ (Naked in the wind) and performed by the snappily named Band für Afrika.

...instead of going to Wembley. It was a great party, thankfully, with one particular memory that I can't share here.

I saw quite a lot of the TV coverage - seen it all now - and the highlight for me was U2. I bought the album Bad was from, solely because of that performance. I didn't think he was a twat at that time, but I do recall thinking Queen had turned shite by then (Radio GaGa is an awful song). I was a big Boomtown Rats fan so was glad they played.

We got married at 12 o'clock and missed large parts of the day. So it follows that it's Mr and Mrs Pinmonkey's
Silver Wedding today. A few drinks will be taken this evening.

loving the special video by Prince with Wendy & Lisa; great song, the musical highlight of the day for me. So I was very upset when the next issue of Smash Hits claimed that someone else had performed at that time, in their blow by blow review of Live Aid. And then added to my anger by saying that Prince had sent a "pornographic video" that couldn't be aired, and all kinds of crap about him not taking part in the event thus being a complete asshole etcetera.
I guess the british broadcast did have something else going out when we in Sweden at least got to enjoy the Prince video, but it definitely wasn't because of any "pornographic" content of that video... I have the audio tapes to prove that we got to hear Prince ( somewhere... ), though I can't remember what song it was right now.
It was great anyway, sorry you guys missed it!

Living 20 mins from Wembley Stadium and with a lot of disposable income at the time (for a 23 year old) i had got the tickets for my mates and I when they were first released, and there was no confirmed line up at that stage...I don't think it was a sell out to begin with.
We got up there early doors to try and get a good position and got to about 30 yards from the stage. My abiding memory was that i got very sunburnt and some prat in front of me threw orange juice up into the air early on and I got soaked, and was very sticky for the duration of the day.
I remember going out to get some beers when the Boomtown Rats were on and just coming back down the steps onto the pitch when Bob sang "And the lesson today is how to die" from I don't like Mondays...a real goosepimple moment.The other memory was that in my mind Queen were pretty much washed up as a group but their set, and the amazing site of everyone in the stadium clapping in time to Radio GAGA, proved completely otherwise.
U2's performance was electrifying on the day also, but I was a big fan at the time, I think history has earmarked their performance as a standout one whatever you think of them now.Back in '85 they were cutting edge not naff and the stadium really went with their performance and the place was jumping.
I lastly remember being very very tired after standing and dancing all day in the heat but had to walk quite a way back to the car and got home to watch the rest of the performances from Philly and the video I had taped from Wembley.
I still have the programme,the photos taken that day and feel lucky to say i was there!

Living 20 mins from Wembley Stadium and with a lot of disposable income at the time (for a 23 year old) i had got the tickets for my mates and I when they were first released, and there was no confirmed line up at that stage...I don't think it was a sell out to begin with.
We got up there early doors to try and get a good position and got to about 30 yards from the stage. My abiding memory was that i got very sunburnt and some prat in front of me threw orange juice up into the air early on and I got soaked, and was very sticky for the duration of the day.
I remember going out to get some beers when the Boomtown Rats were on and just coming back down the steps onto the pitch when Bob sang "And the lesson today is how to die" from I don't like Mondays...a real goosepimple moment.The other memory was that in my mind Queen were pretty much washed up as a group but their set, and the amazing site of everyone in the stadium clapping in time to Radio GAGA, proved completely otherwise.
U2's performance was electrifying on the day also, but I was a big fan at the time, I think history has earmarked their performance as a standout one whatever you think of them now.Back in '85 they were cutting edge not naff and the stadium really went with their performance and the place was jumping.
I lastly remember being very very tired after standing and dancing all day in the heat but had to walk quite a way back to the car and got home to watch the rest of the performances from Philly and the video I had taped from Wembley.
I still have the programme,the photos taken that day and feel lucky to say i was there!

She made me, without any prior knowledge of DVD boxsets or youtube, go to a bloody dog show that my Aunty and Uncle were showing their Shelties at. She said "Your cousins will be there, I'm not having you staying at home". When afore-mentioned Aunty and Uncle turned up they were very surprised to see their music-loving 15 year old nephew there. It turned out that my cousins had been allowed to stay at home to watch the once-in-a-lifetime historical event unfolding on TV, with crisps and lemonade.
All I remember is being in a huge grump all day. I spent as much time as I could hunched over a transistor radio, listening to crackly MW and trying to listen to Adam Ant over the howls and yelps of the surrounding dogs.
My Mum is 70 this year and I may mention this anecdote in my speech at her party. I feel I owe it to my younger self.

We drove from Glasgow to London in a Transit, with hangovers, setting off around noon. We were playing at The Clarendon in Hammersmith on the Sunday. In an homage to Hunter S Thomson, before I got in the van I bought a litre of Grapefruit juice, drank a little of it, and topped it up with a quarter-bottle of vodka. (That was a very functional way to kill a hangover).

We got to London around 9, and I went to my mate Paul's in Clapham. He and his flatmates were knocked out by it all - it passed me by, really.

Clarendon was fun the next day.

well it was 1985!

I was up a mountain in Spain that summer and remember being told that a 17 year-old had won Wimbledon and there'd been this big concert at Wembley. I'm a whole chunk of zeitgeist behind the rest of the world and still don't understand why bands that had one good year in 1985 were gifted legend status and lengthy careers.

Of the bits I've now seen, the part that sticks in the memory is not so much the famous Drive video as the cut back to the live studio afterwards, and the look of panic on Heppo's (or was it Kershaw's) face as he thought what the hell am I supposed to say now?

The night before is when I started going out with my now wife. I remember the following day clearly. A beautiful day in Central Sotland too. Walking on air thinking of my new girlfriend. Watching and listening all day as it was on everywhere. Getting ready to go out on the Saturday night with my pals. Seeing U2 and thinking that they were the coolest band on the planet...how times change. Other highlights for me were David Bowie (a big fan then and now) and Queen (the first band I loved as a kid). I still haven't watched all that DVD they brought out a few years ago. The great memories endure well enough.

and I went to a friend's boyfriend's house on the Southside of Glasgow for a meal, there was much tension between me and the other three as I was desperate to have the telly on. I ended up drinking too much, got back to my home and confessed to Jackie that I'd slept with her sister. To be fair, I did know her sister in student years and only met Jackie via her sister - I really liked Jackie over her sis. It was a doomed romance after that.
I thought Bryan Ferry was great, the poor man struggled with mics failing yet still oozed charisma.

I did a big piece on this for the Graun five years ago on the 20th anniversary when they released it all on DVD - ended up watching pretty much the whole thing in real time. With hindsight, I thought Dire Straits were superb, Sabbath were dreadful, Elton was surprisingly enjoyable, Neil Young was great, and during the American finale they all but start fist-fighting to get a few more seconds on the microphone.

However, my abiding memory comes from my dad during the aforementioned 'Bono in the crowd' incident. Loudly rustling his newspaper, pops rather deflated Bono's 'man of the people' moment by muttering "Just look at him... probably off his head on drugs..." (pause for loud, theatrical rustle of newspaper)... "BASTARD." I think he really took it as a personal affront that somebody who was even potentially intoxicated was in his front room. Albeit via a television.

Speaking of which (and I apologise in advance for going wildly off topic), your tale reminds me of a similar dad/newspaper/TV incident which took place in our house back in 1969, in this instance concerning Led Zeppelin.

Anxious to distance themselves from the world of commercial pop, Led Zepp never released singles or appeared on TV, in Britain at least. In March 1969, however, they broke this rule to make their only live UK TV appearance on a pilot BBC rock show called How Late It Is. After much pleading, I somehow managed to wrest control of the set from my disgruntled dad for the duration. Although it must be said, he made his displeasure known.

As Zeppelin steamed into Communication Breakdown, my old man peered over the top of his evening newspaper, quietly harrumphed several times and was heard to mutter "So, this is supposed to be good, is it?" before returning to his crossword.

Come to think of it, he could have been making an fairly accurate prediction of LZ's woeful Live Aid performance 16 years hence!

Queen yes, Bowie certainly, U2 definitely! (don't believe the history re-writers)

But also The Style Council, whose opening line was a rather impassioned "You don't have to take this crap, you don't have to sit back and relax, you can actually try changing it"

Less cynical, idealistic times and i'm glad i was part of it. I wouldn't want to deal with the plateful of hateful you get now!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0078x3p/Live_Aid_Rockin_All_Over_T... and they've gone for a slightly different expert panel ;-)

Those who watched it at home, including Tony Blair, JK Rowling and Helen Fielding, recall how they didn't miss a minute of this extraordinary event.

pointing his rump at the crowd and doing something rude with his tongue.

Marvellous.

and so missed most of the day time stuff, which was a bind for me, but not so much as it was for my friend Steve, who'd actually got a ticket, but coulsn't get the day off from our manager. The next Saturday, in between unpacking boxes of Queen's Greatest Hits, he called Steve into the office and told him that we were overstaffed and that he was going to have to let him go at the end of the day.

of BBC4 were pretty good, enjoyed Alison Moyet's horror over 'hogging David Bowie's mic' during 'Let It Be' and Mr H's comment on 'the Geldof incident' that 'I hope my Mum isn't watching'.

I remember it being a bloody sunny day, went to our school fete breifly and then rushed home to catch it from The Rats onwards. Queen were magnificent as were U2 and no modern sneering talking heads will convince me otherwise. Bono came over really well. he's much better talking about music than he is world peace.

Freddie Mercury's sheer stage presence that day was and is staggering. Talk about seizing the moment. Radio Ga Ga might not be the best in their canon but the response of the crowd still looks breathtaking. His opera call and response section couldn've died on its arse but he played the crowd like a pro

Phil Collins anger over Plant blaming him for tor their poor performance was justified. Plants voice was shot from playing the night before, they had barely rehearsed, Page was way off match fitness and even a musician of JPJ's calibre couldn't keep em afloat. The fact they were equally poor at the Atlantic 40th Anniversairy gig in '88 spoke volumes.

Its hardly surprising that when it came to the O2 gig Page put in at least a month of solid rehearsal time. And there were only 20,000 rather than 2 billion people watching that time.

And its always nice to hear Simon Le Bon's foghorn yodel - the arse!

and it still galls.

My housemate got an early phonecall that day. Her friend in London had a couple of spare tickets to this concert and did she want to go and bring a friend?

She asked me but I said I was going to my mum's and besides, I was too skint to cover the train fare. I thought nothing more of it, until watching it later at home and kicking myself to death. I had no idea of the scale of it. In fact, I'm not sure I'd even heard about it beforehand. If I had, it hadn't really registered.

Friend of friend was Julia Smith (later Carling), then girlfriend to Jeff Beck. Jeff couldn't make it. The seats were amazing and she was full of stories on her return.

A black day for me indeed.

...is that the day before a BBC producer asked me if I wanted to interview Viv Richards on the Sunday and I said yes. That meant that I finished at Wembley at about 11, took at least an hour getting out of the car park in a bus, was driven to a Mayfair nightclub crammed with those performers who felt like keeping the party going (many of whom spent time screaming abuse at the big screen telecast of the American half of the event in a very uncharitable fashion) got home about four in the morning, then got up again at eight to go to Lord's to interview Viv. It was only talking to him that I realised what a big thing it had been.

I was on holiday in Bournemouth with a mate (who broke his leg and ended up in hospital) and without a paper or radio had no reminder it was happening. It was only when I had the entire Bournemouth seafront to myself – at peak holiday season, rumbled something was up. Live Aid!

True story told to me by one of Adam’s Ants – the reason they’re the forgotten men of Live Aid: No one quite realised how big an event it was going to become when the bands were first booked – so it was down in the diary as ‘benefit gig’. Also the deal was: do old material, get a bigger set. New material – one song only.

Adam chose it as a platform to promote his new album/single Vive Le Rock – so only got one song..

A friend had managed to get hold of four tickets but it clashed with tickets we also had to see Dire Straits later that evening at the Wembley Arena.

We worked out that we could see most of Live Aid on the telly and then go and see Dire Straits at the Arena and also soak up some of the atmosphere from across the way so we sold the tickets. Bad decision!

Dire Straits were good and we did at least get Sting as a binus during Money For Nothing, but in hindsight...

...despite the involvement of all those professionals and that was a very very big part of the appeal. All these massive egos showing themselves to be human beings after all and it really was part of a big wave of genuine public emotion. And in right-on cold war CND days (my life at athe time..) there just weren't many public outpourings of popular youthful optimism.

I saw the original Michael Buerk news broadcast, as a student in London and round at my grandmothers in Roehampton just about to tuck in to what I considered to be my first proper meal for ages and that to be honest that personal moment of sheer revelation and horror is the thing that sticks most in my mind. My nan wasn't too impressed that I didn't wolf the food down in normal fashion mind ... (joke).

But I do remember the day itself - a beautiful London summer's day round at my girlfriends house with lots of friends, after weeks of escalating coverage in the press, airlifts of food organised by Harvey Goldsmith (amd I dreaming about that?) all of us a bit self consciously trendy but happy or overwhelmed or singing and all getting pretty wrecked/altered as the day went on, it was a genuinely optimistic feeling in the air (even in the press) and very hard to be cynical about then or now.

Parted with money I didn't have and love the comment further up about someone failing to do so because of advanced insobriety. I remember Roger Daltrey couldn't do phone duties because he was mutt and jeff even then. I do remember Townshend and Macca locking eyes at one point on stage which was quite thrilling at the time

All of us went to Marine Ices in Chalk Farm later on and I fell asleep in a plate of pasta. Later, in bed, watched the US coverage interspersed with people from the UK show at a London nightclub and um like many others on this thread those are memories from that point onwards I choose not to share but for which I am very grateful.

WHO the heck is she and why is all this coming out now?! Midge Ure didn't seem to give a tinker's cuss about that whole weird 'switching the line up around' stuff so why was it being given so much airtime? I know Geldof can be a arse and i wouldn't want him as my boss but the whole thing whiffed of a desperate attempt to wring some kind of scandal out of the story.
The rest of the docs were brilliant i thought.

how good (and incredibly tight!) Dire Straits were! James Blast was right upthread. I guess it all depended who was touring at the time. If you were touring you were tight if you weren't you were well.. 'rusty'.

Then realised the only way to watch was by putting a sheet over it and us, so put it back inside and watched it through the window.
Wonderful afternoon, but we had been invited to a new neighbour's barbecue on the night.
Left the video recording and ran over the road and put their TV on. New neighbour appeared and exclaimed 'We don't want to be watching TV at a party, do we ?' ' Er, yes we do actually'. So we did.
Later that night, when it had finished, we got into a drunken discourse about dodgy videos. New neighbour confessed to having one of 'a horse being tossed off into a plastic bag'.
The ladies went green, and everone went home shortly afterwards.
New neighbours moved within 6 months.

the sordid goings on neath the surface in 80s subuurbia!