I was in a transition stage of my life in 1985. Not a gender one. A musical one. From liking pop songs that I'd tape onto a cassette during the Sunday evening Top 40 radio show to loving PROPER rock. The turning point for me was U2. I loved them at the time. I'd just got into The Unforgettable Fire, as a result of having sold a load of dodgy pirate tapes of that album at school, sourced from a Korean contact of my Dad's. And therefore, U2's slot at Live Aid was something I was eager to see more than any other. In those days, believe it or not, Bono could do no wrong in my eyes. I wanted to BE Bono. I was similarly short, with a big nose, loved Ireland, had some poncey boots and a brown mullet. Of course, nowadays, Bono can do no right in my eyes, the gurning, supercilious, self-aggrandising, overly-earnest, hypocritical, affectation-riddled, self-righteous bore. But in 1985, when he decided that there was too much space between stage and crowd, leading to his decision to forego U2's 3rd scheduled song (the brilliant 'Sunday Bloody Sunday') to climb down and direct security to pluck a pretty girl out of the crowd so that he could hug and dance with her (she was 'getting crushed'...yeah Bono, but she was also fit, eh?) , I naively thought, THIS IS SO COOL.
U2 were the second best performers of the day. The very best, unarguably, as everyone agrees, was Queen. I had just got into Queen at the time, as well. So for me, Live Aid validated my decision that U2 and Queen were the two greatest rock bands of all time, which, given my very recent introduction to rock, says absolutely nothing. But the general consensus is that those 8 boys done good.
Unlike the bands I went on to like in the next few years.
Within a year of Live Aid, I started my obsession with Bob Dylan. This might have been delayed, had I seen him perform that night. He was the closing act of the US leg of the concert. He went on stage with Keith Richard and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones and the three of them had only about half an hour's rehearsal beforehand. In true Dylan style, he then made a bad situation worse, by telling Keith and Ronnie, once on stage, that he wanted to play completely different songs, which they hadn't rehearsed. Inevitably, the result was execrable. And, given Bob's pretty atrocious 1980s (though that's a non-devotee's opinion, not mine), Live Aid proceeded to be the shit cherry on a big fat cake made of shit for Bob in that decade.
I was also a year away from getting into Bowie, but at least he he did a decent set. It was a bit 80s, and Bowie unfairly got a lot of stick for being too 80s in the 80s, until he died, when people started to celebrate how well he adapted to the times. And I was also a year away from liking Led Zeppelin, who fell flat in the first of two (kind of) reunions since splitting after John Bonham's death in 1980. They roped in Phil Collins on drums, possibly the most mis-cast drummer they could have agreed to use, and blamed him for their crap performance. (I mean, Stairway to Heaven needs bud-a-dum, bud-a dum, bud-a dum-dum dummmm, and not a bu-dup, bu-dup, bu-dup, bu-dup, bu-dup,)
But going back to the whole concept of knowing where you were at a certain time, I was mostly in my bedroom, but had a short spell in North Mid's A&E department. During an act that I was less interested in (and there were several, The Boomtown Rats most notably, because let's face it, Geldof's own band were WAY out of their league) I decided to re-arrange the posters on my bedroom wall. In the process, the pin bit of a drawing pin drove its way through the flat head bit as I pushed it into the wall and so it ended up embedded in my thumb. That part of the pin had a thickened end and so you couldn't simply ease it out as smoothly as it went in. My Dad took some pliers to it to pull it out, but I felt faint and wouldn't let him, asking to go a hospital instead where they would have a less crude method of extraction. At the hospital, they used pliers to pull the thing out. Bastards. It hurt like hell. But it was quick and I was soon back watching Live Aid.
I'm not sure anything like Live Aid can happen again. The sheer scale of it, relative to its time, was way beyond what was thought possible then. The line-up of artists has been unequalled since and these days we are beyond even having that many iconic artists available to snort coke backstage, lap up expensive gifts on their riders, treble their records sales, demand everyone vacates the area around a port-a-loo so that they can take a shit without their straining being overheard (Madonna, apparently). ...er, I mean, iconic artist available to freely gift their services to save the lives of starving Ethiopians. But then, that fact just helps to make Live Aid a one off.
