I Went to Live Aid

A first hand account of all its gloriously messy mayhem

Last weekend was the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, a couple of epic concerts held in London and Philadelphia to raise money for famine in Africa, organized by the former Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof. Inspired by the money Band Aid (a ‘band’ comprised of every hot British act Geldof could get on the phone) raised from their single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” a concert seemed like the natural next step. Featuring legendary and soon-to-be-legendary acts like Queen, David Bowie, The Who, Elton John, Tina Turner, Madonna, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, The Cars, an ersatz Led Zeppelin reunion billed as singer Robert Plant, and Paul McCartney, the fundraiser drew, according to The New York Times, 1.5 billion people in more than 150 countries and raised more than $140 million bucks.

And you know what, bitchez? I was there. Even though I was a 17-year-old, liner note-obsessed music nerd who lived four states away, there was no way in hell I was going to allow a gathering of such epic proportions to occur without my ass in a seat bearing witness.

Armed with nothing but a small bag of the barest essentials, my dear friend Moe and I made the pilgrimage to JFK Stadium in Philly for the occasion. Getting there required an immaculately woven tapestry of white lies: She said she was crashing at my aunt’s house; I said we were crashing at her aunt’s house (I did have an aunt Martha in suburban Philly, but she was none the wiser to this entire operation). It must’ve been an ungodly hour, but Moe somehow convinced her dad to deposit us at South Station in Boston, where we caught the Amtrak and set off to our version of Mecca.

Note the price on the stubs above: $35 for a concert full of that many marquee artists in 1985 would cost at least $350 in this year of our poo, 2025.

So many memories from my youth are fuzzy at best, but fleeting, vivid scenes of the good, the bad, and the ridiculous aspects of this experience remain permanently etched onto the annals of my brain. The tickets you see above are for seats that face the stage but from an entire zip code away, in the uppermost rafters of the stadium. From that great distance, our idols were the barely discernible size of toenail clippings, forcing us to rely on the humungous screens on either side of the stage for assurance that we were getting what we paid for.

The vibe was tight. To put it plainly, the great city of Philadelphia on July 14th, 1985 was hot as FCK—so hot that the fire department took mammoth hoses and sprayed down the crowd. Everyone was high and drunk and promptly sweat out all toxins anyway. Careful to keep our wits about us (to an extent), we sustained ourselves with coffee, Advil, stadium food, chips, and Diet Cokes.

Live acts were alternated with live streams of the London set from Wembley to allow for set changes. We sat rapt watching Queen and Tina Turner on the jumbotron. I vaguely remember bopping around to Run DMC, stupidly ignoring The Beach Boys, having many a laugh with Moe, and securing sustenance until Simple Minds took the stage. I dug Simple Minds and challenge you to find a record that holds up in its shimmering sound as well as New Gold Dream: ‘81, ‘82, ‘83, ‘84—but I digress.

Weary from watching The Pretenders at such a painful distance (Chrissie Hynde’s head looms large among my personal Mount Rushmore of influential musicians) and squinting into the sun for hours on end, I lost patience with our shitty seats. Fortunately, in 1985, assigned seats, like speed limits, were merely suggestions—not gospel. After checking in with Moe to see if she’d be a willing accomplice (she politely declined as she was content with our perch in the boonies), I made one last trip to the bathroom (more on the horrors of that later, *shudder*) and ventured forth solo into the sweaty masses, drawn toward the stage as if I were guided by a divine magnetic force. It took some time to cross the length of the stadium, but I managed to deftly bob and weave my way to the 6th row or equivalent of the pit, in the very front, careful to charm those around me so they wouldn’t hate my guts. I felt like the Moses of Live Aid plebs.

Here’s a mark of the times: Even among the throngs of strangers, I don’t recall ever feeling unsafe. While edging closer and closer, I caught Madonna’s set (the first of many Madonna shows I’d see), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Power Station (Robert Palmer, forever and ever, amen), Eric Clapton (God, I loved “Layla”), and Phil Collins (I vaguely remember thinking “In the Air Tonight” live was deep). Finally, the Led Zep reunion was happening right before my very eyes and, despite the fact I clock in at a whopping 5’ 2”, I secured a window between hulking sets of shoulders that allowed me to peep every detail. I knew deep down I was witnessing something of a miracle, so my eyes were glued to that stage. Of course, when “Stairway to Heaven,” otherwise known as the most overplayed song ever to be played on the radio, finally came on, some dude a couple of rows back decided to bust out his rape whistle and join the band.

So all that’s left in my brain of that performance is: “Ahnd she’s buy-hying a sta-er-wah-hee to..BRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!”

Soon afterward, Duran Duran, the caped crusaders of 80s pop, took the stage. I loved them, but was crestfallen that their four-song set was so Seven and the Ragged Tiger heavy. Duran Duran and Rio were and still are masterful, but I was the rare teenage fan who felt a genuine disdain for that third album (save for “New Moon on Monday,” that tune slaps)—it sounded like too many layers of too many sounds fueled by mounds of coke. But they gave us “Save A Prayer,” and that in and of itself answered at least one of mine.

When that set ended, I felt bad about leaving Moe in the distant wilderness, so Patti LaBelle (LEGEND) and Hall & Oates serenaded me back on my sojourn back across the stadium, to my seat. Alternately sitting rapt and screaming like idiots, we lost our shit to the Mick Jagger set, which included “Miss You.”

Overall, it was a 28-hour physically and psychically rapturous-yet-taxing experience only someone so young could put themselves through and recover from. My young bladder was tested to its limits. The line to those decrepit bathrooms was so excruciatingly long (hours, says Moe of the good memory!), we bonded with the other women suffering and would sometimes opt for the men’s room, which, believe it or not, was the better option toward the end of the show. You know how traumatic events imprint themselves onto your memory for all time? To this day, I cannot unsee the carnage I saw in that flooded-to-the-ankles women’s restroom. Seven years later, that stadium would be demolished for something new and improved, yet that living nightmare is scarred into my library of consciousness for all eternity. Considering what I’d witnessed, the very notion that it was razed gives me comfort.

After the show, we somehow (neither of us could tell you how) got back to the train station, where we napped on the wooden benches until our dawn-ish train left back for Boston. In the messenger exchange of our shared recollections, Moe told me they reminded her of pews—such befitting imagery given how far these Pan-like minstrels had lured us to worship the sounds they made.

“Somehow, we lived to tell the tale,” she marvelled.

A statement, in its very essence, that is as Gen X as it gets.

Oh, and yes, somewhere in my house, I still have the t-shirt.

xx

MF