Just for One Day: The Live Aid musical review: 'frustratingly shallow'
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
TV tonight: Bob Geldof, Bono and George Bush talk Live Aid at 40
9pm, BBC Two 'I didn't think we had a deserving No 1; we had a pop single … but it had to work.' How did a simple song lead to a star-studded Wembley concert and inspire a movement that raised tens of millions of pounds for Africa? For Live Aid's 40th anniversary, this series speaks to instigator Bob Geldof, plus Bono and Phil Collins, along with former world leaders George Bush, Tony Blair and Olusegun Obasanjo, and Birhan Woldu – the now grown-up little girl in Ethiopia who became the image of the famine. Hollie Richardson 8pm, Channel 4 There's biting off more than you can chew, and then there's adopting two polar bears from Sweden. Jamie Oliver's BFF takes on that colossal task in this new series, which will surely have viewers panicking. None will be more nervy than Jimmy's wife Michaela, who looks horrified every time she's on camera. Hannah J Davies 9pm, Channel 4 This new two-parter shadows Cambridgeshire police as they zero in on a possible serial rapist operating in Peterborough. Their suspect is a fixture on the nightclub scene who hosts afterparties in his home hot tub. But when he is arrested and refuses to talk, the team must find other lines of inquiry to advance the case. Graeme Virtue 9pm, Channel 5 Vicky McClure stars in this psychological thriller, which previously streamed on Paramount+. She plays Emma, a successful lawyer and mother of two with an idyllic life. But as she turns 40, she becomes plagued by insomnia and bad dreams – could it have anything to do with her mother's mental health problems? HR 9pm, Sky Documentaries Call it 'blitz spirit', if you like. This third and final episode of the series explores how individual 7/7 survivors and London as a whole returned to everyday life in the weeks following the bombing. Meanwhile, a second attempted attack sparks a nationwide manhunt and the true architect of 7/7 is finally uncovered. Ellen E Jones 10pm, Channel 4 It's been an epic concluding season for the hit dystopian drama, but the Emmy really should go to Aunt Lydia's perennially quivering bottom lip. Gilead has finally fallen (or so it seems) – but what does this mean next for June? There's a lot to iron out and a happy ending was never on the cards for this tale. HR Die Hard 2, 10:30pm, BBC One Is Die Hard 2 the best Die Hard film? Absolutely not. Judged against the elegance of its predecessor, this seems as if it was made by crayon-wielding toddlers. However, once you critically disengage, it is a concentrated dose of sheer fun, full of hilariously gratuitous swearing – 'No pictures, you pinko bitch,' is a personal favourite, but you will have your own – and a disregard for human life so comprehensive that it borders on the psychopathic. That Bruce Willis retains his unstoppable charisma while murdering an airport full of baddies is testament to the man's talent. Stuart Heritage Cycling: Giro d'Italia Women, 11.45am, TNT Sports 2 The first stage: a 13.6km route around Bergamo. Formula One racing: The British Grand Prix, 2.30pm, Channel 4 Coverage of the 12th round.
The Herald Scotland
17 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Live Aid: When the world's rock stars came together just for one day
As Live Aid promoter Harvey Goldsmith told Mojo magazine recently: 'Queen performed a short set, but it was the set of a lifetime, and it transformed them as a band. If you talk about Live Aid, most people go 'yeah, Queen'.' Francis Rossi of Status Quo, the band that opened proceedings at Wembley on July 13, 1985, later said that, in his view, Queen were the best band on the day. For many musicians – Queen's drummer Roger Taylor among them – the reaction of the 72,000-strong crowd remains an imperishable memory. 'During Radio Ga Ga,' he says in the new edition of Radio Times, 'it did seem that the whole stadium was in unison. But then I looked up during We Are The Champions, and the crowd looked like a whole field of wheat swaying.' U2's set was equally memorable, especially when, during the song Bad, Bono panicked his bandmates by disappearing from their sight in order to get closer to the audience. Confusion then reigned among security staff as he picked out three young women from the crowd. As Bono vanished over the edge of the stage, and showed no sign of reappearing, drummer Larry Mullen thought to himself 'how long can we do this for?'. Mullen admitted to Rolling Stone magazine in 2014: 'It was kind of excruciating. We didn't know whether we should stop, we didn't know where he was, we didn't know if he had fallen.' U2's guitarist The Edge told the same magazine: 'We lost sight of him completely. He was gone for so long I started to think maybe he had decided to end the set early and was on his way to the dressing room. 'I was totally thrown, and I'm looking at Adam [Clayton] and Larry to see if they know what's going on and they're looking back at me with complete panic across their faces. I'm just glad the cameras didn't show the rest of the band during the whole drama, because we must have looked like the Three Stooges up there.' Though Bono's inspired, impromptu interaction with the audience meant that U2 had no time to play a third song, Live Aid turned out to be a key chapter in the story of the band. As he wrote in his memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, it was 'a gigantic moment in the life of U2. In the life of so many musicians'. He took a more detached view of U2's actual performance, however: 'Influential though it was in the arc of our band, I confess that I find it excruciating to watch. It's a little humbling that during one of the greatest moments of your life, you're having a bad hair day. 'Now, some people would say that I've had a bad hair life, but when I am forced to look at footage of U2 playing Live Aid, there is only one thing that I can see. The mullet. All thoughts of altruism and of righteous anger, all the right reasons that we were there, all these flee my mind, and all I see is the ultimate bad hair day.' The line-up of artists at Wembley and Philadelphia's JFK Stadium that July day included so many stellar names: Bob Dylan, Sting, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Joan Baez, Eric Clapton, Simple Minds, Elton John, Madonna, Paul McCartney, Black Sabbath, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Who, Brian Ferry, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner and Run DMC. Watching them all over the course of one unforgettable day was a global audience of one and a half billion - the largest ever. Led Zeppelin, who had broken up in 1980 after the death of drummer John Bonham, reformed as a one-off for Live Aid in Philadelphia. The Who, playing Wembley, had also got back together for the occasion. Zeppelin's performance, so eagerly awaited by their fans, was marred by any number of setbacks, and the band subsequently refused to allow footage of their songs to be included in the official Live Aid DVD. Black Sabbath, for their part, had been going through a particularly disruptive period, and their bass guitarist, Geezer Butler, seriously doubted whether the original line-up - himself, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward - would ever play together again. Osbourne, the band's singer, had been fired in April 1979, and replacements Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan had come and gone. Ozzy's solo career in the States was proving hugely successful, and when all four original Sabbath members got on stage in Philadelphia, it was the first such occasion since 1978. Sabbath were managed by the notorious Don Arden, Osbourne by his wife Sharon, Arden's daughter. A reunion had been tentatively mooted but in any event, Arden served Ozzy and Sharon with a writ. 'My father-in-law and my wife and I were in a f*****g war,' Osbourne said a few years ago. 'I was f*****g served [a lawsuit] at Live Aid by my father-in-law, for interference or some b******t, and nothing ever materialised from it.' Butler, for his part, has said that Arden was threatening to take legal action if Osbourne appeared under the Sabbath banner. Sabbath, a late addition to the line-up, had only one rehearsal before playing the first of their songs at Live Aid at 9.55am. "We hadn't slept and some of us were a bit hungover", Butler writes in his memoirs. "We didn't do a Queen and steal the show, but Think we got away with it". Dire Straits, for their part, didn't have far to walk to get onto the Wembley stage, as they happened to be playing 12 nights at Wembley Arena, across the road. At 6pm, they played a brief Live Aid set – Money for Nothing, and Sultans Of Swing – and casually made their way back to the Arena. 'We literally walked off the stage, out of the stadium and across the car park to the Arena,' the band's Guy Fletcher said in a Classic Rock magazine interview last month. 'I think John [Illsley] was even carrying his bass – and to some funny looks from the car park attendants, I might add.' Backstage in London, Billy Connolly heard Bob Geldof barking at someone on the phone. The call over, Connolly queried: 'Somebody on your back there?' Geldof replied: 'Somebody wanted to put Santana on next. They're f*****g c****!' Connolly, interviewed on a BBC documentary Live Aid: Against All Odds, laughed as he added: 'This guy from the Boomtown Rats telling me that Santana are c****. I don't think so!' Backstage at Wembley, David Bowie was a bag of nerves; and Eric Clapton, in Philly, was said by a later biographer to have been overcome with nerves, such was the global profile of the acts with whom he was competing. Read more: Geldof attacks Live Aid critics Live Aid names for sale The Band Aid controversy: the Scottish founder has his say Calling kids who bought the Band Aid record 'racist' is a disgrace 'Pathetic and appalling. I thought we dealt with this 20 years ago'; Geldof returns to Ethiopia and attacks lack of European aid Live Aid, which was put together by Geldof and Midge Ure, raised £40 million on the day – the equivalent of over £100m today – which was then used to provide relief of hunger and poverty in Ethiopia and the neighbourhood thereof. Between January 1985 and the release of the official Live Aid DVD in November 2004, the Band Aid Trust spent over £144m on the relief of famine in Africa. More than 30,000 TV viewers in Scotland got through to the special phone lines on July 13, 1985, donating a reported £300,000. Millions of people were moved to make all sorts of donations. Old couples sent in their wedding rings. One newly-wed couple even sold their new home and donated the proceeds. Live Aid was a colossal achievement, given that in excess of 70 artists and bands performed over 16 hours of live music across the London and Philadelphia concerts, all of them organised in just a few months. * Tomorrow night (Sunday, July 6) at 9pm, BBC Two will broadcast the first two parts of a three-part series, Live Aid At 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World. Greatest Hits Radio will replay the entire concert next Sunday, July 13. Just for One Day: The Live Aid Musical is playing at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London.
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Secret behind Freddie Mercury's Live Aid performance and Gary Kemp's big regret
On July 13 1985 Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially opened Live Aid - Sir Bob Geldof and Midge Ure's organisational triumph, that saw some of the world's greatest musicians perform at Wembley and Philadelphia's JFK Stadium. Broadcast to 1.9 billion people globally, performers like The Style Council's Dee C. Lee recall the thrilling, but nerve-wracking concert, that raised more than £114m for Ethiopian famine relief. Fans assumed she was wearing shades because of the sun. In fact, she was so nervous that she threw up just before the band, led by her future husband Paul Weller, went on stage. 'Travelling to Wembley felt pretty much like travelling to perform at any festival, but once we got there, it all got very real very quick.' says Dee, 64. 'Before we went on, the nerves had properly kicked in, to the point I had thrown up just before walking out onto the stage. This explains why I had to perform in dark glasses, as my eye makeup had run. Not my normal practice!' Speaking on BBC Sounds' Live Aid: Fans' Story, released today, Dee is celebrating that magic day's 40th anniversary. She also sang on the Band Aid single, Do They Know It's Christmas? which raised around £8 million for the famine and was the precursor to the concert. Dee - who went on to have two children, Nathanial and Leah, with Paul before their 1998 split - continues: 'Looking back, I'd felt I'd been part of something amazing, but I didn't realise how historic the day would become. I'm still very proud to have played a small part in it.' The Style Council performed second on the bill after Status Quo, who had the perfect opener with Rockin' All Over The World, following a brief performance by the Coldstream Guard. The Quo's Francis Rossi, 76, says: 'Nobody wanted to go on first. There were lots of egos. I remember asking our manager if anybody had decided yet. 'I said we would gladly go on first, because everybody was arguing. We thought we'd be out of there in 15 minutes and home and didn't think the whole thing would be anywhere near as important as it became.' Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp didn't anticipate the magnitude of the day either. Had he done so, he says he wouldn't have chosen that moment to perform new track Virgin to the audience of 72,000 at Wembley and 89,000 at JFK Stadium watching via satellite, not to mention the billion plus viewers at home. 'I am slightly irritated by the fact that we chose that moment to do a new song,' admits Gary, 65. 'I can't believe that we did a new song out of the three we chose. We didn't do Gold, which frustrates me. We did True and Only When You Leave. We didn't fully get that people would be talking about it 40 years later." The Who had not played together for years when they did Live Aid. 'I was quite excited to watch them,' says Gary, revealing how guitarist Pete Townshend allowed him to watch them perform from the side of the stage. 'At the end of the concert, Sting was handing out the hymn sheets of Do They Know It's Christmas and was very much the head boy of the situation. 'We all kind of did a sort of rehearsal backstage that sort of fell apart and then, of course, everyone ran on stage and tried to do their best. Some people were much better at getting to the front than others.' Nik Kershaw, 67, was approached by Sir Bob about Live Aid in January 1985, when the Boomtown Rats singer spotted him at Heathrow Airport waiting for a flight. 'There was a whole bunch of us going off to a German TV show, and Bob was lurking in the terminal. I never figured out exactly why he was there,' he says. Recalling the atmosphere at Live Aid being 'fraught and tense' until he finished his set, he continues: 'There was a whole load of us hanging out in the royal box. I remember Tony Hadley standing up in the front and saying, 'Does anyone want a beer?' And everybody, I mean, everybody, put their hand up, and he just slumped off and appeared about half an hour later with trays and trays and trays of beers. Good man, Tony. 'When Queen came on, it was an utterly joyous celebration of music. But there were other moments. I remember a particularly poignant moment when David Bowie came off stage a song early, so they could play the original 1984 Michael Burke news report in Ethiopia that started the whole thing off, and the whole place went quiet as everybody remembered what they were there for.' When the show was over and they were all packing up to go home, Nik heard someone singing to himself ' Do They Know It's Christmas time' 'It was Mr. Bowie and I was completely and utterly star-struck,' he says. Billy Ocean performed across the pond at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium. 'I was pleased they asked me to do it,' he says, 'I would have liked to have been one of the black artists in London. I would have been very offended if they hadn't asked me. 'I've always given Bob my respect ( for putting together Live Aid). I thank him for doing something like that for Africans." Meanwhile, Queen's set, including Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer To Fall, Radio Ga Ga, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions is widely regarded as the most famous single performance in popular music history . But it almost never happened. Sir Bob reveals how Freddie Mercury called him, unsure about taking part. Doing an impersonation of Freddie, Sir Bob 73, remembers the call, saying: 'The phone rang and he goes 'Is that you Bobsy? 'I said, 'Yes, and he said, 'So what's all this? It's wonderful what you're doing, but that's not really our thing, you know?' 'I said 'I get it, Fred, honestly, man. But if there was one stage in the world ever built for you, this is it.' And he said, 'Well, what do you mean?' And I said, 'Well, hello, darling! the world.' 'There was a pause, and then Freddie said, 'Yes, I think I know where you're coming from.' And then the next minute, Freddie went on and blasted the world. ' Legendary DJ Paul Gambaccini was backstage, recalling: 'Someone came up to me and said 'they are stealing the show!' You could feel the frisson.' Meanwhile, Sir Bob adds: 'Freddie and Queen will always be remembered for Live Aid. It's not me bigging myself up, but they came from a space of exhaustion with each other, with their music and unsure where to go next. I think they thought, 'if we're gonna go we're gonna go out on a high - by telling people what we did.' These guys just wrapped it up in their blazing 15- 20 minutes.' Freddie, who died from an AIDS related illness in 1991, called it 'a turning point in the history of Queen.' Supported by drummer Roger Taylor, lead guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Deacon, one of the world's greatest showmen ensured that we are still celebrating Live Aid 40 years later.
