‘We created a monster': Midge Ure reflects on Live Aid as musical heads to West End
Sitting in the royal box at London's Wembley Stadium, just shy of the 40th anniversary of the Live Aid concert that he helped make happen here, Midge Ure ponders its legacy. 'We created a monster,' he says. 'And it had to happen.'
The two Live Aid shows in London and Philadelphia on 13 July 1985, featuring performances by U2, Queen, David Bowie and more, form the core of the stage musical Just for One Day. Today, it was announced that it will transfer to London's West End in May, after short runs at London's Old Vic in 2024 and Toronto earlier this year.
But Ure argues that the day-long Live Aid could never happen today, because of the seductive pull of social media feeds. 'Have [audiences] got the attention span? I'm not sure,' he says.
Live Aid was held to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia, and Ure says that he and the team behind it were powered by a cocktail of naivety and rock-star arrogance – logistical hurdles were deemed immaterial. 'We hadn't figured out just what a task this was going to be,' he says. 'Just get the show done. Sparkle, guys!'
They had had major success with Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas? single in December 1984, written by Ultravox frontman Ure alongside Bob Geldof, but it had ended up exposing bottlenecks that were stopping the money getting to where it was most needed. A concert was conceived to swiftly raise the funds to eradicate those problems.
'There was a trucking cartel in situ in Ethiopia that all the aid agencies were using and had to pay for,' says Ure. 'We wanted to break the cartel by buying a fleet of trucks, but we didn't have the money to do it. So Live Aid was born.'
George Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh charity show and album were used to show how good intentions can be dashed by mismanagement: millions of dollars raised by the concert were trapped in IRS tax escrow accounts for years. 'The first advice we were given was from George,' says Ure of the early planning stages for Live Aid. 'He said to Bob, 'Don't do what we did. Don't spend any of the money. No overheads.''
Frugality became the Band Aid Charitable Trust's mantra – it has never had an office and all trustees still work for free, with expenses forbidden. Money continues to come in from licensing, streams (of the Band Aid single at Christmas and YouTube footage of Live Aid) and donations, and 10% of proceeds from Just for One Day will support it. Total funds raised in the trust's lifetime have reached £150m. 'We have people leaving money to us in their wills,' says Ure. 'Our job as trustees is to generate as much money as we possibly can for the cause.'
The 71-year-old Ure accepts that the social context of Live Aid in 1985 can be knotty to explain in 2025. The Band Aid lyrics – such as Bono's line 'tonight thank God it's them instead of you' – have prompted accusations of white saviourhood, and African artists such as Fuse ODG have argued it created a patronising and flattened view of a whole continent. 'We wrote it in an afternoon as a simple pop song and it's not there to be analysed,' counters Ure. 'It was there to do something. Was it done with good intent? Yes, it was. Did it make a difference? Yes, it did.'
He feels, in retrospect, Live Aid marked the end of the old world, where music was the epicentre of culture, and the start of something less monolithic. Having a whole day of TV programming devoted to a concert raising money for a single cause could not work in today's oversaturated and media-fragmented world, he feels.
Speaking at the musical's launch event on Thursday, Geldof made a similar point. 'The problem is, do people have the bandwidth?' he said. 'They're so exhausted with the horror of Gaza and the terror of Ukraine and the American political situation that it's hard to draw attention to those who through no fault of their own are dying right now.'
For Ure, what was a unifying media spectacle then would not cohere now. 'I think Charlie Brooker will be writing the next Black Mirror [about this],' he jokes. 'Fans in the audience would be filming it and then they'd swipe their screens and the artists would disappear after 30 seconds. It's a different world.'
Just for One Day: The Live Aid Musical will open at London's Shaftesbury theatre on 15 May, with an album version to be released on 11 July.
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The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Fake, AI-generated videos about the Diddy trial are raking in millions of views on YouTube
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The vast majority of thumbnails use made-up quotes meant to shock people, such as 'F*CKED ME FOR 16 HOURS', 'DIDDY F*CKED BIEBER LIFE' and 'SHE SOLD HIM TO DIDDY'. Some of the channels going all-in on Diddy 'slop', a term that refers to low-quality media generated by artificial intelligence, have a history of making false claims about celebrities and of using AI-generated thumbnails. But most of the 26 channels appear to be either newly created or older channels that were repurposed. At least 20 channels were eligible to earn revenue from ads. False and sensationalized Diddy AI slop is an easy way to make money on YouTube right now, according to Wanner Aarts, who runs dozens of YouTube channels with AI-generated content and sells a course about how to make money on the platform. He said he's not personally cashing in on the Diddy trend. 'If you would say, 'Hey, how can I make $50,000 as soon as possible?' 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One video is titled 'Jay-Z Breaks His Silence on Diddy Controversy' and features a thumbnail of Jay-Z crying and holding up a CD above the quote 'I WILL BE DEAD SOON'. The nearly 30-minute video, which uses clips from TV news and other sources and AI-generated narration, has 113,000 views. It does not contain any new information from Jay-Z, and the rapper never said the quote that is attributed to him. Pak Gov Update previously posted short, amateurish videos with clickbait titles about public pensions in Pakistan. Its biggest hit was a video called Big information! Senior Citizen Pension Scheme || fedaral Cabnet Big Development, which received a relatively modest 18,000 views. (Typos theirs.) Aarts said that the Diddy slop strategy is lucrative but risky. 'Most of these channels aren't going to survive,' he said, citing the likelihood of getting demonetized due to YouTube policy violations, or legal action from Diddy and other celebrities featured in thumbnails and videos. As with Pak Gov Update, most of the videos uploaded by the channels use AI-generated narration over real clips from news reports and other sources. Some also use AI images and, less frequently, synthetic video. The channels' use of real footage often appears to test the boundaries of fair use. AI slop is just one type of content that you can find about the Diddy trial on YouTube. But it appears to be a growing and lucrative niche. Similar Diddy AI content is also racking up engagement on TikTok. YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon said in an email: 'We terminated several channels shared by Indicator for violating our terms of service and policies covering spam.' Malon said the company removed 16 channels, including Fame Fuel. YouTube also appears to have demonetized several channels, such as Pak Gov Update. 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YouTube has since demonetized NV Historia. A French-language channel, StarBuzzFR, launched in May and appears to only upload Diddy content. It uses AI-generated thumbnails and voiceovers to spin false stories, including that Brad Pitt testified against Diddy and said that he was sexually abused by the mogul. StarBuzzFR is particularly fond of using AI-generated, sexualized images of Diddy and celebs like Pitt. The channel is still monetized as of this writing. Aarts said the general attitude among the YouTube faceless/automation community is that anyone who can figure out a way to make money deserves respect. 'I have nothing to say other than congratulations to those people that are able to pull something like it off,' he said.
Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Real life mafia boss reveals which gangster movie is the most accurate
A former mafia boss has discussed 10 of the lines described as the best ever from gangster films. Michael Franzese, who is originally from New York and served as a caporegime in the Colombo crime family, is now a motivational speaker, TV personality and content creator. He has a YouTube channel where he regularly speaks candidly about the crime organisation and life afterwards. In a recent video, the father-of-seven read an article titled The 10 Best Quotes in Gangster Movies, Ranked published by Collider, and offered his thoughts on the lines presented in the piece. Speaking about the piece, Mr Franzese said: 'There are so many great quotes from so many of the mob movies that most of you are familiar with. 'I came across an article, and I want to talk about 10 of the greatest quotes according to this article, from all the different mob movies. 'Some of you are going to disagree with that. Some of you are going to agree. I have my own opinion, but it's a good article. 'I think you're going to enjoy it. Let's go through it. Let's face it, you know, many of these mob movies, they're just iconic, and some of the lines that come out of them and the way they're delivered are just great. They stick with you.' 10. 'You don't keep a man waiting. The only time you do is when you want to say something. When you want to say f*** you.' (The Irishman, 2019) Speaking about this quote in his video, Mr Franzese said: 'How many of you right now can guess where that line came from? I could because I love the scene.' The line is from the 2019 movie The Irishman directed by Martin Scorsese. Describing the scene the line is in, Mr Franzese said: 'Al Pacino played Jimmy Hoffa [...] I thought he was brilliant.' The scene shows mobster Anthony Provenzano (Stephen Graham) meeting with Hoffa and his employee Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro). Provenzano is late - something Hoffa despises. As the two men wait for his arrival, Hoffa says to Sheeran: 'You don't keep a man waiting. The only time you do is when you want to say something. When you want to say f*** you.' 9. 'You slap me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.' (Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938) Many contemporary film fans may remember a very similar line from Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but the original came from 1938 classic Angels with Dirty Faces. 'You slap me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize,' said Mr Franzese of the line. 'Think about that [...] What a gangster, gangster quote that is [...] if you haven't seen [the film, it's]. It's in black and white, but Cagney was brilliant back then. Different kind of way they carried themselves. 'It wasn't really mob mafia type. It was just a gangster [...] an old school gangster movie that still holds up well, benefiting from the fact that it stars the likes of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, of course.' 8. Policeman: 'What's in the car?' Turkish: 'Seats and a steering wheel.' (Snatch, 2000) Describing Guy Ritchie as a 'brilliant' director, Mr Franzese said his style is defined by 'fast paced editing, bursts of shocking violence, numerous characters, all interacting in unpredictable ways, and lots of dark humor, all qualities that are apparent in the movie snatch, great movie'. Describing the exchange between a policeman and the character Turkish (played by Jason Statham), in which the policeman asks what is in the car, and Statham's character replies that there is a steering wheel and seats, Franzese saiid: 'It's [Statham's] unique style and voice and overall bluntness that really sells it. So go see Snatch.' 7. 'One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy'. (The Departed, 2006) Martin Scorsese's 2006 remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs marks the only time the celebrated director and top actor Jack Nicholson worked together - a partnership which yielded on screen gold. In the movie, Nicholson's character Frank Costello was based on the real life notorious gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. Speaking about Costello's line: 'One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy,' Mr Franzese said many gangsters are funny in real life. He said: 'They don't even know they're funny [...]Guys on the street are funny, I got to tell you.' 6. 'I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.' (The Godfather, 1972) Speaking about this cinematic classic, the former mobster said: 'Everybody and their brother knows this line. And of course, it was brilliant [...] Obviously we know who that was brilliant, brilliant film. 'You can't really talk about iconic gangster movies without at least briefly bringing up the Godfather.' He added: 'Corleone is obviously a character for the ages, no doubt, demonstrating charisma, loyalty, empathy and ruthlessness, sometimes all within one scene. How do you pull that off, all those emotions in one scene? And [actor Marlon Brando] pulled it off brilliantly.' 5. 'Made it, Ma! Top of the world!' (White Heat, 1949) Describing White Heat as a 'final and explosive last hurrah for the Golden Age of Hollywood gangster movie', Mr Franzese described the film as 'arguably James Cagney's best gangster movie', adding that is 'really saying something'. The line, which comes at the climax of the film, marks the final words of Cagney's character, before he is killed. Simply summing up the picture, Mr Franzese said: 'Gangster film, brilliant movie.' 4. 'From now on, I want you to put an equal amount of blueberries in each muffin.' (Casino, 1995) Casino is another picture helmed by American Italian auteur Martin Scorsese - often considered the greatest living director. Robert De Niro plays Sam 'Ace' Rothstein in the picture, which tells the story of the mob's involvement in the development of Las Vegas. While overseeing the daily operations of a major casino, Rothstein gets angry with a chef because one muffin is full of blueberries and another only has a few. He orders the chef to ensure there is an 'equal amount of blueberries in each muffin' - a task the chef says will take hours. The line represents the controlling nature and perfectionism of De Niro's character. Mr Franzese said of the film: 'As a consumer, and a guy that loves blueberry muffins, I'd be a little upset if there wasn't enough blueberries in my muffin. 'So I think that was a good line. It made sense, but it was delivered like a true gangster. Love it.' 3. 'So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you.' (Scarface, 1983) 'Everybody knows this,' Mr Franzese said of this line from Scarface. The picture stars Al Pacino as a Cuban refugee who comes to America and becomes a major player in the criminal world. Speaking about the quote, which takes place when Montana causes a scene in a restaurant, Mr Franzese describes the performance as his best. He also noted another very famous line from the talkie: 'Say hello to my little friend.' 'Unbelievable movie,' said the former mafioso. 'That was the way it ended, when he's fighting [...] Just a brilliant movie.' 2. 'I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to f****** amuse you?' (Goodfellas, 1990) Another exceptional film directed by Martin Scorsese is Goodfellas, based on the memoire of real-life character Henry Hill. In fact, Michael Franzese is himself name checked in the movie. During an early scene in a bar, where the camera pans past a number of characters, narrator Henry Hill (played by the late Ray Liotta) names them. One of the characters, referred to as 'Michael Francesi' is, in fact, representative of Michael Franzese. While the movie is packed full of quotable lines, one of the most popular scenes features the volatile and unpredictable character Tommy DeVito (played by Joe Pesci). In it, Henry laughs when Tommy says something amusing. This becomes a terse interchange in which Tommy asks Henry if he sees him as a clown, there simply to amuse him, before finally laughing and revealing he was just teasing. Because of Tommy's mercurial and violent nature, the characters around him grow increasingly tense, unsure of whether he is being serious. Mr Franzese said of the line: 'It is legendary, unbelievable. Come on, think about that line. Funny how think about and [...] it was a joke, but look at how everybody got scared because they knew what kind of a maniac he was. Was he going to get up and shoot Henry Hill at that point? What was he going to do? Was he going to knock the table over, throw the glasses over? It was all. Nobody knew what he was going to do. 'And all of a sudden, the way, he broke [...] into that line [...] And then, of course, they break out in laughter.' He added: 'Brilliant line. There were other brilliant lines in that film, but Joe Pesci, he is the typical gangster without a doubt.' 1. 'I don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.' (The Godfather: Part II, 1974) The second instalment in the Godfather saga saw the further corruption of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) as he inherited his father Vito's empire. Speaking about the line, which Corleone said to his consigliere Tom, Mr Franzese noted how it highlighted how Corleone ended up alienated from everyone because of his own lifestyle. He also spoke about how the line resonated with his own life experience, describing how his father's commitment to the lifestyle affected his family. He said: 'You know the reason people, I say the mob life is an evil lifestyle - and I'm not calling the men evil, I'm calling the mob life bad and evil - is because families get destroyed. 'The families have made members get destroyed, and at the end of the day, guys end up in prison with nobody you know, or they end up dead, or they end up broke, or they end up everybody being alienated from them. It happens very often. Any lifestyle [...] that causes that to a family, is a bad lifestyle. 'It's something that I realized. I experienced it with my own family that was destroyed because of my father's involvement in that life. So I get it. I really get what was being said there.'
Times
15 hours ago
- Times
Tony Blair: Bono and Geldof saved millions of lives with Live Aid
Sir Tony Blair says Bob Geldof and Bono have saved millions of lives. The rock stars have often been labelled as western do-gooders but a new documentary sets out their influence on world leaders since the Live Aid concert 40 years ago. 'What Bob and Bono and others have done over the years has resulted in, I don't know, probably millions of people living who otherwise would have died,' Blair says. The former British prime minister credits Geldof with getting him to champion African debt relief, while George W Bush tells how Bono persuaded him to pledge $15 billion to fight Aids in Africa. In the series, Live Aid at 40: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World, Bush recalls a 2005 meeting with Bono and Geldof before a G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. 'I didn't have a clue who Geldof was. He and Bono came in, and Bono was at least somewhat presentable; Geldof looked like he crawled out from underneath the ground,' Bush says with a chuckle, before adding: 'But he was a good guy. He cared deeply.' Blair's former adviser Justin Forsyth says: 'Bob was effing this and effing that, even with presidents and prime ministers, and Bono had this kind of deep empathy with people and knew how to kind of appeal to their inner souls.' Geldof adds: 'He [Bono] wants to give the world a great big hug, and I want to punch its lights out.'At the start of the series, Geldof speaks about a conversation with Paula Yates, his wife at the time, that prompted the idea of Live Aid and how he had to explain who Status Quo were to a bemused Prince Charles during the concert on July 13, 1985. • Daniel Finkelstein: Band Aid's critics are just feeding cynicism Geldof later reflects on his subsequent campaign to obtain debt relief for Africa, begun when he returned to an orphanage in Ethiopia in 2003. 'I see these children whose parents have died because of no food. It annoys me to tears of frustration. I go ballistic at this point, as ever, and 'get me Downing Street'.' Blair, at a G8 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, took a call from an aide relaying Geldof's concerns. 'I remember shouting, 'It's happening again,'' Geldof said. In a subsequent meeting, the British prime minster agreed to head a Commission for Africa after Geldof set out the case for the world's poorest countries to be freed from debt. 'I wouldn't have reacted that way at anyone, but it was him with his track record, his commitment, his knowledge, his dedication. And therefore, it made sense,' Blair said. Kate Garvey, another aide to Blair, recalls: 'He [Geldof] was driving the agenda inside government.' When Blair decided to raise debt relief at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, he knew it was critical to persuade Bush. They also had the backing of Bono, who had formed an unlikely alliance with the Bush administration when he got access to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser and a 'huge fan' of U2, soon after Bush's election. She says in the documentary that Bush's tastes went 'toward country music'. Pictures show the president smiling as an aide asks: 'You do know who Bono is, don't you?' He replies: 'Yeah, he married Cher.' But Bono found common ground when he brought an 'ancient Irish Bible' as a gift to the White House, as he knew Bush was a 'man of faith'. Bono wanted the US administration to take action on the Aids pandemic, at a time when 6,000 Africans a day were dying. 'I'm being informed that there's a pandemic destroying an entire generation of people on the continent of Africa at the time that I'm the president,' Bush says. Around a year later, in his state of the union address, Bush pledged $15 billion over the following five years to 'turn the tide against Aids in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean'. Bobby Shriver, co-founder with the U2 frontman of Data (Debt, Aids, Trade in Africa), said: 'Bono got George Bush to give $15 billion to black people who don't vote, who have Aids.' Bono says Pepfar, the president's emergency plan for Aids relief, was the largest health intervention in history, adding: 'It has saved 26 million lives.' In the series, the lack of diversity of the rock acts in the charity concerts is debated with Harvey Goldsmith, the promoter behind the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts. 'I didn't care whether they were black, brown, green or yellow, if they were a big act and they were great and they wanted to play, great,' he says. Bono does think it could have been more inclusive of the African continent. 'We did our best to make it more involving of African acts and failed,' he says, referring to the Live 8 gigs. At the Gleneagles G8 summit, a few days after the Live 8 concerts, aides recall how Blair rushed to London from Scotland when he was told of the July 7 bombings. When the exhausted prime minister arrived back towards the end of the summit, Forsyth says the Blair had little patience with Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, who was holding up agreement on Africa. 'He went down into the bar with all the leaders there, and their wives. I remember him, not to exaggerate, but he had Schröder up against the wall, saying, you know, 'We've got to do this deal?' And at that moment, Schröder gave in, and we got across the line with the Germans.' The G8 leaders agreed immediately to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, and promised to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010. Live Aid had critics. Kumi Naidoo, a human rights activist, said: 'There were many good people with good intentions that were involved both with Live Aid and Live 8. I think that there was not enough sensitivity to understanding that it's not right for a bunch of predominantly white male folks to get together and say, 'We got to frame a continent like this.'' Bono fears the 40th anniversary of Live Aid will have a different resonance for global aid than events in 2005. 'The 20th anniversary was just a convergence of good fortune and good actors on the world stage. But what's happening now in politics means this anniversary could be a funeral for the last 40 years.' Live Aid at 40 airs on Sunday, July 6, on BBC2 and can be streamed on BBC iPlayer
