A really interesting tweet. And a lot of work has gone into this. It’s fun imagining what it would have been like on the day, better or worse?
https://twitter.com/verypopularname/status/1282723150938222594?s=19
Alternative Live Aid
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Slade obviously banned from doing Merry Christmas Everybody.
a) it was 20 degrees plus in July
b) somewhat conflicts with the message of the Band Aid song
The Smiths in the U2 slot – would Morrissey have gone for a walk in the crowd?
Although not actually appearing, Phil Collins manages 5 appearances on stage – Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, The Kinks, and George Harrison. He also crosses the Atlantic twice to appear with everybody he possibly can (whether they want him to or not)
(He also provided the drums for Frankie Goes To Hollywood from the cabin of Concorde)
The only thing I hope that its proper live New Order not Top of the Pops New Order.
I can’t imagine that The Smiths would have done it in a million years.
Great alternative line up although I think I’d’ve found room for Big Country and Talk Talk, and possibly even The Alarm and The Sisters of Mercy.
How could I forget. Stick Motörhead on when some of the crowd might be thinking ‘ooh, I think I might take it easy for a bit, possibly shut my eyes for a few minutes, before the grand finale’.
Thin Lizzy seems an obvious one.
Graeme Thomson, when he appeared at a Word In Your Ear event, to talk about his Phil Lynott biography, said that Phil was devastated when his best mate Bob, didn’t invite the band to appear.
Their threesome could have been:
Don’t Believe A Word
Dancing In The Moonlight
The Boys Are Back In Town
He picked the acts that would get the most viewers. Nobody wanted to see The Alarm or The Sisters of Mercy! Many of the artists were not to my taste (quite a few were), but I think it was more or less the right line-up for those times.
Van wouldn’t have done Brown Eyed Girl in a million years. Full Force Gale, or Cleaning Windows, maybe.
Slade is a fine call as opening act. They’d pretty much disappeared off the radar in the UK by 1985, but they were always terrific live and would know how to kick-start the whole day properly. Not a Quo equivalent, because they were always a sight better than Quo.
No Slade were back with a vengeance, they had had two top 20 hits the year before inc Run Run Away getting to no. 7. They just weren’t as well known amongst all viewers as the Quo, which was the point.
And Rockin All Over the World was the perfect opener for such an event.
I think we can all agree that the 1980s second coming of Slade was creatively a shadow of their 1970s commercial peak.
Cum On Feel The Noize would have made an even better opener for the event.
They were good at the 1980 Reading Festival, though.
And at Donnington 1981
Yes, I don’t doubt it, but they were better at the Civic Hall, Wolverhampton in 1973.
So I’m told.
No it wouldn’t
I’m taking my ball home…
But…but…then we would not have seen the Thompson Twins or Spandau Ballet singing We Are Virgin and Adam Ant doing Apollo 9.
Indeed. Or Nik Kershaw doing Wide Boy.
This man is messing with our treasured memories!
Cough – I think yewl find – Mr Ant performed his, as yet unreleased non-hit ‘Vive Le Rock’. Rumour has it that Ant shared a manager (Miles Copeland) with Sting and word to Geldof was – there’s no Sting without an Ant.
I woke up in a cold sweat at 3am when I realised my Adam Ant faux pas. Of course it was Vive Le Rock! Just the one song though IIRC.
Yeah, I think Geldof desperately tried to persuade the Ant to do one of his big hits, like “Stand and Deliver” or Prince Charming”, which would obviously have gone down well with the crowd and the viewers, but no, he insisted on doing his as yet unreleased non-hit ‘Vive Le Rock’. Ha!
Imagine that Wembley crowd doing the Prince Charming arm movements!
Exactly; so much of it was crap. You can download much here, and hear the horror for yourselves. Editing it to the best bits might give a you a CD.
http://so-many-roads-boots.blogspot.com/
Bit more than a CD and, once again, the artists were chosen for their ability to attract a viewing audience not necessarily on artistic merit:
Wembley
Quo
Style council
Boomtown Rats (maybe)
Elvis Costello
Bryan Ferry
U2 (at the time)
Dire Straits (maybe)
Queen
David Bowie
The Who
Elton John (maybe)
Philadelphia
CSN
Beach Boys
Simple Minds (maybe)
Madonna (she was great)
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
The Cars (maybe)
Neil Young
“Led Zep” (if you like car crash performances)
CSNY
Hall and Oates
Mick Jagger (maybe)
Bob Dylan (see “Led Zep”)
People who like Kershaw, Spandau and Ultravox etc could make a different CD, but he got different generations to watch.
Shame the huge amount of money raised didn’t exclusively go to the right people in the end.
There’s quite a few maybes there. I understand what you are saying, but song choices could be odd; Bryan Ferry’s, for example. Other times, things were over familiar. I get it, it was supposed to be the world’s jukebox, and in that way it mostly succeeded, and I have no objection with Quo starting off the way they did as a statement of intent to cock a snook at cool. Madonna was in her prime, Santana/ Metheny noodled pleasingly, Zep as carcrash (Sabs ditto) … but single tracks here and there would be better than the whole sets. The playlist is here: http://liveaid.free.fr/pages/liveaidtimesdetaileduk.html
If nobody has mentioned it yet, the latest episode of The Giddy Carousel of Pop podcast takes a discerning look at Live Aid. A most ejoyable way to spend an hour or so, and all the better for me forgetting to record my bit, so my letter gets read out instead. @wholehogg will be along shortly with a link…
Yer links here. Also features occasional Afterworder Beany, messers Ellen and Hepworth, former Word & Smash Hits geezer Barry McIlheny, the bloke who was directing the cameras without a script – and I’m on it too (Hello??….CLICK…BRRRRRRRRRR)
https://giddypoppod.home.blog/listen/
That’s quite a plausible line up with some exceptions and would have made for a enjoyable day I think albeit New Order’s equipment would have packed up and Barney would have thrown a strop. I can’t imagine the 80s Kinks doing a synth-rock tastic update of their greatest hits would have flown. I’d swap the Pink Floyd snooze-fest for the actual Rolling Stones.
After the finale – Cut to Philadelphia which instead of Thompson Twins murdering The Beatles Revolution, dead-eyed Zep and a boozy shamblefest from Dylan/Keef & Ronnie ends with a stellar set from Prince, only to be upstaged by the headliner Michael Jackson doing a medley of his greatest hits.