A couple of days ago, I finished posted the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid. Now it's time for the British portion (with all British or Irish musical acts), which took place in Wembley Stadium, London.
The basic idea was to have the concerts in Philadelphia and London happen simultaneously, with the acts in one city filling in the music-free gaps while the stage was getting prepared for the next act in the other city, and then vice versa. However, there was a five hour time zone difference. So the London concert began at noon, London time, while it was still seven A.M. in Philadelphia. The London concert ran ten hours, ending around 10 P.M., London time. However, only about five and a half hours of that contained music from London, since there was down time between sets and speeches and so on. The Philadelphia concert began at 9 A.M., Philadelphia time, and kept going until 11 P.M., Philadelphia time. However, that meant it ended at about 7 P.M., London time. So the last two hours were in London only.
Anyway, I explained the basics about Live Aid in my write-up for the first album of the Philadelphia show. Please refer to that if you want to know more about the concert in general. There's a Wikipedia link there as well. For this write-up, I'm only going to discuss the acts that played this part of the concert.
The London concert began with Status Quo. They seem to be one of the acts that wasn't liked by organizer Bob Geldof and the other insiders who decided who got to play. But they were so very popular in Britain that they were allowed to play anyway. Geldof even told the band's lead singer Frank Rossi, "It doesn't matter what the f-ck you sound like, just so long as you're there." Rossi says he replied, "Thanks for the f-ucking honesty, Bob."
The next band was the Style Council. They weren't hugely popular on their own, but it was lead singer Paul Weller's successor band to the Jam, which were more popular, and probably explains why they got a time slot.
The Irish band the Boomtown Rats came next. Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof was the lead singer, so it's no surprise they were included. Their popularity was waning at the time, and they broke up a year later.
Adam Ant was next. Ant shared the same manager as the Police, which was led by Sting, and broke up in 1983. Geldof later wrote in a book, "I thought [Ant] was a bit passe. But then so were the Boomtown Rats, and each represented a certain piece of pop history, so I agreed. I also thought that might entice him to encourage Sting, or perhaps all three of the Police." Ant was only allowed to perform one song. Ant was understandably upset when he later found out what Geldof said about him, and criticized the concert. (Geldof was successful in getting Sting to play, but the hoped for Police reunion didn't happen.)
In my opinion, this is a case in point why it was a bad idea that the decision on who to include was left to Geldof and maybe some other insiders. It was too important of an event to be left to the whims of which acts Geldof personally liked. But oh well, obviously what's done is done.
Ultravox was the final act for this part of the London concert. It's not surprising they played, since the band's lead singer was Midge Ure, and he was involved in organizing the concert along with Geldof.
I ran into many of the same problems with the London concert that I had with the Philadelphia concert. For instance, although all the music is here, sometimes the introductions were lost. Luckily, for this part of the show, I do have all of the introductions, but that's sometimes not the case for the other parts. Another problem was that the cheering at the ends of songs was sometimes cut off. So, like I did with the Philadelphia show, I patched in more cheering at times.
This album is an hour and eight minutes long.
001 talk (Tommy Vance)
002 talk (Richard Skinner)
003 Rockin' All Over the World (Status Quo)
004 talk (Status Quo)
005 Caroline (Status Quo)
006 talk (Status Quo)
007 Don't Waste My Time (Status Quo)
008 talk (Tommy Vance)
009 You're the Best Thing (Style Council)
010 Big Boss Groove (Style Council)
011 talk (Style Council)
012 Internationalists (Style Council)
013 Walls Come Tumbling Down (Style Council)
014 talk (Tommy Vance)
015 I Don't Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
016 Drag Me Down (Boomtown Rats)
017 Rat Trap (Boomtown Rats)
018 talk (Harvey Goldsmith)
019 Vive le Rock (Adam Ant)
020 Reap the Wild Wind (Ultravox)
021 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Ultravox)
022 One Small Day (Ultravox)
023 Vienna (Ultravox)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15748937/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part1.zip.html
I kept the same cover art format as for the Philadelphia show, except I replaced "Philadelphia" at the top with "London." I also kept the same format of using four small photos of the acts instead of one big one. In this case, that's Frank Rossi, lead singer of Status Quo, at the top left, Paul Weller, lead singer of the Style Council, at the top right, Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, at the bottom left, and Midge Ure, lead singer of Ultravox, at the bottom right. I didn't have room for a fifth act, so Adam Ant got the cut, since he only performed one song.
