Live Aid - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-13-1985, Part 5: The Who, Elton John with Kiki Dee and George Michael, Freddie Mercury & Brian May, and Paul McCartney

This is the last of five albums of the London portion of Live Aid. With this, I'm finishing my Live Aid posts. It's true there were smaller Live Aid related concerts in some other countries on that same day, but the vast majority of the musical acts were only well known to the people from those countries.

First up for this part of the concert was the Who. The band broke up in 1982, and made it official in 1983, so this was a reunion. (They would reunite for good in 1989.) Apparently, there was a red light in front of the stage to indicate when the musical act was going over their allotted time. Lead guitarist Pete Townshend broke the light while jumping around. I don't know if that was accidental or not, but the band ended up going five minutes over their time slot.

Townshend wrote a song specifically for Live Aid called "After the Fire." The Who was supposed to perform it in this concert. However, they didn't commit to joining the concert until the last minute, so they didn't have enough time to practice it. Townshend gave it to the band's lead singer, Roger Daltrey, who had a minor hit with it later in the year.

The Who were also beset with some serious technical difficulties. Part way through their first song, "My Generation," a blown fuse caused their stage TV feed to cut out. Ironically, this happened during the line "Why don't you all fade away," right on the word "away." As a result, they couldn't be seen for the rest of the song, and most of the next song, "Pinball Wizard." Some of the vocals could still be heard for these two songs, though they were very low in the mix. I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. They sound decent now, but the sound quality is still not as good as the other songs on this album. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Elton John was next. At 32 minutes, it ended up being the longest set in either Live Aid concert. This was actually too long. Maybe because of the broken warning light, he went over his assigned time slot. George Michael was still part of Wham! at the time (he would go solo a year after this). The plan was to have Wham! play a set after John finished, but this was cancelled due to all the delays, not just from John, but other delays accumulated earlier in the concert. But John somewhat compensated for this by having George Michael join him in a duet of the song "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." This was the first time they performed the song as a duet. In 1991, they would release a studio version of the duet and it would hit Number One in both the U.S. and Britain.

John also did a duet with Kiki Dee on "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," since those two performed it together when it hit Number One in 1976.

After that, two members of Queen, lead singer Freddie Mercury and lead guitarist Brian May, returned to the stage to play an encore of sorts. They wrote the song "Is This the World We Created?" together in 1984 in direct response to news reports about the famine in Africa. So that's presumably why it was performed towards the very end of the concert instead of part of Queen's set earlier.

Note that this song has "[Edit]" in the title. That's because some strange noise got onto the recording. For a section towards the end of the song, one could clearly hear some thumping as well as the sound of a person talking. I used the UVR5 program to break the song into different tracks and then wipe out most of the talking and thumping. Only a little bit remains, from where some of the talking was simultaneous with some of the singing.

The last proper act was Paul McCartney. According to the Wikipedia article about Live Aid, the concert organizers considered it a high priority to get at least one surviving member of the Beatles, especially McCartney, to help give the concert credibility with the politicians they were hoping to influence. Apparently, former Beatles Ringo Starr and George Harrison also seriously considered taking part in the concert. However, they declined doing their own sets for fear that they would be dragged into performing with McCartney and turning it into a quasi-Beatles reunion. (A full reunion obviously could never have occurred, since John Lennon died in 1980.)

Given the fame of McCartney, and especially the importance the organizers put on having him involved, it's surprising that he only played one song, "Let It Be." My guess is that the TV coverage was due to end at a certain time, and the concert was still running late, so he had to cut his set short. That was bad enough, but his microphone also failed for the first two minutes of the song, making his vocals for that section almost totally inaudible. He wasn't aware of this problem. However, off stage, Bob Geldof, Pete Townshend, Alison Moyet, and David Bowie noticed the problem and rushed onto the stage to help sing backing vocals. They did so, although right at that time his microphone finally started working again.

Live Aid was supposed to be a truly live event, with no album or film of it released later. However, McCartney must have had a good feeling something would eventually be released anyway, because he rerecorded his missing vocals the next day so they could be used for any future versions. That turned out to be a very good idea, since a DVD of some Live Aid performances were released in 2004. And it's lucky for me, because I was able to use those rerecorded vocals. So there's no problem with his performance here.

After McCartney came the usual finale, where all the stars returned to the stage to sing "Do They Know It's Christmas?," the song that started the music industry's response to the Ethiopia famine. Near the end of the song, concert organizer Bob Geldof was raised up onto the shoulders of McCartney and Townshend to celebrate all he accomplished in putting the concert together.

So ends Live Aid. Phew! It was a lot of work putting this whole thing together. I think I'll go back to posting normal albums for a little while before tackling another one of these big rock festivals.

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

088 talk (Tommy Vance)
089 My Generation [Edit] (Who)
090 Pinball Wizard [Edit] (Who)
091 talk (Who)
092 Love Reign O'er Me (Who)
093 talk (Who)
094 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
095 talk (Billy Connolly)
096 I'm Still Standing (Elton John)
097 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
098 Rocket Man (Elton John)
099 talk (Elton John)
100 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
101 talk (Elton John & George Michael)
102 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John & George Michael)
103 Can I Get a Witness (Elton John)
104 talk (John Hurt)
105 Is This the World We Created [Edit] (Freddie Mercury & Brian May)
106 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
107 Do They Know It's Christmas (Band Aid)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15749031/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part5.zip.html

There were three main acts in this portion of the concert, so I included photos of those three: Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (jumping) of the Who are in the top left, Elton John is in the top right, and Paul McCartney is in the bottom left. That left one more spot. I considered a photo of Freddie Mercury and Brian May, since they performed a song too. However, I saw a photo from the finale of "Do They Know It's Christmas" that showed Bono, Paul McCartney, and Freddie Mercury all singing into the same microphone. I thought that was so cool that I had to include it.

Live Aid - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-13-1985, Part 4: Dire Straits, Queen, and David Bowie

This is the fourth of five albums of the London portion of the 1985 Live Aid concert.

Generally, I had at least four musical acts for each part. But this time, it's only three. That's because they are three very big acts at the time, so they were given longer time spots.

First up was Dire Straits. They only played two songs, but together those totaled nearly twenty minutes. For "Money for Nothing," the band was joined by Sting on backing vocals, just as it was on the original studio recording.

Queen was up next. Many say that this was the best set of all the Live Aid acts. Amazingly, in 2004, a poll of music industry insiders called the "World's Greatest Gigs" voted this as the best concert of all time! I think that's a bit much. It was only 21 minutes long, so it's hard to compare with great full-length concerts. Much of what was great about it was the visual performance of lead singer Freddie Mercury, which obviously can't be captured in an audio recording. But it was so impressive that Queen's albums jumped back up the charts after Live Aid, just like U2's did. And the 2018 movie about Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody," made their Live Aid performance the emotional peak of the film, and recreated it with great attention to detail.

It must have been tough to follow an act like that, but David Bowie did a commendable job. He would have a rough late 1980s, but in 1985, he was still riding high from his smash 1983 album "Let's Dance." Rolling Stone Magazine later noted that his performance was "arguably Bowie's last triumph of the 1980s," and that "as approximately two billion people sang along to 'Heroes' ... he still seemed like one of the biggest and most vital rock stars in the world."

This album is an hour long.

070 talk (Tommy Vance)
071 Money for Nothing (Dire Straits with Sting)
072 talk (Dire Straits)
073 Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits)
074 talk (Griff Rhys Jones & Mel Smith)
075 Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)
076 Radio Gaga (Queen)
077 Audience Participation (Queen)
078 Hammer to Fall (Queen)
079 talk (Queen)
080 Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)
081 We Will Rock You (Queen)
082 We Are the Champions (Queen)
083 talk (Andy Peebles)
084 TVC-15 (David Bowie)
085 Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)
086 Modern Love (David Bowie)
087 Heroes (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15749024/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part4.zip.html

As usual for this series, I split the cover into four parts so I could include photos from more of the acts. This is pretty much the only album in the series where there were only three acts: Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits in the top left, Freddie Mercury and Brian May of Queen in the top right, and David Bowie in the bottom left. That left me one more spot to fill. So I chose a crowd scene, since I had one of those for the Philadelphia concert but none for the London one.

Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-26-1979 to 12-29-1979: Part 1: Queen

I mentioned the other day that I'm going to put more effort into posting big "various artists" concerts (with Live Aid being the most famous example), since those seem to get overlooked. A commenter then made the suggestion that I post the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea because the official double album that was released of those 1979 concerts was only ever released on vinyl and is long out of print. I decided that was a very good idea, because I don't think anyone else has ever put together all the well recorded songs for it.

The Concerts for the People of Kampuchea were actually a series of four concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, from December 26 to December 29, 1979. These benefit concerts took place for the timely and controversial issue of what had happened to the country of Cambodia, as it is generally known in the West, or Kampuchea, as it is generally known in the East, including by the people of that country. I'm going to refer to it as Cambodia, since that's what I'm used to. Anyway, from 1975 to 1978, the country was ruled by Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, a Communist political party. The country was devastated by their extreme measures, with about two million, or one-fourth of the entire population, killed during those few years. At the end of 1978, the neighboring country of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and easily took it over, since most Cambodians wanted the reign of terror to end by then.

Paul McCartney was the main musical force behind organizing the concerts, just as his fellow Beatle George Harrison organized the Concert for Bangladesh back in 1971. But, unusually for a rock concert, the United Nations was also officially involved with the concerts. I gather they handled the relief efforts from the money the concerts raised. Cambodia had been devastated by war even before the Khmer Rouge took it over, so they definitely needed help then. But for some people it was controversial for Western, capitalist countries to help a country that had recently been conquered by Vietnam, a Communist country at the time. A few years later, the US and its allies put an economic boycott on Vietnam because they refused to withdraw their army from Cambodia. But Vietnam withdrew in 1992 and the boycott ended. Cambodia slowly recovered, though remnants of the Khmer Rouge sustained an insurgency until the end of the 1990s. Unfortunately, its government is basically a dictatorship as I write this in 2023.

Anyway, let's get to the music. A double album of highlights from the four nights of music was released in 1981. However, it didn't do that well since it only had a couple, or sometimes even just one, song per artist, and often they weren't their best known songs. For instance, the only Queen song on the album was "Now I'm Here," which is a nice song, but far from one of their better known ones. The album quickly went out of print, and has stayed that way due to the difficulty of keeping the legal rights to all the different musical acts.

Luckily though, I was able to find a lot more material than just what was on the official album. In the case of Queen, they played a full concert that was nearly two hours long. They were the one and only musical act for the first night out of the four nights. Many more songs somehow emerged in soundboard quality on bootlegs. However, for some of the songs, there are only audience bootleg versions. I decided to keep the sound quality high for this entire series of concerts, so I have only included here the songs with soundboard level quality. That makes up a majority of the Queen show, including most of their best known songs, but not all of it. What's here is about an hour and ten minutes from a concert that was about an hour and 50 minutes long.

However, one extremely key song wasn't one of those with soundboard quality: "Bohemian Rhapsody." That's become their best known song, and is considered one of the most famous songs of all time, so I felt I couldn't leave it out. Instead, I took the audience bootleg version and used whatever audio editing tricks I had to try to make it sound a little better. One thing that helped me is that the vocals in the middle section, the acappella "opera section," were in fact just a recording from the record version. This was standard procedure for Queen concerts, because they felt they couldn't do that section justice with live vocals due to many, many vocal overdubs for that part. So I patched in the record version for that section, essentially replacing the vocals there. As expected, it was an exact match for the timing and the musical key, and it sounded much better. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I also put in some effort to make sure this recording flowed smoothly, despite the missing songs. Sometimes I had to fiddle with the song transitions to do that, for instance if the recording of one song ended with lots of cheering and the next song started out with near silence. It should all sound good now.

This album is one hour and ten minutes long.

01 We Will Rock You [Fast Version] (Queen)
02 talk (Queen)
03 Let Me Entertain You (Queen)
04 Somebody to Love (Queen)
05 talk (Queen)
06 Death on Two Legs (Queen)
07 Killer Queen (Queen)
08 I'm in Love with My Car (Queen)
09 You're My Best Friend (Queen)
10 talk (Queen)
11 Save Me (Queen)
12 Now I'm Here (Queen)
13 Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)
14 Love of My Life (Queen)
15 talk (Queen)
16 '39 (Queen)
17 talk (Queen)
18 Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)
19 Bohemian Rhapsody [Edit] (Queen)
20 Tie Your Mother Down (Queen)
21 Sheer Heart Attack (Queen)
22 talk (Queen)
23 We Will Rock You - We Are the Champions (Queen)
24 talk (Queen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362751/VA-ConcrtsfrthPeplofKmpchea1979Day1Quen_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/REPPC7zX

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, it only shows lead singer Freddie Mercury and guitarist Brian May.