Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-5-1987

I just posted the Prince's Trust concert from 1986. This is the 1987 concert. It's the same basic idea, but many of the songs and performers are different. Both are very worthwhile listens.

Like the 1986 concert, this one started with some newer musical acts. With the benefit of hindsight, some were good choices, and others... not so much (cough cough, Curiosity Killed the Cat and Go West, cough cough). But if you don't like all the artists, that's okay, because none of the first few acts lasted more than a single song.

There were fewer big name artists in this concert than the 1986 one. Plus, the entire concert was about half an hour shorter. (If, in fact, this is the whole thing - I'm not entirely sure.) But on the other hand, the finale was probably even more impressive. I'll get to that in a minute.

First though, I want to point out that, like the 1986 concert, for many of the songs, there was a backing band made up of many stars. I don't know which songs exactly, because I can't find the full video of this concert on YouTube. But, for instance, when Ben E. King sang his song, his backing band included Phil Collins on drums, Midge Ure on rhythm guitar, and Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

But the big deal was the finale. In the 1986, the biggest star was ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. But the 1987 concert outdid that by having two ex-Beatles performing together: George Harrison and Ringo Starr! Harrison's appearance was a particularly big deal because he hadn't performed in concert since his 1974 tour (other than a couple of brief appearances in the finales of other artist's concerts). 

I randomly stumbled across a description of the concert's finale in a 2015 article in Guitar World Magazine. Here it is:

"On June 5, 1987, three of the five original musicians who appeared on the classic Beatles 'White Album' track 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' reunited to perform the song live at the Prince's Trust Rock Gala in London's Wembley Arena. George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton were joined in an all-star U.K. band, including Elton John, Phil Collins, Jeff Lynne, Ray Cooper, and... well, if you're wondering who that understandably happy bassist is, it's Mark King from Level 42. Harrison, Starr, and Clapton last performed the song live 16 years earlier at the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City. What most interesting about this performance is the fact that A., the normally Strat-happy Clapton is playing a beautiful Gibson Les Paul, just as he did on the original 1968 recording, and B., the also-Strat-happy Harrison joins Clapton in the extended guitar solo at the end of the song. The two guitarists trade solos and feed off each other's energy, and their intertwining lines are often pretty damn cool."

In addition to that, someone, I'm guessing Clapton, played a guitar solo for "With a Little Help from My Friends," a song that normally lacked any solo. It's a shame that Jeff Lynne apparently didn't sing any of his Electric Light Orchestra hits. But he sang backing vocals on all three of the Beatles songs at the end. Given that Lynne is a huge Beatles fan, this must have been the closest he ever got to a fantasy of being a part of the Beatles, getting to sing with Harrison and Starr, with Clapton on guitar for good measure!

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Running in the Family (Level 42 with Eric Clapton)
02 If I Was (Midge Ure)
03 Misfit (Curiosity Killed the Cat)
04 Don't Look Down (Go West)
05 Invisible (Alison Moyet)
06 Through the Barricades (Spandau Ballet)
07 So Strong (Labi Siffre)
08 Run to You (Bryan Adams)
09 Hearts on Fire (Bryan Adams)
10 Somebody (Bryan Adams)
11 talk (Dave Edmunds & Bryan Adams)
12 The Wanderer (Dave Edmunds & Bryan Adams)
13 talk (Eric Clapton)
14 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)
15 Behind the Mask (Eric Clapton)
16 Stand by Me (Ben E. King)
17 talk (Phil Collins)
18 Reach Out, I'll Be There - I Can't Help Myself - Same Old Song (Phil Collins & Paul Young)
19 You've Lost That Loving Feeling (Phil Collins & Paul Young)
20 talk (Elton John)
21 Your Song (Elton John)
22 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
23 talk (George Harrison & Ringo Starr)
24 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George Harrison & Eric Clapton with Ringo Starr & Jeff Lynne)
25 Here Comes the Sun (George Harrison with Ringo Starr & Jeff Lynne)
26 With a Little Help from My Friends (Ringo Starr with George Harrison, Eric Clapton & Jeff Lynne)

https://www.imagenetz.de/hkdKF

I searched the Internet pretty thoroughly for a color version of the group photo from this concert. All I could find was a black and white version. I tinted it blue. If anyone can find the color version, please let me know so I can upgrade this. There are way too many people in the photo for me to try to make a colorized version.

Live Aid - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-13-1985, Part 2: Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Nik Kershaw, Sade, Sting, and Phil Collins

This is the second part of the London portion of Live Aid. The British concert was shorter than the American one, only about five and half hours of actual music compared to about eight hours in the U.S. So I've made only five albums for the British portion compared to seven albums for the American one.

Spandau Ballet was the first act for this part of the concert. They were always much bigger in Britain than the U.S. For instance, at this point in their career, they'd had fourteen Top Forty hits in Britain compared to only two Top Twenty hits in the U.S.

Next up was Elvis Costello. I must say I'm disappointed that he was only allowed to play one song. Consider for instance that he had eleven Top Forty hits in Britain at this point in his career, compared to the fourteen Spandau Ballet had. But Spandau Ballet got to play four songs and he only got one. It seems a lot of this was just how much organizer Bob Geldof and his friends liked you. Anyway, Costello surprised by not playing any of his hits. Instead, he did a cover of "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles, which he introduced as an "old Northern English folk song."

Nik Kershaw was next. He isn't that well known today, but he was hot in 1985. At the time, he'd put out two albums and had seven Top Forty hits in Britain. But after Live Aid, he would only get only one more Top Forty hit, later in 1985. (Again, it seems odd he was able to play four songs, and Costello with more British hits, only played one.)

The band Sade was up next. Lead singer Sade Adu was born in Nigeria, making her the only Live Aid star actually from Africa. However, the rest of her band was British, and she'd lived in Britain since she was a toddler. Sade was especially big in Britain at the time. They had only released two albums at the time, but both of them went multi-platinum in Britain. Surprisingly, she didn't perform her biggest hit and signature song, "Smooth Operator."

As with the Philadelphia concert, the fame of the musical acts grew bigger as the concert went on. But there may have been an exception in this part, due to Phil Collins flying on a plane across the Atlantic Ocean to perform in Philadelphia later in the day. He was so famous at the time he probably would have been one of the last acts. 

This part of the concert ended with Sting and Phil Collins. Both of them were big stars at the time, and they were introduced together. But in fact Sting performed two songs by himself, then Collins performed two songs by himself. Only then did they perform two songs together. Apparently, this collaboration was spurred by the fact that Sting sang on the song "Long Long Way to Go" on Collins' most recent studio album. It was particularly fitting to the purpose of the concert, so they performed it together.

024 talk (Andy Peebles)
025 Only When You Leave (Spandau Ballet)
026 talk (Spandau Ballet)
027 Virgin (Spandau Ballet)
028 talk (Spandau Ballet)
029 True (Spandau Ballet)
030 talk (Andy Peebles)
031 All You Need Is Love (Elvis Costello)
032 talk (Tommy Vance)
033 Wide Boy (Nik Kershaw)
034 Don Quixote (Nik Kershaw)
035 The Riddle (Nik Kershaw)
036 Wouldn't It Be Good (Nik Kershaw)
037 Why Can't We Live Together (Sade)
038 Your Love Is King (Sade)
039 Is It a Crime (Sade)
040 talk (Noel Edmonds)
041 talk (Sting)
042 Roxanne (Sting)
043 Driven to Tears (Sting)
044 talk (Phil Collins)
045 Against All Odds (Phil Collins)
046 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
047 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
048 talk (Phil Collins)
049 Long Long Way to Go (Phil Collins & Sting)
050 Every Breath You Take (Phil Collins & Sting)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15748941/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part2.zip.html

Like the other albums in this series, I split the cover into four so I could have pictures from the concert of more of the musical acts. That's members of Spandau Ballet on the top left, Nik Kershaw on the top right, Sade Adu, lead singer of Sade, on the bottom left, and Phil Collins and Sting together on the bottom right. There were five albums in this part, so I had to leave one out. I excluded Elvis Costello, since he only performed one song.