Live Aid 

On November 25, 1984, 36 British recording artists gathered at a studio in Notting Hill, London to donate their time and talent to a song written by Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure (Ultravox) to raise money for the relief of famine in Ethiopia. 

The result was the historic Do They Know It's Christmas?, performed by Geldof and Ure with Bananarama, the Boomtown Rats, Phil Collins, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Heaven 17, Kool & The Gang, Annie Lennox, Marilyn, George Michael, Spandau Ballet, Status Quo, Sting, U2, Ultravox, Paul Weller and Paul Young - a group of singers collectively known as Band Aid.

The single went straight to Number 1 in the UK and became the biggest-selling single ever. Meanwhile, the single was certified gold in the US where it inspired a similar fund-raising recording, We Are The World, by a consortium of entertainers calling themselves USA For Africa.

In March 1985, as Bob Geldof and Midge Ure accepted their Novello Award for Do They Know It's Christmas?, the first shipment of food and medicine paid for by Band Aid arrived in Ethiopia. 

In total, Band Aid had raised £8 million for the famine relief program. Inspired by the British effort, USA For Africa and Canada's Northern Lights added more to the pile. But Geldof wanted more.

On July 13, at one minute past noon, the biggest pop event ever staged over a one-day period kicked off with a set by Status Quo, and Wembley Stadium in London and the John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, USA, became the most famous venues on the face of the planet.

61 of rock's biggest acts performed in those two giant outdoor stadiums for sixteen hours, in front of a live audience of 162,000 (90,000 in Philadelphia and 72,000 in London) and broadcast to an estimated 1.9 billion TV viewers in 150 countries across the world.

The acts were given exactly 17 minutes apiece to perform. Everyone left their ego at the dressing room door and threw themselves into the spirit of the event, while Geldof harangued viewers into getting off their butts and phoning in with promises of cash. 

In the US, the phone system broke down momentarily when 700,000 calls hit the pledge line at the same time. By the midpoint of the day, more than $20 million had been promised through telephone pledges.

To be under Wembley's blue skies that day you felt overwhelmed, empowered and humbled by waves of colliding emotions - rage and sadness for the pitiful victims of the Ethiopian famine alternating with enormous pride and excitement at the sight of rock's biggest names seizing the initiative, doing what their governments singularly failed to do.

Memories flood back of the helicopters flying in and out with their famous passengers, the first lump-in-the-throat glimpse of the Live Aid logo standing tall on either side of the stage, Status Quo kicking off with Rockin' All Over The World, the deafening cheers as Concord roared overhead carrying Phil Collins to his second performance of the day at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium, and the heart-stopping finale with Geldof held aloft by Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend before the mass singalong of Do They Know It's Christmas (Feed The World).

The Who reunited for a four-song nuclear blast; Robert Plant and Jimmy Page re-formed Led Zeppelin with Phil Collins and members of Power Station and icons of the sixties (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and The Beach Boys) shared dressing rooms and stages with arena kings of the seventies (Queen, Led Zeppelin and The Who) and pinup darlings of the eighties (Spandau Ballet and the Thompson Twins).

On the US stage, Madonna jammed with the Thompson Twins, Tina Turner performed a duet with Mick Jagger, Black Sabbath re-formed with front man Ozzy Osbourne, and Neil Young, Tom Petty, The Cars and Bryan Adams were part of the staggering list of performers.

The Wembley line-up included Paul McCartney, Adam Ant, Elvis Costello, BB King, The Pretenders, Paul Young, Spandau Ballet, Cliff Richard, Bryan Ferry, Paul Weller, Alison Moyet, Ultravox, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, INXS and Queen. And Geldof performed again with The Boomtown Rats (even though he had vowed he wouldn't sing).

The climax in Philadelphia saw Bob Dylan jamming incoherently with a clearly bemused Ron Wood and Keith Richards before an all-star cast degenerated into an unseemly scrum while singing the USA For Africa anthem We Are The World.

Live Aid set a lead that others were quick to follow (including Comic Relief, Artists Against Apartheid, Sports Aid and Farm Aid). And the man who started the whole charity thing off was dubbed Sir Bob Geldof, Knight of the British Empire, in the Queen's Birthday honours list in June 1986.

In 1992, having raised a total of $144,124,694 the Band Aid Trust was closed down and Geldof issued a statement which read, in part; 

"It seems so long ago that we asked for your help. Seven years . . . you can count them now in trees and dams and fields and cows and camels and trucks and schools and health clinics, medicines, tents, blankets, clothes, toys, ships, planes, tools, wheat, sorghum, beans, research grants, workshops . . . 

I once said that we would be more powerful in memory than in reality. Now we are that memory".