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Musical relief
Updated On: 13 July, 2020 09:06 AM IST | Mumbai | Shunashir Sen
On the day that the iconic Live Aid concert in 1985 brought long-term political change, city musicians talk about the impact it had on them
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Freddie Mercury burns the stage at Wembley Stadium with his performance at Live Aid, 1985. Pic/Getty Images
It all seems so different back then, when the Live Aid concert on this day in 1985 changed music history. Freddie Mercury had 76,000 fans eating out his hands in London’s packed Wembley Stadium. Across the pond, fellow British legend Mick Jagger was putting on a show at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Others including Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin also popped in for performances across both venues, with 1.9 billion people — that’s 40 per cent of the global population at the time — reportedly tuning in on satellite TV to watch them play for free. Why free? Because the whole epic event was brought together by musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for and awareness about the existing Ethiopian famine.
It set the tone for future music activists like Bono from U2, and 35 years after it took place, two veteran Mumbai artistes reminisce on what the event meant for them.
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