Live Aid

Live Aid was a multi-venue rock music concert held on July 13, 1985. The event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in order to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. Billed as a "global jukebox", the main sites for the event were Wembley Stadium, London, attended by 72,000 people, and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, attended by about 90,000 people, with some acts performing at other venues such as Sydney and Moscow. It was one of the largest scale satellite link-ups and TV broadcasts of all time -- an estimated 1.5 billion viewers in 100 countries watched the live broadcast.

Live Aid recordings / releases

When organiser Bob Geldof was persuading artists to take part in the concert, he promised them that it would be a one-off event, never to be seen again. That was the reason why the concert was never recorded in its complete original form, and only secondary TV broadcasts were recorded. Following Geldof's request, ABC even erased its own broadcast tapes. However, before the syndicated/ABC footage was erased, copies of it were donated to the Smithsonian Institution and now have been presumed lost. MTV decided to keep recordings of its broadcast and recently located more than 100 Live Aid tapes in its archives, but many songs in these tapes were cut short by MTV's ad breaks and presenters (according to BBC). BBC also decided to keep its broadcast recordings, but many performances from the US were not shown on the BBC and recordings of these performances are missing.

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Official Live Aid DVD

An official 4-DVD set of the Live Aid concerts was released on November 8, 2004. It contains 10-hour partial footage of the 16-hour length concert. The DVD was produced by Geldof's company, Woodcharm Ltd., and distributed by Warner Music Group.

Related Topics:
DVD - November 8 - Warner Music Group

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The decision to finally release it was taken by Bob Geldof nearly 20 years after the original concerts, after he found a number of pirate copies of the concert on the Internet (see full story here). There has been controversy over the DVD release because a decision had been taken for a substantial number of tracks not to be included in this edited version.

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The most complete footage that exists is from the BBC, and it was the main source of the DVD. During production on the official DVD, MTV lent Woodcharm Ltd. their B-roll and alternate camera footage; this was an additional source of the U.S. footage that appears on the official DVD.

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Working from the BBC and MTV footage, several degrees of dramatic license was taken in order to release the concert on DVD. For example, many songs on the official DVD had their soundtracks altered, mainly in sequences where there were originally microphone problems. For example, Paul McCartney had to re-record his failed vocals for "Let It Be" in a studio, nearly twenty years after the fact, expressly for the DVD, otherwise both "Let It Be" and the UK finale that followed would have been left off the official DVD for continuity reasons. Also, in the USA finale, the original USA For Africa studio track for "We Are The World" was overlaid in places where the microphone was absent (in fact, if you listen closely, you can hear the vocals of Kenny Rogers and James Ingram, two artists who did not even take part in Live Aid).

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Judicious decisions were also made on which acts would be included and which ones would not, due to either technical difficulties in the original performances, the absence of original footage, or for music rights reasons. For example, Rick Springfield, The Four Tops, The Hooters, Power Station, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were among those acts that were left off the DVD. Many of the artists' songs that were performed were also omitted. For example Madonna performed 3 solo songs in the concert, but only 2 were included on DVD - "Love Makes the World Go 'Round" was omitted.

Related Topics:
Rick Springfield - The Four Tops - The Hooters - Power Station - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Madonna

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There were also issues with the artists themselves. Two such performers were left off at their own request - Led Zeppelin and Santana. The rock band Led Zeppelin defended their decision not to be included on the grounds that their performance was "sub-standard," but to lend their support Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have pledged to donate proceeds from an upcoming Led Zeppelin DVD release to the campaign, and John Paul Jones has pledged proceeds from his current American tour with Mutual Admiration Society.

Related Topics:
Led Zeppelin - Santana - Jimmy Page - Robert Plant - John Paul Jones - Mutual Admiration Society

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The British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown decided the VAT collected on the DVD will be given back to the charity, which will raise an extra £5 for every DVD sold.

Related Topics:
Chancellor of the Exchequer - Gordon Brown - VAT

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Unofficial recordings

Because the "Live Aid" broadcast was watched by billions of people, most of the footage was recorded on home consumer VCRs all around the world in various qualities. Many of these recordings were in mono, because most of the home VCRs at that time were mono recorders and also because the European BBC broadcast was in mono (as mentioned previously, both the US MTV broadcast and the ABC Radio Network simulcast was stereo). These recordings started to circulate among collectors 20 years ago and in recent years have also appeared on the internet in file sharing networks. Since the official "Live Aid" DVD release includes only partial footage of this event, unofficial distribution sources continue to stay the one and only source of the most complete recordings of this important historical music event.

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In any event, the official DVD is the only authorized video release in which proceeds go directly to famine relief, the cause the concert was originally intended to help.

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