Video: 'MTV Live Aid (7/13/1985)' (200 clips)
(Saturday, July 13, 1985, 12 noon-4:00 a.m. British Summer Time/7:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m. EDT; during Live Aid) — In a groundbreaking display of global unity through music, the world came together today for Live Aid, a transatlantic concert broadcast live to an estimated 1.9 billion people in more than 150 countries — nearly 40% of the planet’s population.
The simultaneous concerts, held at Wembley Stadium in London (click here for a list of performance times/performers/set lists) and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia (click here for a list of performance times/performers/set lists), were organized by musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for victims of the devastating famine in Ethiopia.
The event was a follow-up to the chart-topping charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” released in December 1984.
Billed as the “global jukebox,” Live Aid drew a who’s who of the music world and sparked additional benefit concerts across the globe, from Canada to Japan and the Soviet Union to Australia. It also marked one of the largest satellite link-ups in television history, delivering an unprecedented moment of real-time, worldwide connection.
Video: 'Live aid 1985 Estadio Wembley y Estadi' (161 clips)
Beyond the music, the event shifted political and humanitarian conversations. “We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda,” Geldof said, “and, through the lingua franca of the planet – which is not English but rock ‘n’ roll – we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus.”
Some aid workers later credited the concert with pushing humanitarian concerns to the center of Western foreign policy. “Live Aid created something permanent and self-sustaining,” Geldof said in another interview, though he also posed a difficult question: “Why is Africa getting poorer?”
The money raised — millions of pounds — was quickly funneled to non-governmental organizations working in Ethiopia. But over the years, allegations have surfaced that some funds were misused or diverted to the regime of Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam. While early BBC reporting raised concerns about aid being spent on arms, the broadcaster’s own Editorial Complaints Unit later found “no evidence to support such statements.”
Brian Barder, who served as British Ambassador to Ethiopia during the period, called the allegations “entirely false,” stating that “nothing of the sort occurred” regarding Band Aid and Live Aid contributions.
Despite the controversies, Live Aid’s legacy endures as a milestone in global activism, pop culture, and international cooperation — a moment when music truly tried to change the world.
