LIVE AID, QUEEN, FREDDIE MERCURY AND AIDS. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
LIVE AID, QUEEN, FREDDIE MERCURY AND AIDS.
BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Do you remember where you
were when LIVE AID happened? I do. I was just a kid, obsessed with pop and
rock, glued to the television on which the biggest benefit concert the world
had ever seen was about to kick off with British broadcaster Richard Skinner
uttering the immortal words, ‘It’s twelve noon in London (also Ireland,
where I was!), seven am in Philadelphia and, around the world, it’s time for
LIVE AID.’ It was a gorgeous sunny Saturday in Ireland and I was
super-excited about having a day of top quality pop and rock from some of the biggest
stars on the planet to look forward to.
The legendary concert, organised
by rock musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, happened on this day thirty-seven
years ago, and it was conceived of after the BBC aired some horrific news
reports by Michael Buerk on the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia.
The initial Band Aid project
saw the song performed by Various Artists, Do They Know It’s Christmas?,
reaching the coveted Number One spot in the charts during Christmas of 1984. I
still love watching the official video for the song, in which those
never-to-be-surpassed ‘80s celebrities arrive at the studio to record the single,
and Bono was cool for the very last time.
Live Aid was the massive
follow-on from the charity Christmas single. When the shit hits the fan, people
do what they can. Writers write, artists paint and singers sing. It would be
the biggest charity concert in the world bar none, giving its proceeds and the
performers’ fees to the starving people of Africa.
It was unique for the fact
that it was being broadcast from two places at once, Wembley Stadium in London
and the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, and being live-streamed around the world
courtesy of the BBC in London and, in America, ABC and MTV.
Some of the biggest pop and
rock names in the world performed at LIVE AID. Some members of rock’s royalty
were actually still alive to perform, which was unreal. Look at the
names of some of the musicians who strutted their stuff on the British stage:
Status
Quo
QUEEN
David
Bowie
The
Who
Elton
John
Paul
McCartney
Dire
Straits
Spandau
Ballet
Elvis
Costello
Sting
Phil
Collins
U2
I mean to say, any one of
those alone would be worth getting out of bed to watch for free in the comfort
of your own home, but all of them together...?! Jiminy Cricket. Now let’s have a (Pat?!) Butcher’s at a few of the American
legends who took part:
Joan
Baez
Black
Sabbath
Crosby,
Stills and Nash
Judas
Priest
The
Beach Boys
Simple
Minds
Madonna
Tom
Petty and the Heartbreakers
Neil
Young
Eric
Clapton
Duran
Duran
Phil
Collins
Mick
Jagger and Tina Turner
Bob
Dylan, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood
Notable absences were Bruce
Springsteen, who declined to perform simply on the grounds that he didn’t
realise just how big the Krusty the Clown Comeback Special was going to be (a
reference there to the Simpsons!), and Michael Jackson, who apparently was
practically living in his studio at the time, frantically recording stuff to a deadline.
Annie Lennox had a sore
throat and couldn’t come, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy was said to have been
devastated that he wasn’t asked to perform in the British leg of the concert
and Roger Waters, who’d refused to put Pink Floyd back together for the
worldwide gig, came by himself instead. You know what? Maybe he was right.
Apparently, between ourselves, the LIVE AID Led Zeppelin reunion was a
disaster…!
It's common knowledge that
Queen, the biggest rock band in the world back then (in the world, I say!),
gave the best and most memorable performance on the day, out of any of the
iconic musicians who had turned up to play, have a laugh and make a few million
quid for the starving folks in Africa. They chose their set-list wisely:
Bohemian Rhapsody- the first
part
Radio Ga-Ga
Hammer To Fall
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
We Will Rock You
We Are The Champions
The crowd went wild for it.
Freddie Mercury, the Greatest Showman of all time, I say, all time, dressed in
iconic vest, faded blue jeans, trainers, studded belt and arm circlet, gave the
performance of a lifetime.
He strutted, pouted,
shimmied, flung the microphone and stand all over the place (I always wonder how
he managed to never take poor Brian’s eye out with his flagrant recklessness!),
punched the air and gyrated like a wild thing. He had the crowd eating out of
his hand with his call-and-response trick (‘Aaaaaaaaay-o…!), and was
told by no less a personage than Elton John that he’d stolen the show. ‘All
right!,’ as Freddie himself might say.
People have speculated for
years if Freddie knew he had AIDS at the time of Live Aid. As a matter of fact,
he only developed full-blown AIDS around 1987, by which time he’d begun to feel
unwell and slow down. It’s thought that he’d picked up the HIV virus from a sexual partner in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, probably during the
period when he was living in New York.
That particular period was a bit of a sexual free-for-all for gay men in America, particularly in San Francisco and New York. They were out in the open and proud of it. But then in 1981 came a strange little newspaper headline, seemingly out of nowhere: ‘Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals…’
AIDS, Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome, was considered to be purely a gay issue at first. It was
even referred to as GRID initially, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, before
the scientists began to work out that this horrible disease wasn’t just
happening to sexually active gay men.
Intravenous drug users were next on the
chopping block, because they shared each other’s dirty needles, followed by
haemophiliacs who’d had transfusions of infected blood, then Haitians. Yes,
people from Haiti kept presenting with symptoms back then as well, and the
stigma that attached to them as a result was hard to shake off.
When it was discovered that mothers could pass
the HIV virus along to their babies in the womb, and heterosexuals could pass
it to each other (more men to women than women to men, as women are the
receivers of semen), a lot more funding was suddenly available for AIDS
research. It wasn’t just a gay issue any more. This affected heterosexuals now
as well…
Though Freddie didn’t go on
to develop AIDS until 1987, he may have been feeling a little unwell or tired
around the time of Live Aid. People with the HIV virus often complained of swollen
lymph nodes all over the body, thrush in the mouth, a sore throat and a feeling of ‘general
malaise,’ which I interpret as feeling like crap a bit but not knowing exactly
why. Even if he had anything like this going on, it didn’t show in his
amazingly energetic, electrifying performance on the 13th July, 1985.
Freddie kept working on writing and recording songs more or less up to the time of his death. One of the reasons he kept his
illness secret was that he feared that the inevitable media circus would get in
the way of the thing he valued most in life, his music-making.
He had his steady boyfriend
Jim, his beloved cats, his beautiful home in Garden Lodge and constant contact
with his best friend and former wife, Mary Austin, all throughout his final years. I hope these things
cushioned poor dear Freddie from some of the worst effects of the loathsome
disease that stalked him.
Thirty-seven years ago today, at around twenty to seven in the evening, Freddie Mercury woke up an entire new audience to the music and possibilities of Queen. He rocked and rolled, he aaaaay-o’d and he showed the estimated TV audience of 1.9 billion, 40% of the world’s population, that Queen were still A Force To Be Reckoned With. Rest in peace, Freddie. God knows you’ve earned it.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is
out now from Poolbeg Books:
Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN
STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is
out now from Poolbeg Books:
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