This year marks the 35th anniversary of the iconic Live Aid benefit concert.
Following the success of the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas", which claimed the official UK single's Christmas number one of 1984 and raised over eight million pounds for the Ethiopia famine relief, Bob Geldoff set his sights on staging a huge concert to raise further funding; hence the creation of Live AId.
The benefit concert was held on Saturday, 13th July 1985 at Wembley Stadium, London and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. Starting at 12 noon (BST) at the Wembley Stadium with the John F. Kennedy Stadium joining in the proceedings at 13:51 (BST), the concert broadcasted for just over 16 hours, but with artists performing simultaneously at the two venues, the actual total concert-length was much longer.
Queen's Iconic Performance
Undoubtedly, Live Aid is well remembered by Queen's show-stealing performance, in particular, the way Freddie Mercury commanded the stage and engaged with the crowd of 72,000 from the moment when stepped on stage right up till the moment he left. During the set, Mercury even interacted with the cameraman to really get into the living rooms of the viewers from around the globe.
For the dedicated fans of Queen, the delivery of the show and the crowd interaction was no surprise, however, with the world watching, Mercury gave a whole new life and following to Queen. With growing speculation from the media about a split, Queen would go on to record their twelfth album "A Kind Of Magic" and perform their last album promotional concert tour, "The Magic Tour", hence proving the media wrong and continue their journey until the untimely death of Mercury.
At 18:41, Queen was introduced to the Live Aid proceedings by the comedy duo "Smith and Jones" (Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones) dressed up as two policemen, asking the audience to keep the noise down as a woman in Belgium has complained and that there are people out there who are not used to the trends of modern music.
1st Song - Bohemian Rhapsody
2nd Song - Radio Ga Ga
3rd Song - Ay-Oh & Hammer To Fall
Song 4 - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Song 5 - We Will Rock You
Final Song - We Are The Champions
Later on in the evening, at 21:48, Freddie Mercury and Brian May returned to the stage to perform the most poignant song, "Is This The World We Created?"