20 Minutes That Changed Music: Queen at Live Aid, July 13th, 1985

20 Minutes That Changed Music: Queen at Live Aid, July 13th, 1985
by Ian Wigley

As a youngster my dad always used to buy every number one single, namely every record that made it to the top of the British charts each week. Back in the day, 1980-85, if you wanted a hit single, a number one, you had to sell about a million records; today it’s different, 30,000 record sales gets you to number one. My dad used to buy me Madness records, a band from London, a ska kind of band, lots of guitars and a horn section or two. I still have those records in my spare room, treasured they will be until the day I die. My dad has impeccable music tastes, heavy on The Beatles, Dusty Springfield, and lots of 60s stuff that’s above my head. He’s way too intelligent in music terms for me.

In the early 80s my dad bought ‘The Works’ by Queen. Queen were a band that by all intents and purposes were past their sell-by-date, their career as 70s rock icons was done. But ‘The Works’ was a resurrection, a chance for this band to get a third chance. The singles from that record were flawless, ‘Radio Ga-ga and ‘I Want to Break Free’ speak volumes to begin with. They could sell out stadiums at the drop of a hat, the media were walking around in the palm of their hands, playing lip service to their every move, despite their bad albums a year or five before. Something new was on the horizon.

In 1984 Sir Bob Geldof, tortured genius, almost-failed musician with The Boomtown Rats, and a B-list celeb, decided to try and solve Africa’s money problems through a song (‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’) with his rock star pals, and then subsequently staged a concert in England (Wembley Stadium, London) and the US (Philadelphia, JFK Stadium), to be known as Live Aid. He had a cornucopia of top-notch artists on board, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys, Simple Minds, everyone who was anyone in the 60s, 70s or 80s. One band Sir Bob did put on that stage in London, was Queen. Thank God.

Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor, all supremely talented musicians in their own right, all worthy of the status they were given, played Live Aid as Queen, something they always had been. If you talk to anyone about Live Aid, about the global spectacle it was, the question they’ll ask you is this: “Do you remember Queen?” And we do. Live Aid was about throwing food into starving children’s mouths, about saving a continent from human disaster, that’s all it mainly was, but scratch below the surface, and it was about Queen, and those 20 minutes they played.

Freddie Mercury was the ultimate frontman, better even than David Lee Roth. He steered Queen through thick and thin, note-perfect in every vocal way, a showman in a very different way to David Lee Roth – Dave had the looks and the charisma, Freddie had the talent. So, Live Aid had a few decent acts on from the start, a handful of good musicians flaunting their wares to an audience of billions, but the best was yet to come. Somewhere around 7pm we had Queen on our Wembley Stadium stage.

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, a song that is positively embarrassing, opened up the show, only to be cut short to provide an interlude to ‘Radio Ga-ga’. By this point the whole of Wembley Stadium was freaked out and rocking, it was something we’d never seen before, something we’ll never see again. Freddie single-handedly took 80,000 people out of their mundane 9-to-5 existence and shook their little worlds up. He’d got everyone just where he wanted them, the world revolved around him.

Apparently a musician is ‘meant’ to walk a stage, they posses that something that makes them that ‘plus-one’—David Bowie has it, Stephen Patrick Morrissey has it, Mick Jagger has it, Michael Stipe has it, Robert Plant has it, Jarvis Cocker has it, Liam Gallagher has it, so does Frank Black, and to a certain sober extent, Ryan (not Bryan) Adams has it. It’s that intangible something that separates the greats from the average musician. Freddie Mercury had it times ten, and he proved it fifteen or twenty times over at Live Aid.

So, ‘Radio Ga-ga’ went, everyone lost their minds, and then we had ‘Hammer to Fall’, an early 80s rock classic in its time. Freddie had people killing for him at 7pm on a hazy July 13th night in 1985. I was too young to appreciate it, I was only a kid, but 20 years down the line I can get the gist, and it doesn’t get much better. I spent £50 on the Live Aid DVD box-set last year, only for Queen. That might be the best £50 I ever spent. Shower praise over Freddie, by all means, he deserves it, they can never taint him in my eyes.

The show slowed down after ‘Hammer to Fall’, we had ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ to ground us in reality, a small anti-climax in a show-stopping performance. Then Freddie pulled out his next best stop after ‘Radio Ga-ga’ and gave us ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We are the Champions’ straight off the bat. He had the world (yes, the world) eating out of his hand, quite literally going stir crazy, and then he laid those two songs on us to finish his set! 80,000 people swaying in unison to that last song is enough to bring a lump to most people’s throats, but put on the stage of the world for such a humanitarian case just multiplies the whole thing.

I’ve seen the cream of the crop in terms of music—Morrissey, Oasis twice, The Ramones, Aerosmith, The Kinks, Pulp, Iron Maiden, Madonna, Jane’s Addiction, AC/DC, Motley Crue, you name them, I’ve seen them all. But you show me a band that kicks it as freestyle as Queen did that day…I don’t think you can. That was it, the best 20 minutes in music we’ll ever see, Queen at Live Aid, July 13th 1985. If you’ve never seen it, buy it on DVD now, it’ll take your breath away. Music has never been the same since.

Ian can be reached at ian@babblog.com.