On this on the spot was born a brand new age of musical efficiency that might be notable as a lot for what issues appeared like as for the way in which they sounded. The street to right this moment’s special-effects-packed, big-ticket live performance expertise was laid at Dwell Assist. The Age of Spectacle began right here.
Important viewing
What was to climax with a TV occasion that everyone watched as a result of they wished to started with a TV occasion that many watched as a result of that they had little selection. That was Michael Buerk’s report from the camps on the plain of Korem in Ethiopia’s Tigray area the place, in October 1984, many 1000’s had been dying because of famine and struggle.
Bob Geldof was at residence on the night of Buerk’s broadcast – as a result of his profession because the lead singer of The Boomtown Rats was now not fairly as chart-busting because it had been. Moved and enraged by what he noticed, he took the prodigious power that might ordinarily have been put into plugging a brand new single, and dragooned his pop mates into singing on a charity report.
One of the broadly held misconceptions concerning the in style music scene of right this moment is that it strikes swiftly. That’s not the case. It’s glacial. Glastonbury now entails extra planning than the Normandy D-Day landings. In contrast, Band Assist (and the live performance that adopted, Dwell Assist) got here collectively so rapidly they took your breath away – and no one realised the extent of what had been achieved till lengthy after it was over.
Once I went to Sarm West Studios on Sunday 25 November 1984 to report on the recording of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, there was no assure that the challenge would fly in any respect. Bob Geldof’s doing a charity report, the murmurs went: we’ll consider it once we see it. Two weeks later, it was primary – the largest story in music – and your entire neighbours had snapped up a duplicate.
Why? Have been they seized by altruism? That’s not possible to know. The motivations of these individuals who grabbed the only in Woolworths and Our Worth and a thousand different stores that December had been most likely as combined as these of the individuals who had been invited to sing on it: blissful to do one thing for trigger, and in addition moderately having fun with feeling at one with the nationwide temper. At this time we might name it a vibe shift.
The report was such a phenomenon that it demanded some type of follow-up. By some extraordinary stroke of fine fortune, Geldof – whose private success had ebbed – had caught a wave of public sentiment. Immediately, all people in his orbit – the broadcasters, the acts, the report corporations and the media – appeared to see the place he would possibly lead them subsequent. A present of some variety?
There had been profit live shows earlier than, after all, with proceeds donated to assist the victims of wars and humanitarian disasters in Biafra (Nigeria), Bangladesh and Kampuchea (now Cambodia). Within the years following Dwell Assist would come Farm Assist, Nelson Mandela’s seventieth birthday, The Live performance for New York Metropolis, and so many others that they swiftly hardened into ritual. However solely Dwell Assist reverberates strongly sufficient within the public reminiscence that it conjures up individuals to recall the place they had been that day, and to reminisce about how they felt historical past was being made.
Good thing about expertise
The large pop names of the early Nineteen Eighties – the likes of Elvis Costello, Boy George, Paul Weller, Ian Dury and Joe Strummer – had been notable for 2 issues. The primary was their readiness to opine on a variety of topics with out worry of cancellation; the second was their consciousness of the place their predecessors – and right here they had been fascinated by the likes of the Beatles, Stones and David Bowie – might have gone unsuitable again within the days once they had been the brand new youngsters on the block.
None of this new galaxy of stars, whose profile was heightened due to MTV and the sudden ubiquity of the pop video, was extra garrulous or extra conscious of their half in carrying on the custom of massive gestures and good works than Irishman Geldof.
When he determined to comply with up the roaring success of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ with a profit live performance to be known as Dwell Assist, he consulted a former Beatle for recommendation. In 1971, George Harrison had organised the sooner star-studded Live performance for Bangladesh in New York. Kind out the charitable facet first, suggested the Beatle who wrote ‘Taxman’, or the Inland Income will take most of what you elevate.
In contrast to Harrison’s Bangladesh present, which was poorly filmed and given an underwhelming cinema launch months later, Dwell Assist could be deliberate from the beginning as occasion tv. It was designed to be skilled by as many individuals as could possibly be reached on the day – and on this it was a toddler of the instances. It will be staged at two venues on the identical day, with a formidable roster of principally British and Irish acts taking part in Wembley Stadium in London, and an equally stellar line-up of largely American artists at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. (Within the occasion, Phil Collins jetted throughout the Atlantic to seem in each venues.)
Dwell Assist proved an excellent higher use of Geldof’s abilities than Band Assist or any variety of Boomtown Rats data. It was exactly as a result of his group had failed within the US that he understood the significance of interesting to the American market.
He may now not enable the likes of Paul Weller and Standing Quo to be his occasion’s solely stars. He needed to browbeat The Who and Led Zeppelin to get again on stage. He needed to entice musicians of an older technology – veterans corresponding to Elton John, David Bowie and Queen, most of whom had been eager to be invited whereas cautious of getting their thunder stolen by one another. And, with a view to be sure that the occasion was perceived as must-watch TV, Geldof needed to get everybody to undergo taking part in not more than a handful of numbers – a tough promote in a enterprise the place the pecking order is measured in stage time, and all people needs to go on at nightfall.
Having labored as a journalist, Geldof understood the significance of constructing Dwell Assist as a narrative that the favored press – nonetheless an enormous deal in these days – would get behind. He knew that the attendance of Princess Diana – who preferred to have it recognized that she was a fan of George Michael and skated the halls of Kensington Palace to the songs of Dire Straits – was way more vital than that of her husband, Charles. Geldof, a media tycoon in ready, was capable of put stress on the BBC to deliver its unmatched expertise of outdoor broadcasts to bear on the day. No one else would have been capable of deliver it off, earlier than or since.
Impartial spirit
Though many of the acts concerned would have blenched on the concept, it owed quite a bit to a can-do spirit that Margaret Thatcher would have applauded. Most of the prime movers had come up by way of the unbiased report labels of the late Seventies, the place that they had realised that nothing bought performed until you probably did it your self. Moreover, since Dwell Assist was being deliberate throughout a ‘Second British Invasion’ when the commanding heights of American pop had been conquered by Annie Lennox and Boy George, the British music trade was going by way of one in all its sporadic cocky intervals.
The Band Assist Belief – the charity arrange to make sure that the errors of 1971 weren’t repeated – might have been powered by established names corresponding to promoter Harvey Goldsmith, artist supervisor Chris Morrison and tv mogul Michael Grade, nevertheless it was Geldof who offered the management. He employed each inch of the bully pulpit offered by his unsought elevation to ‘Saint Bob’ standing to tug everybody into line, from British Airways to Robert Maxwell to the commerce unions.
It couldn’t presumably occur right this moment. The world through which somebody like Bob Geldof may choose up the cellphone to a handful of highly effective, well-intentioned individuals within the media and have them order the clearing of complete TV schedules and whole newspapers to make room for this largest of splashes has evaporated within the 40 years since 1985.
On the similar time, the conquest of public discourse by social media has resulted in a world the place well-meant initiatives are lambasted for falling in need of perfection moderately than modestly applauded for giving issues a strive. Again in 1985, only a few individuals identified that there have been comparatively few ladies and subsequent to no individuals of color on the invoice at Wembley. While you look again on the footage right this moment, when identification politics is to our period what respectability was to the Victorians, these sins of omission are the primary issues that strike you. We might by no means be so harmless once more.
Sunny disposition
As proceedings bought below manner in Wembley at midday that July Saturday, although, I keep in mind looking on the spectacle and considering: someone should have lit a candle for Geldof. On the time, the ticket worth of £25 appeared a bit on the stiff facet, however individuals had been ready to miss that truth as a result of half of the proceeds had been going to charity. And on the day, it was straightforward to see that the group – way more ecumenical than the usual partisan viewers at rock live shows – was in temper. That was partly as a result of the solar was shining – hardly ever one thing Londoners take as a right. It glinted on the trumpets of the Coldstream Guards as they performed their fanfare (a really Mary Poppins contact for individuals tuning in abroad) earlier than Standing Quo bought issues up and operating with essentially the most good tune selection of all the day: John Fogerty’s ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’.
In that superb sunshine, the BBC’s reside tv protection of the spectacle was pleasing to the attention. On reflection, it felt as if that day had efficiently offered Center England the thought of a rock live performance not as a brow-furrowing ordeal however as a competition through which you and your fellow viewers members linked arms to hitch in with songs you had recognized since your teenage years.
The expertise of open-air reside pop music, now as a lot part of the British summer time as Wimbledon, was on the time in its infancy. But all through that afternoon, swelling numbers of Britons deserted mowing the garden or cleansing the automotive to look at Sting and Phil Collins or Sade carry out at Wembley – albeit from the consolation of their dwelling rooms.
Dwell Assist had different unintended penalties. It confirmed the top of a technology hole that punk had performed a lot to foster within the earlier decade. For a number of chart acts of 1985 – Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, the Thompson Twins – it marked the high-water mark of their recognition. For others, corresponding to U2 – who had feared that the entire expertise would show to be a career-ending catastrophe as soon as Bono had disappeared into the group, unable to seek out his manner again – it proved an unintentional triumph.
For older acts that Geldof had attracted as a result of he thought-about them very important to abroad gross sales, it got here as a large bonus. In a single day, the likes of Queen and Elton John went from being mildly passé to changing into bona fide ‘legends’, embraced by one and all. And, after all, what no one observed on the time was that we had been getting into a future through which nearly all of pop stars could be outdated ones – not that it’s dented their recognition one bit. When Paul McCartney closed out the London facet of Dwell Assist, we appeared in marvel at this venerable determine taking to the stage to sing ‘Let It Be’, and questioned at his nice age. (He was 43.) However he wasn’t retiring: as we had been to find over the subsequent 40 years, he was simply getting began.
Apart from all that, Dwell Assist offered the mannequin for a brand new type of media occasion on which burgeoning broadcasters would converge: World Cups, Glastonbury, the Oscars and state events internationally, consumed on an increasing number of channels.
Phenomenal begin
Because it turned out, 13 July was simply the beginning of the Dwell Assist phenomenon. Over the times and weeks that adopted, the newspapers went all out with wall-to-wall protection of the occasion, its organiser and contributors. The marketing campaign for Bob Geldof to be given a knighthood started subsequent day, and the musicians who took half had been mostly described as ‘heroes’. In fact, most of them weren’t any such factor: they had been simply glad to be included, and blissful to have the publicity. But there was no getting away from the truth that the way in which individuals appeared to really feel about stars who play guitars was totally different from how they felt about actors or novelists. Dwell Assist performed a key position in burnishing the standing of those individuals to being in some way on the facet of the angels. The street to the current, through which any rock star over the age of 60 has likelihood of being invited to Buckingham Palace, runs proper by way of Dwell Assist.
Some £40m was raised that day for famine reduction in Ethiopia, and the occasions of 13 July 1985 modified the face of charity. Immediately, it was now not the kindly outdated woman coming down your avenue with the gathering tin. It was essentially the most well-known person who the organisers may discover, looming out of your TV set in a T-shirt bearing a provocative slogan, demanding that you just become involved.
And one thing else occurred to us that day: we fell in love with scale itself. You may detect this each time you go to an enormous live performance, which an increasing number of of us do. Earlier than something has occurred – typically earlier than a single observe has been performed – the group will start roaring their approval, whooping and hollering to precise their delight at merely being a part of one thing.
This being 2025, they can even be capturing their very own movie of the event on their cellphone. Will they watch it again? Most likely not. However it should reside lengthy of their reminiscence. Like Dwell Assist.
David Hepworth is an writer and broadcaster. His daily habits guide is Hope I Get Outdated Earlier than I Die: Why Rock Stars By no means Retire (Bantam, 2024)
This text was first printed within the August 2025 subject of BBC History Magazine