Live Aid was 25 years ago today and I’m wondering where the hell all those years have gone! I remember this event like it was yesterday. That my sound a clichéd thing to say but I honestly do remember it that well.
I watched the first hour or at home at my parents and then legged it up to my then girlfriend’s house (married, divorced, one child many years latter)and watched half an hour then a 2 min run to the pub.
The pub was the old Yates’ wine lodge in the now demolished and part rebuilt Urmston precinct. In those days pub rarely had a TV so this was just a colour TV dumped on a table in the pub with everyone sat round it. This was also the days of the old opening hours, 12 – 3 and then 5:30 – 11pm so we weren’t there long and then it was back to her house.
At this point the memory fades due to the beer. 
But I do remember watching it right to the end as the US part of it was 5 hours behind us and went on well into the early hours here.
I have a 4 hour VHS here that is roughly split 50/40 between Wembley and JFK stadium in Pennsylvania which I really must transfer to DVD.
I must mention for younger readers what the technology was like back then;
No mobile phones available to the public.
Computers at home were mostly CBM64, some sort of Sinclair or a BBC electron. The Amiga 1000 was still weeks away.
The web was still 7 years away. So there was no Twitter/facebook, we used to go out and talk to people!
There were only 4 TV channels. Beeb 1 & 2, ITV and Channel 4.
Today though, 25 years after, the message remains the same. People do not need to die from famine, we can all make a difference and should do our utmost, in our own individual little way, to achieve this aim.
I’ll leave you with a video that on the day was introduced by Bowie at Wembley. It consists of video footage of the famine taken in 1984/85 and is set to the Cars “whose going to drive you home”. This is the more recent version with added content but the first few mins are the same. I was never the same after seeing this back then.
(The little girl survived and appeared on stage at Live 8 in 2005)
Live Aid Youtube channel. Plenty of vids from the day.
