Rock bands set for huge event

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 1

Rock bands set for huge event

NZPA-AP London Royalty will open it, a who’s who of pop stars will take part, and perhaps a billion people around the world will watch on television a 16-hour trans-Atlan-tic rock concert today in aid of African famine victims. The concert, called Live Aid and held in stadiums linked by satellite 5000 km apart in London and Philadelphia, will be beamed live to at least 88 countries, organisers say. Tapes will be relayed or sent by diplomatic pouch to almost every other nation. China turned down an offered satellite feed and South Africa is barred because of its racial policies. But the Soviet Union’s State television network will receive the transmission, and perhaps screen part of it, as will a clutch of other Eastern bloc nations. A performance by a Soviet group, Autograph, will be slotted live from Moscow into the extravaganza alongside numbers by the rich and famous of Western pop music, from Paul McCartney to U2, said Bernard Doherty, spokesman for the British promoters. Billed as the greatest rock concert of all time, Live Aid is the culmination of a dream born out of a nightmare which haunted the Irish singer, Bob Geldof, of the Boomtown, Rats, after he watched television film

last October of the starving and dying in drought-rav-aged Ethiopia. After today’s concert, Geldof is likely to have raised more for Ethiopia than the British Government’s total aid last year. Geldof organised top British rock stars into a group Band Aid whose record “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” raised £8 million ($22.8 million). USA For Africa followed with a multimil-lion-dollar fund-raising disc, “We Are The World.” Geldof says that, conservatively, today’s extravaganza will raise £lO million ($28.5 million). With the Band Aid proceeds, that would top Britain’s £25.8 million ($73.53 million) Government aid to Ethiopia last year. “It’s pathetic that the price of a life is a plastic record. But if that’s the way it has to be, you have to use glamour,” Geldof said. The bill includes Status Quo, Style Council, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Sting, U2, the Beach Boys, Dire Straits, Tears For Fears, Queen, Simple Minds, David Bowie, Elton John, Wham! and former Beatle, McCartney. All are performing The British group, rne Who, which split in 1983, has re-formed to take part in Live Aid. Mick Jagger and David Bowie, performing together for the first time, this week recorded the song, “Dancing in the Street.”