Live Aid – 25 years ago
Today marks the 25th anniversary of Live Aid, a sentence that makes me feel old. I wrote what I think is my definitive take on the day two years ago. I have nothing new to add, except for a few minor edits. But it’s the 25th anniversary of a big event I actually attended, so I will recycle that post and re-upload my Live Aid mix, ripped from DVD.To see what else happened that day and what awful music populated the US charts, check out the always enjoyable The Hits Just Keep Coming blog.
The music was mostly terrible, the artists tended to be self-serving and smug, we had shit seats right at the back of Wembley Stadium, and the legacy of the event is questioned by many. And still, Live Aid ranks among the best days of my life, at least in as far as concerts are concerned.
Indisputably, there were long stretches of tedium, watching wasters like Sting and Phil Collins being bumptious, Spandau Ballet demonstrating why they were a rubbish live act, Adam Ant destroying his already skidding career with one song, and the creations of mad hairstylists immortalising the decade of my youth as one bereft of sense and elegance.
But these dull stretches were enlivened by some high point. Everybody is right, Queen were indeed, well, majestic. Fred had sex with the whole of Wembley stadium, and left us panting for more. Queen’s set provided my abiding memory: the crowds doing that arms-aloft-clap-clap-arms-aloft-clap-clap thing from the video of Radio Gaga – what a sight that was from where I was sitting overlooking the masses on the pitch – followed by Mercury leading the 80,000 people (or whatever) in vocal exercises. And I’m not even a Queen fan, certainly wasn’t in 1985.
Other highlights included getting to watch The Who play live, playing my favourite song of their catalogue, Won’t Get Fooled Again; and U2 playing my favourite of their repertoire, Bad, with the mulleted Bono (then not yet conclusively the pompous ponce we know him as today) grabbing that girl from the crowd. It was not a spontaneous act, though; he performed that shtick, probably stolen from Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark video, during every concert at the time (I saw him do it three times in three countries that summer). At the time I thought his sampling of other people’s songs (here Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones), was cool; now not so much. And George Michael, coming out as a bearded man for the first time, was magnificent when he sang Elton John’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. When he got around to recording it almost a decade later, it had lost its magic.
In Philadelphia, Hall & Oates stole the show. In a pretty soul-free line-up, the blue-eyed soulmen hooked up with bona fide soul legends, singing soul music. Otherwise there were the Four Tops, and, at some point when nobody was watching, Ashford & Simpson with Teddy Pendergrass (R.I.P.), the latter appearing on stage for the first time since his accident which left him paraplegic. Oh, and Pati LaBelle, whose acute histrionics were entirely distressing. And, I must say, Madonna (wearing entirely regrettable floral trousers) was energetic. Her line, “I’m not gonna take shit off tonight” in reference to just released nude photos of her in Penthouse was a welcome glimpse of humour.
Embarrassing moments prevailed, however. Sumon Le Bon, never a good singer, totally missed a note in A View To A Kill. Bob Dylan and the two craggies from the Stones (who looked 60 then, but were only in their early 40s) contrived to perform an amusing cacophony, which the performers believably blamed on not being able to hear each other. Frankly, I thought Keef was high, Ronny pissed and Dylan no different from usual.
But the cringe moment of the day belonged to the man who made Live Aid possible, Bob Geldof (Midge fucking who?). Of course, credit to Bob for doing something; indeed, more than most of us have done. It was commendable and all that. When it was their turn, the Boomtown Rats gave a particularly feckless rendition of I Don’t Like Mondays, with the sidekicks not even bothering to sing the backing vocals in tune. Then at the line “and the lesson today is how to die”, in a song about a schoolground shooting, Geldof stopped, raised his fist and let the crowd lap up his status as Temporary Messiah while they reflected on the supposed symbolic magnitude of the line. You see, Ethiopians are dying, and the lesson today is how to die. Which is deep man. Especially if you consider how many Ethiopians are running around with silicon chips inside their heads getting switched to overload.
Likewise, the use of the Cars’ song Drive to soundtrack that utterly devastating video of starving people was embarrassing. One misapplied line in a love song is not suitable as a device for the manipulation of those who viewed the video. It was not just mawkish; it was ill-judged, trivialising the famine, as though it can be explained by a random pop number. It symbolised the cocaine-fuelled rock triumphalism of the day. Perhaps Midge Ure captured the true spirit of Live Aid’s star-roster when he crooned that line from Vienna: “This means nothing to me.”
Doubtless many acts on the bill felt deeply about feeding the world and reminding the starving Ethiopians that they were doing their best to ensure that there will be snow in Africa next Christmastime, regardless of the inopportune consequences of such radical climate change. But many of those who took part were in truth opportunists, wanting in on the cash-in. Some, such as Queen (who might have been sincere or opportunistic or both), revived their flagging careers on the back of Live Aid. All but one act recorded increased sales after the event, the exception being the hapless Adam Ant. Live Aid was at least as much about corporate profiteering as it was about social engagement. Did much of the profits from increased post-Live Aid sales go to famine relief? Didn’t think so.
Paradoxically, Live Aid was also a bit of a racist event, and the 4-DVD set aggravates that defect. No African artists other than the Nigerian-born but otherwise decidedly western Sade appeared in London or Philadelphia; an oddity when the event was supposed to raise awareness about Africa. As noted above, black artists were very thin on the bill. The DVD set even manages to exclude the Four Tops’ 5-song set, as well as those of Billy Ocean and Run-DMC (featured in the extras). The only other excised acts are Santana and, commendably, Power Station.
I don’t buy into the fairly popular idea that Live Aid was in itself malign. Pragmatically, it raised money which saved some lives, and helped build clinics and water purification schemes. That is admirable. It did raise awareness on a range of issues concerning famine, albeit imperfectly, and promoted some sense of social responsibility. In the callous, self-centred 1980s, Live Aid made charity cool. But it also proposed a notion that charity is not selfless, that for your charity you must get something in return — at the very least the option to congratulate yourself. Consumerist charity, one might call it.
Live Aid did not see itself as a solution but as a contribution to a problem. Its contribution was effective in addressing an immediate crisis. The music, however, was mostly shit. To celebrate the music that wasn’t, or to observe the performances which were poor but stand as novelties we may marvel at, here is a compilation of my highlights of Live Aid (plus the chaos of Bob, Keef and Ron).
TRACKLISTING:
1. Status Quo – Rockin’ All Over The World
2. Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays
3. Elvis Costello – All You Need Is Love
4. U2 – Bad
5. Beach Boys – Good Vibrations
6. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
7. Queen - Radio Gaga
8. David Bowie – Heroes
9. The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again
10. George Michael – Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me
11. Paul McCartney – Let It Be
12. Crosby, Stills & Nash – Teach Your Children
13. Neil Young – Nothing Is Perfect (In God’s Perfect Plan)
14. Hall & Oates with Eddie Kendricks - Get Ready
15. Hall & Oates with Eddie Kendricks & David Ruffin – Ain’t Too Proud To Beg
16. Hall & Oates with Eddie Kendricks & David Ruffin – My Girl
17. Bob Dylan, Keith Richards & Ron Wood – Blowing In The Wind
.
Much of Eurodisco was made in West Germany, with Giorgio Moroder producing Donna Summer in Munich, and acts like the Silver Convention strutting their shiny trousers there, too. It is fair to say, however, that the German Schlager scene was not a hotbed of disco (or, indeed, anything else but banality). The exception was Marianne Rosenberg, whose sensible secretary’s hairstyle complemented her girl-next-door image. She retained the coiffure and high collar dress during her foray into disco in 1975, the splendid Ich bin wie Du (“I am like you”). The fusion of straight-lacedness and disco queenhood established Marianne as an icon in Germany’s gay scene, a position she continues to occupy today.
Before she became a gay icon, a gawkier teenage Marianne Rosenberg appealed to Paul McCartney to reply to her fan letter, because no other girl likes him as much as she does. She resorts to emotional blackmail: John and Ringo and even the odd Rolling Stone would have sent her an autograph by now. But not Paul, oh no. So she has to resort to singing this song to attract his attention. There are, of course, other ways to get Paul’s attention (if not a thumbs up sign). Seven years later, in 1977, German newspapers were agog with the claims of a teenager that Mr Paul McCartney had fathered her during one of the Beatles’ stints in Hamburg. To the shock of nobody, the claims were found to be — gasp — untrue.
Last time we encountered ABBA recording in German. Before she became one of the As in the groups’ acronymised name, Agnetha Fältskog tried to realise the ambition of many Scandinavian singers of the day with a dream of musical success: breaking into the German Schlager scene. Agnetha released a batch of German singles between 1968 and 1972, most of them quite awful even by the low standards of the genre, though a couple were actually quite good. In her endeavours, Agnetha — who already had a career in Sweden but put it on hold while going for stardom in West Germany — was produced by her boyfriend, Dieter Zimmermann. Once Dieter was history, her next boyfriend, Björn, worked out better on the way to stardom.
Four years earlier, Señor Gonzales was Agnetha’s second German single. I see no reason why it shouldn’t have been a Schlager hit. It has the necessary clichéd lyrics and banal melody; it even has the faux-Mexican sound the Schlager-buying public was so fond of (though here Agnetha might have been ahead of her time; the Mexican Schlager wave peaked in 1972 with Rex Gildo’s superb Fiesta Mexicana, which I shall feature soon). The b-side to Señor Gonzales is a rather better affair. Mein schönster Tag is a country ballad which our girl sings rather well; it is a cover version of a country song, but I can’t work out what the original is. Somebody will surely tell me.
In the 1960s it became common for English-speaking artists to make foreign-language recordings of their hit songs. Foremost among the European countries to offer a market for such things was West Germany. In 1966, Johnny Cash recorded I Walk The Line as Wer Kennt den Weg (alas not as Johannes Bargeld). In the early 1950s, Cash had been based as an US soldier in southern Germany. Clearly he did little in that time to benefit from the opportunity to learn German; his accent is quite appalling.
Like her compatriots Petula Clark and, to a lesser extent, Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw recorded a lot of her repertoire in German (and in French), including her epic version of Bacharach/David’s Always Something There To Remind Me. Here the title translates as “Just once to be happy like the others”. Recorded in 1965, Sandie sounds like she actually knows what she is singing. She clearly makes an effort (though towards the end the effort apparently becomes a bit too much for her), and her diction is charmingly foreign. That’s all the German public ever asked for; as noted previously, nothing could win the hearts of Germans as much as somebody butchering their languages gently.
Berry Gordy could spot a marketing opportunity, and so he had the stars of his Motown roster record their big hits in various European languages, apparently singing from phonetic lyric sheets. Diana Ross makes a game attempt at it; one can understand her implorations not to be left by the addressee of the song. The Temptations take rather more relaxed view of linguistic doctrines, anticipating the German tendency to include English words as part of the conversational language. Germans are quite happy to use the word “girl” instead of Mädchen, or indeed “happy” instead of glücklich, as the Temptations do here (dear Diana is more purist about this: she actually uses the word glücklich, which must be a bit of a tongue breaker for non-German speakers).
And another German version of an English-language hit. Millie (who sounds even more chipmunkish in German) doesn’t make an effort to translate the chief rhyme — sweet as candy/sugar dandy — into German. And how could she? “Du bist so süss wie Süssigkeiten / Du bist mein Zuckerbursche” somehow wouldn’t work well as a line of seduction. So we can forgive that. But why didn’t the songwriters bother to change the line “I love you I love you I love you so” to “Ich lieb’ dich ich lieb’ dich ich lieb’ dich so” ? That’s just lazy.
And yet, the two Bayern München legends featured here can be forgiven for their amateur warblings (if not for their club affiliation). Beckenbauer is, in my view, the greatest defensive player of all time. Adept at playing in virtually any position, he was an elegantly authoritative figure on the pitch. Germans, always acutely sensitive to their troubled history, called him “Der Kaiser”, which is preferable to “Der Führer”.
If Beckenbauer’s nickname was somewhat misguided, that of his teammate Gerd Müller’s is quite mind-boggling, coming just a quarter of a century after World War 2: “Der Bomber”. The moniker was supposed to testify to Müller’s genuinely breathtaking ability to score goals — he’s by far the best I’ve seen in my lifetime. But it was a misnomer. The nickname suggests that Müller had a mighty shot, firing V2 rockets with accuracy from outside the penalty area. In reality, Müller had no particularly powerful shot. He was, however, compact with a low centre of gravity and an almost unerring positioning instinct. Many of his goals were scored with his backside, or while he was on the ground. His single, Dann macht es bumm (“And then it bangs”), perpetuates the mistaken notion of the blitzkrieging bomber. It also perpetuates the reality that Gerd Müller wasn’t particularly bright. Still, the man is a legend and probably not a friend of the evil Blatter.
Vera Lynn has just become the oldest person to have a British #1 album (alas not with her collection of Rammstein covers), but the world’s oldest still active performer is Johannes Heesters. The Dutch-born singer and former actor, whose career was directed almost exclusively at German audiences, is still at it at 105 years of age. As one might expect, he is much loved in Germany.
Not a German song, obviously, but a stinging propaganda satire by the legendary English wit at the expense of Germans. Of course he had no intention of pleading for post-war clemency towards Germans; quite the contrary. And yet, to some extent his satirical entreaty would be realised. To be sure, some Germans were treated badly after the war, especially the many women who were raped by occupying soldiers (and not just by the Russians, who clearly did not share the song’s sentiments). But, truth be told, Germans subjected to occupation in the West cannot have too many complaints about the treatment they received.
Here is the second volume of ’60s soul tracks. Some of these songs are pretty well-known, but many others are hidden or forgotten gem. Eddie Holland’s track is as much a gem as it is a historical curiosity; it’s one of the few records he released on Motown before Berry Gordy decided that Eddie, with Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier, should work exclusively as one of the label’s in-house writer/producer teams, in particular for the Supremes and the Four Tops . 
It was a huge hit for the unlikeliest pop star ever to emerge from Johannesburg (yeah, I know, Mr Lubowitz’s stage name applied to the whole band). But a year before that, in 1963, it was recorded, minus a diddy, by a soul girl group which never enjoyed as much success as it deserved. The Exciters are remembered mainly for their single big hit, the Bert Berns composition Tell Him.
In Motown’s happy family it was common that the same songs would be recorded by different artists. Sometimes, that custom would result in two chart-toppers within a year, as in the case of I Heard It Through The Grapevine 
While the Temptations scored with the Undisputed Truth’s song, Edwin Starr had a hit with a Temps song, War. The anti-Vietnam protest song appeared originally on the Temptations 1970 Psychedelic Shack album. By popular request, Motown decided to release it as a single, but not by the Temptations, because the label did not want to associate its big stars with political causes. Indeed, the Temptations themselves were apprehensive about offending some of their fans (though exactly why anybody who would dig the drug-friendly psychedelic grooves of early-’70s Temptations might be offended by an anti-war sentiment is a mystery). So Motown gave the song to a relative unknown who two years earlier had enjoyed his solitary hit. Edwin Starr’s anthemic, fist-raising version was far more fierce and furious than that of Temptations. Catching the zeitgeist, Starr’s War was a US #1 hit. And guess who appears on the backing track? The Undisputed Truth.
Few noises in mainstream pop history have been as disturbing as Joe Cocker’s croaked note at the end of that staple of soppy love songs, You Are So Beautiful. Some people might regard the song best crooned by Homer Simpson, but they are probably not familiar with Billy Preston’s rather good original. The song was written by Preston and his songwriting partner Bruce Fisher, with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s uncredited lyrical contribution (Wilson would sing the song as an encore at Beach Boys gigs in the late ’70s and early ’80s). Preston’s version was recorded shortly before Cocker’s slower version in 1974. The former remained an album track, while Cocker’s version reached the US #5 in 1975 (but didn’t chart at all Britain).
Of course, this is not so much the story of an orignal and its cover as the unhappy tale of a sample and greed — all revolving around a loop in the Verve song that was lifted from Andrew Look Oldham’s 1966 instrumental adaptation of the Rolling Stones’ The Last Time. Oldham was not only a musician, but also the manager of the Stones in their early pomp. He sold his contract to Allen Klein – has there ever been a more lawyerly name in rock? – in 1966. By 1997, when the Verve’s Urban Hymns album came out, Klein controlled the Stones’ 1960s back catalogue.
It can be argued that Jagger and Richards didn’t even write the song from which Ashcroft didn’t sample; The Last Time was based on a 1950s recording by the Staple Singers of a traditional song. It’s a shame the Staple Singers didn’t think to sue… And just to turn this sorry tale into a real farce, when Bitter Sweet Symphony was nominated for two Grammys, the credit went to Jagger and Richards as writers and the Andrew Oldham Orchestra as artists.
“Sunshine, blue skies, please go away. My girl has found another and gone away. With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom, so day after day I stayed locked up in my room. I know to you it might sound strange, but I wish it would rain.” Motown lyrics are pure poetry. “Day in, day out, my tear-stained face pressed against the window pane. My eyes search the skies desperately for rain, ’cause raindrops will hide my teardrops, and no one will ever know that I’m cryin’. When I go outside to the world outside, my tears I refuse to explain. Oh, I wish it would rain.” Promise me you will punch them.
The unaccountably obscure Tibault in his song from 2000 acknowledges that he was dumped for being a bit of an ass (“And everything about me drags her down”), and he now pretends, Smokey-like, not to be affected by the break-up. But he really still loves her (“She moves around me like the air I breathe, gets inside of me and she never leaves”) and wants her back: “Someday I’ll find my way back in; somehow I’ll cross that bridge again. And then I won’t have to pretend to be unbroken.”
A very jaunty number for so sad a lament wrapped up in nautical metaphors. Since she “sailed away” there are no lights in the harbour and ships lost at sea all because Don is crying so much, he is “on this sea of tears – sea of heartbreak”. He tried to woo her back with another maritime call: “Oh, what I’d give to sail back to shore, back to your arms once more.” Poor Don, chances are that another man has put down his anchor in the good ship ex-girlfriend.
You know what it’s like when a song comes on that reminds you of an ex-partner (or, worse, of the break-up itself)? In this rather quirky tune, Sugar Ray bemoan not only the loss of a girlfriend, but also the diminishing delight in the things they used to enjoy together: “All the songs she used to sing, all the favourite TV shows have gone out the window.” It’s worse than that. Not only does he no longer enjoy re-runs of Friends or whatever, but when he does catch one, the old feelings for her return. Which calls to mind Hal David’s lyrics for Always Something There To Remind Me: “I passed a small café where we would dance at night, and I can’t help recalling how it felt to kiss and hold you tight. Oh, how can I forget you, when there is always something there to remind me…” The version posted here is a 1982 cover by the English synth-pop duo Naked Eyes, featuring the late Rob Fisher, later of Climie Fisher. Burt Bacharach once said their version was his favourite…
The Bee Gees asked for pointers in mending broken hearts. One way of doing so is to enter into a loving relationship with somebody new who will take care of you. In this song, Amy Rigby found such a man, one who’d do anything for her. But sometimes even that doesn’t work, when there remains so much residual anger that the contemptible ex still dominates emotions. In this instance, the new man in Amy’s life wrecklessly* offers to “shoot the dude who screwed me up”. Amy responds that she is “trying so hard to forgive”. With that in mind, “Here’s his address, here’s his picture, here’s the make and model of his car. He works until 4:30, then he hangs out at the topless bar with a girl on each arm.” Amy reminds the new paramour: “Remember how he cheated and he lied to me. You told me that it makes you lose your head… I don’t believe you’d do those things you said.” And did she mention they’re pouring concrete on Route 33? But if he does the things he said he’d do (and here’s the address and a photo), he must not tell her, but keep it to himself. Then Amy sighs: “I like the way that you take care of me. I like the way you that you’ll take care of things.” Hell hath no fury etc. (* google it)
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