Bob Geldof says Live Aid’s success ‘would have been impossible without Philadelphia’

Bob Geldof brought two of the biggest concert events to ever happen — anywhere, in the history of pop music — to Philadelphia.

The first was Live Aid, the African famine relief benefit concert that was staged at London’s Wembley Stadium and at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985.

The Philly show featured Mick Jagger and Tina Turner, Madonna, Run-DMC, and Philly’s Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Hall & Oates, and the Hooters. It drew 90,000 fans and was watched by 1.9 billion people around the world.

Twenty years later, Live 8, a free concert focused on pressuring G8 nations to increase aid to poorer African countries, was held on the Ben Franklin Parkway and in capitals around the world.

Starring Stevie Wonder, Bon Jovi, Destiny’s Child, Jay-Z, and Linkin Park and hosted by Will Smith, Live 8 Philly attracted a crowd The Inquirer judged to be 400,000, though some estimates were as high as 1 million.

On Wednesday, Geldof will be feted for his efforts by the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame at a gala at Vie on North Broad Street that will also honor Schoolly D, David Dye, Janis Ian, Stephen Sondheim, David Serkin Ludwig, the Settlement Music School, and the Orlons, plus singing Eagle Jordan Mailata, and three Philly jazz clubs.

Earlier this month, the Irish songwriter and political activist, who came to fame as the leader of the Boomtown Rats, sat for a Zoom interview about how Live Aid came to be and how it came to be in Philly.

Geldof was at his house in Kent, where he lives with his wife, French actress Jeanne Marine, when not in London.

Before the interview, the “I Don’t Like Mondays” singer sent a background primer via email explaining that Live Aid was not just a once-in-a-lifetime cherished memory, but “a 40 year ongoing project” he attends to daily.

It raised “around $450 million in today’s money in one week” and led to Live 8, which resulted “in excess of $100 billion” in a combination of debt forgiveness and increased aid to African nations. “That of course was entirely impossible without Philadelphia,” he said.

In conversation, Geldof, 73, is a charming, f-bomb dropping storyteller, with his rock star gray hair and stubble, still wearing his broad brimmed black hat after an afternoon walk. He’s Sir Bob, because Queen Elizabeth bestowed the title on him in 1986 for his charitable work — but it’s only an honorary knighthood because he’s an Irish citizen.

Speaking of the queen, he turns around his laptop camera to show off the overstuffed shelves of books in his den, and one can’t help notice the photos of Sir Bob with Queen Elizabeth, as well as other such 20th century figures of import as Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Pope John Paul II.

Those signs of the global impact the Dublin-raised musician had, after he saw an October 1984 BBC report about a catastrophic famine in Ethiopia, would seem to be signs that music really can change the world.

But Geldof is more practical minded than that.

“I don’t believe that music can change the world,” he says. “What it can be is a device for gathering people, a pied piper sort of idea. You can walk around singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ until you’re blue in the face, but you simply won’t until you’re specific about that it is you want to overcome, and set about doing that.”

The first thing Geldof felt compelled to do after educating himself about the “morally reprehensible” truth that millions of people were dying of hunger in a world of economic surplus was write “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with his friend Midge Ure of the band Ultravox.

The song, credited to Band Aid, which included Bono, Sting, George Michael, Boy George, and Robert “Kool” Bell of Kool & the Gang, has been criticized for typifying a paternalistic Western attitude among privileged pop stars to the developing world.

But Band Aid, and Live Aid, Geldof says, were born out of rage over moral injustice as well as sympathy and empathy.

He can’t resist going on a rant: “That sociopathic ketamine-fueled moron Elon Musk said ‘The weakness of Western civilization is empathy.’ … In fact the glue of society is empathy, and the political expression of empathy is democracy. This man doesn’t understand any of this! Sorry, it was just when I said the word ‘empathy’ it triggered that thought."

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was a massive success, becoming one of the fastest selling singles in British history. Geldof hoped to raise £100,000. It quickly pulled in 8 million.

“The noise it made reached across the Atlantic and one night I’m sitting at home watching Dynasty and the phone rings and it’s Harry Belafonte, a hero of mine for obvious reasons."

Belafonte told him that Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written a song and put Jackson on the phone.

The song was “We Are The World,” whose star-studded recording session, helmed by Quincy Jones, was the subject of last year’s Netflix doc The Greatest Night in Pop.

Its success made doing a charity event on two continents the next logical step. Wembley in London was obvious, but where in America?

San Francisco promoter Bill Graham wanted it on the West Coast, which Geldof dismissed. His first thought was Shea Stadium, associated with the Beatles. Or if not, the National Mall in Washington.

Then British promoter Harvey Goldsmith suggested Geldof talk to Philadelphia promoter Larry Magid.

Geldof’s first thought was “F— Philadelphia? What’s that got to do with rock and roll?”

“Larry Magid is the real hero of this,” says Geldof, speaking of the then head of Electric Factory Concerts who had booked many oversize concerts at JFK, the biggest being Peter Frampton and Yes, which drew 100,000 in 1976.

“I spoke to Larry and said, ‘We’re talking to the world. How is this going to work? And he said ‘It’s the City of Brotherly Love.’ And I said f— hell, yes! Now I see here where you’re coming from.”

“Geldof said, ‘Why would I want to do it in Philadelphia?‘” recalls Magid, the founder of the Music Alliance.

(Geldof is unable to attend the gala on Wednesday, but will send a video message. The Hooters will play the same set of songs they performed at Live Aid.)

“I told him it was the Cradle of Liberty, it was where it all started,” says Magid. “And that I’ve done this dozens of times, I know how to do this.”

Geldof was convinced, and in can-do mode, preoccupied with challenges like Phil Collins flying on the Concorde to the U.S. so he could play drums on a Led Zeppelin reunion at JFK. He needed a dependable promoter, rather than the famously temperamental Graham, with whom he didn’t get along.

“Larry was endlessly capable,” says Geldof. “It’s f— great when you meet capable people who tell you to just go away, leave them alone, and they’ll see you on the day. And you don’t get Live Aid’s success without Philadelphia."

That success was impacted by another Philadelphia story making international headlines in 1985.

“We got the venue for free because the mayor had just bombed the city,” says Geldof.

Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode initially rejected the plea to use JFK gratis, Magid says. But eventually, the city — reeling after the collective trauma of the MOVE bombing, which killed six adults and five children on Osage Avenue in West Philly on May 13 — relented.

“We got the stadium rent-free,” says Magid. “The city was in need of some good public relations.”

With his hands full putting on the London show — remembered most fondly for Queen’s iconic set, re-created in the 2018 movie Bohemian Rhapsody — Geldof only visited Philadelphia once in the run-up to Live Aid.

“He had the vision,” says Magid. “We were just his conduits, just helping him to pull this off. He was able to pull the best out of people. He had the vision that made the world sit up for one spectacular day.”