Live Aid celebrates its 40th anniversary on July 13, 2025. It was a global phenomenon that featured simultaneous massive concerts held at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with Live Aid-inspired concerts also staged in dozens of other countries, all to raise money for the famine in Ethiopia.
"We weren’t touring or playing, and it seemed like a crazy idea, this talk of having 50 bands on the same bill. We thought it was going to be a disaster. Freddie, in particular, said, ‘I haven’t got the right feeling for this.’ He wasn’t the leader of the band, but if he dug his heels in, there was no dragging him, so we parked it," said May.
But May said that Geldof kept calling, and tickets were selling out, so he finally said to Mercury that he thought they would regret not playing Live Aid.
Drummer Taylor added that they were given "a strict 17 minutes" for their performance, but they ended up going 21 minutes because of Mercury and his electric connection to the crowd.
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"Elton [John] had his own English rose garden with an actual fence,” recalled Taylor. “David [Bowie] was there. I think he was quite jittery.”
"At the end, I came off thinking that went OK, but also very aware of the places where it nearly fell apart. It came off the rails quite significantly at the end of 'Hammer to Fall.' If you look at it, you might think that was on purpose, but it wasn’t, because there were little tweaks and nobody quite knew where we were. Live shows aren’t perfect. But most of the things we tried to do worked out. I came off very conscious of the flaws in our performance, but I also knew Freddie had been great," said May.
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