Index

• The Anniversary: Live Aid, 40 Years On
• The Podcast (History, Trivia, and 22 Tracks)
• The Book: “Live Aid – Il suono di un'era”
• All the Songs of Live Aid

The anniversary: Live Aid, 40 years on

How many times, as music fans, have we asked ourselves which great concert of the past we'd travel back to see if we had a time machine at our disposal? And there would be plenty of options, from Woodstock to any given Beatles gig, or maybe a date from the Exploding Plastic Inevitable with the Velvet Underground. And yet there's one concert that, at least in theory, would be the ideal choice for this imaginary quantum leap, if only because it packed practically the entire history of pop-rock music — past, present and future — into a single day. And whatever you couldn't see live, you could watch on the big screen in real time, thanks to the satellite video link. That day was July 13, 1985, the day of Live Aid, the biggest charity concert in the history of music, held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, and broadcast worldwide, with nearly 2 billion viewers tuning in from 150 different countries, for a total of around 16 hours of live television coverage.
“The day the music changed the world”: that's how the mega-concert organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure (frontman of Ultravox) to raise funds and ease the famine that had struck Ethiopia in those years is commonly remembered. It's a concert that is also the subject, these days, of a new book, “Live Aid: Il suono di un'era. Gli anni '80 e il sogno di un mondo migliore”, published by Tsunami and written by Gabriele Medeot, a music storyteller and professional musician for more than thirty years.

In 1985 we were in the thick of the so-called decade of hedonism and individualism, with the world's two great political, economic and military superpowers, the US and Britain, led by conservative, hyper-liberal leaderships embodied by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The latter once said: “There is no such thing as society”. But Geldof and Ure, together with all the artists they rallied and the countless people who were there in person or watching on TV that summer day in the mid-80s, proved to the British PM that the opposite was true: society did exist, and was still capable of noble gestures, contradictions and all.
The origins of Live Aid, however, need to be traced back a few months before it actually took place. In December 1984 Geldof and Ure released the famous Christmas song “Do They Know It's Christmas?”, written by the two of them (and produced by Ure) and recorded with Band Aid, a supergroup formed specifically to draw attention to the famine in Ethiopia, made up of British and Irish pop stars including, among others, Sting, Phil Collins, Wham!, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Boy George, Paul Weller and Bono of U2. A few months later came the American response with “We Are The World”, a song written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson which, under the USA for Africa banner, brought together a host of American artists behind the cause Geldof had launched. Riding the incredible success of the two songs, Geldof then relaunched the cause with the idea of the mega-concert — an idea that had, in fact, originally been proposed by Boy George.

Going by London time, Live Aid kicked off in the English capital at midday and in Philadelphia just before 2pm. Opening the show at Wembley were Status Quo, followed by the legendary Style Council, led by Paul Weller (fresh off the release of the album “Our Favourite Shop”), and then, one after another, all the rest. In Philadelphia, in front of nearly 90,000 spectators, Bernard Watson kicked things off, immediately followed by the great Joan Baez. Even the hosts who took turns on stage — especially in the Pennsylvania city — were exceptional, several of them famous actors such as Jack Nicholson, Chevy Chase, George Segal, Don Johnson and Bette Midler.
Countless snapshots from the event have remained etched in the collective memory. The most iconic was Queen's performance — the reigning performance, quite literally, among the day's many highlights — those legendary twenty minutes with Freddie Mercury utterly in command of the stage, able to hold an entire stadium in the palm of his hand with a single gesture (actor Rami Malek would masterfully recreate it on film in the band's 2018 biopic, “Bohemian Rhapsody”). How could anyone forget that adrenaline-fuelled “Radio Ga Ga”, or the famous vocal call-and-response (those unforgettable “Eh-oh”s) with the crowd before “Hammer To Fall”? And then the thrilling renditions of “Bohemian Rhapsody” (performed only in its piano-ballad section), “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions”.
U2 also triumphed, with Bono breaking the event's strict protocol by climbing down off the stage mid-performance to reach the crowd and pull out a randomly chosen girl, inviting her to dance with him to the strains of “Bad”, which was stretched out to more than twelve minutes of the band's allotted twenty, causing “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” — the third song scheduled in the Irish band's set (the first had been “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”) — to be dropped altogether. From that day on, the Dublin quartet's star would rise, metaphorically laying the groundwork for “The Joshua Tree”, seeing as Bono himself, just two months later, would travel to Ethiopia with his wife Alison Stewart to take part in an educational project for local children, drawing on-the-ground inspiration for one of his band's most iconic songs, “Where The Streets Have No Name”.

Live Aid was also yet another confirmation of the greatness of artists who had long been at the top of their game, such as Elton John, who delivered a positively electric performance (his duets with Kiki Dee on “Don't Go Breaking My Heart” and with George Michael on “Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me” are the stuff of legend), David Bowie, and Phil Collins, who managed the feat of performing first in London and then flying record-quick on a British Airways Concorde to play in Philadelphia too. At Wembley, a small mistake of his has gone down in the annals. At the start of “Against All Odds”, right after the line “You're the only one who really knew me at all”, the then-Genesis frontman hit a wrong note on the piano, at which point he blushed and shook his head, his face forming that endearing, deeply human grimace of pain mixed with a smile that became the “trademark” of his appearance that day.
Live Aid was also an important showcase for many names who would become icons starting precisely from the 1980s. Madonna was only 27, but had already released the album (and its title-track hit) “Like A Virgin”. Simple Minds were symbols of the new rock, and burst onto the Philadelphia stage with their hit “Don't You (Forget About Me)”, recently released for the soundtrack of “The Breakfast Club”. Rick Ocasek's Cars cemented the success of their “Heartbeat City” on the American stage, while Tom Petty once again proved himself a flawless rocker with a quartet of his classics. Sting took centre stage both solo and alongside Phil Collins (with whom he also performed “Every Breath You Take”), and then with Dire Straits on “Money For Nothing”, the track the former Police man had also guested on in its studio version, featured on the album “Brothers In Arms”, released a couple of months before Live Aid.

Duran Duran, for their part, were coming off the success of “Wild Boys” and delivered a powerful set with “A View To A Kill”, “Union Of The Snake”, “Save A Prayer” and “The Reflex”. Not to mention Spandau Ballet, remembered in particular for a magical rendition of “True”. And then there was Bryan Ferry, performing solo, who in the recent past, with his Roxy Music, had so heavily inspired the New Romantic bands, such as the ones led by Simon Le Bon and Tony Hadley. Ferry, of course, also sang the seductive “Slave To Love”, his freshest hit at the time, joined on stage by David Gilmour on guitar — oddly “snubbed” by the cameras, as we'd say today; but those were different times, and Pink Floyd were perhaps going through the darkest moment of their career, coinciding with the troubled departure of Roger Waters. Waters, incidentally, was also present backstage at Wembley, where he was interviewed by British television, but he did not perform. “I tried to 'get involved' at Live Aid,” the principal author of “The Wall” would later say, “but they'd asked me to do it with Pink Floyd and I said no: I wanted to play with my new band, which they weren't happy about.” Things would go very differently twenty years later at Live 8, when Waters and Gilmour, together with Nick Mason and Richard Wright, would reform Pink Floyd's classic line-up for the last time, for those twenty minutes on stage at Hyde Park that, at least in this writer's opinion, represent the most significant musical moment of the 21st century.

Naturally, the stage also had to feature the two organizers with their respective bands: Geldof's Boomtown Rats delivered a towering “I Don't Like Mondays”, as did Ure's Ultravox with “Vienna”.
But how could one forget the appearances of some legendary bands from the Sixties and Seventies? Led Zeppelin reunited for the occasion, albeit without their late drummer John Bonham, who had died five years earlier and was replaced behind the kit by the aforementioned Collins (alongside fellow drummer Tony Thompson) — though this didn't satisfy singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page, who would say years later: “Reforming the band wasn't a great choice. Plus the drummer” — referring to Collins — “didn't come in on time at the start of 'Rock And Roll' and that got us into trouble.” The man behind “In The Air Tonight” (for whom that July 13th was evidently a rough day) would defend himself against the accusations: “I hadn't done any rehearsal when I got there — my only preparation for the concert was having listened to a few of the band's songs on the flight to Philadelphia. When I got to the trailers, Plant told me: 'Watch out, Page is pretty angry.'” In essence, Collins had wanted to get up on stage and simply “play, no fuss”, completely relaxed, and in response to Page's insistence that he and the others had rehearsed, he'd said he'd seen “the band's first-ever concert in London”, and so knew his parts. He then mimed the drum part of “Stairway To Heaven” in front of the band, which sent the Led Zeppelin guitarist over the edge. The English band were so unhappy with the performance that in 2004 they even refused to grant the rights to the footage for the event's official DVD release (a box set containing 4 discs but which would not include the concert in its entirety — only 10 of the total 16 hours of broadcast).

Another sensational reunion was that of Black Sabbath, who brought Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward back together on the same stage six years after their last performance together. For them too, the reunion was far from memorable — in fact it was “a bit of a disaster”, as Iommi would put it. “They'd set aside a room for us to rehearse. We started, and pretty quickly ended up talking about the old days instead. And that's how most of the time we had went. Then that evening, back at the hotel, we ended up at the bar, drinking about it and knocking back far too many drinks. Judas Priest were there too, and you know how these things go... The next day, predictably, I woke up with a terrible hangover, and I carried it right through the gig. I have to say, I wasn't expecting us to have to go on stage so early that day, but that's how it went, and it really wasn't our finest hour.”
Wembley also saw The Who, likewise back together as a band after splitting in 1982. Initially, Pete Townshend was reluctant about the idea of playing Live Aid, but Geldof, learning of the guitarist's doubts, convinced him with unquestionably persuasive words: “Every pound we raise will save a life. Do the fucking math and do the fucking gig.” Townshend agreed, but the band didn't spend much time rehearsing the show: once they got on stage, The Who realized they weren't remotely prepared. Making matters worse, the satellite signal dropped at the start of their set, during “My Generation”, and didn't return until the beginning of the second song, “Pinball Wizard”. And as if that weren't enough, John Entwistle's bass kept cutting out. The band recovered slightly with “Won't Get Fooled Again”, but still lost their way somewhere in the instrumental section, never quite managing to pull it back together. “We were out of practice,” Townshend himself would admit, “and maybe we should have just let Queen or George Michael have the space — they were the ones who won over the show.”

Neil Young also reunited with his old comrades Crosby, Stills & Nash, first billed separately in Philadelphia and then coming together again to play “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Daylight Again”.
The Beatles, however, couldn't reunite in full, for obvious reasons. Paul McCartney, though, was the star of the evening's final legendary moment in British show business, when, as the last artist on the bill before the all-star finale, he sang the first two minutes of “Let It Be” with his microphone switched off — but no technical mishap was ever more blessed, because at that point Sir Paul's voice was taken up by the 72,000 people at Wembley, to an even more moving effect.
Of course, Live Aid also had a few notable absences. Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, for instance, didn't take the stage, but in a sense — as mentioned — it was almost as if they had, having taken part in “We Are The World”; the same goes for Boy George, who had nonetheless taken part in “Do They Know It's Christmas?” (and, as mentioned, had come up with the original idea for the concert); while Prince partly made up for his absence by sending in a pre-recorded video of a performance of “4 The Tears In Your Eyes”, broadcast during the Philadelphia show. Annie Lennox wasn't there either, due to a throat infection, but the Eurythmics vocalist would partly make up for it twenty years later at Live 8, with a spine-tingling performance.

In a sense, Live Aid managed to embrace eighty years of pop music at once - the forty years that preceded it and the forty that followed. It was both memory and foresight, since on one hand the bill included the likes of B.B. King, a blues icon since the Fifties (appearing via video link from The Hague, in the Netherlands), the Beach Boys, American rivals of the Beatles in the Sixties, and Bob Dylan, a folk monument dating back to the golden days of Greenwich Village; and on the other, the bill also featured Run DMC, pioneers of a hip-hop movement that was just taking root and would go on to blossom into the present day with all its offshoots, trap included.
Naturally, the London and Philadelphia concerts could only end with their respective continental anthems against hunger, namely the same “Do They Know It's Christmas?” and “We Are The World”, performed respectively by the full lineups of Band Aid and USA for Africa, sealing an unrepeatable event, a memorable chapter of music and charity - though sadly not quite as memorable for Ethiopia and Africa as a whole, which, once the spotlights dimmed, would soon be forgotten.

In 2005, Geldof would try to replicate the success of Live Aid by organizing the aforementioned Live 8, an even more ambitious initiative than its older sibling, as the name itself recalled, with no fewer than eleven free concerts staged in various cities around the world to coincide with the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland - ten of them held on July 2nd and one on the 6th of that same month.
But this series of shows, which ran alongside the British "Make Poverty History" campaign aimed at cancelling the debt of poor countries, would prove in no way comparable to the event that, two decades earlier, had managed to change the world for at least one day. And this time too, poverty would not be relegated to history - quite the opposite, as we unfortunately still see today. (Valerio Di Marco)

P.S. On July 13th the official YouTube channel will mark the anniversary by streaming the event again starting at 1pm Italian time (which is "twelve noon in London"), that is, at the exact original time.

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The podcast (history and trivia plus 22 tracks)

We dedicated an episode of Rock in Onda, the show hosted by Claudio Fabretti on the digital airwaves of Radio Città Aperta, to Live Aid. From the Style Council to David Bowie, from the Who to Paul McCartney, from Tom Petty to the Cars, from the Beach Boys to Bob Dylan: the spectacular parade of stars at the greatest rock event in history, told through a handful of anecdotes and a 22-track playlist. Listen to or download the podcast for free: 

 Live Aid

A double live event that made history, so much so that it's almost unanimously regarded as the greatest rock event of all time - and not just because of the caliber of its performers. Thirty-five years ago, Live Aid took to the stage: the concert organized by Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats together with Midge Ure of Ultravox, aimed at helping the people of Africa, and in particular easing the famine ravaging Ethiopia at the time. It all unfolded in a single day, July 13, 1985, simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, in front of 72,000 and 90,000 spectators respectively. On TV, the event was broadcast via satellite to 150 countries - one of the largest television link-ups of all time - reaching an audience of roughly 2 billion viewers (nearly 40% of the world's population).
It was an event so lavish that it remains etched in collective memory, inevitably marking an entire generation.
It's impossible to fit every protagonist of that epic day (the event ran for 16 hours!) into a single setlist. So we've tried to offer as thorough a summary as possible of that immense parade of stars, one that no rock legend passed up (the Who, the Beach Boys, Queen, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bryan Ferry, Sting, Phil Collins, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Bob Dylan), but also the biggest bands of the moment, from U2 to Ultravox, from the Style Council to the Cars, not to mention pop idols like Madonna and Duran Duran. Never again would the music world manage to offer such a united, collective response to the world's great causes.
For a long time Live Aid survived only in the memories of the lucky few who watched the show live, or on some amateur VHS tape, because Bob Geldof, in order to convince the artists to take part, had promised them the event would never be reproduced on audio or video again. At the organizer's explicit request, ABC even destroyed the tapes.
But eventually an official DVD was released, in 2004, along with a few recorded versions, most notably the Band Aid Trust label's digital download release in 2018, not to mention the YouTube channel launched that same year, featuring 87 videos from the concert. It's from these sources that we drew the tracks featured in our podcast's setlist. (Claudio Fabretti)

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The book: Live Aid - The Sound of an Era

Title: Live Aid: The Sound of an Era. The 1980s and the Dream of a Better World
Author: Gabriele Medeot
Publisher: Tsunami Edizioni
Pages: 239
Price: 20 euros

What will remain of the Eighties? Take Live Aid, for instance. July 13, 1985. Forty years ago - and you can feel every one of them - came the last great humanitarian gasp of popular music: the massive charity concert organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. Naive, controversial, imperfect as you like, but unquestionably unique and unforgettable. Now attempting to capture the meaning of that event and explore what it has left behind over these four decades is the book "Live Aid: Il suono di un'era. Gli the Eighties e il sogno di un mondo migliore" (Tsunami Edizioni), edited by Gabriele Medeot, a professional musician and broadcaster for over 30 years, with a foreword by Franco Zanetti.
Forty years after that July 13, 1985, which glued nearly two billion people to their television sets, Medeot reconstructs the story of "the greatest musical event of the century" - as it's been dubbed - in a book that isn't a nostalgic celebration but a well-documented essay on what Live Aid truly meant. For music, for the media, for politics, and for the collective imagination. The title itself makes the intent clear from the outset: "Live Aid: The Sound of an Era" doesn't just recount the show, but tries to frame it as a historical metaphor for a contradictory, spectacular decade, marked by global crises and planetary dreams, weaving together reportage, anecdotes and analysis for a journey into the beating heart of the 80s. Ten years of global transformation: from the crisis of the Keynesian economic model to the birth of the MTV generation, by way of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the struggle to survive in an increasingly fast and complex world.

But the story can't help but start from the event's sheer global scale. Over 16 uninterrupted hours of music, one stage in London and one in Philadelphia, 16 satellites for a worldwide broadcast reaching over 90% of the world's televisions at some point during the event, more than 70 artists in an all-star cast. "In short, the best music of the decade, performed live, by the most famous and influential artists, virtually all on the same stage, without a break, all united in the name of a single voice: that of solidarity," the author writes.
Medeot, a musician and broadcaster with a background in radio and theatrical storytelling, approaches Live Aid as a fusion point between spectacle, ideology and pop culture, working from the premise that "music is the caption of its times." But he does so while steering clear of easy mythmaking, starting from one essential point: without the context of the Eighties - the rise of global television, the ascent of MTV, the cult of image, and the rampant neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher - that event probably never would have happened.

The book unfolds along a double track. On one hand, there's the passionate, well-documented account of that unrepeatable day, which saw artists such as Paul McCartney, Queen, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, the Style Council, Ultravox, George Michael, Bryan Ferry, U2, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, The Cars, Sting, Phil Collins (who flew on the Concorde to perform on both continents), the Who and many others take turns on the twin stages of Wembley and Philadelphia. On the other, there's a broad, layered reflection on the historical and symbolic backdrop against which the event took shape: the Ethiopian famine emergency, the hunger killing millions across Africa, the illusion that music could bring change, the seductive power of the "Western model" put on display before the cameras of the entire world. The book's strength lies not just in its information - which is abundant and accurate - but in its perspective: Live Aid is read as a media icon even before being read as a concert. It's no accident that Medeot calls it "the global jukebox," where the pop song becomes a vehicle for universal messages, a lever to trigger a collective pathos, an idem sentire that today feels light years away.
"In the mid-Eighties - Medeot recalls in an interview with Mow - there was a kind of economic crisis, though it was starting to ease. Serious money was beginning to circulate, and the boomers, children of the postwar years, were starting to move into business. On top of that, the technological landscape was buzzing, and people looked ahead with a futurist enthusiasm for what was coming. At the same time, millions... Before globalization, Live Aid sent out a global message, because the whole world understood the importance of doing something for others. The message, at bottom, was one and crystal clear: solidarity." And on top of that - the author notes in the book - Live Aid was also the first event to trigger a very long series of charity concerts, and throughout the rest of the Eighties there would be countless musical events organized to raise funds for one cause or another, all of them destined to become, inevitably, imitations of something that neither was, nor would ever be, truly imitable."

The writing, while avoiding hagiographic tones, doesn't hide the fascination - and indeed the emotion - that the event still exerts four decades on. It examines the spectacle's construction, the control of the television flow, the near-liturgical choreography of gestures and camera angles, going so far as to recognize that the image of Freddie Mercury commanding Wembley during "Radio Ga Ga," or that of Bono climbing down from the stage to embrace a fan, left a deeper mark on the collective consciousness than the songs themselves.
Alongside the reconstruction of the "great show," Medeot includes profiles, listening recommendations, biographical digressions and brief personal musings. All without ever slipping into sentimentality: even where his affection for that era shines through, his gaze remains clear-eyed and critical. He doesn't forget, for instance, that "Do They Know It's Christmas?" or "We Are the World" are songs full of good intentions but also colonial stereotypes; nor does he skip over the fact that the real effectiveness of the fundraising was already up for debate at the time. "That massive effort certainly changed the future for millions of people, setting off an enormous wave of solidarity that continued throughout the decade, but it also ended up fueling weapons and conflicts, and therefore death," Medeot notes. "Not, of course, by any direct intention, not through carelessness, not for any reason that can be blamed on Geldof, Band Aid, or anyone who worked on that project, but simply because the money raised, once it reached African governments, turned out to be far too easy to pocket. It was humanitarian aid with no real oversight, and therefore perfect for exploitation, feeding personal political and economic interests."

In short, Medeot doesn't turn a blind eye to the project's shadows: he acknowledges the ambivalence between philanthropy and spectacle, between genuine mobilization and the manufacturing of consent. And yet that's precisely where the heart of the book lies: in showing how Live Aid - with all its contradictions - was the last great collective dream built through music, in an age when people could still believe a song might change the world. A mix of naivety, idealism and megalomania that the die-hard purists of the underground could never fully grasp, content to superficially point out the hypocrisies of the mainstream's muscle-flexing display of power. And while it's true that Live Aid gave a huge boost to an industry that, after the glory days of the Seventies, was starting to feel some strain, it's also worth remembering that every musician who took the stage on either continent performed for free, with no soundcheck and no rehearsal, facing plenty of hairy moments along the way - from the logistical headaches of Phil Collins's transatlantic double show, to Paul McCartney's microphone failure, to the electric shock suffered by Eric Clapton, which forced him to step back after losing the signal from his monitors.
Now that technology would make staging similar events far easier, it seems almost impossible to even imagine a global concert on this scale happening again. "The world strikes me as more selfish than it was in the Eighties, and that's one of the reasons that pushed me to write this book - to bring attention back to the ideas of solidarity and altruism, so they don't become something vague and hollow," Medeot points out. And we couldn't agree more.
"Live Aid: Il suono di un'era" is a book that's both engaging and rigorous, able to speak to those who lived through those years firsthand as well as to those who only know them by hearsay or through some fragment caught on YouTube. Not a mere commemorative exercise, but an in-depth, passionate contribution on one of the most important musical events of the last century - one we cannot help but remain eternally grateful for, despite its shadows. Because, as Medeot puts it, "Live Aid wasn't perfect, it was real. It was, simply, human." (Claudio Fabretti)

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All the Songs of Live Aid

Below is the complete list of songs performed at Live Aid on July 13, 1985, in London and Philadelphia.

London, Wembley Stadium

12:00 – Coldstream Guards – “Royal Salute”, “God Save the Queen” (first six bars only)
12:01 – Status Quo – “Rockin’ All Over the World”, “Caroline”, “Don’t Waste My Time”
12:19 – The Style Council – “You’re the Best Thing”, “Big Boss Groove”, “Internationalists”, “Walls Come Tumbling Down!”
12:44 – The Boomtown Rats – “I Don’t Like Mondays”, “Drag Me Down”, “Rat Trap”
13:01 – Adam Ant – “Vive Le Rock”
13:17 – Ultravox – “Reap the Wild Wind”, “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes”, “One Small Day”, “Vienna”
13:46 – Spandau Ballet – “Only When You Leave”, “Virgin”, “True”
14:07 – Elvis Costello – “All You Need Is Love”
14:22 – Nik Kershaw – “Wide Boy”, “Don Quixote”, “The Riddle”, “Wouldn’t It Be Good”
14:53 – Sade – “Why Can’t We Live Together”, “Your Love Is King”, “Is It a Crime?”
15:18 – Sting, Phil Collins, Branford Marsalis – “Roxanne” (Sting), “Driven to Tears” (Sting), “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” (Phil Collins), “Message in a Bottle” (Sting), “In the Air Tonight” (Phil Collins), “Long Long Way to Go” (both), “Every Breath You Take” (both)
15:49 – Howard Jones – “Hide and Seek”
16:08 – Bryan Ferry (with David Gilmour) – “Sensation”, “Boys and Girls”, “Slave to Love”, “Jealous Guy”
16:40 – Paul Young – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (intro), “Come Back and Stay”, “That’s the Way Love Is” (with Alison Moyet), “Everytime You Go Away”
17:19 – U2 – “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Bad” (with snippets of “Satellite of Love”, “Ruby Tuesday”, “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Walk on the Wild Side”)
18:00 – Dire Straits (with Sting) – “Money for Nothing”, “Sultans of Swing”
18:41 – Queen – “Bohemian Rhapsody” (ballad segment), “Radio Ga Ga”, “Ay-Oh”, “Hammer to Fall”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, “We Will Rock You”, “We Are the Champions”
19:23 – David Bowie – “TVC 15”, “Rebel Rebel”, “Modern Love”, “Heroes”
19:59 – The Who – “My Generation”, “Pinball Wizard”, “Love, Reign o’er Me”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
20:50 – Elton John – “I’m Still Standing”, “Bennie and the Jets”, “Rocket Man”, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (with Kiki Dee), “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” (with Wham!), “Can I Get a Witness”
21:48 – Freddie Mercury, Brian May – “Is This the World We Created…?”
21:51 – Paul McCartney (with David Bowie, Bob Geldof, Alison Moyet and Pete Townshend) – “Let It Be”
21:57 – Band Aid – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

Philadelphia, John F. Kennedy Stadium

08:51 – Bernard Watson – “All I Really Want to Do”, “Interview”
09:01 – Joan Baez – “Amazing Grace”, “We Are the World”
09:10 – The Hooters – “And We Danced”, “All You Zombies”
09:32 – Four Tops – “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)”, “Bernadette”, “It’s the Same Old Song”, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)”
09:45 – Billy Ocean – “Caribbean Queen”, “Loverboy”
09:55 – Black Sabbath – “Children of the Grave”, “Iron Man”, “Paranoid”
10:12 – Run–D.M.C. – “Jam Master Jay”, “King of Rock”
10:27 – Rick Springfield – “Love Somebody”, “State of the Heart”, “Human Touch”
10:47 – REO Speedwagon – “Can’t Fight This Feeling”, “Roll with the Changes”
11:12 – Crosby, Stills and Nash – “Southern Cross”, “Teach Your Children”, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”
11:29 – Judas Priest – “Living After Midnight”, “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)”, “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'”
12:01 – Bryan Adams – “Kids Wanna Rock”, “Summer of ’69”, “Tears Are Not Enough”, “Cuts Like a Knife”
12:39 – The Beach Boys – “California Girls”, “Help Me, Rhonda”, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, “Good Vibrations”, “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
13:26 – George Thorogood and the Destroyers (with Bo Diddley and Albert Collins) – “Who Do You Love?” (with Bo Diddley), “The Sky Is Crying”, “Madison Blues” (with Albert Collins)
14:05 – Simple Minds – “Ghost Dancing”, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, “Promised You a Miracle”
14:41 – Pretenders – “Time the Avenger”, “Message of Love”, “Stop Your Sobbing”, “Back on the Chain Gang”, “Middle of the Road”
15:21 – Santana (with Pat Metheny) – “Brotherhood”, “Primera Invasion”, “Open Invitation”, “By the Pool”, “Right Now”
15:57 – Ashford & Simpson (with Teddy Pendergrass) – “Solid”, “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” (with Teddy Pendergrass)
16:27 – Madonna (with Thompson Twins and Nile Rodgers) – “Holiday”, “Into the Groove”, “Love Makes the World Go Round” (with Thompson Twins and Nile Rodgers)
17:02 – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “American Girl”, “The Waiting”, “Rebels”, “Refugee”
17:30 – Kenny Loggins – “Footloose”
17:39 – The Cars – “You Might Think”, “Drive”, “Just What I Needed”, “Heartbeat City”
18:06 – Neil Young – “Sugar Mountain”, “The Needle and the Damage Done”, “Helpless”, “Nothing Is Perfect (In God’s Perfect Plan)”, “Powderfinger”
18:42 – The Power Station – “Murderess”, “Get It On”
19:21 – Thompson Twins (with Madonna, Steve Stevens and Nile Rodgers) – “Hold Me Now”, “Revolution” (with Madonna, Steve Stevens and Nile Rodgers)
19:38 – Eric Clapton (with Phil Collins) – “White Room”, “She’s Waiting”, “Layla”
20:00 – Phil Collins – “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)”, “In the Air Tonight”
20:10 – Led Zeppelin (with Phil Collins) – “Rock and Roll”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “Stairway to Heaven”
20:39 – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, “Daylight Again/Find the Cost of Freedom”
20:46 – Duran Duran – “A View to a Kill”, “Union of the Snake”, “Save a Prayer”, “The Reflex”
21:20 – Patti LaBelle – “New Attitude”, “Imagine”, “Forever Young”, “Stir It Up”, “Over the Rainbow”, “Why Can’t I Get It Over”
21:50 – Hall & Oates (with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin) – “Out of Touch”, “Maneater”, “Get Ready” (with Eddie Kendricks), “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” (with David Ruffin), “The Way You Do the Things You Do”, “My Girl” (with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin)
22:15 – Mick Jagger (with Tina Turner) – “Lonely at the Top”, “Just Another Night”, “Miss You”, “State of Shock” (with Tina Turner), “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It) (Reprise)” (with Tina Turner)
22:39 – Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood – “Ballad of Hollis Brown”, “When the Ship Comes In”, “Blowin’ in the Wind”
22:55 – USA for Africa – “We Are the World”

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