Live Aid was a dual-venue concert held on 13 July 1985, and an on-going music-based fundraising initiative. The original event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the Ethiopian famine. Billed as the “global jukebox”, the event was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, England,  (attended by 72,000 people) and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  (attended by about 100,000 people). On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative happened in other countries, such as Australia and Germany. It was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time: an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 nations, watched the live broadcast.

In this recording music correspondent Mal Reding takes us backstage at Wembley Stadium for a unique and exclusive insight into the thoughts and feelings of some of those musicians who performed on the day including the ‘master of ceremonies’, Bob Geldof along with Phil Collins and Sting.

Bob talks about the meticulous organisation and how well the live event was running at the time, Phil Collins explains his reasons for performing on stage both in London and Philadelphia on the same day – a Guinness World Record – and Sting discusses governments approaches to famine relief and how he thinks it is more about people than politics.