Changes

When I started reading this, I thought it would be a fairly straightforward and thus extremely detailed account of the Live Aid concert in central London, and of the show in Philadelphia which followed. It turned out to be much more than that. While the proceedings of 13/14 July are the main focus, Jones also discusses the careers and reputations of all the leading acts who took part, with some interesting byways along with the political, social and cultural elements of the era, as well as positive and negative critical reactions to the venture. Taken as a whole, it is more than just a book about Live Aid. As the title indicates, it ends up being more or less a book about the whole decade.

It goes without saying that throughout these pages the personality of Bob Geldof is more often than not in the background, sometimes out front. The pre-eminent Boomtown Rat has always been an enigma, an often petulant loudmouth capable of astonishing anger and passion one moment, full of humour and rugged charm the next, with a well-reasoned argument on politics as much as on any other subject. In 1976 Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols articulated the utter rejection of everything perfectly, he explains at length. Somebody had to come along and change it, and then somebody did – a woman with a handbag. Margaret Thatcher was Johnny Rotten in drag, as like him she swiped at every institution that was there. By comparison Arthur Scargill, he adds, was no more than an egomaniac leading his people into oblivion. We are also reminded that the Rats, who saw out the 1970s as one of the top British bands in terms of chart success, were completely washed up a couple of years later and their front man frontman was known behind his back as ‘Mr Paula Yates’. After Live Aid, a BBC producer was quoted as saying that the project had sounded the death knell for Geldof as a rock star, as he could no longer be a rebellious symbol of youthful alienation one moment and sending food to Africa the next.