In his book When the Music's Over, Robin Denselow recalls that when U2 toured the USA in 1987, after Bono's visit to Nicaragua and El Salvador, fans brought along Amnesty banners and slogans calling for the release of political prisoners, the ending of apartheid or praising Martin Luther King, the subject of U2's song 'Pride'. "We're not a political band, " Bono later insisted but then added, "but politics is a part of it." Pop music's ability to arouse global interests and passions was never more obvious than during 'Live Aid', driven by Bob Geldof and inspired by a terrible famine in Ethiopia. Geldof succeeded, for a time at least, in making rock audiences around the world aware of the problems of world hunger and succeeded in raising $140m worth of aid contributions.
Geldof put the emphasis on running a humanitarian rather than a political campaign but, as Denselow pointed out, Geldof's own experiences quickly showed him that politics and famine were very closely linked. And when Geldof was captured on camera questioning Margaret Thatcher about the over-production of butter or lecturing the west and the USSR at the UN, nobody could doubt that he was being political. "Any television programme that reaches an audience like that [around two billion people], and which by its very nature questions the distribution of wealth on the planet, even if through such soft, if effective devices as a Cars video, will stimulate debate and become a political event, " Denselow wrote.
But Live Aid specifically, and the relationship between politics and pop stars as a whole, are not without their critics. The British Left were highly suspicious of Live Aid arguing that it represented the story of an individual trying to right the wrongs of the world and that offered tremendous ideological value to Thatcher and her 'Victorian Values'.
Those of a less ideological bent said that governments should be tackling world hunger and their ability to act dwarfed anything that could be achieved by a group of pop stars, however well meaning. Worse still, they argued, events such as Live Aid took the pressure off politicians to act.
And while the motives of Geldof or Bono were beyond question, it was suggested that some of the bands who played seemed to be using the concert as a launch-pad for further commercial success.
The ripples of Live Aid spread across the rock music industry, resulting in the misguided Self Aid concert in this country, which was a hugely - flawed attempt to address the then chronic problem of unemployment in Ireland and numerous charity concerts across Europe and the rest of the world, which became somewhat jaded.
Ballad box in one hand, karma-lite in the other
