Written by Eamon Dunphy:
In March 1985
Rolling Stone magazine featured the Irish rock band U2 on its cover. The headline read: 'Out Choice: Band of the '80s'. The was rock n'roll's critical accolade. In u@'s case it could be argued that the honour bestowed on them was a trifle premature: it would be fully two years before the band justified the claims made on their behalf.
Live Aid took place four months after
Rolling Stone hit the newstands, at the beggining of the creative process that would produce their magnificent 1987 album,
The Joshua Tree. U2 were not a stadium band. The had much to lose as they waited to take their place on the greatest rock n' roll bill of all time. The had fifteen minutes and three songs to attack with. This was not a U2 audience, there was not residual fervour, no long-established relationship to justify a passionate, personal embrace. But they were determined to go for it, expose themselves as they had that first time at Mount Temple School, pouring everything-fear, hope,'fucking desperation', as Adam would irreverantly describe it-into those three songs, that fifteen minutes, as if there would never be another show, another chance.
It hung on Bono. At moments of acute need like this it was if he was the vessel into which all their fears and hopes, ideas and emotions dissolved. In him and though hi the pool of accumulated sadness, joy, anger, and yearning swelled and began to flow--from Edge's guitar, through Larry's drums and Adam's bass the musica gathered force, bursting out through Bono whose task it was to give it words and meaning on a day like this. When Bono prayed that day, as he always did backstage, he asked for strenth. Adam prayed silently that the sound system would work.
Geldof's rule was that nobody from the audience should come on stage. There was a no fans' land between audience and stage to ensure that the rule held fast. U2's planned set was 'Bad, 'New Year's Day' and 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. But Bono blew the plan right out of the window. And with it went the rules of the day, even one Geldof hadn't thought worth imposing: nodbody would want to go from stage to audience. Nobody would be that crazy. Nobody would have the time.
Paul McGuinnes sat down to watch on a tv monitor backstage. He felt unusually tense. Normally he didn't doubt Bono's ability to deliver, but this was Big. The band went straight into SBS. No spiel. Bono looked deceptively calm. Looking out at the vastness of Wembley, his tension began to drain away. Bono was introducing 'Bad'. "We're from Dublin'" The crowd roared acknowledgement. "Like all cities, it has its good and it has its bad. This is a song called Bad".
Onstage Bono had claimed the audience. When he held the microphone out the response was lusty, frantic. This was his private way of assesing how things were going. He ventured out from the surging mass of bodies in front of him. He beckoned. Several girls moved forward. But he knew which one he wanted. She was pretty, dark haired, with a white sweater.
Backstage McGuinness looked at his watch. Time was running out. There'd be no third song.
The girl was at the outer edge of the pit now. Bono leaped down. The security men scrambled to contain the crowd closest to the stage who fought for a sight of the singer. Now the dark-haired girl reached him. They embraced.
Jesus, McGuinnes thought, he's really blown it this time. Bono had dissapeared. Nobody in Wembley's Stadium could see him except the security guards and the few people in front. But the millions watching on television could follow every move. To them the scene was intimate, a spectacle that overshadowed anything else on that momentous day.
This symbolic bonding of performer and audience, music and people captured the mood. Bono had taken the ultimate performing risk. It could have seem gimmicky, gauch intrusion, a breach of the spirit of Live Aid. But his instinct for an audience had helped him get it right.
Accepting congratulations afterwards, McGuinness harbored doubts about what he'd seen. Had it worked. A month later he watched a video of the performance and understood why it had worked, and knew his band could play anywhere.
The End.
This is interesting though about Bono's reaction:
By Mark Taylor:
"Bono felt he had blown it, shot U2 in the head in front of the whole world. Back in Ireland, he just drove around for days, unable to communicate with anyone. He kept thinking about the millions dying of starvation and wondered what he was doing performing in something as banal as a rock 'n' roll band.
"As he travelled around the Irish countryside, he met a sculptor, an older man who knew very little about music. Ironically, the man was working on a piece which he called "The Leap", an attempt to reproduce the spirit of Live Aid through an image that U2 had themselves provided for him. After that, Bono went back home and started to believe people when they said that the part of Live Aid that they remembered best was Bono leaping into the crowd and embracing the girl."