Live Aid was a two-venue benefit concert and music-based fundraising initiative held on Saturday, July 13th, 1985. The event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise further funds for relief of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, a movement that started with the release of the successful charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in December 1984. Billed as the "global jukebox", Live Aid was held simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia.
On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative were held in other countries, such as the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan, Yugoslavia, Austria, Australia, and West Germany. It was one of the largest satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time. An estimated audience of 1.9 billion people in 150 nations watched the live broadcast, nearly 40 percent of the world population.
The impact of Live Aid on famine relief has been debated for years. One aid relief worker stated that following the publicity generated by the concert, "humanitarian concern is now at the centre of foreign policy" for Western governments. In another interview he stated that Live Aid "created something permanent and self-sustaining" but also asked why Africa was getting poorer.
The organisers of Live Aid tried to run aid efforts directly, channelling millions of pounds to NGOs in Ethiopia. It has been alleged that much of this went to the Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam – a regime the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed – and it is also alleged some funds were spent on guns. Although the BBC World Service programme Assignment reported in March 2010 that the funds had been diverted, the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit later found "that there was no evidence to support such statements". Brian Barder, British Ambassador to Ethiopia from 1982 to 1986, wrote on his website: "The programme itself, and in particular the BBC's advance publicity for it, gave the impression that these allegations concerned not only the aid operation in TPLF [rebel]-controlled areas but also the much larger international relief aid operation in the rest of Ethiopia, including in particular money for famine relief raised by Bob Geldof's Band Aid and Live Aid. This impression is entirely false. Nothing of the sort occurred."
Background
upright=0.7|thumb|[[Michael Buerk's reports on the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia for BBC World Service helped spark the aid relief movement. The BBC News crew were the first to document the famine, with Buerk's report on 23 October describing it as "a biblical famine in the 20th century" and "the closest thing to hell on Earth". The reports featured a young nurse, Claire Bertschinger, who, surrounded by 85,000 starving people, told of her sorrow of having to decide which children would be allowed access to the limited food supplies in the feeding station and which were too sick to be saved. She would put a little mark on the children who got chosen, with Geldof stating of her at the time: "In her was vested the power of life and death. She had become God-like and that is unbearable for anyone." Such was the magnitude of Buerk's report it was also broadcast in its entirety on a major US news channel – almost unheard of at the time. From his home in London, Geldof too saw the report; he called Ure, the Ultravox frontman (Geldof and Ure had previously worked together for charity when they appeared at the 1981 benefit show The Secret Policeman's Ball in London), and together they quickly co-wrote the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in the hope of raising money for famine relief. It stayed at number one for five weeks in the UK, was Christmas number one, and became the fastest-selling single ever in Britain and raised £8 million, rather than the £70,000 Geldof and Ure had initially expected.
It was clear from the interview that Geldof had already had the ideas to hold a dual-venue concert and of how the concerts should be structured: