‘Sex, drugs and rock ‘n' roll? We were too exhausted': Spandau Ballet singer TONY HADLEY relives Live Aid 40 years on

Daily Mail​

17-05-2025

'On stage Freddie was giving it large'
Spandau Ballet singer Tony Hadley, 64, remembers a swelteringly hot day at Wembley, 40 years on from the legendary Live Aid concert in 1985
My most potent memory of Live Aid is when I was standing to the side of the stage next to [Radio 1 DJ] Janice Long, with a 72,000-odd audience, watching in beautiful sunshine as Status Quo kicked off with 'Rockin' All Over The World'.
We both looked at each other because we knew it was the beginning of something momentous. Even now, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
When we did the Band Aid single the year before, none of us thought it would lead to Live Aid. Bob Geldof had bumped into my Spandau Ballet bandmates on the King's Road and said, 'Me and Midge Ure want to put a record together with all our friends, to raise awareness of the Ethiopian famine.' Bob's a force of nature so you can't say no to him.
We'd had a bit of a night with Duran Duran in Germany before the recording of the single. Did we turn up in a Bentley? I can't remember. George Michael, Paul Weller, everybody was there, but it wasn't glamorous: just tea, custard creams and a sausage roll for lunch.
When it came to the concert, [promoter] Harvey Goldsmith isn't really given enough credit. He was instrumental in getting a world event together at a time when technology was not what it is today. We had a revolving stage like I'd never seen, and all these issues connecting London with Philadelphia [where the event was staged simultaneously] and the rest of the world, plus Prince Charles and Princess Diana and god knows how many dignitaries in the audience. There were remarkably few glitches on the day, though at one point my mic flew out of my hand when I was trying to do a pirouette.
Apart from Status Quo I remember Queen's performance, of course. Freddie Mercury gave me advice as a young singer and he was a lovely man, very reserved off stage, but on stage he was something else – swanning it and giving it large. There were no egos, you were just wandering around backstage meeting your heroes: Bowie, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins (he flew on Concorde to perform in Philly, too). Bob was there, shouting at everybody, ranting and raving for the telly.
We went on in 80-degree heat and I'm in a double-thickness leather coat with a mullet full of hairspray – I think the hole in the ozone layer was created by 1980s pop stars. I sweat quite a lot on stage anyway but that day I was just drenched and had to be towelled off afterwards. I've still got the coat if anyone wants to auction it for charity.
We did 'Only When You Leave', 'True' and a new song, 'Virgin', instead of our big hit 'Gold', because it had all these cellos and orchestrations. That was crazy! We should've just done 'Gold' as a rock song. I've never watched our performance back, or the Band Aid documentary: I hate seeing myself on TV. But I meet a lot of young people who say they love the 80s and I think it's great they can check out the styles: Culture Club, Ultravox, the Durannies…
Everyone assumes there was a big party afterwards – sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll – but we were mentally and physically exhausted. We knew we'd done something that was watched by over a billion people. We did go to Legends near Savile Row for a few beers, and I remember saying to Brian May I had to go home to sleep. But there was a real sense of achievement.
If you look back at what was going on in Ethiopia with the famine… we did our bit to help. Live Aid changed the way people looked at philanthropy. Recently people have said we shouldn't have done it and Ed Sheeran has been going on about something [Sheeran wasn't happy about having his vocals reused on last year's reissue of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?']. But anyone who has a problem with that can jog on.
'We were dubbed the 'killer bimbos of Fleet Street''
As one of the first female editors of a national newspaper, Eve Pollard OBE, 81, covered everything from royal weddings to the Aids crisis (as told to Liz Hoggard)
The 80s were glamorous with a capital G. Television shows such as Dynasty and Miami Vice were huge. The men all wore suits in newspaper offices, so we did the same. But even if you had a man's job, you felt you had to look feminine. Big bottle-blonde hair, cleavage, high heels. Wearing stilettos on a newspaper floor was stupid – it's done irreparable damage to my back – but we were stuck in that model of allurement.
The BBC made a documentary about women editors in which they called us the 'killer bimbos of Fleet Street' and rather tiresomely focused on my stockings and heels rather than my editorial skills.
I was married throughout my Fleet Street career, first to Barry Winkleman [father of Eve's daughter, the TV presenter Claudia] and then Daily Express editor Nick Lloyd.
Powerful women bosses in Fleet Street were unheard of and everything about us – what we wore, what mood we were in – was under scrutiny. I'd have loved to have been a bit more invisible. When I was eight months pregnant, I went to a star-studded gala.
I intended to wear a kaftan, but I looked like a Christmas tree on legs, so I poured myself into an old low-cut dress. In the photo [above], I have squidged bosoms, but the bump hidden under the table is my son Ollie. I ended up sitting next to Larry Hagman, at the height of his fame as JR in Dallas, who was delightful.
In the 80s, we were told that women either had to stay at home with the children or be in the office. We didn't have time for hobbies and never went to the gym, even though we ran lots of health features about Jane Fonda and the Green Goddess. So we wore suits with huge shoulder pads to give us a tiny waist. Joan Collins, a dear friend, told me never to sit in the sun – a large hat and sunglasses were her tips.
People came from all over the country to work on Fleet Street. It was a land where everything was possible. You'd go to the finance department on the tenth floor and say: 'I'm going to Paris to interview Brigitte Bardot and Charles de Gaulle', and they'd just give you money. You were invited to first nights and party conferences. I was very spoilt.
I was part of the BBC TV coverage of Charles and Diana's wedding in 1981. As she climbed out of her carriage, I remember saying quietly to myself: 'Unmade bed.' Then David Emanuel tugged at the skirt and it looked perfect. I covered Sarah and Andrew's wedding for The Sun in 1986 and remember the shock of Fergie arriving at Westminster Abbey in a floral headdress and then in the vestry revealing the tiara underneath, a gift from the Queen. It was the time of union strikes and picket lines, so I had to be helicoptered out of The Sun's Wapping HQ after I'd filed the piece.
Alcohol didn't suit me – one glass of champagne and I fell asleep. But people came back to the office sloshed. There were lots of assignations on Fleet Street. Every year there was a staff trip to Calais.
We all knew the sports editor was having an affair with his secretary. A colleague asked me how much it cost to go to Calais and I replied, 'Oh, about £20.' The sports editor yelled, 'Actually, it costs £400,325', because he had to get divorced when his wife discovered the affair.
The 80s were full of colour and excitement, so different from my childhood. Mum was lovely. Dad was impossible. He wouldn't let me go to university. I was expected to marry at 18. Later my brother said, 'Where did your get-up-and-go come from?' And I said, 'I had to have get-up-and-go, otherwise, I would have been buried by my father.'
I worked for a publisher then got a job at Simpson's of Piccadilly, where I was told about a position going on teen magazine Honey. The editor, Audrey Slaughter, hired me as a fashion assistant. After Honey I became women's editor of The Sunday Mirror. We did articles on parenting, childbirth, IVF. I was very proud of a story we ran highlighting the dangers of a woman's contraceptive called the Dalkon Shield, an IUD that caused inflammatory pelvic infections and continued to be prescribed until the company that made it was forced into bankruptcy.
When I joined The Mirror I was pregnant with Claudia and there was nothing on the statute book about how much time you could have off. I felt so guilty leaving her with a nanny. But I could get from the office at Holborn Circus home to Primrose Hill in 20 minutes.
Colour printing came along and suddenly newspapers were beautiful to look at. Millions watched TV together. Yes Minister lifted the lid on politics – before The Thick Of It, we had Paul Eddington as MP James Hacker. Channel 4 launched in 1982, EastEnders first aired in 1985 and newspapers created soap celebrities.
There was tragedy, too. The Aids epidemic decimated the entertainment world. I had an address book of make-up and hair people, and it just had line after line of telephone numbers crossed out. It was a landmark moment when Princess Diana shook the hand of a man living with the illness in 1987. And we covered terrible stories like the fatal crowd crush at Hillsborough football stadium in 1989.
When I landed the job as features editor of [breakfast show] TV-am, I fixed an interview with Margaret Thatcher for [presenter] Anne Diamond. I kept phoning Number 10 and saying, 'Do you want make-up?' I couldn't get an answer. So I said to our wonderful make-up person Brenda, 'Come with us. You can always wander around looking at the paintings.' And, of course, Mrs Thatcher said, 'Oh, a make-up girl, that's good. I did an interview the other day and I looked so awful, the pound went down!'
I became launch editor of American Elle by chance. Nick was asked by Rupert Murdoch to go to the States for a year, so we went with him. Nick brought in an Elle proof that I'd scribbled on – notes like, 'Where's the beauty section?' And Rupert said to Nick, 'I've realised the answer lies in your flat.' I got the job.
Elle was a breath of fresh air compared to stuffy Vogue and Harper's. We showed how you could wear a Chanel jacket with jeans and look fresh, rather than wearing matchy-matchy labels.
When we were moving back to the UK, Rupert asked me to find a new editor-in-chief for Elle. I had breakfast with Anna Wintour, who was not enjoying life on House & Garden, and offered her the job. She went back to Vogue [which was owned by the same company as House & Garden] and said, 'Either you give me Vogue or I'm going to Elle.' I helped change her life, and ever since she has supported my causes, like Women In Journalism.
In London I got the top job editing Robert Maxwell's Sunday Mirror in 1988. Often men didn't know how to deal with female bosses. We weren't their wife, girlfriend or sister, so they turned us into cartoon characters. But I'm proud of helping make newspapers relevant to women.
And showing women they could go to work, too. People looked at us – journalists, politicians, TV presenters – and thought, 'I'm as clever as her. I could do that.'
'George Michael looked like the Greek I knew I could never be'
Music journalist Pete Paphides, 55, on growing up in the 80s as a child of immigrant parents and why Wham!'s debut performance was such a big deal
As a kid, you don't want to stand out. And yet that was never going to be me, the youngest child of Greek and Greek-Cypriot immigrants who boarded the boat from Cyprus on the week 'She Loves You' reached number one.
All the other kids lived in houses with front doors. We lived in Birmingham above one of the hundreds of British fish and chip shops taken over by Greek-Cypriots. Only as I approached my teens in the early 80s did I realise this was something I could use to my advantage. When my mates came over, they could eat free chips. While they had Ataris and Sinclair ZX Spectrums, I had access to a full-scale Space Invaders machine.
But there was confusion, too. You would sometimes gaze at your parents and see in them the person they expected you to be. My dad wanted us to take over the chippy. He couldn't understand why my brother and I wanted to mix with other British, Asian and West Indian kids rather than the more culturally on-message offspring of my parents' Cypriot friends. Sometimes this created strange little flashpoints. I remember in 1982 it was made clear to us that we would be cheering on Anna Vissi, who was representing Cyprus in the Eurovision Song Contest. Secretly I was rooting for UK duo Bardo, whose song I loved and whose singer, Sally Ann Triplett, I found quite adorable.
Similarly, George Michael's prime-time TV debut was a massive deal. But in our house, the news of Wham!'s Top Of The Pops appearance with 'Young Guns (Go For It)' wasn't gleaned via the TV listings in the Birmingham Evening Mail. It came from my dad's friend Stratis, who owned a chip shop in Tottenham [North London] and knew George's dad personally. Except that no one was referring to George Michael by his pop-star name. He was Yiorgos, the son of Kyriacos Panayiotou from Patriki.
My first impressions of Yiorgos were, if I'm to be completely honest, not great. He looked like the Greek I knew I could never be. Thin. Handsome. Confident. Masculine. Outgoing. Normal. Successful. Attractive to girls. It took me years to realise we had more in common than I could have ever imagined. Like me, the erstwhile Yiorgos Panayiotou was the son of a Greek-Cypriot restaurateur. Like me, he had been a pudgy teenager with unmanageable curly hair, stuck in the suburbs, using pop music to try to establish for himself the identity his parents could never truly give him. Over time, we all came to realise that the persona George invented for himself in Wham! was actually that of his best friend in Wham! – Andrew Ridgeley. Years later, when he went on to sing, 'There's something deep inside of me/There's someone else I've got to be' he might have been talking about breaking free of Wham! or about accepting his own sexuality. But in a sense, it doesn't matter. If you grew up in the 80s, in a different country to that of your parents' upbringing, you will have felt the full force of those words.