Live Aid guard will 'never forget' Princess Diana's entrance 40 years on

Daily Mirror

11-07-2025

Forty years ago Wembley Stadium became the centre of the world, with more than 70,000 people packed into the famous London venue to watch Live Aid - the global charity concert that brought together the biggest names in music to raise money for famine relief. It was a day of unforgettable performances, raw emotion and one truly iconic royal moment with Princess Diana stepped out to deafening cheers alongside Prince Charles.
But while the cameras focused on the stars, there were others playing their part in making history like the eight Coldstream Guards tasked with sounding the fanfare that opened the show.
The Mirror spoke to one of the Coldstream guards, Iain Parkinson and he spoke about the roar of the crowd when Princess Diana appeared.
'Oh, they went mad,' Iain told the Mirror. 'We played our fanfare, but you could barely hear it - the crowd just went crazy when Charles and Diana arrived.'
He was one of only eight military musicians chosen to perform that day, stepping onto the Wembley stage ahead of the likes of Queen, Elton John and David Bowie.
Backstage at Wembley, the scale of the day began to sink in. Iain remembers the atmosphere vividly, as the who's who of the music world filed past. Iain found himself surrounded by the stars of the moment, as Queen prepared to steal the show, Bowie and Jagger plotted their set, and Elton John held court with fellow legends.
"We arrived backstage, and you could sense all the excitement building - obviously, every band that was any good was arriving and playing at the Live Aid gig,' he says. 'We were very excited.'
At the time, he admits nobody truly realised how huge the event would become. 'We knew it was a big thing - there'd never been anything like it before, but it's grown and grown over the years since and to be able to say you were there and you played before any other band had even arrived was really special.'
By then Iain was already used to big occasions. Having joined the Coldstream Guards as a teenager, he'd performed at Changing the Guard, Trooping the Colour and even royal garden parties occasions where Diana herself would sometimes stop to greet the musicians. 'We did see them on a number of occasions,' he explains. 'If we were playing at a garden party at Buckingham Palace, the Queen or Princess Diana might walk around the corgis and perhaps come and say hello to us as we were setting up.'
Still, nobody expected her to turn up at Live Aid - least of all the Guards themselves. 'They weren't really expecting royalty but at the time Diana was a big Duran Duran fan, and she probably thought, this is something I want to be at, so all the wheels went in motion for a fanfare to be played,' he says.
When the royal couple finally appeared, the reaction was electric - even now, four decades on, that roar still rings in his memory. 'It's extra special because it's still celebrated now, and they haven't really done anything quite like that since,' he says. 'To say you were part of it is fantastic and something I'll always remember.'