Latest news with #JustforOneDay
Perth Now
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Bob Geldof was left 'mortified' when he read the script for the Live Aid musical
Bob Geldof was left "mortified" when he read the script for the Live Aid musical. The 78-year-old musician teamed up with Midge Ure to organise the the benefit concert and raised funds for relief of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia with a major concert starring the likes of late Queen star Freddie Mercury, pop legend Sir Elton John and rock band Status Quo amongst a host of others but just days before the story behind it launches as jukebox musical titled 'Just For One Day' in London's West End, he admitted he felt uncomfortable reading about himself. Speaking at Wembley Stadium on Thursday (01.05.25) as he announced the release of the 'Just For One Day' cast recording, he said: "It's extraordinary, the musical is extraordinary. I'm not familiar with this sort of thing, I'm more of a Rodgers and Hammerstein guy, and when they approached me I was mortified by the script because, you know, you're reading a version of the self. "My main thing was that it has to be politically pertinent. It has to be about what it was always supposed to be about, the charity, which everyone 40 years ago had understood. These days it's about Freddie [Mercury] – genius and all that – but what the musical does for us is put it in the contemporary perspective. "What happened 40 years ago at Wembley was to lay that idea to rest that there is such a thing as society, it proved that human beings do care about each other." 'Just for One Day' will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Live Aid with a very special performance at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London on 13 July, and the Boomtown Rats star - who co-wrote 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' in the months before the legendary concert took place - admitted that he had no idea all those years ago that the issue would be as "vital" today. He said: 'We couldn't possibly have known that 40 years down the track, the issue would be as vital or the interest as great. Millions of children today are being forced to starve as an instrument of war, and millions of lives are in peril due to AIDS and because of cuts to international aid. "This musical is extraordinary, and it brings Live Aid to a new generation - the possibility of what individuals can do together. It refutes Thatcher's dictum that there's no such thing as society. There is and it roared its existence on that day 40 years ago in Wembley Stadium. Human beings do care about each other - they rise above contemporary politics. "Just For One Day puts Live Aid into perspective. It's a phenomenal piece of work. I read somewhere that it's a 'jukebox musical' - dude, it's the original musical jukebox! That's what we called it back then - 'Live Aid - the Global Jukebox'! That's what Live Aid was, arguably the greatest collection of songs of the rock era, and so this musical is hit after hit after hit, stunningly arranged for this generation! Its achievement is to conjure that vivid sense of 40 years ago, and to make it relevant to now." 'Just For One Day - The Live Aid Musical' (Original Cast Recording) will be available from 11th .
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We created a monster': Midge Ure reflects on Live Aid as musical heads to West End
Sitting in the royal box at London's Wembley Stadium, just shy of the 40th anniversary of the Live Aid concert that he helped make happen here, Midge Ure ponders its legacy. 'We created a monster,' he says. 'And it had to happen.' The two Live Aid shows in London and Philadelphia on 13 July 1985, featuring performances by U2, Queen, David Bowie and more, form the core of the stage musical Just for One Day. Today, it was announced that it will transfer to London's West End in May, after short runs at London's Old Vic in 2024 and Toronto earlier this year. But Ure argues that the day-long Live Aid could never happen today, because of the seductive pull of social media feeds. 'Have [audiences] got the attention span? I'm not sure,' he says. Live Aid was held to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia, and Ure says that he and the team behind it were powered by a cocktail of naivety and rock-star arrogance – logistical hurdles were deemed immaterial. 'We hadn't figured out just what a task this was going to be,' he says. 'Just get the show done. Sparkle, guys!' They had had major success with Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas? single in December 1984, written by Ultravox frontman Ure alongside Bob Geldof, but it had ended up exposing bottlenecks that were stopping the money getting to where it was most needed. A concert was conceived to swiftly raise the funds to eradicate those problems. 'There was a trucking cartel in situ in Ethiopia that all the aid agencies were using and had to pay for,' says Ure. 'We wanted to break the cartel by buying a fleet of trucks, but we didn't have the money to do it. So Live Aid was born.' George Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh charity show and album were used to show how good intentions can be dashed by mismanagement: millions of dollars raised by the concert were trapped in IRS tax escrow accounts for years. 'The first advice we were given was from George,' says Ure of the early planning stages for Live Aid. 'He said to Bob, 'Don't do what we did. Don't spend any of the money. No overheads.'' Frugality became the Band Aid Charitable Trust's mantra – it has never had an office and all trustees still work for free, with expenses forbidden. Money continues to come in from licensing, streams (of the Band Aid single at Christmas and YouTube footage of Live Aid) and donations, and 10% of proceeds from Just for One Day will support it. Total funds raised in the trust's lifetime have reached £150m. 'We have people leaving money to us in their wills,' says Ure. 'Our job as trustees is to generate as much money as we possibly can for the cause.' The 71-year-old Ure accepts that the social context of Live Aid in 1985 can be knotty to explain in 2025. The Band Aid lyrics – such as Bono's line 'tonight thank God it's them instead of you' – have prompted accusations of white saviourhood, and African artists such as Fuse ODG have argued it created a patronising and flattened view of a whole continent. 'We wrote it in an afternoon as a simple pop song and it's not there to be analysed,' counters Ure. 'It was there to do something. Was it done with good intent? Yes, it was. Did it make a difference? Yes, it did.' He feels, in retrospect, Live Aid marked the end of the old world, where music was the epicentre of culture, and the start of something less monolithic. Having a whole day of TV programming devoted to a concert raising money for a single cause could not work in today's oversaturated and media-fragmented world, he feels. Speaking at the musical's launch event on Thursday, Geldof made a similar point. 'The problem is, do people have the bandwidth?' he said. 'They're so exhausted with the horror of Gaza and the terror of Ukraine and the American political situation that it's hard to draw attention to those who through no fault of their own are dying right now.' For Ure, what was a unifying media spectacle then would not cohere now. 'I think Charlie Brooker will be writing the next Black Mirror [about this],' he jokes. 'Fans in the audience would be filming it and then they'd swipe their screens and the artists would disappear after 30 seconds. It's a different world.' Just for One Day: The Live Aid Musical will open at London's Shaftesbury theatre on 15 May, with an album version to be released on 11 July.
