Live Aid: The Definitive 40 Year Story

Paul Vallely

• Publisher: New Modern
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781917923408
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Social History

A Classic Pop Music Book of the Year

FEATURING A FOREWORD BY BOB GELDOF

The authoritative, official inside story of 40 years of Live Aid, from Band Aid to today.

In 1985, with £100+ million in his back pocket from Live Aid – the greatest rock concert the world had ever seen – Bob Geldof took a trip across Africa to decide how to spend the money he had raised for the Ethiopian famine. He asked Paul Vallely to go with him. Over the next four decades Vallely became one of Geldof’s closest advisers – travelling with him to meet the world’s top rock stars and politicians. 

Here, for the first time, Vallely gives his full eye-witness account of those 40 years. The book, which has a foreword by Bob Geldof, is crammed with stories of how pop, poverty, politics and power are interwoven in the Live Aid story. Geldof encounters presidents, prime ministers and popes as well as the pop heroes who adorned his bedroom wall as a boy. Bob drinks late-night whisky with Margaret Thatcher, is forced to write a grovelling apology to Bill Clinton and meets Vladimir Putin on a boat in the Mediterranean. He pressurises The Who, sweet talks Pink Floyd, and is awestruck by Bowie. Is Bob Geldof a bully or a charmer, saint or ‘white saviour’, or simply a force of nature?   

But there is more to this than music. The journey from Live Aid to Live 8 was one from giving money to calling for action, from charity to justice – and an entire generation went on it with him. Live 8 in 2005 was the largest gathering in human history. Its eight simultaneous concerts created a seismic event which the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations could not ignore. It made a whole generation feel they could make a difference. In more ways than one, Live Aid rocked the world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Map of Ethiopia
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Six Characters in Search of a Story
• Chapter 2: A Terrible Famine
• Chapter 3: Death in the Living Room
• Chapter 4: Reeling in the Stars
• Chapter 5: ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’
• Chapter 6: Geldof Goes to Ethiopia
• Chapter 7: ‘We Are the World’
• Chapter 8: St Bob Versus the Iron Lady
• Chapter 9: Constructing a Global Jukebox
• Chapter 10: What Happened to the Black Acts?
• Chapter 11: Glitches and Hitches
• Chapter 12: The Day That Rocked the World
• Chapter 13: Back in the USSR
• Chapter 14: Give Us Your Fucking Money
• Chapter 15: This is Your Woodstock
• Chapter 16: Upstaging Mr Jagger
• Chapter 17: Children of Live Aid
• Chapter 18: Sacks and Trucks and Rock ’n’ Roll
• Chapter 19: Across Africa to Spend the Money
• Chapter 20: A Long-running Feud Begins
• Chapter 21: Doing Something Funny for Money
• Chapter 22: From Charity to Justice
• Chapter 23: Punks, Pope and President
• Chapter 24: Bono in America
• Chapter 25: Vladimir Putin’s Smile
• Chapter 26: In the Shadow of the Twin Towers
• Chapter 27: A New Blueprint for Africa
• Chapter 28: The Odd Couple
• Chapter 29: The Girl Who Came Back from the Dead
• Chapter 30: Bono and Richard Start Plotting
• Chapter 31: Making Poverty History
• Chapter 32: What Changed Bob’s Mind
• Chapter 33: Making Pigs Fly
• Chapter 34: It Was Twenty Years Ago Today
• Chapter 35: The Cracks Begin to Appear
• Chapter 36: Playing Poker at Gleneagles
• Chapter 37: Doing the Deal
• Chapter 38: The End of the Beginning
• Chapter 39: Did Geldof Get It Wrong?
• Chapter 40: Passing the Baton
• Photographs
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Index
• Publisher’s Note
• Image Description
• Copyright