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The Live Aid
The Live Aid concert at Wembley Arena in 1985 has become a musical and cultural landmark. Everyone who was anyone from the world of pop music at the time signed up to perform – Queen, David Bowie, Elton John, The Who, Dire Straits, U2, Paul McCartney, Sting and… Phil Collins.
As told in the bookazine – Concorde Supersonic Speedbird – The Full Story, taking part in the London event though, meant it would be impossible to also participate in the second Live Aid event being run in parallel in Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium.
There was a choice to be made and while some Brits opted for the London show, many more such as the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones and Duran Duran decided to play America instead.
At the time, Collins was riding high on the success of his third solo album No Jacket Required which reached number one in charts all over the world and spawned hit singles such as Sussudio and One More Night. The LP had appeared in January and six months of touring followed, starting in February, with Collins’ regular crew of backup musicians nicknamed The Hot Tub Club.
Collins, who had already appeared on the Band Aid single playing drums, had heard about the Live Aid concert from Sting. When he saw that it was scheduled for July he realised that not only was it a great opportunity to raise some money for a good cause, it would also make the perfect climax for his 88 date world tour – which ended with a two-night stand at New York on July 1-2, having already included a show in Philadelphia on May 20.
Phil Collins getting Concorde
Having made the decision to play, he then struggled to decide which show he should play.
He later recalled: “When we looked at who was on in England, there was really nobody that I might have wanted to play with or that I knew or that I thought would want to have me.
“It needed to be someone with whom I would gel because I wanted it to be right for the concert and make a proper contribution. All my mates like Clapton and Robert Plant were doing the American show.
“Then someone said to me that it would be possible to do both if I went on early enough in London and then got Concorde. So I said: ‘okay, I’ll do that then’, without really thinking about it. A week before Live Aid, my tour had finished in New York and while I was there, I said to this guy at the airport: ‘We’re coming through next week to do a charity show; any chance of getting cleared on board’? He said no. Apparently everyone has to go through the terminal – even Princess Margaret.”
The London leg of Live Aid kicked off at noon with the Coldstream Guards playing a short royal salute and God Save the Queen before Status Quo took to the stage for a rousing rattle through Rockin’ All Over The World, Caroline and Don’t Waste My Time. They were followed by Paul Weller in The Style Council, The Boomtown Rats, Adam Ant, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Nik Kershaw and Sade. Then, at 3.18pm, it was Collins’ turn.
Phil Collins doing a live broadcast from Concorde
After an introduction by Noel Edmonds, he joined Sting and jazz performer Branford Marsalis for a seven song set lasting 32 minutes. The capacity audience at Wembley was treated to Roxanne, Driven To Tears, Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now), Message In A Bottle, In The Air Tonight, Long Long Way To Go and Every Breath You Take. It was now 3.50pm, which meant that it was 10.50am in Philadelphia and Collins had eight hours and 50 minutes to get from the stage at Wembley to the stage at JFK Stadium in time to perform with Eric Clapton at 7.40pm.
Edmonds, a licensed pilot, flew Collins to Heathrow airport in his own helicopter. Collins later said: “When we got to the airport-I’ll never forget this – we landed and all the baggage handlers were out by Concorde to wave me goodbye. It was ever so nice of them. Cher was on the plane and I’d never met her before so I went over and said hello – you know, ‘Hi, I bought I Got You Babe’ – and she asked what was going on. I told her about Live Aid and she asked whether I could get her on, I told her to just turn up.
“I was supposed to do a live broadcast from Concorde. The captain obviously knew about it and said I could do it but that I wasn’t to tell anybody because he wasn’t supposed to let me. I thought this was crazy. Here he was telling me not to tell anybody and the broadcast’s about to go out to 1.5 billion people.”
Philadelphia
Concorde touched down at New York’s JFK airport after around three and a half hours in the air but with the clock ticking. Collins knew he had to get a move on. Fortunately, there was another helicopter waiting for him in anticipation of the onward journey to Philadelphia.
“Considering the distance is only a hundred and fifty miles it seemed like ages after it took us only a few hours to go all the way from London to New York,” he said. “I was worried that we weren’t going to arrive in time to play with the people I was supposed to play with.”
When he arrived, Collins had to quickly prepare himself for the three shows he was scheduled to perform. He’d had no time to rehearse with either Eric Clapton or Led Zeppelin, whose Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were playing together again for the first time since the death of drummer John Bonham five years earlier.
With Clapton, he played an old Cream favourite, White Room, then She’s Waiting and finally Derek & The Dominos crowd pleaser Layla. After only a short rest and a reintroduction by Bette Midler and Jack Nicholson, he was back for a short solo set consisting of Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) and In The Air Tonight. Then, finally, he was back for the third time in a row with Plant, Page, Jones, second drummer Tony Thompson from The Power Station and bass player Paul Martinez from Plant’s Band of Joy.
Led Zeppelin
The performance should have been a triumphant conclusion to an heroic endeavour, only made possible by Concorde’s own incredible supersonic performance but a lack of planning at the American end proved decisive.
The impromptu group’s three song show turned into a shambles. First up was Rock and Rol, followed by Whole Lotta Love and Stair way to Heaven. From the outset, it was clear that the lack of opportunity to rehearse was going to be a serious problem. Neither Collins nor Thompson was able to recreate John Bonham’s complex rhythms and intricate fills and it showed. To make matters worse, Page found that his guitar was out of tune and given the tight schedule, with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young waiting in the wings to go on, there was little time to sort it out.
Collins later remarked that he had been made to feel uncomfortable by Page who, he said, was performing below his best. He told Spin magazine in 2010: “If I could have walked off, I would have-but then we’d be talking about why Phil Collins walked off from Led Zeppelin. So I just stayed there and bit my tongue.”
Page himself told the BBC: “We came together and rehearsed with a drummer we’d never met before and then we were joined by Phil Collins, who we’d never played with before, on this great Live Aid stage. We went there with the spirit of it, but actually it was pretty shambolic.”
No jetlag
Having given one performance at 3.18pm, and then three more at effectively 12.40am, the last of which was a nerve jangling disaster, Collins found that he was utterly spent.
He said: “Before I had done all this running around I was asked to sing a couple of lines in We Are The World at the end of the show and at the time I had said: Yeah, no problem’. But when came off, it was like someone had unplugged me; I was completely zonked.”
Collins flew back to London the day after the concert with his second wife Jill.
“It was really the next morning, when we woke up and read all the newspapers, that we actually realised what we had been part of. At the time as far as I was concerned, it was just a logistical exercise, getting from A to B. Would I get there in time, would it be all right? Would lose my voice? People are still asking me if I’ve recovered from it; that I must have had jetlag. But we didn’t, because we weren’t there long enough to adjust.”
Concorde Supersonic Speedbird – The Full Story is published by Mortons Books and is available to order here.
Photo credit: Adrian Meredith / Crown Copyright and ozz13x via Wikipedia
