Twenty years after the Live Aid concerts, musical superstars are joining in a five-city spectacular to push a political solution for African poverty.
“We don’t want people’s money. We want them,” Bob Geldof, the driving force behind the Band Aid and Live Aid campaigns, said Tuesday as he announced plans for Live 8 concerts on July 2 just days before leaders of the world’s richest countries, the G8, meet in Britain.
Musicians including Madonna, Paul McCartney, U2, Bon Jovi, Brian Wilson, Crosby Stills & Nash, Coldplay, Sting, Stevie Wonder and Jay-Z will grace stages in London, Philadelphia, Berlin, Paris and Rome.
The 1985 Live Aid concerts, held in London and Philadelphia on the same day, sold out both venues, drew a TV audience of millions around the globe and raised $40 million for poverty relief in Africa.
Since then, Geldof said, Africa has only become poorer.
“Twenty years on, it strikes me as being morally repulsive and intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus,” Geldof said. “This is to finally, as much as we can, put a stop to that.”
Geldof said he had resisted any recreation of Live Aid, but relented to pressure from U2’s Bono and others: “It seemed to me that we could gather again, but this time not for charity but for political justice.”
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