Throughout the concerts, viewers were urged to donate money to the Live Aid cause. Three hundred phone lines were manned by the BBC, so that members of the public could make donations using their credit cards. The phone number and an address that viewers could send cheques to were repeated every twenty minutes.
Nearly seven hours into the concert in London, Bob Geldof enquired how much money had been raised; he was told £1.2 million. He is said to have been sorely disappointed by the amount and marched to the BBC commentary position.
Pumped up further by a performance by Queen that he later called 'absolutely amazing', Geldof gave a famous interview. Many now recall that Geldof said, "Just give us the money." However, this is not true; he did say, "People are dying NOW.
Give us the money NOW. Give me the money now." And later, when trying to impress the importance of his plea on the BBC presenter, Geldof yelled, "Fuck the address, just give the phone, here's the number.
.." After the outburst, giving increased to £300 per second.
Later in the evening, following David Bowie's set, a video, shot by CBC, was shown to the audiences in London and Philadelphia, as well as on televisions around the world, showing starving and diseased Ethiopian children set to the song "Drive" by The Cars. (This would also be shown at Live 8 in 2005.) The rate of giving became faster in the immediate aftermath of the moving video.
As Geldof mentioned, during the concert, the Republic of Ireland gave the most donations per capita, despite being in the throes of a serious economic depression at the time. The single largest donation came from the ruling family of Dubai. They donated £1m in a phone conversation with Geldof.
The next day, news reports stated that between £40 and £50 million had been raised. Now, it is estimated that around £150mn has been raised for famine relief as a direct result of the concerts. Criticisms and controversies Bob Dylan's performance generated controversy for his comment: "I hope that some of the money.
..maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe.
..one or two million, maybe.
..and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.
.." He is often misquoted, as on the Farm Aid web site [3], as saying: "Wouldn't it be great if we did something for our own farmers right here in America?
" In his best-selling autobiography, (published in 1986), Geldof was extremely critical of the remark; he states: "He displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid...
. Live Aid was about people losing their lives. There is a radical difference between losing your livelihood and losing your life.
It did instigate Farm Aid, which was a good thing in itself, but it was a crass, stupid, and a non-nationalistic thing to say." Singer Pat Boone, while commenting that Live Aid was a noble cause to start, did comment how uncomfortable he felt with some of the lyrics. He especially noted that Duran Duran's performance of "A View to a Kill" (with its lyric "dance into the fire").
Although a professed admirer of Geldof's generosity and concern, Fox News television host Bill O'Reilly has been critical of the Live Aid producer's oversight of the money raised for starving Ethiopian people, noting (in June 2005) that much of the funds were siphoned off by Mengistu Haile Mariam and his army. O'Reilly believes that charity organisations, operating in aid-receiving countries, should control donations, rather than possibly corrupt governments. Tim Russert, when interviewing Bono on Meet the Press shortly after O'Reilly's comments, addressed this concern of O'Reilly and others to the singer.
Bono responded that corruption, not disease or famine, was the greatest threat to Africa, agreeing with the belief that foreign relief organisations should decide how the money is spent. On the other hand, the singer said that it was better to spill some funds into nefarious quarters for the sake of those who needed it, than to stifle aid because of possible theft [5]. Other critics have argued that donations to charity organisations often end up being used by corrupt governments as well.
Much of the money raised by Live Aid went to NGOs in Ethiopia, some of which were under the influence or control of the Derg military junta. Some journalists have suggested that the Derg was able to use Live Aid and Oxfam money to fund its enforced resettlement and "villagification" programmes, under which at least 3 million people are said to have been displaced and between 50,000 and 100,000 killed.[6] Live Aid performers and setlists (In order of appearance, times given are British Summer Time and indicate the start time of the performance.
Coldstream Guards, royal salute, "God Save the Queen" (W 12:00); Status Quo - "Rockin' All Over the World", "Caroline", "Don't Waste My Time" (W 12:02); Boomtown Rats - "I Don't Like Mondays", "Drag Me Down", "Rat Trap", "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" (sung by the audience) (W 12:44); INXS (performing in Melbourne) - "What You Need", "Don't Change", 13:06); Men at Work (performing in Melbourne) - Overkill (13:12) Loudness (taped in Japan) - "Gotta Fight", 13:34); Off Cause (taped in Japan - "Endless Night", 13:36); Eikichi Yazawa (taped in Japan) - "Take It Time", 13:38); Motoharu Sano (taped in Japan) - "Shame", 13:40); Bernard Watson - "All I Really Want to Do", "Interview" (JFK 13:51); Joan Baez (introduced by Jack Nicholson - speech, "Amazing Grace", "We Are the World" (JFK 14:02); Austria For Afrika (taped in Austria) - Introduction, "Warum(Why)" (W 14:12); Shahrouz Homavaran - "children need to have home ", (W 14:10); Throughout the concerts, viewers were urged to donate money to the Live Aid cause.
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