Freddie Mercury : Radio Ga Ga : Live Aid

Long-lost photo of Freddie Mercury of Queen, performing Radio Ga Ga at Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, London 7.13.1985. Hidden away in an archive for forty yerars, and now finally unleashed.

“It's twelve noon in London, seven AM in Philadelphia, and around the world it's time for Live Aid.” With those words, broadcaster Richard Skinner launched the Global Jukebox, the show heard around the world, attended by 72,000 people at Wembley Stadium, and watched live by 1.9 billion people - 40% of the world’s population.

I was there in the photo pit for Smash Hits, and the entire staff of the magazine was called into the Carnaby Street office to write and lay out the story and photos in real time. A motorcycle messenger was assigned to me for the day. He was given a pass, so he could come right into the pit and collect my exposed color film and run it back to a lab, Joe’s Basement, in Soho to get it processed. The messenger would then return to Wembley for the next batch.

After the show wrapped at around 8:00pm, I drove to the office, where there was a party atmosphere, and proofs of several of the finished pages had already returned from the printer.

The photograph chosen by Smash Hits for this historic cover wasn’t of the undoubted star of the day, Freddie Mercury, but one of Live Aid co-organizer Bob Geldof, pausing in the middle of his band The Boomtown Rats’ anthemic I Don’t Like Mondays with his fist raised.

Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp later told The Guardian, ”Dare I say it, it was evangelical, that moment when Geldof stopped I Don't Like Mondays and raised his fist in the air. He was a sort of statesman. A link between punk and the New Romantics and the Eighties. You would follow him. He just has a huge charisma; he'd make a frightening politician.” Geldof himself used the same photo (back to front though?) in his biography Is That It, noting that was the moment when he realized the enormity of what he and his fellow organizers had achieved.

In the week following Live Aid all of the photographers sent their best images to the Band Aid Trust for use in various associated publications, such as the 1995 Live Aid calendar and a Live Aid book, but it seems that we never got them back. One of my friends, who also shot the show, told me we went to the Trust years later looking for his/our images, but they’d all been thrown in the rubbish bin. And wouldn't you know it, I don't even have this historic Smash Hits cover image in my archive.

And here's a recently discovered photo of me, in one of the photo pits at Live Aid, shooting on what looks like a rented 400mm f2.8 Nikkor... taken by one of my photographic inspirations, the legendary Pennie Smith!