Barely able to hear himself speak above the noise of the crowd, Chevy Chase asks for quiet. “We’ve got another group coming up that I think is gonna excite everybody,” the comedian-turned-Hollywood-star promises.
It’s July 13, 1985, and not yet 10am on the US’s eastern seaboard. But the day has dawned brightly for the 89,484 ticket holders gathered inside Philadelphia’s John F Kennedy Stadium for the US leg of the history-making ‘global jukebox’ famine relief concert Live Aid. They’ve already seen performances from folk legend Joan Baez, Motown greats the Four Tops, The Hooters, Billy Ocean, and Bernard Watson, an unsigned and completely unknown 18-year-old singer/ songwriter from Florida, who somehow charmed legendary promoter Bill Graham into letting him open the show, after sleeping outside the stadium for an entire week.
