40 years ago, in the summer of 1985, music’s biggest moment since Woodstock took place. Live Aid took place simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London, and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, and raised over $100 million to provide famine relief in Ethiopia. The event was spearheaded by singer Bob Geldof after a trip he took to Africa the year before.
The lineup for Live Aid featured an almost unbelievable array of stars: Elton John, David Bowie, U2, Queen, The Who, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel—the list goes on, and it doesn’t get any less impressive. The concert was broadcast via satellite across the globe, and drew a crowd of over 160,000 people between the two venues.
The legacy left by the Live Aid benefit concert illuminated the power of music and the global community, something that had never quite been done before, and has yet to be done since. Unfortunately, however, given the state of technology today, Live Aid can never truly be replicated in all its glory, because cell phones would get in the way.
Live Aid Couldn’t Happen In Today’s World Full Of Distractions (& Screens)
Part of What Made Live Aid So Special Was A Communal Presence
Four decades after the massive success, and with the breadth of technological advancements that in theory should be able to enhance the experience if someone were to organize a reunion of sorts, Live Aid organizer Midge Ure has actually explicitly said the event could never happen again. According to Far Out Magazine, Ure said in an interview with the BBC:
Everyone’s all over the place. Everyone’s too busy looking at screens. Technically, you could organise it easier, but these days you have so many distractions.
A huge part of Live Aid’s appeal was the collective feeling of being present, with nothing but the people around you, and the artists in front of you, playing for a noble cause. At mega-concerts and music festivals today, the crowd is all but dominated by phone screens, with some audience members actually watching the show through their phone.
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While Ure himself recognizes that, logistically, it would be much easier to put on an event like this today, it just wouldn’t be the same. Audience members would simply be too distracted to take it in, their phones keeping them from being fully present, and the event wouldn’t have nearly the same impact in 2025.
Is It Time To Permanently Put Down The Phones At Music Events?
Concerts Are Meant to Be Enjoyed in the Moment
Midge Ure isn’t the first or the only live music organizer to take a stance on cell phones at a music event. Pop icon Sabrina Carpenter actually came out in support of phone bans at concerts, after attending a Silk Sonic concert which implemented a phone ban, and they very well could be onto something.
It makes sense to want to film a concert to be able to relive the experience afterward, but if you’re only focused on getting the perfect video, are you actually experiencing it in the first place?
It makes sense to want to film a concert to be able to relive the experience afterward, but if you’re only focused on getting the perfect video, are you actually experiencing it in the first place? We’re so deeply tied to the outside world with our phones attached to us at all times, it’s inherently harder to stay present.
With concert ticket prices only going up, it stands to reason that we should want to be present for the duration of the event we paid for. Even if we never get another Live Aid, if more artists like Silk Sonic and Carpenter implement phone bans at their shows, a similar mega-concert is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
