If we truly “fed the world” in the 1980s, why are so many people still starving today? That’s a question that I had been thinking about in the context of the approaching 20th anniversary of Live Aid — even before the series of Live 8 concerts were announced.

Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect that a benefit concert (or a benefit single) would actually achieve any lasting change, but the rhetoric of the time made it clear that doing so was the goal. In the Live Aid Worldwide Concert Book, organizer Bob Geldof wrote, without any apparent attempt at irony, that we should all remember that “there is someone alive in Africa ‘cos one day you watched a pop concert.” But realistically, despite raising over $1.5 billion for African famine relief, the charity concerts ended up showing how sadly appropriate the name “Band Aid” had been.

It’s not clear whether we’ve learned anything since July 13, 1985. On the one hand, the compulsion to hold a benefit concert in response to any global tragedy has continued unabated. As Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells pointed out in January (around the time that everyone was singing for tsunami victims), “There are discrete stages in the response to any great global tragedy. Shock, first, then grief. Then a feeling of helplessness, which, in Canada, is usually expressed as indignation at the government. There is an outpouring of sympathy and philanthropic donationâe¦ Before very long, the response reaches its most public and ecstatic expression: the relief concert. It’s not the most intuitively appropriate response to catastrophe — the party of disaster, the festival of mourning — especially because, if you’ve ever been at a relief benefit, you’ll recall that the mood is hardly one of quiet introspection. Yet the benefit concert has become such an automatic response to a certain kind of disaster that these shows sprung up spontaneously, chaotically, even producing an unintended environment of competition.”

At the same time, organizers and participants seem to be reflecting on the limitations of rock ‘n’ roll as a tool for social change. Geldof reflected on the tsunami relief concerts in an interview with CBC Newsworld’s The Hour. “It’s not new. That’s the way that musicians can utilize their constituency to help other peopleâe¦ They [natural disasters and global poverty] are completely differentâe¦ You can’t stop an act of nature. It is not a man’s gift. You can stop an act of man. The condition of the poor in Africa — 150,000 people, at least, die each day because of poverty — that’s preventable. Which is the greater tragedy? I think it’s knowing that people are dying from hunger, poverty and diseaseâe¦ and doing nothing about it. There is no need to die of want in a world of surplus. That is morally repulsive and intellectually absurd.”

According to Geldof, the motive behind the Live 8 events is “not for charity but political justiceâe¦ This is to finally, as much as we can, put a stop to that [poverty in Africa].” This time, there seems to be more understanding that, while tears are still not enough, neither is simply buying short term food supplies. The objective is to raise awareness about global poverty and to pressure the G8 leaders (who are meeting in Scotland in the week following the concerts) to increase their foreign aid budgets and cancel debts owed by poor nations.

In particular, Geldof has targeted Canada’s failure to live up to longstanding aid commitments. “It’s so important that Canada is involved. Canada put together the proposal for that [contributing 0.7 per cent of GDP towards foreign aid]. Canada almost has a special obligation in this instance. There’s no use your prime minister coming to Scotland [for the G8 Summit] unless he’s prepared to do this deal. There’s no reason why the Canadian government would back down … there’s every reason why they should take leadership with this issue. Don’t let your government come here unless they’re really prepared to change the world.”

Much of the media commentary on the Live 8 concert — scheduled for July 2 in Philadelphia, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Toronto (Barrie), Tokyo, Johannesburg, Cornwall and Edinburgh — has been centred on the question of lineup (although in Canada, that discussion has been overshadowed by exaggerated agonizing about the venue). Why are so many of the featured acts, to put it kindly, somewhat past their prime? Why aren’t there more African artists included? Which will be more artistically significant: the reunion of Pink Floyd, the reunion of the Spice Girls or the reunion of Mariah Carey with her career? These are interesting questions, of course, but they are far less important than the big questions that are being largely ignored.

The British media are the exception to this dearth of attention to serious questions. Some examples:

  • Guardian columnist George Monbiot warned that “The danger is that we will follow the agenda set by Bono and Bob Geldof. The two musicians are genuinely committed to the cause of poverty reduction. They have helped secure aid and debt relief packages worth billions of dollars. They have helped to keep the issue of global poverty on the political agenda. They have mobilised people all over the world. These are astonishing achievements, and it would be stupid to disregard them. The problem is that they have assumed the role of arbiters: of determining on our behalf whether the leaders of the G8 nations should be congratulated or condemned for the decisions they make. They are not qualified to do so, and I fear that they will sell us down the river.”
  • Brian Reade of the Daily Mirror asked “How ludicrously simplistic is the notion that Western politicians have the power to solve all of Africa’s ills, and that they can be seduced into taming multi-national sharks and the continent’s tyrannical rulers after a few bars of Dido. Against such awful reality, sneering at the motives of pop stars is irrelevant. The heart-breaking truth they are delivering to our living-rooms should make us turn our snarls on politicians, businessmen and tyrants. These are the people who cynically cover up the fact that the three richest men on earth control more wealth than all the 600 million people in the world’s poorest countries. The scale of the horror should make us realize it is cynicism that keeps Africa in poverty. Cynicism supported by world leaders who know it would cost less than one per cent of world income to wipe out global poverty. But choose not to.”
  • “Can the starving children of Africa save our has-been pop stars yet again?” asks Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday. “The hungry, terrorized children of Africa are being called upon to help rescue the sagging reputations of that needy and deprived group of balding, clapped-out rock stars who still long for the crowds that once listened to them.”

Certain British pop stars have been equally savage in their assessment of the event. Noel Gallagher (who nevertheless says that Oasis would have played Live 8 if their schedule permitted it) complained about “the general thing that rock stars should be doing something to fookin’ sort this out. And it’s like, ‘Well, all right, that’s what Bono and [Chris] Martin are for.’ The fate of the African continent does not fookin’ depend on a load of fookin’ musicians in Hyde Park singing fookin’ shit songs to kids. And they’re saying they’re fookin’ raising awareness for it. If you’re not aware of it by now, you can be aware of it for the half-hour. But I bet you that 99 per cent of that audience will walk out while they’re still eating McDonalds on the way home and won’t realize that by actually standing in McDonalds you’re perpetuating poverty in some way.”

On the other hand, what else is an artist to do if they want to make a difference? Isn’t doing something better than doing nothing? Isn’t it better to use the audience that you have to change opinions and, in doing so, to move governments to act? Stephen Page of The Bare Naked Ladies recalls that, after 9/11 (and the ensuing benefit concerts), “it was at the point where people were thinking ‘We’re going to have a year of benefit concerts, and they’re not going to mean anything anymore.’âe¦ But you have to say [what you’re thinking]. Otherwise you just become a cartoon character. I think that’s what art is. I think that the artist who goes out and decides to pontificate just to hear themselves speak or to feel some kind of power is an artist to be cautious about. But, I think an artist that tries to say something that is honest about their own feelings and their own ideas, that’s what artists do.”

Guelph musician and producer Scott Merritt summed up many artists’ reaction when he said “To be honest, I think for most of us it’s probably a relief concert in a couple of ways. In a way, it’s a relief to be asked to pitch in. Most of us feel a bit powerless watching the world and its ills going by, day in day out. In light of things, it’s a relief to be able to be part of anything that is — without question — constructive on a purely human level. If the work you do naturally can be of possible service, directly — or in any way — to someone genuinely in need somewhere, you are lucky.”

Without questioning the motives of most of those involved in this or any other benefit concert, the reality is that it’s up to the global audience to keep working for lasting, meaningful social change now and long after the final note has faded away. We can enjoy the music and applaud the message, but ultimately, the responsibility for creating a fairer world is ours.

July 13th, 1985 (The Live Aid Song)
by John Wesley Harding (from the album It Happened One Night)
Lyrics used with permission.

July 13th 1985 was the day we watched Live Aid
The Global Jukebox came alive
We fed the world that day
We fed the world that day

It was a day for a party we made a lot of food and we ate it sure as hell
Vegetarian salads, they had no meat, there was leftovers as well
Everybody laughed when I said
Thinking of the people either dying or dead
Let’s pick up the leftovers, send them to the starving children in Ethiopia
My mother used to say that

Sure I was pleased to give money, cause it was not a political cause
I just remember the smiling faces, the music and the applause
I spent 30 quid on coke
I smoked a little too much dope
I was wiped out from 5 til 7, I missed Spandau Ballet and U2

July 13th 1985 was the day we watched Live Aid
The Global Jukebox came alive
We fed the world that day
We fed the world that day

The music was fucking brilliant and that Madonna she sure can move
By the time Paul McCartney’s microphone had failed yeah, we are all well into the Live Aid groove
Paul McCartney, he sang…
Which must have been a bit of an irony
Cos if you ‘Let it Be’ nothing will ever improve
But it was one of the first times I ever heard one of the real Beatles sing a real Beatles’ song live on television, I really wished Julian Lennon had turned up instead of his recently dead father, I was really moved

July 13th 1985 was the day we watched Live Aid
The Global Jukebox came alive
We fed the world that day
We fed the world that day

Well the powerful voice of pop music, solve the problems, feed the world
So what if there weren’t any blacks involved there was Everything but the Girl
Bob Geldof has no ego that man should get the Nobel Prize
By the time he sang the solo on Feed the World
I thought he should be canonized

I felt guilty about the starving but I felt good to be alive
And I must admit I shed a tear or two in the very moving video for that great Cars song Drive
(You canâe(TM)t go on as if nothingâe(TM)s wrong
Whoâe(TM)s going to drive you homeâe¦)
Saint Bob made me feel like shit
So I got out an envelope, opened it
Put in a very crisp ten pound note
It was the same one I used earlier to snort my coke
And that made me feel good inside
Sending the money, not snorting the coke

July 13th 1985 was the day we watched Live Aid
The Global Jukebox came alive
We fed the world that day
We fed the world that day

(You can’t go on as if nothing’s wrongâe¦)

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Scott Piatkowski

Scott Piatkowski is a former columnist for rabble.ca. He wrote a weekly column for 13 years that appeared in the Waterloo Chronicle, the Woolwich Observer and ECHO Weekly. He has also written for Straight...