‘Elton cooked burgers and Freddie stole the show’: an insider's view backstage at Live Aid

At 12 noon on Saturday 13 July 1985, Live Aid kicked off at London’s Wembley Stadium. Five hours later its sister event would join in from the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. I took a moment, in between running around with a walkie-talkie answering questions and troubleshooting, to enjoy the fruits of my labours from the past six weeks. I was 31, managing acts such as The Kinks, and had been taken on to help organise the 16-hour marathon by Harvey Goldsmith, my wife’s boss, a friend of Bob Geldof ’s and one of the UK’s biggest concert promoters. He had a lot on his plate with his own acts, including Bruce Springsteen, and needed to outsource some of the project. The concert was for The Band Aid Trust, and so to avoid a conflict of interest, Harvey made me the charity’s sole employee for a freelance fee of £250 a week. He explained that the project was so ambitious no one knew if it was going to work. He told me that if it all went well, no one would hear about me. If it was a disaster, I’d be famous. I understood that he needed someone below the radar, and I was happy to do it. Just being involved in this amazing event was enough.