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ijwthstd
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found on BTX:
found on a Bruce Springsteen message board
It was interesting to read the recent posts concerning Bruce Springsteen and the Live Aid concert, given its prominence in current academic inquiry. Hasn’t anyone read Ocean County College Professor Liam MacHarvey's book "Smell of Success: Bruce Springsteen at the Cusp of the Millennium"? People are saying it's by far the most authoritative account of the latter half of Springsteen’s career since 1998's, ‘The Bruce Springsteen 1998 Wall Calendar’.
MacHarvey devotes a full three chapters of his tome to the issue of the Springsteen’s "non-participation" (or as some would have it, "participation") in 1980's vintage mega-celebrity gastronomical activism. The questions have been in the air for so long and it comes as no surprise that MacHarvey finally reveals that "Do They Know It's Christmas" was a veiled, but in the end obvious message to Bruce Springsteen and his management...does Bruce know it's Christmas? Time for giving? Giving us money? Giving us the power and influence of his reputation by headlining the Live Aid extravaganza?
Bob Geldof: “We believed that this would be nothing without the participation of Bruce. We thought, great, two massive bloody empty stadiums with a bunch of has-beens...McCartney, Zeppelin, Dylan...and a bunch of no-talent upstarts...Madonna, Phil Collins, Boomtown Rats...all braying away at their stupid songs with nobody listening, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent and not a penny raised. I said to Midge Ure, "Either this is going to be a fooking ballroom blitz or it's going to be the biggest pile of shite ever and we'll all look like fooking fools." He said, "Cor, yer right, mate." It's a miracle that it turned out to be anything at all, given that Springsteen refused in no uncertain terms.
A band insider recounts that Springsteen, the band, their management team and hangers-on including Marlon Brando, Fred "Rerun" Berry, Randy Bachman and Shelly Winters, were deeply moved when they viewed the documentary on the Somalian crisis that Geldof had sent to their Holmdel, NJ compound.
"I felt a deep ache in my heart", said Springsteen, "They all looked so sad and depressed. So I cried out to everyone within earshot, 'They don't need us to be playin' at Wembley or Philly…we're goin' ta Africa!' They all thought I was crazy, but I got on the phone with NJ Governor Tom Kean that night and we were off and running."
Kean arranged a meeting with envois from the famine-stricken nation and with the help of the UN, the concert was arranged within a month of Springsteen’s proposal. The band arrived in Mogadishu on May 3rd, a full two months before the Live Aid concert was scheduled. They rode out to the concert sight, on a large tract of flatlands 40 miles from the capital's center. An enormous stage had been erected, long as a football field with a 3-story high backdrop and over 20,000 individual lights. Before the stage, three quarters of a million Somalians had assembled.
"Even we were surprised," drummer Max Weinberg admitted, "We knew we were big everywhere, but this was big even for us. Far as the eye could see."
The band's popularity was manifest in even the most remote corners of the world, but this turn-out was nothing less than unprecedented. Still, linguists have pointed out that the phrase “E Street Band" sounds almost exactly like the Somalian term "estreetband" which translates, roughly: "All the free grain you can possibly eat, and more."
The band, after partaking of their usual pre-show meal (cream of mushroom soup, rack of lamb, salmon almandine, cherries jubilee) hit the stage at 7 p.m., taking advantage of a typically magnificent African sunset to maximize the drama of their entrance. But it was to be a difficult, if eventually triumphant, performance. Springsteen explains:
"Well, you know, we decided to run onstage with a tape of 'All You Need Is Love' playing. It always got everybody going. But with this crowd there was nothing. I mean, John Lennon had only been dead for a few years at that point. It seemed highly disrespectful, you know, because there was virtually no response. None really. I figured if there was anybody who could get behind the spirit of that song...y'know, 'All You Need Is Love'...it would be the Somalians. But there was like, nothing. I mean, we knew that they'd been having a rough time of it, but come on…it's a rock and roll show! We took it in stride, though, and ripped right into our standard opener, ‘Born In The USA’. We were playing it balls out, and yet, we looked and there was still virtually no response from the crowd. I mean, most of the people didn't even stand up! Many of them were lying down! We couldn't believe it. I was singing the song and thinking 'what the heck is wrong with them...this isn't the Boston Pops at Tanglewood!" We had been given the impression that Mogadishu was a really rockin' town, but this crowd was really dead." (International observers have since confirmed that 17% of the assembled audience were, literally, dead.)
But the band persevered, putting in an impressive performance of their many hits, plus obscure album cuts and covers of the Hollies' "All I Need Is the Air That I Breathe", Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf", and a romp through the British music hall standard "Yes, We Have No Bananas".
Bruce Springsteen: "By the time we got to our first encore, ‘Born To Run’, the crowd had really woken up. People were on their feet. They were really going wild, you know. It was heartening. We capped off the final encore with a cover of Sweet’s "Love Is Like Oxygen", which had pyrotechnics, really big explosions, naked girls and confetti raining out over the audience. They really loved it. We always did this very long coda where we'd repeat the final line of the chorus, 'Not enough and you're gonna die', over and over, really rocking it up. It was incredibly moving, looking out over that sea of people, all of them waving their very thin arms, singing along...'Not enough and you're gonna die'...over and over. I mean, besides money and girls, this is what we got into the business for."
The band were airlifted out and arrived back in New Jersey seemingly triumphant the very next day. But the African and international press, much to the band's shock, were not impressed. "While the band's artistry and Springsteen’s supreme showmen's skills are untouched," ranted the New York Times, "the benefits which may have been bestowed upon the long-suffering people of Somalia are very much in question." And the Mogadishu Gazette offered a searing critique in an op-ed piece entitled "Imperial Rape Goes Blue Collar".
Jon Landau: "We couldn't believe the ingratitude of those Africans and the rest of the world too. Here, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and give them a bit of entertainment, put on a real show, lift up their spirits, and we end up getting slagged off in the press. We still think that it was a musical success, but the fact was, as far as concession sales, it was a disaster. Now, I can understand why the t-shirt trade was slow. That makes sense, sure. But we had the lowest percentage on refreshments that we've ever had anywhere. I mean, it was good stuff--mini-pizzas, cheeseburgers, vegetable wraps if they wanted. I figured it would all sell like hotcakes at a big outdoor event like that. But not even the hotcakes sold."
Critics have pointed out that the cost of a small paper dish of nachos with cheese was $5.50 and that this was more than a decade's income for the large majority of the concert's audience.
"All right, I understand they're a bit put out, moneywise," Springsteen rejoins, "But, you know, it was an event. When me and the boys were living on shoplifted baloney in a cold Asbury Park rental in 1971, before the band hit, we still managed to scrape up beer money when the Stones came to town. I mean, that's the spirit of rock and roll, right? Which them Somalians sadly seem to be lacking in."
The entire affair has been largely forgotten, completely overshadowed by the massive success of the Live Aid event. While most rock fans agree that none of the acts on the bill that day could touch the almost divine intensity of the E Street Band in full flight, it is generally thought, that in humanitarian terms, Geldof trumped the Boss in the Summer of '85.
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Anything Springsteen on RO... Part 4a (Read 641,295 times)
