(upbeat music) - It is time for "You Oughta Know."

And on tonight's show, we remember Live Aid, 40 years later.

- [John] We didn't realize that it would evolve into us actually headlining and closing the show.

- [Midge] Bob had just seen the footage about the Ethiopian famine in 1984, and he was outraged and he said, I want to do something, will you help?

- [Eric] The crowd at Live Aid was monstrous.

- [Rob] We were like, let's represent the city.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the show.

I'm Shirley Min.

My outfit is a throwback to the eighties as we turn the clock back to July, 1985.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, the global concerts in London and Philadelphia that raised awareness of the famine in Ethiopia.

Journey back with us as we learn how Philly was chosen to host this stateside concert, what it was like to be part of this historic event, and how Philly artists were prominently featured.

We begin with the band that kicked off the concert.

- Hi, I'm Rob Hyman.

- And I'm Eric Bazilian.

We're from The Hooters.

- We opened Live Aid - In 1985.

We got invited to Live Aid actually while we were touring.

We were out on our first little practice tour with Don Henley.

And we got a phone call, you guys were playing Live Aid.

- We heard about this show and they were talking about different cities apparently, New York, LA, they ended up picking JFK in Philly and our management and Larry Magid, the promoter, along with Bill Graham, super promoters, they were pushing to have a local band and so were we, you know, we were like, let's represent the city.

The lineup was incredible.

Even today, you look at the lineup and it's mind boggling.

But they wanted us to be Philly, be local, and we were happy to do it.

- The crowd at Live Aid was monstrous.

There was an elevator that took us up to the stage, so we hadn't seen the crowd yet.

I felt like gladiators being pushed out into the arena.

So we, you know, we took the elevator up.

First, we looked to the back and we saw, you know, our significant others in the stand, turn around and see what a hundred thousand people looks like.

And I guess we had seen that before when we opened for The Who, but this was just different.

This was really magnetic.

- [Rob] Nobody's prepared for a hundred thousand people at 9:00 a.m. and that's what it was.

We came out like really hyped up.

I'm like clapping like a maniac up there.

But you know what, the crowd got going and I, Joan Baez officially opened the show, solo.

I think she was the only solo artist, but we were really the first band to play.

And we're like, you know what?

This is our spot.

Give us 10 minutes, but we're gonna give it our all.

And the the reaction was awesome, it was great.

And those 10 minutes at Live Aid really did change our whole career.

I mean, that was just, all of a sudden, even Bob Geldof knew who we were.

And then we hit the road, we toured with "Nervous Night," we went to Australia that winter, I guess, first national tour.

We started hitting the States, Canada, next year or two to Europe and we're still going.

So that opened up huge doors and we made the best of it.

- In some ways, the world started to become global that day, on Live Aid Day.

You know, it was the first time that the whole world was united by music.

And it really did start with "We Are The World."

and really before that was, "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

in the UK.

But you know, "We Are The World" was a global song, a global hit, and it made that happen.

- [Rob] We joined the finale too.

And I think I, for some reason, I remember Duran Duran, but we were in that vicinity, like, that's the band that was there.

But you know, whoever was there at the end, but during the show, not only Nick, but Keith Richards is there, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, goes on and on.

As I look at the list, I still can't remember - Yeah.

- half of them.

And, you know, most people stayed and we're all up there doing "We Are The World."

It was just one of those giant events, had to pinch ourselves.

And the rest really, was history.

- I think a big takeaway for me with that experience was feeling like we belonged with these people.

You know, during the finale I turned around, there's Bob Dylan and Keith, and Ronnie Wood.

I'm like, okay, yeah, they're standing behind me.

- Our buddies, our new best friends.

Back then it was TV, radio, kind of, but really, just this worldwide satellite broadcast.

As Eric said, it was really the first time of anything on that scale.

And even the technology back then, you know, was what it was, and we've come a long way, but there was something just basic and even soulful about just, this is how we're gonna communicate as best we can with what's available technically.

And that was a challenge.

Just the production itself was a challenge.

And then reaching the whole world as Eric said and then boom.

We go to wherever, Japan, Australia, Europe, we've been all over.

Everyone's talking about Live Aid.

Everyone just remembers where they were, if they were around.

And you know, now it's, you know, all these years later, like Woodstock, if you weren't there, you know, you'll say you were, you know?

It's just become this monumental, Even if you watched it on TV, you were kind of there.

So globally, it kind of changed everything.

- [Eric] And everyone knows about it.

You know, if I meet teenagers, you know, they say, what do you do?

And I tell 'em about the band.

You know, the records we've done, the artists we've worked with, that's nice.

But then when I say we opened Live Aid, they weren't close to born then, but, you know, they, wow, you played at Live Aid?

It has that much of a panache in the world, in the Zeitgeist still.

- We have a brand new single that just came out called "Pendulum."

♪ Pendulum Swings for me and for you ♪ ♪ The left and the right, the red and the blue ♪ ♪ So here's to my friends and my enemies too ♪ ♪ The pendulum swings for me and for you ♪ And then a new double live album with a horn section we recorded last year at the Keswick Theater, and it's absolutely killer.

So 45 years and I have to say, I think the shows are better than ever.

The energy's high.

We are still in shape to get out there and rock and roll and the fans do the rest.

I mean, the people carry the energy through.

The other thing about it is, these songs we've been singing for 45 years or so, "Zombies," "Fighting On The Same Side," "Day by Day" and day by day, you know, nothing lasts forever, it only fades away and we're like, here we are.

- Still hasn't faded away.

- Hasn't faded away.

So it's words to live by, and sing by, and the the fans to do the rest, they make it possible.

So we'll keep going as long as we can.

- Live Aid was a first.

An event unlike any other.

Electric Factory co-founder, Larry Magid, was critical in bringing this worldwide event to Philly.

Larry, thanks so much for being here.

- Sure.

- Bob Geldof, who conceived of this idea, of this benefit concert, has been quoted as saying that, you are the real hero in bringing Live Aid to Philadelphia.

What did you say to him to convince Bob Geldof to have Live Aid here in Philly?

- Well, originally when we got the call, they wanted to do it in Washington on the Mall, but we didn't, we only had about five and a half weeks to do this show and to get a license, to do the Mall, would've been impossible.

Then they wanted to do it in New York or North Jersey.

And I explained to them that A, Philadelphia was the right place, we had 90,000 seats, lots of experience doing shows there, everything was at our fingertips, but it didn't quite work.

So after a couple of days telling them, this is where history started for America.

This is the Cradle of Liberty, City of Brotherly Love, just a, this is where everything started in America.

I finally got through and the rest is history.

- Yeah, and it helped that we had one of the largest stadiums in JFK Stadium at the time.

- Yeah, 90,000 seats and a great place to view a show.

The sound was great 'cause you just shoot through the air and yeah, it was great.

And again, we knew all the department heads.

So when we started, Geldof flew over in the middle of this meeting where we had 50 city departments at a round table talking about how we were going to do this and what the goal was.

So we had, you name it, streets department, firemen, police, everybody so.

And everybody was really cooperative, and I think they knew the significance, and we were well versed, again, in doing big shows like this.

- I didn't realize that you only had five and a half weeks.

- Five and a half weeks, yeah.

- Was Geldof pretty hands off since - Yeah.

- he knew you kind of had done this many times over.

- They were putting on Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith, the promoter in London, they were busy putting their show together, and they had a remarkable show.

I think we had a great show in Philadelphia.

We put together a great show, and just happy that it was in Philadelphia and I think that that was a key because of our experience.

- And we had a lot of hometown musicians - Yeah.

- performing, which was really nice.

- Yeah.

- Was that important to you?

- Yeah, yeah.

We worked that as we were putting the show together, Bill Graham and I were putting the show together, we got a call from a couple of acts in London saying, you have a great show, but where's all the Great American black acts?

So I had a lot of history growing up with black music and I knew who to call.

So we had, we got the Four Tops, we had Ashford and Simpson, we had Run DMC, and then, so I got Patti LaBelle.

And with Ashburn and Simpson, we had a very dramatic moment with Teddy Pendergrass' first appearance after his major automobile accident.

And then we got, we had Hall and Oates who appeared with two of The Temptations who actually were living in Philadelphia at the time.

And we had George Thorogood from Delaware and we got to put The Hooters on as the opening act, and it was just very poignant.

- Yeah, it's perfect.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I'm gonna be speaking with John Oates later about his remembrances from Live Aid.

So I'm really excited about that.

- Yeah, they were great.

It was an interesting show with the going, doing it with the two Temptations and going through the different dance steps.

It was great.

- Yeah, for sure.

So when you think back to Live Aid, you know, what do you remember?

Like, do you have mostly positive memories?

- Yeah, all positive, yeah.

It was a great event.

We raised a lot of money.

A billion and a half people saw it worldwide.

But I think that what these things tend to do is raise people's social consciousness, and it doesn't end that day with just say, okay, we got some, we have some famine relief for Ethiopia.

These things live on.

And then we got to do it 20 years later with Live Aid and I did a big benefit, the same format for 9/11 for the Pentagon survivors.

So, you know, we were very well versed in this, a lot of experience, and the key is having great people around you, and knowing who they are, and trusting them.

And it was a magical day, it really was.

And very proud to be a part of it.

- Alright, Larry Magid, thank you so much for taking the time to kind of take us back to the summer of '85.

- Yeah, it was great.

(graphics swoosh) - Live Aid wasn't just two concerts, it was a worldwide movement of charitable giving.

And that movement was started by musicians, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure.

- I'm Midge Ure and along with Bob Geldof 40 years ago, we put together the Band Aid record and Live Aid.

I've known Geldof since, oh, probably the late seventies when I moved to London from Glasgow in Scotland, my hometown.

And I joined the Rich Kids with Glen Matlock, the ex Sex Pistol.

And Bob used to come and see us play, and we used to see him, and I think everyone at the time knew Bob, not because of his music, but because of his girlfriend.

Paula Yates was a music journalist and she'd interviewed everybody and everybody loved her.

And I happened to be on a television show and Paula co-hosted it with Jools Holland.

And I was chatting to Paula, the phone rang, and it was Bob.

She handed me the phone and said, he wants to speak to you.

Bob had just seen the footage about the Ethiopian famine in 1984.

And he was outraged and he said, I want to do something, will you help?

So we turned up a couple of days later, talked about what we were capable of doing, which was very little, you know, you write a song, you make a record, that's what we do.

We needed to get a Christmas number one record so that the record would stay in the charts over Christmas, New Year, all of that stuff.

I went home from that meeting, and had a little Casio keyboard on the kitchen table, and I sat there and thought Christmas, And I came up with the (imitating musical notes) And I recorded that and a few chord changes, and sent it to Bob who hated it.

And he came over to my place the next day and he sang the bones, the idea of a song that he had.

And I knew that he was kind of making it up 'cause every time I asked him to play it again, it was different.

So I ended up recording him on a cassette, just said right, leave it with me.

And I spent four days putting these totally incompatible ideas together and played all the instruments on the backing track while Bob got on the phone and bludgeoned all our poor friends and contemporaries into doing this thing.

And they all wanted to do what they could.

And it just grew from there.

We got good accountants, and we got music industry lawyers, managers, entrepreneurs together to form the Band Aid Trust.

It was quite phenomenal.

Every territory on the planet did their own interpretation of it.

You know, USA for Africa "We Are The World" and Northern Lights in Canada.

You know, every country wanted to contribute.

This whole phenomenon had started to roll, it was amazing.

So Bob walked in one day and said, I've got an idea.

He said, it's Live Aid.

And we said, well, what's that?

And he said, well, I want to do a massive concert.

And Harvey Goldsmith was saying, I don't think that's possible.

You can't do it.

You wouldn't be able to do it in time.

And then Bob said, well, but we want to do two concerts.

He wanted to do one here in the UK and one in America.

Everyone assumed that Bob was talking about, you know, New York.

And I'm forever grateful, the fact that it did become Philly, the City of Brotherly Love, and it put the spotlight on Philadelphia.

After Band Aid and Live Aid happened, you can't really get the vastness of it when you're standing in the middle.

And it wasn't until a couple of years later, and the little girl who lived next door on the farm where we were living at the time, used to come in and play with my daughters and stuff, and she came in and said, we read about you in history today.

I said, what?

She said, yeah, we read about you in history about Band Aid and Live Aid and stuff.

And I thought, wow, that's quite something.

And it did bring it home, that what we managed to do was we made caring cool.

We made it okay.

We thought we were making a record, and this would be a six month project.

So here we are, 40 years later.

Who knew?

- My next guest needs no introduction, singer songwriter John Oates.

Welcome back to "You Oughta Know."

- Thanks for having me.

- We're talking about Live Aid today.

Hall and Oates performed.

Talk to me about how you were approached or how you became part of this worldwide event.

- We were very much aware that there was going to be this incredible event in London, and we had heard that they wanted to do something in the US.

But as soon as we heard it was in Philadelphia, then, of course we, you know, that really got our attention.

And we thought, well wait a minute, you know, being from Philly, and being, really, at the top of our game at that period of time in the mid eighties, you know, we were having such incredible commercial success and we were number one record after number one record.

And we just thought, well, that seems to make sense, you know, that we would at least be a part of it.

What we didn't realize that it would evolve into us actually headlining and closing the show.

♪ She'll only come out at night ♪ ♪ The lean and hungry type ♪ ♪ Nothing is new I've seen her here before ♪ ♪ Watching and waiting ♪ ♪ Ooh, she's sitting with you, but her eyes are on the door ♪ ♪ So many have paid to see ♪ ♪ What you think you're getting for free ♪ And we brought our teenage idols, basically, Eddie Kendrick and David Ruffin, the original singers, the lead singers of The Temptations.

♪ So get ready, get ready ♪ We brought them on stage with us and we reprised a kind of a Temptations medley of some of their great big, big hits.

And it was an amazing experience because, you know, whenever you get to play with your idols, you know, of course that's a huge- - Yeah.

- Experience.

And so we, you know, we made the suggestion that we bring them along, and of course, that was well received.

And then I don't know whether it was just a, I guess it was just synchronicity or just a lucky, you know, lucky timing.

Mick Jagger at the time had just done a solo album and he didn't really have a band, a live band.

Mick needed a band and we said we would love to play with him, but what he didn't tell us was that Tina Turner was gonna be a special surprise guest, and we didn't know that.

And he just kind of, basically, right in the middle of the show, you know, he was on stage doing his thing, and all of a sudden he just grabbed her in the wings and pulled her on stage.

I guess they had something planned, I'm sure they had, knowing Mick Jagger, they had something planned and it was great.

- What was that like?

What was the energy like?

What was it like being backstage when you weren't performing?

Kind of describe the vibe there.

- I wanted to really go to the stadium early because I wanted to see this whole thing.

I wanted to see all the various artists and, you know, as many as I could anyway.

And I got there super early, and so I just hung around in the backstage area, watched, you know, watched Madonna, and watched Bob Dylan, and Neil Young and, you know, there were so many incredible people playing.

Eventually, we got around to us, and we, you know, got our act together and hit the stage.

- Because Live Aid raised money for famine relief in Africa, did you feel like you were part of something, you know, bigger than yourself, bigger than music?

Did you feel special in that way?

- It was a very unique moment in rock history because it was, I believe the first time that, you know, that artists had gotten to, you know, to back a cause.

- What was the crowd like?

What was the crowd energy like?

And then also, did you know at the time, billions were tuning in?

- Well, I knew that it was gonna be simulcast around the world and I knew that here, as I said, I knew that was gonna unprecedented, you know, event.

You know, it was packed and the energy was high, but at the same time we were last to go on and the crowd had been there all day long, seeing, you know, so many performances.

So- - And it was hot.

It was hot, right?

- Very hot.

And by the time we got on, they were still ready to go.

And it was super exciting.

It was a historic moment.

It will never happen again, that's the same way.

And you know, when you get all these people together, especially backstage, they let their guard down.

They're not, you know, everybody was friendly, and it was really, yeah, the vibes were very, very positive.

- Love it.

Okay, I just wanna bring attention to my T-shirt.

- Yes, bring attention.

(Shirley laughing) And the albums, we see it all, yep.

- Yeah.

(Shirley laughing) All right.

- I can even see where I signed on my cheek.

- Yeah.

(Shirley laughing) Big fan here.

All right, Philly's own John Oates.

- Would never have guessed.

I would never have guessed.

- Huge, huge fan.

Philly's own John Oates, thank you so much for your time.

Great seeing you again, and loved hearing your stories from Live Aid.

- Thanks very much, I appreciate it.

- From The Hooters to Hall and Oates, Rockdale Music is preparing the next generation of rock stars.

(upbeat music) - So this is historic Milltown here in Rockdale that has really turned into an artist's destination.

Rockdale Arts District started about eight, nine years ago to create, like, a coalition of artists to promote each other's work.

And I'm the owner of Rockdale Music.

Rockdale Music and Studios is a music school, but really, like, a community for creativity, and getting together with fellow musicians, and artists, and create cool stuff together.

We are a performance based music school, so everything is really leading up to you showcasing everything that you've been working on.

First thing we try to do is create a love for music.

If we get that, the rest of the job is easy.

Teaching and learning is easy when they're passionate and they really love it.

- All right, so let's run from the beginning.

- We got it.

- We offer private lessons.

We have group classes, we have summer camps, we do recording and production.

We've done video stuff over here.

Really, it's like about teaching kids the full gamut of music and creativity and, like, visual arts, and how it all really works together to create a performance.

- Tap.

(drums beat) - We start with age four with our rock band junior programs, intro to music classes.

- Do a fill.

(drums beat) - Nice.

- We've got programs for the next phase of eight to 10 years old.

♪ Think about forever ♪ - Even in their teenage years we've got rock band programs.

♪ Carry on, my wayward son ♪ ♪ There'll be peace when you are done ♪ - [Jared] We've got students here that are in their eighties that are pursuing it as a, you know, lifelong dream in their retirement to learn an instrument.

Everybody's welcome, and we encourage everybody to take a shot, learn something new.

(bright music) We make our curriculum around what you want to learn.

So you come in and tell us what you're interested in and what your goals are.

We find you a teacher that matches up with those goals and then we help you set a trajectory or set a path on that journey.

♪ The future is coming on ♪ ♪ It's coming on, it's coming on ♪ We offer guitar, bass, drums, piano, voice, trumpet, violin, mandolin.

We also do songwriting, we do recording and production and we're constantly adding new teachers with new skills.

It's about learning and playing together, but also just to hang and getting to know each other and growing together.

That peer learning environment is like a really important part of what we do.

The Rock Band Program is their chance to really pick songs that they like, all decide together what songs they're gonna play together.

And then we learn and teach them together, and then they go and get to perform them in front of friends and family, and at different community events.

And it's a whole lot of fun.

(bright music) I feel the most pride when I see the kids perform.

That's the payoff, right, is to see them do it on their own, it's awesome.

♪ Living on a lighted stage ♪ ♪ Approaches the unreal ♪ ♪ For those who think and feel ♪ ♪ In touch with some reality beyond the gilded cage ♪ - And that is our show.

Have a good night, everyone.

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