BOB GELDOF has announced a repeat this summer of 1985’s Live Aid concert, an event that will highlight global poverty and coincide with the G8 summit.
The free event, Live 8, will be held in London’s Hyde Park on July 2, with other concerts in Philadelphia, Paris, Rome and Berlin. It will also be shown on big screens in seven cities across the UK, and broadcast live on TV and radio.
The aim will be to raise awareness of Make Poverty History, a campaign to get the richest nations to cancel debt and increase aid to developing countries. The concert will coincide with the G8 summit that takes place between July 6 and 8 at Gleneagles, in Perthshire. It has also been reported that Geldof is also calling for a mass march on the summit venue.
Geldof said: “We don’t want people’s money. We want them.” He told a news conference that the G8 meeting provided a “unique opportunity for Britain to do something unparalleled in the world, to tilt the world a little bit on its axis in favour of the poor”. Among the acts confirmed for the London event are Sir Paul McCartney, Coldplay, REM, Dido, Robbie Williams, U2, Keane, Annie Lennox, Elton John and Mariah Carey. Philadelphia’s Museum of Art will boast such stars as Will Smith, Bon Jovi and Stevie Wonder. Berlin will be able to see big names such as A-Ha and Lauren Hill and, in Rome, Faith Hill and Duran Duran will perform. Paris’ Tuilleries Gardens will play host to names including Craig David, Placebo and Jamiroquai.
“We’re amazed as ever that the artist community has stepped up the table yet again,” promoter Harvey Goldsmith said on Tuesday. Live 8 would be a “show of strength” to create a “pressure point” on the world leaders’ meeting days later, Goldsmith said. “The whole reason for these concerts this time is different from last time,” he added. “This is an opportunity once and for all for the eight leaders of the world to deal with a continent (Africa) that’s basically dying.” British Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, has pledged her full support to ensure the Hyde Park site for Live 8 becomes the “biggest and best open-air concert the capital has ever seen”.
