Fifteen years ago today I traveled to London to attend what would become one of all time’s greatest music events. We all are familiar with Madonna’s performance at Live Aid in Philadelphia back in 1985, to think I would be there in person for the ‘follow up’ was unreal!
The day before the event I walked around Hyde Park to try and see if I could hear anything of the rehearsals going on. Hyde Park is so immensly large though that I couldn’t come anywhere near the area where it was all going down tomorrow. Walking down Oxford Street a little later me and my friend passed the kaballah centre, where at the time Madonna was seen quite regularly. A crowd of people had gathered near the entrance so we went up to check things out.
Some familiar faces there told us that Madonna was in fact inside and could be coming out any minute. When we saw Guy Ritchie leave the place and taking off on his bike we knew it’d be a matter of minutes before Madonna would follow. Her black infamous car was already parked outside and I checked with her people if it was okay for us to wait for her there. I was told that this wasn’t a problem at all.
Only a few minutes later the door opened and I saw this tiny person in white with large cap coming out, not realizing that this was in fact Madonna! Thankfully I quickly recognized her and managed to snap a photo. As always she didn’t acknowledge anyone standing there, but wasn’t rude too. She hopped into her car for her looooong ride home (I mean that sarcastically).
When the day began of the long awaited event, we decided to not go up to Hyde Park but to see Donna De Lory instead. Donna was attending a yoga class and would end the session with singing. Me and two of my friends went there and met up with Donna before the class started. Apart from the usual people attending yoga class there, we were the only ‘fans’ there. We waited until yoga class was over and then sat on the floor for Donna’s singing. Afterwards met up again, chatted to her and took some photo’s. She was nervous about the big performance and said it would be happening somewhere later in the afternoon.
After this we did quickly make our way to Hyde Park but unfortunately took the wrong entrance into the park. It took us a very very very LONG time until we finally hit the area where the concert was happening. We missed acts like Coldplay and U2 because of this, oh well. The crowd was HUGE. However there was more than enough room to walk around and stand wherever you wanted. I remember enjoying Bob Geldof’s performance and really liking Snoop Dogg’s. Didn’t know Brad Pitt was attending, so that was a bit of a surprise.
Madonna’s entrance was fantastic, up there with Birhan the girl captured in a heartbreaking video of so many years ago. All I can tell you about Madonna’s performance is that she completely stole the show. There wasn’t a single soul there that didn’t have their hands up and was singing along. My favourite song by far was ‘Music’ and made me relive the incredible Re-Invention Tour performance. The crowd ate it up. When Madonna’s performance was over we decided to walk around and take things easy as I still wanted to see Mariah Carey perform later.
Mariah did great but the reception of the crowd wasn’t as good as with Madonna. People around me were joking left and right about how ‘we don’t need to hear you sing luv’. Mariah has an interesting personality and like no other knows how to take herself not too seriously, she can be quite a goof on stage which is exactly what happened here. Hell I didn’t care, I loved it.
We left during Robbie Williams’ set (sorry) as our feet were killing us. We had to walk back to the hotel as public transport was a mess at that point.
The next day the event was all that the media was talking about and whose face was it gracing those newspapers? It was Madonna’s OBVIOUSLY.
Check out my original report HERE
Check out our Live 8 photo gallery HERE
Check out our Live 8 page HERE
Kimberly
