It started off as a song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, released that previous Christmas to raise money for relief of the famine in Ethiopia.
Band Aid was a British and Irish charity supergroup, founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia by releasing the record “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” for the Christmas market that year. The single surpassed the hopes of the producers to become the Christmas number one on that release.
The record was released on November 29, 1984, and went straight to No. 1 in the UK singles chart, outselling all the other records in the chart put together. It became the fastest- selling single of all time in the UK, selling a million copies in the first week alone. It stayed at No. 1 for five weeks, selling over three million copies and becoming easily the biggest-selling single of all time in the UK.
It exploded into a concert that went around the world and raised £150 million (approx. $283.6 million).
1985: Live Aid makes millions for Africa
The Live Aid concert for the starving in Africa has raised triple the £10m expected.And as the London event draws to a close at Wembley Stadium, Britain had contributed £1,100,000 to the global total of £30m.
Described as the Woodstock of the eighties, the world’s biggest rock festival was organised by Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Africa.
Wembley was packed with a crowd of 72,000, andTV pictures, co-ordinated at BBC Television Centre, have been beamed to over 1.5 bn people in 160 countries in the biggest broadcast ever known.
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