To Hull And Back: Alternative Memories Of Live Aid 40 Years On
Not all of us were glued to the telly watching Queen and Phil Collins perform at Wembley. We had better things to do
My preposterous life
EVERYONE REMEMBERS WHERE they were on July 13, 1985. Mostly, they were sitting in front of the TV watching Live Aid.
The 40th anniversary of the event has generated a slew of nostalgia. Live Aid’s heart was in the right place – raising money to help alleviate famine in Ethiopia – but, let’s face it, this was the most uncool episode in the history of rock’n’roll. Anyone who seriously believes that Queen’s 21-minutes on stage is the greatest gig in history has taken too many drugs. Or maybe never taken any.
Live Aid was pop music for people who didn’t like pop.
So where were the cool kids while Elton John was poncing around Wembley? Don’t ask me, but I can tell you where I was. Hull.
Humberside was the centre of the universe for the Evans family that day. The city was hosting the English Schools Athletics Championships and The Farm appeared at the legendary Adelphi Club in the evening. The spotlight was on John, my brother, in the 800m final in the afternoon and I was performing with the band later on. John and my youngest brother Stephen were already in Hull. The athlete was tucked up in bed with a host family. Ste, 14, was on a camp site without any adult supervision. The young Scousers inevitably came under attack from locals. It was the 1980s, after all. Britain was a much more violent place and the closest we came to safeguarding was an episode of Jim’ll Fix It.
Which brings us neatly to ‘doing a lot of great work for charity.’ Recording royalty had gathered for Live Aid. The Farm were the industry’s peasants.
Wembley is little more than 200 miles away from Hull but it might have been another planet to us in 1985 – at least in terms of a music venue. We were very familiar with the place from football. I joined the band after meeting Peter Hooton, the lead singer and group’s driving force, in the scoreboard end at Old Trafford.
The Farm were still at the 15-people-in-a-transit career stage. And don’t forget the amps and drums had to go in the van, too.
Me and George on stage
We got to the Adelphi and George, the trumpet player, and I left the rest of the boys to set up and soundcheck. Off we went to the athletics track, with a short pitstop in the alehouse.
The pub we went to had Live Aid on the telly. Some wag took a look at our instruments – you couldn’t miss my bass trombone – and said, “You on your way to Wembley, lads.”
I was prepared with my classic 1980s standby aggressive comeback line. “Are you taking the piss because I’m on the dole?” That shut him up. By the way, I was. And working on the side, too.
Sting and Phil Collins forced us to drink up and leave, the pair of gits. It was just as well. The time of the race was approaching fast. Actually, too fast.
We came out into the stand just in time to see the 800m runners approaching the line. Where was our John? Had he not started for some reason?
No, he’d already finished. The bad news: we’d missed him. The good news: he was English champion. That was cause for celebration. Back to the pub.
So, to the Adelphi. Not one person there seemed to care about Wembley and Philadelphia. A couple of local bands were present in the club to check us out. The members of one group had a beer with us, praised the way we looked and spoke flatteringly of our sound. Nice fellas.
The next time I saw them was on Top Of The Pops, dressed very much like we did, doing silly dances to a brilliant single. You had to love The Housemartins and Happy Hour.
What else do I remember about the day? A dog barked throughout our set from somewhere behind us. Not sure the audience could hear it but we could. That’s it. Nothing else. Not how we were received.
Bedlam had become normal to The Farm by the summer of 1985 – there was a full-scale riot when we supported The Redskins in Birmingham the previous December – but in Hull it was positive chaos. The nights that stick in the memory are the ones where we went down badly (rare) or the gigs that were accompanied by mass violence (more frequent than you’d think).
The Farm outside the Ministry rehearsal studios. Or more to the point, the Wine Lodge
I do recall a huge sense of cynicism about Live Aid. We were all for feeding the starving but doubted the motives of some of those taking part. People like Collins made it clear they supported Margaret Thatcher and her government. They weren’t arsed about feeding the poor at home and we wondered how much they really cared about dying Africans. Live Aid was great PR, though. Record sales shot up.
The Farm were no strangers to fundraising gigs. We had performed for Liverpool City Council during the ongoing standoff with Whitehall, raised money for the miners throughout the year-long strike and played at rallies highlighting youth unemployment.
Bizarrely, we would eventually do a stadium show for those starving in Africa. It wasn’t quite Wembley, though.
A year after Live Aid, a new initiative – Soap Aid – conducted a day-long festival at Knowsley Road, the home of St Helens rugby league club. Marillion topped the bill but the crowds turned out to see the actors from Coronation Street, EastEnders, Brookside and Grange Hill. Soap opera’s royalty were out in force. Bill Tarmey, who played Jack Duckworth in Corrie, wore a white suit, a red satin shirt open almost to his belly button, and belted out a storming version of Tom Jones’s It’s Not Unusual. No one would be talking about Freddie Mercury at Wembley if the nation had seen Bill strut his stuff.
One of my favourite memories of playing in The Farm is connected with Soap Aid. Six or seven of us crammed into Hooton’s mini to drive to a soundcheck the previous day. On the way back, on a whim, we drove into Knowsley Safari Park and had an uproarious time. A monkey lay across the top of the car and urinated down the windscreen. The car shook with our laughter.
I’ll bet we had a better time than any of the performers at Wembley. Pissing monkeys were our milieu.
Live Aid deserves to be celebrated. It raised awareness about the famine and money to feed the needy. I’m just glad I had something else to do on that July day four decades ago.
In fact, someone last week asked me if I fancied going to see Oasis. I was able to use one of my other stock phrases, one that’s turning 40 today. “No chance. I’d rather be in Hull.”