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De Sunday Times van 1-8-04
It is being billed as “the greatest show on earth”. An estimated global audience of 1.5 billion watched the Live Aid concert, and now a film of the event is expected to fly off the shelves as the biggest-selling music DVD of all time.
But one important component is missing. Led Zeppelin, once the world’s highest-rated rock’n’roll band, have refused to allow their performance to be included in the movie.
The refusal has disappointed Bob Geldof and other organisers of the Band Aid charity, which hopes to sell 8m copies of the DVD and raise as much as £320m for famine relief in Africa. Geldof has been fighting with lawyers for nearly 20 years to get permission from all the stars involved to release the film and stop bootleggers cashing in.
The concert in July 1985 kicked off with Status Quo performing Rocking All Over the World to 70,000 people at London’s Wembley stadium.
A simultaneous concert was watched by 80,000 people in the JFK stadium in Philadelphia, but this will be the first time since then that the footage will be legally available.
Zeppelin’s three surviving members — singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones — appeared in Philadelphia where they were joined by Phil Collins, the Genesis drummer and solo artist, who had flown from London on Concorde after performing at Wembley.
The band’s original drummer, John Bonham, had died after a heavy drinking session in 1980 on the eve of an American tour, effectively ending the band’s career.
Live Aid was the first attempt at a “reunion”. But concert-goers blamed Collins’s tiredness and poor sound quality on stage for the band’s lacklustre performance. Plant complained about the sound quality and Page perspired freely as the band roared through Rock and Roll, Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven to win one of the biggest cheers of the day.
Insiders on the DVD project believe Zeppelin’s reputation for fierce management and tight product control is behind the refusal to allow the footage to be included in the film. Zeppelin never released any singles in Britain as part of a clever marketing ploy that saw them sell 50m albums worldwide.
The band, who dabbled with the occult, groupies and drugs, have also refused to be included on compilation records. Jack Black, the American actor, had to beg the band publicly to allow him to use some of their music for his feature film The School of Rock, released in Britain earlier this year.
Another reason for the veto may be the success of Led Zeppelin’s own DVD of performances. Page spent two years editing concerts from the Albert Hall, Earls Court and Knebworth, for a DVD which has sold 2m copies.
One insider on the Live Aid project said: “It is a political thing. They don’t want the legend of Led Zeppelin to be diminished by one below-par performance. Collins was jet-lagged.”
Jill Sinclair, who edited hours of footage from different cameras into 10 hours of film for the Live Aid film, which will be released as a DVD on November 1, said: “Led Zeppelin have done the decent thing because their performance on the day was not great.”
Geldof said: “It is difficult. Every band has three lawyers: a band lawyer, a personal lawyer and a publishing-rights lawyer so it takes a long time to get agreement. But Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have done marvellous things for Band Aid, both on the day of the concert and since.”
Geldof met retailers last week to try to persuade them to forgo their £12 profit margin on the DVD, a feat he accomplished with record stores in 1984 when he rounded up other pop stars to make the single Do They Know It’s Christmas? after watching a television documentary on the Ethiopian famine.
Geldof, former lead singer with the Boomtown Rats punk rock band, thought it would make £100,000 which he could then give to Oxfam. The single went on to sell 7m copies, half of them in Britain where it was the biggest-selling record until Elton John’s Candle in the Wind tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, which sold 4.8m copies.
Taking personal charge of the distribution of the £5m raised by the single, Geldof visited Ethiopia and realised he needed another £3m to buy trucks to avoid the high transport charges for grain being charged by local lorry drivers. The idea for Band Aid was born.
The line-up included a galaxy of music stars, including Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, the Who, Elton John, U2, Ozzy Osbourne and Madonna.
Part of Dylan’s shambolic performance with Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has been cut because he appealed for some of the money raised to go towards paying off the mortgages of American farmers.
Live Aid was the biggest-ever rock benefit, raising £51m from donations on the day and £37.5m since.
A spokeswoman for Led Zeppelin’s management said she could not say why the band would not be appearing in the DVD of the world’s biggest rock benefit “but I don’t think it is because they don’t like appearing in compilations”.
Paul Gambaccini, a broadcaster who presented on the day, said: “Some, like Bowie and Queen, seized the opportunity and are remembered for mythical performances; others aren’t.”
Maurice Chittenden
The Sunday Times - 1 August 2004