Liverpool’s British Music Experience is to host an exhibition looking at the Live Aid concert 40 years later. The ground-breaking 1985 concert was planned as a “global jukebox” and a continued response from the music industry and fans to the famine in Ethiopia.
The concert was truly global thanks to the advances in technology that allowed for its broadcast to over 150 countries. A crowd of 72,000 people attended Wembley Stadium, and 90,000 packed into the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia.
Band Aid and Live Aid were conceived to help meet an immediate and pressing humanitarian need. For many, both are remembered as being era-defining moments when music was used as the most powerful unifying tool.
The story continued beyond the concert with Visual Aid for Band Aid, Fashion Aid, Sport Aid, and then Live 8—the global series of benefit concerts featuring more than 1,000 musicians that preceded the G8 conference in 2005.
Importantly, government policy change was sparked as the enormous power of unity shown by record-breaking audiences and viewers was harnessed into action.
Since then, the Band Aid Charitable Trust has raised an estimated £480 million. The Trust has utilised these funds to provide emergency aid and support long-term development initiatives, aiming to make a lasting impact on communities in need.
The British Music Experience, the UK’s Museum of Popular Music in Liverpool, is to reflect on the legacy by displaying some items from the personal collection of organiser Bob Geldof.
British Music Experience Chair of the Trustees, said: “Forty years on, Live Aid remains a defining moment in music and humanitarian history. It was a bold, chaotic, and surprising endeavour that united the world for a cause greater than ourselves.
“The passion and unity we sparked in 1985 continues to inspire, reminding us of music’s power to drive change. Bob’s personal collection from that time gives us all a look behind the scenes and we are delighted to host this at the British Music Experience.”
Items from the achieve include letters from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, planning documents for Live Aid, the very first test pressing for Band Aid, Peter Blake’s stage-side sketches of Live 8, hand-written re-worked lyrics for Band Aid 20 and much more.
The British Red Cross have also kindly loaned a collage by artist Julia Miranda and a letter by Dame Claire Bertschinger – the nurse who appeared in Michael Buerk’s first report for BBC News on the effects of the drought in Ethiopia.
Sir Bob Geldof added: “As Live Aid turns 40, I look back at that day in 1985 when music became a global force for unity, bringing 1.9 billion people together to fight famine in Ethiopia.
"Our bid to change policy—pushing for debt relief and fairer aid—helped save millions of lives, proving that a song, a stage, and a shared purpose can tilt the world toward justice.”
The exhibition will run from June 5, 2025, to January 4, 2026. After 40 years locked in a storage time capsule, the museum’s merch store will sell limited original, official Band Aid and Live Aid merchandise.
All general entry tickets purchased include the temporary exhibition celebrating Live Aid 40. All tickets are valid for 12 months.
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