Mom's Live Aid Memories

Live Aid happened 40 years ago this weekend, on July 13, 1985. I was there, at JFK Stadium, as the Philadelphia Live Aid concert and I have many memories of it that I could describe here. Instead, what follows is a memory of the day that my mom wrote 30 years ago.

Once I had gotten a ticket to Live Aid, along with my friends Joe and John, I began to think that I wanted to have a record of it for myself. To make sure this happened, I rented a video cassette recorder — we didn’t own a VCR — and conscripted Mom to tape Live Aid, all day long. Which she did.

Ten years after Live Aid, my wife Donna and I published a special Live Aid anniversary of a zine called ‘Volcano’ that we were making at the time. We asked our friends and readers for their memories of Live Aid and many responded, including Mom.

Mom died in April 2021. I still miss her and always will, but the fact that she stepped up and taped 16 hours of Live Aid for me, on a rented VCR, is one of my favorite memories of her. And here she is, telling that story. This was originally published in the July 1995 edition of ‘Volcano’ but has never been published or posted anywhere since then.

Ann and the Rented VCR

By Ann Wilhelm

I have known Rich Wilhelm for quite a few years. I thought I had grown used to his crazy ideas, but this one was pretty far out. Back in July of 1985 he asked me to do a favor for him. He was going to a concert in Philadelphia, at JFK Stadium, and he was really about this “big event”. He talked endlessly about the concert, which was really two concerts, one in Wembley Stadium in London and one in Philadelphia, and how everyone who was anyone in the music industry would be performing at one of the two stadiums. It was going to be a worldwide effort to help the dire conditions in Africa caused by years of drought. The world was going to be fed and he was going to be part of it.

The favor he wanted of me was to videotape this event. He was going to rent a VCR, since he didn’t own one. I question the expense of this since he already had spent the exorbitant amount of $35.00 for his ticket to the concert. His reasoning was that the concert was for a good cause and he wanted to be able to show his future grandchildren the tapes. His grandchildren could see the even that he actually witnessed in person.

So there I was at 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, July 13, 1985, sitting in my family room, waiting to push the right buttons. The first part of the televised show was from England where the five-hour time difference made it a much more civilized time to be watching these mega-stars of the music industry. Rich had already left to go to JFK to witness in person the show of his life. I had my index car ready because I also had to write down who was performing in each tape. I pushed all the right buttons and the VCR started taping. As I wrote the names on the index card I couldn’t help wondering who or was as a “Boom Town Rat”? Would there be really big stars performing? Would there be anyone I knew? Would possibly Frankie Avalon or Fabian show up?

As the day progressed, the televised portion went back and forth between Philadelphia and London. When Philadelphia was on camera I searched the sea of people, looking for Rich. Was he enjoying himself? Was this event everything he hoped it would be? The day was very hot and people were inside enjoying the comfort of air conditioning. This great surge on the electricity caused periodic “brown outs”. Our television went very dark and all I could think was this major effort would result in tapes you couldn’t even see. I did not know that the signal was taped coming into the house and the tapes are of much better quality than the actual pictures that I sat there and watched for 15 hours.

I managed to change the tapes at the right time and Rich was very pleased with the results. He owns four videotapes of this great concert. Look back now, I can relate doing this to other things. Like the cavemen carved stories on the walls of caves, the pioneer women carefully stitched quilts, history was preserved and I helped preserve it. Someday in the future, my great-grandchildren can watch on primitive tapes that their grandfather attended. A day that the world stopped, listened to the music, and cared about starving children in a far-off continent. And I think to myself, what else is a mother for?

These are some of the notes Mom wrote to accompany the Live Aid tapes: