The London West End musical Just For One Day depicts the events leading up to the iconic 1985 Live Aid charity concert to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Although food issues and malnutrition are always an ongoing concern in Africa, between 1983 to 1985 the situation escalated to the point where a famine was declared. Conditions contributing to the famine included a combination of severe drought, ongoing civil war and government policies that prioritized on military spending over social aid.
When 33-year-old
Bob Geldolf of the Irish alternative rock band Boomtown Rats learned of the tragedy, he was greatly moved and spurred into action, recruiting help from his friend Midge Ure, leader of the group Ultravox. Together they wrote the song “
Do They Know It’s Christmas” and formed a super-group of Britain’s largest music stars to record it. Joining them in the group were members of hit bands at that time including The Police, U2, Genesis, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Wham!, Spandau Ballet, Kool & The Gang, Bananarama and more. Geldof named the group “
Band Aid” since he knew that his efforts would not end hunger but would at least be a bandage solution to provide some relief. American musicians joined the cause by forming their own supergroup “
USA for Africa” and recording the song “
We Are the World” written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson. In this recording were superstars including Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Cyndi Lauper, Ray Charles, Huey Lewis, Kenny Loggins, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Billy Joel, Tina Turner, and more.
Despite the two charity songs raising £8 million pounds and $11 million US Dollars respectively, it was not enough to address the problems. The food which this money bought was not getting through to the starving people due to corrupt cartels and government officials blocking the process. As a way to raise even more money and more importantly, awareness around the world, Geldof and Ure organized an unprecedented one-day, live music event named “
Live Aid”, that was broadcast to 1.5 billion people across 150 countries. British artists performed at London's Wembley Stadium in front of 72,000 people with their acts interspersed with American artists playing in Philadelphia’s JFK stadium in front of a crowd ranging between 90,0000-100,000. This time over £110 million pounds were raised, which was enough to cut through the corruption and red tape, so that food finally flowed to the starving people of Ethiopia.
The originally proposed concept for
Just For One Day was more in lines of a biopic focusing on the heroic acts of Bob Geldof, which he was totally against. The offer to donate 10% of the show’s proceeds to charity convinced Geldof to let the show’s producers try again. He insisted that the musical’s main focus must be on the cause. After multiple attempts, librettist John O’Farrell finally produced a version that met with Geldof’s approval, using several fictional archetypes, a framing device, and flashback scenes to convey the story.
Amara, a Red Cross nurse in Ethiopia gives a voice for and provides first-hand witness accounts of the suffering and deaths happening in Ethiopia. The character of
Suzanne serves as a proxy to represent the innumerable ordinary people who helped promote or were affected by the charity movement back in the 80s. In current day, Suzanne’s university-bound daughter
Jemma is a stand-in for the next generation who will hopefully carry on the torch.
The musical opens in the present with Suzanne trying to make Jemma understand the magnitude and significance of the Live Aid concert. As a teenager, Suzanne and her coworker Tim worked in a record shop where they hawked the Christmas charity single and attended the actual concert. Suzanne reminisces about the concert with a group of attendees including Jim, the sound technician and Marsha, who acted as an assistant producer. They express how proud they were to have participated by singing David Bowie’s song Heroes with lyrics “We can be heroes, just for one day” (thus the title of the musical and a song also used in the musical Moulin Rouge).
Somehow Bob Geldof is summoned and called upon to relay to Jemma the events leading up to the concert. Geldof is annoyed by how the group’s memories of that time are romanticized and sets the record straight about all the issues, heartaches, tensions and near disasters that occurred along the way. In retelling how it all came about in 1984-85, the action jumps from Britain to America to Ethiopia. Intermittently a scene returns to current day to get reactions from Jemma. Liverpool actor and singer Craig Els hilariously portrays the character of Bob Geldof as manic, foul-mouthed, pushy and reckless, which the actual Geldof laughingly concurred was just about right! The other character used for comedic effect is Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who Geldof spars with several times in order to convince her to forgo the taxes that she wants to levy on the charity money collected.
Created as a jukebox musical, all the songs in Just For One Day where chosen from performances in the actual Live Aid Concert. For those of us who lived through the 80’s, this musical was wonderfully nostalgic as familiar hit songs flowed one after another. Up until the concert begins, the songs were selected perfectly set the mood or advance the plot with lyrics acting almost as dialogue. This is exactly how a good jukebox musical should work. When Amara pleads for assistance for the starving, she sings the Cars’ haunting hit “Drive” with lyrics including “Who’s going to tell you when it’s too late? Who’s going to come around, when you break?”. When Geldof decides he needs to generate more visibility and cash for the relief fund, he sings “Message in a Bottle” by The Police (“I’ll send an SOS to the world”). When introducing Harvey Goldsmith, the concert promoter extraordinaire who helps pull the concert together, the song “Pinball Wizard” by The Who is performed to highlight his expertise (“How do you think he does it? What makes him so good?”). And when Amara prays that the concert will work and finally bring relief to the starving masses, she sings Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” (“How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry?”).
The musical’s portrayal of the Live Aid concert led to some interesting artistic choices. Most of these songs were not presented as imitations of the original artists or their performances, but rather were reinterpretations of the songs. This made the well-known songs feel fresh without having to live up to the standards of the original. The only exception was the set performed by the
Boomtown Rats, where Craig Els channeled Bob Geldof and gave a stirring rendition of the hit song
“I Don’t Like Mondays”, including the moment where Gedolf sang “the lesson today is how to die”, then stood for multiple seconds with his fist in the air while the crowd went crazy before carrying on with the song. Once the song was done, Geldof told the crowd “Thank you very much. I just realized today is the best day of my life”.
Action cut between the concert performances and the frantic activity in the background by the crew including Jim and Marsha who struggle to keep things on track while Geldof and Goldsmith panic. Checking back in with Jemma towards the end of the concert, she sings
The Who’s anthem “My Generation” to show that she (and by proxy her generation) understands what was accomplished by Live Aid and accepts the challenge of carrying on the fight for change and for a better future. The show closes with
Paul McCartney performing “Let it Be”, including the depiction of an actual technical glitch which muted his microphone for a few minutes. The crowd chimed in to fill the silence until the problem was fixed.
The set and staging were quite simple with several rows of stadium-styled bleachers for the cast while the 5-piece band played on a platform behind and above them. As each set of featured characters performed or interacted on centre stage, the remaining cast acted as the chorus behind them, often popping up to deliver a line before sitting down again. During the concert performances, occasionally one or more guitarists would descend onto the stage to perform solos as would have happened in the Live Aid show. Throughout the musical, so many different artists and bands were represented in such quick succession that the names of the people or groups were projected overhead so that the audience could follow who they were supposed to be watching. In many cases, the iconic song being performed gave it away but in some cases, the visual cues helped.
After watching this enjoyable and inspirational musical, I went into a bit of a deep dive into researching Band Aid and Live Aid. I listened to
Bob Geldof’s recent interview with the CBC radio program Q with Tom Power to promote the opening of the musical and watched copious
YouTube videos of the Live Aid performances from both London and Philadelphia including Queen’s now iconic set and one where David Bowie introduces a
CBC video clip from Ethiopia. Seeing images of the starvation and devastation reminded people what the concerts were really about and started the money pouring in. It also helped when Bob Geldof went on BBC radio in the middle of the concert to remind people that they were not just here to have a good time. He made an impassioned plea for donations that was later misquoted as “Give us your F**king money!”. This became a running gag in the musical as he had to repeatedly deny using the profanity. I listened to a video of his actual plea and it is true that he did not curse, but it made for a funny gag for the show.
I also watched the documentaries “
Band Aid – Making of the Original Do You Know It’s Christmas” and “
The Greatest Night in Pop” (Netflix) that documented the recordings of the two charity songs. But the most interesting documentary was “
Wham! Last Christmas” (Netflix) which expanded on a small subplot that was briefly referenced in the musical. George Michael of Wham! had written “Last Christmas” which was a shoo-in to be the #1 song on the UK charts at Christmas before Band Aid’s song come along. Although disappointed, George Michael gave up fighting to promote his own single and even became one of the soloists on “Do They Know It’s Christmas” which indeed was the #1 seller in 1984. Last Christmas came in at #2 and Wham! generously donated all the proceeds from that record to the cause. This was another example of altruism and personal sacrifice that warms the heart. In 2023, Last Christmas finally made it to #1 but unfortunately, George Michael never got to experience this achievement since he passed away in 2016.
The poignant tale of Band Aid and Live Aid, as portrayed in the musical Just For One Day, did an amazing job of reminding past generations and teaching a new generation what it was like to have empathy and to care about the world and humanity as a whole. Given how countries are becoming more and more insular, protectionist and self-serving, this show could not have come at a better time. I’m not sure given the current political climate globally, that such an amazing feat as Live Aid could happen today. Although he did not want to be featured, the passion, selflessness and generosity of Bob Geldof came through loud and clear.
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