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Credit: Far Out \/ Daniel Hazard<\/p>\n
October 21st, 2026 \u00b7 10:30pm BST <\/p>\n
When it comes to Live Aid\u2019s top three performances, most will plump for U2<\/a>\u2019s afternoon slot after David Bowie and Queen\u2019s immortal sets that day.<\/p>\n The bumper benefit gig proved crucial in launching U2 from Dublin post-punks to the biggest band on the planet. They weren\u2019t quite as mammoth as The Joshua Tree<\/a> would catapult them to in two years, but the 1985 concert finally offered a platform for their widescreen anthemic sermons to truly realise themselves, as well as score Bono\u2019s frontman cum preacher rock and roll sermon.<\/p>\n The Unforgettable Fire marked a decisive pivot in U2\u2019s evolution. Dropped the previous year, the final embers of new wave bristle were finally shaken off when heading to Ireland\u2019s Slane Castle for the bulk of the album sessions, enlisting the help of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to craft a sonic expanse for The Edge\u2019s chiming guitar ripples. Such new alchemy yielded a surefire pop stirrer like lead single \u2018Pride (In the Name of Love)\u2019, yet the chart fodder wasn\u2019t too obvious on the rest of their fourth LP effort.<\/p>\n It\u2019d still top the UK charts and fare well over on the Billboard 200, but the issue with weaving such atmospheric canvases as songs is that some may struggle to ever arrive at any defined shape. Case in point was \u2018Bad\u2019. <\/p>\n Never released as a single but a live staple, Bono looked with anguish at the heroin epidemic blighting the Irish capital during a nasty economic downturn early in the decade, subsequent tours revealing the song\u2019s central character as \u2018Guck Pants Delaney\u2019: the brother of The Virgin Prunes\u2019 Derek \u2018Guggi\u2019 Rowen<\/a> and his younger brother Peter, the child shot for the Boy and War covers.<\/p>\n Taking an impressionistic approach to the subject of heroin addiction and imbued with U2\u2019s characteristic lyrical communiques with a divine power, \u2018Bad\u2019s\u2019 allusive reportage would prove difficult to pin down in the studio. An atmospheric number with exhortive gravitas and coated in Eno\u2019s Oberheim DSX sequencers and The Edge\u2019s complex digital delay set-ups, the band would long deem the track undercooked on record but coming alive on stage, nebulous enough to respond to the energy in the crowd at any given moment.<\/p>\n It took Live Aid, however, for U2 to understand the live gem in their bag. Every band, no matter how big, was given strict instructions by event organiser Bob Geldof to leave ego backstage and play their 15-odd minute to serve the Ethiopian famine relief initiative, and U2 were no different. Taking the stage at 17:19 for a three-song set, the band tore through \u2018Sunday Bloody Sunday\u2019 as scheduled, yet ran out of time to round off their slot with \u2018Pride (In the Name of Love)\u2019 ahead of Dire Straits taking over.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n Well, \u2018Bad\u2019s\u2019 strange life on stage bloomed the most epic, extending itself for 12 minutes and winding through lyrical nods to Lou Reed and The Rolling Stones. The grand emotional scope born from Bono\u2019s spiritual anchor to Dublin\u2019s addiction woes found a new electric context with the backdrop of Live Aid\u2019s humanitarian charge, and the rush to free a young Wham! fan crushed at the front row offered U2 and \u2018Bad\u2019 the dramatic optics money could never buy.<\/p>\n From then on, the song would always hover near a U2 setlist, a rock homily at the ready when the band ever felt like injecting some gospel energy into the crowd, even as recently as the 2020s. Still, despite such a crucial performance in U2\u2019s world conquest, The Edge initially harboured misgivings about their Live Aid moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really took us by surprise when people started talking about U2 as one of the noteworthy performances of the day,\u201d he confessed to Rolling Stone, \u201cI thought they were joking. I really thought we were crap. But looking back, as I did a week later, I started to see what it was. It was the sense of real, total jeopardy, which is always very exciting for a live event, and Bono\u2019s complete determination to make physical contact with the crowd and eventually getting there after two minutes of struggling over barriers. I think there was something about the effort he had to put in to do it that somehow made it even more powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
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