ABSTRACT
As Neal Ullestad has noted, 'Live Aid was first and foremost a media event of the highest order. The aid, the music, and the musicians were quite secondary to the event itself'. A further difficulty in writing about Live Aid is that there was never a commercial video or soundtrack album released and the acquisition of a video or audio recording has, until recently, been quite difficult. Queen's performance comes a few hours into this documentary. They were introduced at Wembley by two British comedians, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones, dressed as policemen. Thus, before seeing Queen's performance, it is remembered for the viewer as the performance that best achieved the primary goal of the event, according to one of its senior organizers. After 'Radio Ga-Ga' comes the first break in the music, and Mercury goes to the front of the stage to engage the audience in a round of call and response, using musical gestures derived from classical music.
