By Matthew Gambino • Posted July 11, 2025

The day was hot, the venue packed, the cause just.

Forty years ago the Live Aid concerts drew hundreds of thousands of music fans to the biggest stadiums in London and Philadelphia, and a worldwide viewing audience estimated at almost 2 billion people, to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

As one of a dozen skinny teenagers and 20-somethings among the 100,000 people packed into creaking JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, I enjoyed a morning, day and night of music spanning an ocean. The experience was fun, grueling and unforgettable.

What struck me then and stays with me most powerfully to this day was the union of young people. In 1985, we had no defining moment or unifying experience. Live Aid represented one way to gather young people from across the Philadelphia area and around the world – a sense of “us” – to help people in Africa that we’d come to see as brothers and sisters in need of help that we could give.

That sense of purpose energized each of us when we bought our tickets, for $35 each. Yes, you could afford concerts in those days.

To prepare the day before, we’d packed food and jugs of water, and done the rare feat of getting a good night’s sleep. Then on July 13, the big day, we rose at 4 a.m., met at a friend’s house to check supplies needed for the day, then started our caravan of old cars and headed for South Philly.

We waited behind the gates of JFK Stadium at 6 a.m. and when they swung open at 7, our gang ran down the aisles into the infield about 40 yards from stage left. We set down blankets and sat around that perimeter with all our gear in the center, staking out our camp and watching as the stadium filled with newfound brothers and sisters.

Soon the first broadcasts from London arrived on the big screens and sound system. Our hundred thousand were joining Britain’s hundred thousand in a family-of-families union, 200,000 kids singing the same songs verbatim across the Atlantic.

Then the artists began to perform in Philadelphia, switching from JFK to Wembley Stadium and back after each band’s set. More singing, dancing, hands waving, voices cheering in unison across time zones.

As the day hit its heat and fatigue, we shared the food and water we’d brought, plus vital info on bathroom locations. Around mid-afternoon water hoses sprayed around JFK’s infield, offering a cooling shower to baking kids.

On the music went into the night. At the concert’s end the stage filled with the era’s top pop stars singing the anthemic “We Are the World,” backed by Philly’s own Hall and Oates band.

We trudged out of the stadium around 10 p.m. and somehow stayed awake on the drive home. It’s good to be young.

Looking back on it all, cynicism cast a shadow. Observers then and now pointed out that much money raised for charity instead got channeled into corrupt hands or inefficient delivery systems. Cynics said the money likely didn’t make a dent in that or subsequent famines in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet it was a start. Leaders took action to gather artists, who donated their performance talents; attendees paid their money willingly. All were contributing to a cause bigger than oneself or one’s country and building community.

The can-do spirit of those times – there’s a problem of human suffering, let’s go ease it – wasn’t a protest but a movement toward the good.

Today that message endures. We find common purpose by getting out of our own head or our own tribe, setting aside surface differences, and getting busy serving one another, everywhere.

Live Aid’s glimpse of unity through service and fun continues in every 5K race or designer bag bingo or other community event that puts the fun in fundraisers.

God created this human family. The Father wants us to love one another as he loves us, to live in a unity of love and mercy.

As Philadelphia natives the Hooters sang “All You Zombies” on that July 13 morning 40 years ago:

“Holy Father, what’s the matter?
Where have all your children gone?
Sittin’ in the dark
Livin’ all by themselves.”

No, we “don’t have to hide anymore” behind masks of cynicism or walls of grievance. Yes, “we are the world,” still.