Tomorrow is the 29th anniversary of one of the greatest days in the history of rock music - the two Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia to raise money and awareness of the African famine.
Many of the acts had never played before a stadium crowd before but the ones who had - Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Queen - knew that, in this era before huge screens, they had to be larger than life on stage. They all delivered that day.
These rock legends were all overshadowed, however, by an up-and-coming band serving notice of its greatness. U2's incredible performance of Bad made them superstars that day.
While hugely popular by then in England and Ireland, they only had one top 40 hit at the time in North America with Pride (In The Name Of Love) and the adoration of my sister, campus radio stations and Rolling Stone magazine, who proclaimed them as the Band of the 80s in a cover article in March of that year.
Rolling Stone published an online article this week about "the 12 minutes that made the band's career," with a minute-by-minute recap of the Live Aid performance with the band's recollections of what was happening.
On the surface, it was a disaster.
Bad, not a well-known song to begin with, went on for so long that U2 didn't have time to perform Pride, their biggest hit, and the other band members were furious that Bono disappeared for several minutes without a mic, leaving them to keep playing and wondering what the hell had happened to their charismatic lead singer.
Unknown to them and to most of the Wembley Stadium crowd, he had jumped down into the narrow area separating the crowd from the stage. In a desperate effort to connect with the audience, he implored the security staff to pull through a couple of young ladies at the very front. That took a couple of minutes and the emotional moment of Bono eventually slowdancing for a brief moment with a young star-struck girl and then hugging and kissing two others was captured by the TV cameras and beamed to the two billion people watching across the world.
It helped that Bad is such a great live song. The studio version is flat and uninspiring but the live performance is pure magic, featuring a vintage guitar lick by The Edge, Adam Clayton's chugging bass and Larry Mullen's marching percussion.
Check out U2's Live Aid performance of Bad here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zIW8qDPhos&feature=kp - and then get the behind-the-scenes view of what was going on from Rolling Stone at http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/u2s-bad-break-12-minutes-at-live-aid-that-made-the-bands-career-20140710.
