Watching the Live 8 concert, I could not help but remember Live Aid, which to me was not a day of glorious music but the day my idol, Bob Dylan, belly flopped in front of the world. Back in those days, there were few occasions to see a major rock star on television. Dylan was neither on MTV nor in the Monterey Pop Festival or Woodstock movies that ran periodically on PBS. In fact, to many in my generation, seeing Bob Dylan at the Live Aid concert was the first and only time we would experience this boomer idol. And it was hideous.
The organizers of Live Aid, a 1985 fundraiser to provide relief for famine-devastated Africa, could not have been more excited to have Bob Dylan at the event. He was not a permanent road warrior back then and any appearance by him was news, so Live Aid was pleased to shine a spotlight on him. On a day that featured spectacular reunions of the surviving members of Led Zeppelin and the Who, Dylan was given a place of honor: the last act before the grand finale. In fact, as Dylan performed at the front of the stage, the finale was being set up behind the curtain: a sing-along performance of "We Are the World." Perhaps the distracting noise of arranging microphones and equipment offers some explanation for what happened when Dylan emerged with an acoustic guitar after being introduced by Jack Nicholson.
From the start Dylan seemed a bit dazed, mumbling: "I wanna introduce some people who came along tonight. Keith Richards and Ron Wood. I don't know, where they are?" With that, the two Rolling Stones guitarists—and, if you believe the unauthorized biographies, Dylan's drinking buddies throughout the day—appeared for an off-key version of the highly obscure, "The Ballad of Hollis Brown." Sitting in front of my television, I could not believe how tuneless it was. And the embarrassment wasn't over; it got worse. After the song lumbered to an end, on a day dedicated to ending African poverty and starvation, Dylan offered these words:
"You know while I'm here, I just hope that some of the money that's raised for the people in Africa, maybe they could just take just a little bit of it, $1 or $2 million maybe, and use it to, maybe use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms, that the farmers here owe to the banks."
One could hardly blame organizer Bob Geldof for noting of Dylan's comment:
"He displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid .... it was a crass, stupid and nationalistic thing to say."
Yes, it was. Watching Live 8, it was clear that one thing that hasn't changed in the 20 years since Live Aid is that the photos of African poverty are as appalling as ever. Actually, things have become worse. The great triumph and only strength of Live 8, and before it Live Aid, was its ability to stay on message and inform the public about the worst humanitarian crisis on our planet. More than his crappy playing, Dylan's comments were so wrong because he dissipated the message. He failed to realize that the power music had that day was its ability to focus the world's attention on this issue that, despite its unique, staggering humanitarian costs, could be solved except for a lack of money, corrupt local governments and sporadic international interest. A worldwide rock concert is in a unique position to influence all of these things, but especially the third. As Bono said at Live 8, "The rock stars and hip-hop stars can't change anything, but the audience can. They can put the politicians who can do something in and out of office. We are not looking for charity; we are looking for justice. We cannot fix everything but the ones we can, we must."
So it probably isn't so bad that Bob Dylan was nowhere near Live 8, and this time out, the performers chose to save denunciations of the Iraq war and support for stem-cell research for the awards shows. We learned only about Africa's troubles throughout Live 8. In the Internet-Information Age, Live 8 did that spectacularly well, too.
Still, one of the fun things about getting older is seeing history rewrite itself. Rather than being recalled as a low point in Dylan's career, as it surely was, such was the power of his moral authority that his clueless palaver at Live Aid begat Farm Aid, and Dylan is actually remembered not for his subpar performance but for inspiring that charity event. But what he did that day was still wrong, and even this fanatic fan admits it.
Richard Abowitz worships at the shrine of Bob Dylan. E-mail him at
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