Bob Geldof says Queen biopic gets crucial Live Aid detail wrong – as another act ‘melted the phone lines’

Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic charting the rise of Queen and Freddie Mercury, suggests the band were responsible for a boom in Live Aid donations.

But Bob Geldof, the event organiser, says this was not the case and another artist who was on after Queen had been the reason phone lines had “melted”. The veteran performer pieced together an all-star list of musical acts for the day when raising money for the famine in Ethiopia. While Queen’s rapturously received performance is regarded as one of the best moments in music history, it was not the reason for the increase in donations Live Aid felt. Geldof has instead credited a legend of the stage for their part in drumming up interest in the two-day benefit.

Speaking on the Questions with Tom Power podcast, Geldof says he took issue with the Queen movie for misrepresenting the band’s impact on Live Aid. He said: “The Queen movie has it that Queen do their piece and the world goes crazy and the phone lines collapse. That’s not true. I had to go meet Harvey Goldsmith, who is the promoter and producer of the show with David Bowie, because David wanted to go through what songs he was going to do.”

It was during this meeting that Bowie made a request that nearly saw him drop out of performing at Live Aid. He eventually won over, and his actions at the concert set the phone lines ablaze for donations for the Ethiopian famine.

Geldof confirmed: “I said, ‘Before we start guys look at this what I’ve just got,’ and we put on the CBC thing and Bowie sat there and started to cry. And he just said, ‘However many songs I’m doing I’m giving up one and I’m introducing this.’ Harvey said, ‘They won’t show it. The BBC will just take it off the international feeds and we’ve got silence, we just can’t do it.'”

Bowie did it, anyway, and it made for one of the most powerful moments of the night. The Life on Mars legend said he would walk away from the performance if he could not introduce the CBC footage.

Bowie was granted permission to introduce the video during his Live Aid performance, with Geldof saying he “kills it and he does Heroes and then the place is going nuts and he interrupts them, impatiently,’ and that was when Bowie introduced the video.

Bowie introduced the video by saying: “The subject speaks for itself. Thank you. Please send your money in.” That is where Geldof says the phone lines “melted” for Live Aid, shortly after Queen had taken to the stage.

Geldof said he watched the crowd’s “faces crumple” and says “that was the moment the phone lines melt. I mean, literally, in some places, phone lines collapsed.”