Melbourne furniture salesman Bill Gordon who sold his store to stage Aussie arm of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid 40 years ago
A man who was the unsung hero behind Australia’s involvement in Bob Geldof’s legendary 1985 Live Aid concert has broken his silence on the 40th anniversary of the famine relief global fundraiser.
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The former Melbourne furniture salesman who was the unsung hero behind Australia’s involvement in Bob Geldof’s legendary 1985 Live Aid concert has broken his silence on the 40th anniversary of the famine relief global fundraiser.
Bill Gordon, 85, sold his Templestowe store in May 1985 to underwrite Oz For Africa, the Australian arm of Live Aid, which brought together the biggest names in Australian music for a concert and telethon that raised $10m.
The Oz For Africa concert was held at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on Friday, July 12, 1985 and featured 17 acts including INXS, Men At Work, Dragon, I’m Talking, Models, Mondo Rock, Australian Crawl, Uncanny X-Men and Goanna.
Filmed by the ABC, the concert was broadcast nationally, and sent out on a satellite feed, at 8am on Saturday, July 13 – Live Aid day.
Owing to time differences, Oz For Africa was the first fundraising concert in the world to be aired that day. The London Live Aid concert was broadcast live on the ABC that night.
Australia was one of a number of countries including Japan, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Russia, West Germany and America, who hosted charity concerts as part of Geldof’s Live Aid global jukebox.
Oz For Africa grew out of humble beginnings, after Gordon, so moved by news reports on the African famine tragedy in late 1984 swapped furniture for fundraising and with little experience in the entertainment business, miraculously put on the EAT (East Africa Tragedy) Appeal Concert at Melbourne’s Myer Music Bowl in January 1985.
At the urging of friend Margaret St George, the second wife of Andrew Peacock, Gordon contacted the Band Aid charity in London, which had recorded the song Do They Know It’s Christmas, and asked if Geldof and Midge Ure would come to Melbourne to support the concert. Geldof was unavailable but Ure, co-writer of Do They Know It’s Christmas, did make the trip Down Under.
EAT included satellite messages from stars in the UK and the US, who had appeared on the songs Do They Know It’s Christmas and We Are The World, and raised $1m.
From there the big thinking Gordon wondered if a global fundraising concert was possible.
“Because there had been We Are The World in the US and Feed The World in the UK plus the EAT concert, in my mind they made the potential for a global concert,” Gordon said.
“I flew to meet Geldof and the Band-Aid committee in London at the beginning of April (1985) and discussed the possibility of putting something together and Bob said ‘I am already on it, I’m trying to get something done in New York and London’.
“We sent a whole host of Telex messages back and forth between myself and the Band-Aid committee about the planning of it.”
When Geldof officially announced the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts Gordon wanted Australia involved and Oz For Africa was born. He put a deposit down on the Sydney Entertainment Centre and started putting the concert line up together.
Channel 9 initially came on board as the broadcast and telethon partner, but pulled the pin in early June for budget reasons. Out of the blue came a call from the ABC with music guru Molly Meldrum, who had been passionately promoting Band Aid, We Are The World and Live Aid, and the Count Down crew keen to get involved.
Around June 13, with just four weeks to go, Gordon said the ABC agreed to show the Oz For Africa concert and telethon as well as air the UK and US Live Aid concerts and provide the staff, equipment and facilities for the Australian broadcast.
Meldrum would anchor the broadcast and be the irresistible hype man, with Grant Rule, then the executive producer of Count Down, appointed the executive producer of the Oz For Africa project.
“Molly, very early on, was championing the Live Aid concert and the need for Count Down and by extension the ABC, to be at the centre of ‘what would be the greatest concert in the history of the world’,” Rule said.
“My initial reaction was that it just wouldn’t, it couldn’t happen. Putting aside the costs associated with staging an event like this, it was illogical as there was simply not enough time to set it up. Also the satellite technology of the day was still in its infancy with significant audio and vision signal challenges.”
A remarkable and diverse group of individuals, organisations and artists worked miracles and donated their time, expertise and talent to put the concert on.
“It was hair raising,” Gordon said.
“The number of people who got involved, volunteered their time, worked all hours and took calls at any time was incredible.”
On July 13, money poured in as Australians opened their hearts and wallets for Africa.
At 9pm, with the local telethon still going, the legendary London Live Aid concert kicked off
and Meldrum, broadcasting from the Harbour Queen ferry moored on Sydney Harbour, welcomed Australian ABC viewers to the history-making show.
As Live Aid went on into the night, Sydneysiders started coming to the ferry and dropping off donations and gifts.
“Well meaning and extremely generous folk started dropping off assorted jewellery, diamonds rings, watches, gold bracelets and handfuls of cash,” Rule recalled.
“It was remarkable. Predictably, Molly had a somewhat quizzical look on his face … and the on-sight producer was soon on to me in the main broadcast control room saying, ‘You had better get some security down here right now as there is so much money and jewellery lying about.’
“At one stage deep into Sunday morning Molly casually mentioned on air ‘it’s getting very cold here’ and the next thing dozens of heaters were being dropped off to the Harbour Queen by concerned and caring citizens.”
Rule said he was proud to have played a part in the Oz For Africa undertaking.
“At the time you were just so busy, you just got on with it, you did not have time to stop and think,” he said.
“It is only with hindsight you realise you were part of something so significant.”
Meldrum was awarded an MA, Member of the Order of Australia, in the 1986 Australia Day honours in recognition of his Oz For Africa work.
Meanwhile, after Oz For Africa, Gordon, who was the heart and soul of the project, organised the Sport Aid fundraising concert in 1986 and then stepped out of the spotlight.
He has not been in contact with Geldof since mid-1986, but has stayed in touch sporadically with Ure.
“Our lives went in two different directions,” he said.
Never one to seek accolades, Gordon moved to Queensland and got involved in property development.
He returned to live in Melbourne in 2000.
“I like to flip between things, I don’t like sticking to one thing, I like the variety of life,” Gordon said.
“It is a dream to have been able to achieve something like that (Oz For Africa) for what is an average bloke.
“I am proud of the amount of giving that people around me gave. I am proud that they saw the same thing that I saw.”
Originally published as Melbourne furniture salesman Bill Gordon who sold his store to stage Aussie arm of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid 40 years ago
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