Do They Know It’s Christmas? aims for No.1 with epic all-star 40th anniversary reboot
In Australia to launch his Songs and Stories tour, Sir Bob Geldof shares the plans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of both his Live Aid concerts and iconic Christmas melody.
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Beloved charity classic Do They Know It’s Christmas? will get its most star-studded reboot to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
Sir Bob Geldof, in Australia to launch his Songs and Stories tour next March, is chasing another No. 1 Christmas hit with the Band Aid 40 version, which will be released in December.
Geldof tasked legendary producer Trevor Horn with the technical challenge of threading together the original 1984 version with the two other official anniversary editions from 2004 and 2014 for its 2024 reissue.
“It’s absolutely fantastic, the video is just ‘Wow’, and you can see I’m not the enthused type,” Geldof said, chilling on his Sydney hotel suite couch.
“You’ve got a young Sting singing alongside a young Ed Sheeran, a young Boy George singing alongside a young Sam Smith, a young Bono singing alongside a young Harry Styles; in the middle, you have a dead George Michael singing alongside a dead Sinead O’Connor.
“They’re all on just one track and it’s like they’re all in the same room. It’s reimagined the song and revivified the original emotion of it, it really has.”
Band Aid 40 will again be in competition for the coveted Christmas No. 1 with another anniversary reboot of Wham!’s Last Christmas. And of course they’re both up against the Queen of Christmas Mariah Carey.
Do They Know It’s Christmas, which George Michael also sang on, beat Wham! to No. 1 in 1984, but Last Christmas finally claimed the top spot in the UK in 2021 and 2023.
Geldof also made a secret but brief return to acting in Queensland last month, filming a cameo in the Australian action comedy film Zombie Plane which also stars Vanilla Ice, Sophie Monk and Chuck Norris.
He received a deluge of text sledges after photos emerged of him on set wearing a garish green and orange shell suit.
“They branched out (my filming) into a three-day thing. I’m at a party and someone gives me a f**king flamethrower as a present, and I’m parachuting out of a plane but I forget my parachute, and then I’m coming out of the Pacific Ocean with my parachute attached,” he said.
“I keep getting these (messages) from England saying ‘I didn’t know you were going to Australia to do a (film)?’ and I said “I’m not ... I’m just doing a couple of scenes.
“I don’t know who’s in it, I don’t know what it’s about, I filmed the party scene with no one.”
The 73-year-old musician and activist said the Australian tour will be a solo respite from an overwhelming slate of anniversary activity marking the 40th anniversary of the iconic Live Aid concerts in 1985 and the 50th anniversary of seminal Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats.
There is also a jukebox musical based on the events leading up to the historic Live Aid concerts called Just For One Day, which had a sold-out season on London’s West End in march this year and will open in Toronto in January. It will no doubt make its way to Australia in the next 18 months.
The musical also donates a portion of ticket sales to the Band Aid Trust which administers funds – an estimated $400 million since 1984 from the concerts and singles – for famine and disease relief.
Do They Know It’s Christmas? remains a big fundraiser for the trust with the original 1984 single and the 2004 and 2014 recordings generating more than 600 million streams on Spotify alone since they became available on the platform.
Tickets for An Evening With Bob Geldof; Songs and Stories from an Extraordinary Life go on sale from 1pm on November 7, with all details via tegdainty.com.
An Evening With Bob Geldof
March 15 – ICC Darling Harbour Theatre, Sydney
March 16 Newcastle Civic Theatre
March 19 Hamer Hall, Melbourne
March 20, Odeon Theatre, Hobart
March 22, Royal Theatre, Canberra
March 25, Adelaide Entertainment Centre
April 1, QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane
April 3 Tweed Heads Twin Towns
April 5 Riverside Theatre, Perth
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