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Editors note: Monday is the 35th anniversary of the Live Aid benefit concert. The Tribs Paul Guggenheimer was there. Here, he shares his first-person remembrance of the historic event in Philadelphia.

In the days leading up to the Live Aid benefit concert in Philadelphia and London on Saturday, July 13, 1985, young people like me were being told that this was our generations Woodstock.

Looking back, Live Aid certainly was a lot of things. It was no Woodstock.

There were similarities. A lot of big name bands showed up and rocked out, and there was a shared feeling that a great thing was being done for less fortunate people in the world.

But this was no back-to-nature communal weekend in a rural field with peace and love vibes and lots of drugs.

Live Aid was designed to raise money to fight famine in Ethiopia, where hundreds of thousands of people were starving to death. The effort to raise money for famine relief had begun over a half-year earlier when event organizer Bob Geldof arranged to have colleagues record a song called Do They Know Its Christmas?

When it was all said and done, Live Aid raised $127 million and inspired future benefit concerts such as Farm Aid to help family farmers and Live Earth to fight climate change.

Live Aid was a one day/night stand with a distinctly corporate feel in the middle of a big city. There were few hippies and, from where I was sitting halfway up the midfield stands to the right of the stage even fewer drugs being shared.

I imagine more than a few Pittsburghers made the trek across the state to experience it. But by 1985, I had already left Pittsburgh for Boston to attend college. I had a part-time job at a radio station that billed itself as HitRadio 103, WHTT and had added We Are the World Live Aids anthem, released in March of that year to its playlist.

Slow start on a sweltering day

I was somehow able to wangle a couple of Live Aid tickets that at least two big-name disc jockeys had apparently turned down.

The tickets were handed to me the day before the concert. I immediately called my freshman year roommate, Ron, the one friend I knew would drop everything to drive down the coast to Philadelphia that night. We left shortly after 5 p.m. in Friday afternoon rush hour and by midnight had made it to the Philly suburbs, where we slept in a friends living room.

After a short nights sleep, Ron and I were bound and determined to get to John F. Kennedy Stadium by the 9 a.m. start of the concert. But we ended up parking so far from the stadium that we had to settle for listening to opening act Joan Baez sing Amazing Grace from just outside the gates.

Once inside, we were giddy with anticipation. Rumors swirled that Bruce Springsteen was going to swoop into Philadelphia for a surprise appearance. Meanwhile, we were hearing that on the London side of the show at Wembley Stadium, there would be a Beatles reunion with Julian Lennon standing in for his late father, John. Young Julian had just released his spectacular debut album, Valotte.

The excitement receded quickly, though, as the morning and afternoon wore on and the temperature began to soar into the upper 90s. With the exception of The Hooters playing on their hometown turf and the Four Tops, who sang a snappy version of Bernadette, the early end of the Philly lineup was uninspiring.

Some of the acts, including Billy Ocean, Black Sabbath, Tom Petty, Run DMC, Rick Springfield and REO Speedwagon, made us want to run for the shade, which along with cold beverages was in short supply.

JFK Stadium was an ancient horseshoe-shaped edifice that was seven years away from being demolished. The mens rooms were like something out of a Gothic prison. It was a nearly 100,000-seat football stadium that had been the longtime home of the annual Army-Navy game. As for concerts, it had hosted everyone from Barbra Streisand to the Grateful Dead.

But on this sweltering day, JFK felt like an outdoor frying pan that was woefully inadequate for hosting an event of Live Aids magnitude. Long lines of dehydrated kids were cueing up to pay $4 for a warm Coke. Much-needed bottles of water werent available until later in the day.

I cant remember what I paid for water, but by that time I would have traded gold bars for it.

And then came CSN, Clapton, Led Zeppelin, et al.

The suffering didnt seem worth it until Crosby, Stills & Nash took the stage, opening with the song Southern Cross.

The band that stole the show in the afternoon was Simple Minds. Their big hit Dont You (Forget About Me) from the soundtrack of the hit film The Breakfast Club was all over the radio that year. But led by singer Jim Kerr, these Scottish rockers proved to be much more than one-hit wonders. Their closing song, Promised You a Miracle, brought down the house.

The other highlight of the afternoon was when Madonna, despite the 95-degree temperature, announced Im not taking s- off today! in the middle of a nationwide telecast, a reference to the recent release of early nude photos of her in Playboy and Penthouse magazines.

As the afternoon began to make its way toward twilight and a slight breeze picked up, so did the music. Suddenly it was a parade of classic rock acts.

Eric Clapton showed up looking cool in a crisp, white shirt that made his red guitar strap stand out. He produced an amazing sound on songs like White Room and Layla.

Clapton was followed by Phil Collins, who performed that day in London and later in Philadelphia, traveling by helicopter to Heathrow Airport, then by Concorde supersonic jet to New York, and by another helicopter to JFK Stadium.

After performing his own set, Collins sat in on drums with the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, who were performing for the first time since the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980. Hearing them play Stairway to Heaven with a soon-to-be-setting sun as a backdrop was a surreal, dreamlike moment.

Apparently for lead singer Robert Plant, however, it was more like a nightmare. Unbeknownst to us, the performance was criticized, namely for Plants hoarse voice and Jimmy Pages allegedly out-of-tune guitar. If that was the case, we never noticed it. Maybe Ron and I were suffering from heat stroke.

There were more acts to come, including an encore of Crosby, Stills & Nash, this time with Neil Young, a Mick Jagger and Tina Turner duet set and a Bob Dylan, Ron Wood and Keith Richards collaboration.

As far as we were concerned, though, nothing could top what we had just seen, with the possible exception of Jagger tearing off Turners leather mini-skirt, leaving her to finish Its Only Rock n Roll (But I Like It) in a leotard and stockings.

To this day, were not sure whether they planned it.

We kept waiting for Springsteen, but the Boss never showed. The Philadelphia show ended with a nine-minute version of We Are the World. Meanwhile, in London, The Beatles reunion was only a rumor. Paul McCartney was the only one of them who performed.

Eventful ride home

Ron and I left JFK Stadium some 14 hours after we arrived, dazed and dying to get into an air conditioned hotel room. Unfortunately, we werent able to find one and ended up grabbing a few hours of difficult sleep at a roadside rest stop.

The next morning we grabbed a greasy breakfast and hit the road for the return trip to Boston. We started out with Ron driving and me foolishly sleeping across the back seat with my head resting on the drivers side door.

I ended up being frightened out of my sleep by a frantically honking car horn. Ron had fallen asleep at the wheel; our car crossed into the far left lane and brushed against the side of another automobile. Fortunately, the damage to the vehicles was minimal. More importantly, we survived and were in one piece.

We kept ourselves awake the rest of the way by reliving what 35 years later can certainly be called a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Paul Guggenheimer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paul at 724-226-7706 or pguggenheimer@triblive.com.

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Reliving the Live Aid experience 35 years later - TribLIVE