I came across an assortment of backstage passes the other day. The one I’m most proud of is my artist/performer backstage pass from Live Aid (1985) where I played on stage with Hall & Oates, Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin of the Temptations, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner.

The line up for Mick’s set was essentially the Hall & Oates rhythm section including T Bone Wolk on bass, G E Smith on guitar, Micky Currie on drums and myself on keyboards. Here’s a picture of me at sound check (second from left) – JFK Stadium 1985.

We’d rehearsed for a week in New York and had worked up several tunes with Mick and couple with Tina Turner who was scheduled to join him for a duet towards the end of the set.

I remember it was a million degrees that day in Philadelphia. There was a huge backstage area which had been used as a sort of carnival midway where each act, record label, TV crew, broadcast outlet and every other conceivable entity had set up base camp. They were arranged in rows and aisles and the whole affair took on the appearance of a makeshift tent city. There seemed to be an endless supply of tv and recording trucks, band trailors and hospitality tents belonging to various record labels, MTV, VH1, CNN, ET etc. Quite the circus. We weren’t scheduled to go on till 4pm that afternoon, so everyone was pretty toasted from the heat and stress by the time we went on. Anyway, pretty amazing. In the end, the show was viewed by 1.5 billion people! Supposedly 80% of the worlds tv sets were tuned to Live Aid that day.