The largest rock n roll concert audience was at the Live Aid concert in 1985. This concert was organized to raise money for the Ethiopian famine relief.
The largest attended concert of all time was the Rod Stewart concert held in 1994 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The event attracted an estimated 3.5 million people, making it the largest concert ever held. The concert was free and was held on Copacabana Beach as part of the New Year's celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.
It can't be overstated how Queen's 20-minute set at Live Aid in 1985 was one of the best live performances ever. Rami Malek's Academy Award-winning portrayal of Freddie Mercury in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody brought the epic show back into the spotlight in 2018.
Live Aid eventually raised $127 million in famine relief for African nations, and the publicity it generated encouraged Western nations to make available enough surplus grain to end the immediate hunger crisis in Africa. Geldof was later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his efforts.
Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. These four outlaw country music icons had joined forces in 1984 to form the supergroup The Highwaymen. Their debut album came out just a few months before Live Aid, and none of the quartet appeared at either show..
“Everybody realized that Queen was stealing the show,” said Gambaccini. These were the very words Elton John uttered when he rushed into Mercury's trailer after the set. “You bastards, you stole the show,” joked the charismatic star.
The Woodstock Festival: The Biggest Concert In History
The Woodstock Festival, which took place between August 16-18, 1969, was one of the most well-known music events in history. The festival was held on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York, between August 15-17, 1969, and it drew thousands of people.
This Day in History: 'Live Aid' concert raises $127 million for Famine Relief in Africa. Register for more free articles. Keep reading with a digital access subscription.
Speaking ahead of their performance, Queen were asked if they agreed to play Live Aid to "support the cause" and do their bit or instead because it was "a unique rock event" that they "can't afford to miss". The ever candid Freddie replied: "To answer that honestly it's a bit of both.
The band did sound better than most of the other bands at Wembley for two very impressive reasons. Firstly, Queen's talented sound engineer was one of the few who knew how to properly maximise the output within the limits so Queen sounded clearer and louder.
Queen's set opened with their 1985 single One Vision, which was written and released in the aftermath of the band's performance at Live Aid. The epic intro was the perfect opener and the recording from Knebworth was later used to kick off the album Live Magic, released at Christmas 1986.
It's been more than 33 years since Queen, spearheaded by their electric front man Freddie Mercury, charged onto the stage of the 1985 Live Aid concert and performed the set often lauded as the greatest live gig of all time.
Rock in Rio, Brazil, January 1985
The shows on 12th and 18th of January attracted the biggest crowd Queen ever played to, with an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people in attendance each night.
With more than 69,000 people in attendance, Taylor Swift has officially broken the record for the highest attended concert for a female artist in the U.S.. Swift overtook Madonna, who had held it since 1987 when she performed at Anaheim Stadium in LA in front of 63,000 people.
An incredible 100,000 people packed into Philadelphia's JFK Stadium for Live Aid and 72,000 attended the Wembley concert. Tickets for this once in a lifetime event cost $35.00. Live Aid was conceived by Bob Geldof on May 1, 1985, and it was planned and executed in just 10 weeks.
Who followed Queen at Live Aid? It would have been daunting for anyone to walk onto the Wembley stage after Freddie Mercury and co had just delivered the performance of a lifetime, but there was one artist who was more than up for the challenge: David Bowie.
Was Live Aid Freddie Mercury's last performance? The Live Aid concert happened on July 13th, 1985, but his last live performance was a year later at Knebworth Park on August 9th, 1986.
Woodstock was larger as a physical event, of course — an on-site audience of 400,000 compared with the 90,000 at Live Aid's Philadelphia stage and the 60,000 in London — but whereas Woodstock was a gleeful veneration of the counterculture, Live Aid sought to occupy the mainstream psyche with a traditionally uncool ...
One source even speculates that the concert — which featured such top-name artists as Elton John, Guns N' Roses, David Bowie, and Metallica — raised only $8 million and that the heavy bills for performers' deluxe hotel accommodations, among other things, total nearly $12 million.
AC/DC were asked to play at the Live Aid concert in 1985, but turned down the chance to play at the charity event, which raised an estimated £100 million for famine relief and made an international celebrity activist out of Geldof.
It was on this day in 1985 when Queen cemented their legacy with a career-defining (and show-stealing) performance at Live Aid.
According to The New York Times, Jackson's press agent, Norman Winter, stated that Jackson was not able to perform at the Live Aid because he was busy with his projects. Norman said that he was “working around the clock in the studio on a project that he's made a major commitment to.
Unfathomably, Freddie not only managed to overcome his voice issues, but he used Wembley Stadium as a vehicle to prove himself as the greatest showman on the planet.