“It’s a class system. They are first class and we are standard class. It feels like they are mocking us. It’s completely hypocritical, we are trying to save people from poverty and they have bought the privilege. If we wanted to watch it on TV we would’ve stayed at home.” Victoria Gould, quoted in the Sunday Independent, 3rd July 2005.

So here it is. The show of the Millenium (ahem, “Willenium”). The show that sees every celebrity (a-list,b-list, and z-list) either on the bill or the guest list. And it is huge.

And it’s amazing, according to the BBC. Event of the year. Gig of the century. The BBC brings on a scrawl of flabbergasted talking heads. Almost all of whom are famous for being famous (Ronan Keating and Jimmy Carr anyone?), to talk vaccous bullshit about today and how amazing it is, whilst saying how much they are looking forward to Madonna.

Out there in the riff-raff, there’s not much difference. Bands turn up for their fifteen minutes of fame, are shunted off, and the video screens play footage of Starving Children that helps sell records. Pink Floyd sales increased 1353% the day after.

I’ve seen huge. And this makes Knebworth look, well, intimate. The venue is so big it takes quarter of an hour to walk from one end to another. That’s almost a mile . It’s so big that the time delay between the video screen and the audio makes it akin to talking to someone on the moon. Or at the very least, a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie. On stage there’s Dido and Yossou N’Dour. At the back of the field, she’s still hasn’t finished the song before this one. That’s how big it is. I’m not watching music, but physics demonstrated before my eyes.

You’re coming to a rock concert and watching television. It’s too big to do anything but. Inside the £1,000 ‘Golden Circle’, you may get to see something, but for the 133,000 rest of us, it’s little dots on stage obscured by flags.

33 flags. I counted them. I don’t care if you’re from Brazil, or you like U2. If all anyone else can see is the back of your flag saying “Make Poverty Histery” (as one flag in the illiterate, but overprivileged Gold Circle read), then I don’t care about the cause. Show some consideration for the fellow humans in London as well. There’s only one flag I saw worth waving, and that had a Dalek on it.

Extermin8 Poverty indeed.

For the rest of us, though, what is it like? It’s enormous. There are people everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Every last nook and cranny of the Park has someone in it. And that someone has a Live8 t-shirt or a Live8 programme, or both. And a camera phone. And why are we here? Despite what Bob Geldof tells us, this is about music, as much as about the cause. At least, judging from the number of U2 and Pink Floyd t-shirts.

But if music is what it takes to get people to listen to the cause, then so be it. If it takes the people to stand up for what they believe in in their millions to make them listen, then so be it. “Any squabbles the band have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if re-forming for this concert will help focus attention then it’s got to be worthwhile”, said David Gilmour, one member of Pink Floyd – and a player in Rock’s Most Acrimonious Split Ever.

If they can set aside their differences, can’t everyone else? Leave your ego’s at the door. Ego’s are the thing that put mankind in this dreadful situation in the first place.

Let us not forget that a child dies every three seconds. And that 50,000 people die a day. That’s everyone in the Park in four days. That’s the population of Birmingham in three weeks. If what we do today saves one life it is worth it. If what we do today saves one life I’m prepared to sit through UB40’s risible, white-middle-class reggae medley of cover versions.

The show must go on.

And what a show.

When I got home I watched the TV coverage aghast. It always looks better on TV. And my God, did it look good on TV. Better by far than actually being there. On TV there was no crush. No £7 boxes of chicken, and no rubbish. No flags. No secret drunks who’d smuggled in bottles of vodka, or who started fires after Pink Floyd. Nobody standing on anyone else’s shoulders during The Who, so instead of Roger Daltry, you get to see a black t-shirt and a crap tattoo of a dolphin.

But really, that is just splitting hairs. This is a day when we put aside everything. Where we stand up and be counted. And to get it on TV, we put on some music.

With little or no fanfare, no Status Quo, no recap of past glories, five men walk on stage. U2 and Paul McCartney. For me, for whom The Beatles are a footnote to history, this isn’t the earth shattering event it should be. Yes, it’s the first time ever that McCartney has sung this song since it was recorded. The first time that U2 and McCartney share a stage. A meeting of legends. And?

Well, I can’t tell. It looks and sounds brilliant on television. However, it’s a rather different tale out here as five very small dots are obscured by flags. Everyone stands around watching, largely in awe, or shock, or both. And then it’s over. As “Thumbs Aloft” leaves the stage, and U2 continue there’s a sense of Was That It? It Was Over So Fast!

Without any further ado, and with one eye on the clock, U2 power through a minature set, bringing Hit after Hit. And whilst, thematically “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo” seem to be miles away from the spirit and cause of the day, I think it’s churlish to complain.Today is a Global Jukebox. Jump up and down in your living room, we’re packed in like sardines here.

Though Bono never takes his sunglasses off, and his jeans have a tear in the crotch, his sincereity is explict. And, unlike other shows, he keeps the preaching to a thankful minimum, with a short speech before “One”. A song that, now more than ever, has gone beyond it’s original meaning, and is a call to all of us. One World. One Love. One Life. We’ve got to do what we should. 

But is it “The Greatest Rock Show In The History Of The World”, as the TV coverage says? No. You can’t reinvent the world. You can’t capture magic and recreate a moment. But my word, you can try. And since we don’t want your money, it’s not a plea for dollars. It’s a plea to be aware.

The Global Jukebox rolls on. Coldplay, like U2 and Elton John, are contractually obligated to perform In A Stadium Somewhere In Europe later, and thus, run to the stage for a Greatest Hits Precis that manages to avoid their most recent Number 2. Though “In My Place” offers a momentary highlight in form of a tribute to Status Quo, and “Bitter Sweet Symphony” an alleged (almost self-appointed) highlight when some guy who hasn’t made a good record since 1997 and doesn’t wear shoes sings with them, it’s too early for scene-setting drama. And following that with “Fix You”, a song off the new album that isn’t a hit, sees the atmosphere sucked away. Despite how great the song is, it doesn’t translate to the crowd, who, even now, are slightly jaded. Coldplay performed with passion and vigour, but there’s an almost palpable, tangible sense of anticlimax. We’re all lost in our own world of private, peculiarly British melancholia. With a great soundtrack.

But watching the TV, I’m getting fed up of the flood of superlatives. It’s amazing, it’s brilliant, it’s the Gig of The Willenium, it’s… Live8, which is Gr8. Oooh look! Peter Kay! Oh look, Andy Marr! Ooooh, scuse me whilst I fall asleep.

Out here in the trenches it’s a different story. It’s another stadium rock gig, though one for a good cause and stripped of the usual round of between song adverts and hangovers. In fact, it’s more like the world’s biggest picnic. Crowds mull around video monitors, eating £5 hot dogs, and making the FastFood stallholder’s poverty history. Elton John, also about to jet off to a stadium in Dublin, is next, and his duet with that cunt from The Libertines (the only Live8 appearance that actually cost the band sales, FACT), is, without a doubt, a godawful shambles that should best consigned to the dustbin of history. Watch that coked up junkie twat swanning around like he’s some kind of Genius, when he’s just a Junkie Arse. Doherty saunters on stage looking like a painting of a transvestite composed by Stevie Wonder, and proceeds to slaughter a T-Rex song with a cigarette lighter in his mouth. He throws a Union Jack at the TV cameras in an act of both unwarranted arrogance and utter stupidity. Sadly, the only thing he flings into the Golden Circle isn’t a hand grenade, or at the very least a sense of outrage, but a cap. I doubt the £1,000 a head Corporate Hospitality Wankers that totter around drinking Pimms whilst the rest of the field suffers a class-enforced mini-Prohibition even noticed.

Photo opportunities abound. Elton John sits on top of his piano. Madonna hugs a young African Woman, who Bob Geldof saved just 10 minutes from death, with his army of Pop Stars! Mariah Carey serenades a rabble of African children in ethnic dress to a chorus of jeers that are mysteriously mixed out of the TV coverage.

When Dido arrives, it’s time to watch from the place furthest away from the stage. To consume overpriced shitty food out of a paper box and sit in a sea of discarded newspapers. Dido & Yossou’N’Dour sing wildly out of time when the monitors (the half-mile, half-a-second time delay between sound and vision doesn’t make it any less or more coherent). It’s like a very big festival, but with ALL the acts over the three or four days rammed into a few hours on one stage.

Aside from the insular, hit-free sludge that was Velvet Revolver (three ex-members of Guns N Roses fronted by a largely charm and talent free ex-junkie), the day was seriously lacking in metal. The closest thing the day got to Rock was The Stereophonics, who offered a no-frills greatest hits set of The Songs From When They Were Good.

REM meanwhile offered a polemic-free, quarter hour precis of all that is good and bad about their world. No speeches which, given their recent political hectoring, was perhaps more surprising than anything else, but made for a handy reminder of why they were once one of the greatest bands in the world. Like Coldplay, they delivered their premium weepie - “Everybody Hurts” - with a career-high intensity and one eye on the end-of-the-day highlights package. Some songs are almost designed to unfold over images of the middle-class millions trying to shift their guilt offshore and slow-motion shots of dying children on the Evening News. 

 Miss Dynamite-tee-hee (as everyone calls her) passes in a blur of well-meaning but generic, unexceptional urban hip hop. Keane meanwhile, a drab shower of shit at the best of times, perform two songs fronted by a scruffy, unkempt student whose My Mum’s haircut make him look all like a 13 year old from 1974. An unexceptional drip of effort that gave some of us a chance to have a Global Mopealong, but will be looked at in 2025 the same way that we, now, are aghast at the thought of Nik Kershaw ever being at the original Live Aid. At least Spandau Ballet had “Gold” and “True”. 155,00 people stand around with £2 bottles of water and wondering why they can’t buy any cigarettes or chocolate on site. Or, for that matter, any sandwiches.It's as if catering has been done by the Fast Food Rockers.. and if's not burger shaped, its not on the menu.

Travis don’t do much better, but enliven proceedings with a raptorously received “Staying Alive” that enforces the conception that the day needs, as much as anything, some true Star Power. In this poverty of heroes, Annie Lennox’s rocked-up versions of 80’s Synth Hits, and her Designed-for-TV rendition of “Why?” feel forced. It doesn’t help that she looks like someone who looks a lot less like a rock star, and a lot more like a jaded middle-manager for a corporation.

But 133,000 faces weeped as she sang “Why?” over a montage of children : all of whom had AIDS and would not see their 16^th birthday. In this cynical age it’s harder to tug heart strings. When we have seen it all before.

The less said about UB40’s Abortion of a GreatestHitsMedley, or Snoop’s extended ghetto posturing the better. A couple of choice “Motherfuckers”, “Niggas”, “Bitches” and “Ho’s” later (as well as five songs and 25 minutes, more than anyone else all day), see me singlehandedly wishing I could make Snoop history. Leave your egos at the door, Live8 is not an opportunity for Snoop to ramble on with a goodtime greatest hits-and-drive-by’s set. His last words are something about the West Side, which is just another episode in Rap’s Global Pissing Contest. Make Poverty Motherfucking History, My Nigger.

Razorlight, Snow Patrol, and to a lesser extent, The Killers, are sucked into a void of the bland.Only Madonna, sandwiched between today’s Q-Approved Stadium Whinge Interlude, rouses the field from an hour or two of tedious, well meaning rubbish. Her voice is thin and weedy, the bass overpowering, her choir of backing musicians proof that Madonna’s talent is not musical but in arranging an army of talent around her to bolster her slender abilities. 

Got the field dancing around to her concise set of Superhits. Even if I can’t really understand quite why she is as huge as she is. It may have sounded great on TV, but it was shit out here on the field, and her photo-opportunity duet with an African Woman who was ten minutes from death in 1985 feels callous, forced, and as exploitative as a Chinese sweatshop. Fuck off dear, you’ve got your front page. Now feel guilty, you with your credit card debt and your day jobs, for living in a world of relative affluence. 

The Scissor Sisters do the Global Jukebox thing as well as Madonna, but thankfully without the starving children or the choirs. The sun sets behind us like a nosebleed. Between moments where, for those who like 70’s misanthropic prog-rock, the sun is obscured by clouds.

Meanwhile, what they don’t show you on TV is what happens when Mariah Carey comes on. The diva totters around, introduces us to her masseuse, her bottled-water-flunkey, and her mike stand roadie, whilst singing her latest single and flanked by brown children dressed in colorful ethnic robes. Which is like someone doing a “London Aid” concert and being surrounded by street urchins plucked straight from Charles Dickens. It’s patronising, ignorant bullshit of the highest order, and what they don’t show you on TV is a wave of deafening jeers and boo’s that surrounds the fields.

If we weren’t seperated from the stage by a privileged few with their £1,000 tickets and secret backstage supplies of wines and spirits, she’d be drowning in a sea of rolled up Live 8 programmes and smuggled vodka bottles. I've never heard a chorus of jeers so passionate.

Still, it’s the most amazing music event of the Willenium, the gig of the year, and the message is sometimes lost between the global jukebox and the intention to make good, franchisable television. The message, the one that astounded me that no one star said was simple : politicians are here to represent the people. We, the people, have spoken, and if they do not listen, we should get new leaders.

For the cost of one stealth bomber, 25,000,000 children could be put through school. Or Mariah Carey could buy a new pair of shoes.

Dispensing with the diva bullshit, Robbie Williams returns to the stage for his first show since Knebworth. From the opening “We Will Rock You” to “Angels”, Britain’s biggest – and possibly best – pop star had the crowd eating from the palm of his hand. Say what you like about him, but no one can command a stage or seduce an audience the way Mr.Williams can.

After this, a bloated The Who could only disappoint, which they did competently but boringly. A hyper-extended “Won’t Get Fooled Again” saw a keyboard solo that felt longer than UB40’s set, if such a thing were possible. This was not abated by the fact that the field started to empty as soon as “Angels” came to a close, as babysitters needed rescuing and last trains needed catching. As the day wore on, and acts were shuffled around, nobody knew who was on when, or when anyone was coming on, or when it was due to finish. A small message said “The concert is due to finish after 23.00”.

But nobody got cancelled. Harvey Goldsmith knew that if he bumped anyone off the bill, that they’d probably never work with him again. After all, Live8 is as much about him trying to rebuild his concert promotion business than it is about the music or the message. He’ll pay the fine imposed by the Westminster Council, or he’ll never work in the business again.

For a lot of people, the finale was the return after 24 years of Pink Floyd. From the field, the view was even better than the TV coverage. It wasn’t just a case of watching the first – and probably last – Pink Floyd show since 1994, but also, this wasn’t just Pink Floyd, but THE Pink Floyd. The original, definitive lineup of four men who last played together publically in 1981.

Unlike the rest of the lineup, even U2, Pink Floyd needed no introduction. Night fell over a weary, exhausted, hopeful Hyde Park, and then, without any fanfare, the screens faded to black. From nowhere, yet everywhere, a thin green line traced out a heartbeat on the screen.

 A field of old Pink Floyd t-shirts stood in hushed awe, possibly slightly stoned, definitely aware of exactly how momentous this was. This was history. A quarter-century feud buried. Friends together again after an eternity. A flash of light, a subdued scream, a downward guitar slide, and the band launch “Breathe”. The last time Pink Floyd played this songs was June 1975, when I wasn’t even two years old.

Now this is history in the making. History unfolding. This is a wonderful, beautiful finale to their story. Four estranged friends repaired for a common cause. In the field, not on the TV coverage, eyes strain and peer, a stoned hippie yells “Fuck yeah!” as the lights rise above us for what is probably the last time in their forty year journey.

I could talk about the music. But what’s the point. The best music is about emotion, evoked and expressed. And tonight was all about emotion. The sight on massive screens, whilst the band played away, of the iconic images of Battersea Power Station underneath a flying pig, the now silenced smokestacks billowing forth white smoke, from what is now an empty hulk of spare bricks. What was once dormant now resurrected for a short while, and as potent as ever.

What didn’t the TV show you? That as the screens cut away from the imagery of pigs on the wing to a band shot, the massive – and I mean, ENORMOUS – cheer that rode a wave across the field as a closeup panned up from a familiar lanky pair of hands playing the bass to the face of Roger Waters. No television captured that.

The performance? Well. There were some imperfections, but often imperfections are what makes something perfect. The slight tremor of hesitation in a voice, the odd understated, underrehearsed drum fill, was all that could betray the fact that this was the bands first performance in quarter of a century, and in they were debuting themselves in front of 200,000 people and a TV audience of 5,000,000,000. And yet, they succeeded.

As this final, unique version of “Breathe” faded from our ears, we strained as one to hear. What next? How long have they got? And for even a bitter old sea dog like me, it was emotional. Not the fact that they were together again, at last, for me, Pink Floyd were always a historical entity. I never saw them before. I will probably never see them again. But what was emotional?

For years – sixteen long years – I listened to Pink Floyd, and I knew that I would never see them. I was too young when they last toured near me, and then too far from them when they did tour. And tonight a dream I had held for almost two decades, and all of my adult life, came a little bit true.

I wasn’t emotional. I didn’t cry. I was in a state of mild shock. Academically I knew what I was witnessing. In the midst of history, you can sometimes only feel after the event.

Sod that. When, unannounced, the sax solo began in “Money” and I saw Dick Parry (the Floyd’s saxophonist in the seventies), appear, or Tim Renwick, or Jon Carin (respectively, their second guitarist, and wunderkid multi-instrumentalist, since the mid-Eighties) on stage, that’s when I felt it. Wet skin under the eyes. I. Was. Watching. Pink. Floyd. And not just Pink Floyd, but THE Pink Floyd. The way they should always be remembered.

Without an army of backing vocalists, or a flashy second drummer, or their talented slap-bass replacement, but as old friends enjoying themselves again. Anyone who doubted that didn’t see the smiles on their faces, or the moments when they forgot how many people were watching and just played, lost in the music, or missed the moment when Roger and David duetted on stage during “Wish You Were Here” or, both oblivious to the other, waved their hands around and smiled during “Comfortably Numb”at the same time.

Above the screen for the entire duration of their set, just three words. The most pointed message on this day of days where we all stood up to be counted for what we believed in : “NO MORE EXCUSES.”

Economically British to the last, the last song – probably ever – was “Comfortably Numb”. Stripped of the indulgent glamour of the previous tour, it was over in 6 minutes 47 seconds. No flab. The song roared a final elegy to lost innocence. A moment of utter majesty as Gilmour played two of the finest guitar solos in human history in the space of six minutes, as his friends played around him, as Nick Mason, playing again solo on the drums for the first time in 28 years threw off his headphones and kicked loose without missing a beat, and Roger and Rick lost themselves in music. For the last time. For a good cause.  For probably the biggest and best cause there is.

And then it was over. Our last hurrah. Behind them, the screens turned to a white set of bricks. An unseen hand writes in red “MAKE POVERTY HISTORY” in letters that span 100 feet on white bricks.

It was the best of times, the worst of times. The best for what it was, the worst for it will probably never be again. But does it undo the Floyd’s achievements since 1983? No. Never in a million years. What starts, end. Tonight they came full circle. Tonight they closed the book with one final, last, beautiful chapter.

In typical British fashion, the band are saying “Never Say Never”. Not committing to ruling out a reunion tour. But they’re also saying “It was a one-off event, like sleeping with an ex-wife”. And with that, they went off to The Great Gig In The Sky.

The field empties as the Floyd go off stage. And some guy called Paul McCartney played some songs. But, in a thinning field, that was an anticlimax, an addendum. Tonight, the circle closed. 

Shine on. Now the question lies at the feet of our leaders. Will they exchange a walk on part in the war on poverty, and gave humanity the lead role in a cage? No more excuses. No more lies. Nobody should starve in the 21^st century.

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