In just 20 minutes, Queen’s performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert changed everything for them. Held at Wembley on 13 July 1985, in front of the biggest-ever TV audience of 1.9 billion, Queen performed some of their greatest hits. The show’s organisers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, other musicians such as Elton John, Cliff Richard and Dave Grohl, and journalists writing for the BBC, CNN, Rolling Stone, MTV, The Telegraph among others, described Queen as the highlight. Mercury’s powerful, sustained note during the a cappella section came to be known as “The Note Heard Round the World”, and band were revitalised by the response to Live Aid – a “shot in the arm” Roger Taylor called it – and the ensuing increase in record sales.
