Paul McCartney and the Irish rock band U2 will have history on their minds today in London, where they plan to kick off a globe-spanning chain of concerts to combat Third World poverty by singing "It was 20 years ago today...."
That opening line from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is meant to invoke the memory of Live Aid in July 1985, when dozens of the world's top pop musicians rallied together to raise money and food for Africans dying of starvation.
An even bigger conglomeration of rock, pop and rap's biggest movers and shakers is now taking stages in nine world capitals for Live 8, urging world leaders who meet next week in Scotland for the annual G-8 summit to do more to end poverty and disease in Africa.
"They're not asking for a handout this time," says Jack Healey, architect of the Amnesty International concert tours in the 1980s that similarly aimed to effect change, not just collect it. "They are asking people to get the world's boot off the throat of Africa."
Specifically, Live 8 supporters want leaders of the Group of 8 nations -- President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and heads of state from Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and Italy -- to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed by Third World countries.
Can Live 8 make a difference?
Despite the big-name lineups or estimates that global coverage of the concerts could reach a potential audience of billions in 140 countries, there remains a monumental gap between political reality and the humanitarian intentions of pop music stars and their fans, many of whom have little understanding of the issues. On Thursday, a London forum with Blair and Irish rocker Bob Geldof kicked off with a videotape in which rapper Snoop Dogg asked, "Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister -- or President -- Tony Blair, I'd like to know who or what is the G-8?"
A generation after all-star Live Aid and No Nukes concerts, millions of Africans are still starving and the issue of nuclear weapon proliferation is as volatile as ever.
But having studied the limitations and problems of such celebrated rock humanitarian efforts as the Concert for Bangladesh and Live Aid, Live 8's musicians and organizers, led by Geldof and U2 singer Bono, are implementing a new model of pop music activism, one that's beginning to yield more significant payoffs.
Where entertainers once were brushed off in the halls of power as politically naive do-gooders, increasingly their voices are being heard.
