Tears for Fears were scheduled to perform at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia for Bob Geldof’s Live Aid charity event in 1985 but on the morning of the historic event, July 13, 1985, the band pulled out of the show. The reason they gave for their absence was that two of their backing musicians had quit – saxophonist Will Gregory and guitarist Andrew Saunders, because their contract expired. In replacement of their absence, the band pledged to donate proceeds from their world tour played in New York, Tokyo, London, and Sydney. Blues-rock group George Thorogood And The Destroyers incongruously replaced them.
A slightly rewritten version of one of their biggest hits was recorded and released in 1986 for the British fund-raising scheme Sport Aid, a splinter project of Band Aid in which people took part in running races of changeable distance and sincerity to raise more money for African projects. The slogan was “I Ran the World”; therefore Tears for Fears released “Everybody Wants To Run The World” (#5 in the UK and #4 in Ireland). They were indirectly involved in the earlier Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” of 1984, which featured a slowed down sample from their song “The Hurting” in the introduction.
I bought the live aid dvd in the hopes of seeing them, and they are listed on the cover, but aren’t actually on it. They claim that there was technical difficulties, so that’s why they and some other bands don’t actually appear on the video. Wonder why I didn’t find out this information until now. I never knew that they didn’t perform.
Weird. But they did manage to get Kenny Loggins doing one of his worst songs-so there’s that.