Overview

• This July’s media retrospectives revisit Live Aid’s concerts through documentaries, stage musicals and rebroadcasts that pair its musical triumphs with the performers’ personal hardships.
• Bob Geldof endured the accidental heroin overdose deaths of his wife Paula Yates in 2000 and his daughter Peaches in 2014 after their Live Aid moment.
• Phil Collins revealed that 2009 spinal surgery left him unable to hold drumsticks, effectively ending his five-decade drumming career.
• George Michael lost his partner Anselmo Feleppa to AIDS in 1993, a tragedy that precipitated years of depression and addiction before his own death in 2016.
• Other artists have faced severe health battles too, from Paul Young’s wife dying of brain cancer in 2018 to Alison Moyet’s decade-long agoraphobia and Martin Kemp’s treatment for two brain tumours.