Live Aid was a particular source of pride in Ireland at a time when the country was at a low ebb.
Record unemployment, emigration and a ballooning national debt beset the country in July 1985.
Yet the Irish people dug deep and contributed IR£7.1 million (the equivalent of €22.5 million today) to Live Aid, far more than any other country per capita.
In recognition of the generosity of Irish people, Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof handed over his Live Aid archive in 2017 to the National Library of Ireland. Among the collection are thousands of photographs donated by photographers and news organisations from the day. Some of them have never been seen in public before. There were more than 1,500 plastic slides, 629 colour transparencies and 139 photographic prints.
RM Block
Live Aid was billed as the greatest day in rock’n’roll history. One photograph shows Paul McCartney and David Bowie hanging around backstage at London. Another shows coded references to all of the acts that played just the Philadelphia leg of the gig – Madonna, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Beach Boys and Black Sabbath among a who’s who of stars from that time.
There are many of U2 playing what was the most important performance of their lives, their 15-minute set propelling them to superstardom in the 1980s.
There are dozens of negatives too of Queen’s performance on the day, which was universally praised and is all the more poignant in retrospect given Freddie Mercury’s death six years later.
The National Library of Ireland has now digitised 2,000 photographs and made them available to the public to view online to mark the 40th anniversary of the day.
Most are in black-and-white, which was still the most-used form in newspapers at the time. However, a selection are in colour.
Each image was given a unique identifier and multiple sections in the library were deployed, according to Crónán Ó Doibhlin, the head of special collections at the National Library of Ireland.
“It is a much more complicated work than people expect,” he said.
“While we continue to safeguard original archive material, the public can now enjoy the spectacle and colour of Live Aid from anywhere in the world online.”
Sara Smyth, the assistant keeper in special collections at the National Library of Ireland, said the colour slides are susceptible to degradation and need to be preserved for future reference.
National Library of Ireland director Dr Audrey Whitty said the digitisation of the Live Aid archive is a “powerful example of how we connect people with the past in accessible, lasting ways.”
The photographs will be live on the National Library of Ireland website from midday on Friday.
