Bob Geldof on Just For One Day – The Live Aid Musical: “To reimagine the sense of why Live Aid worked is an achievement”

As Just For One Day — The Live Aid Musical receives a rapturous West End reception, Bob Geldof tells Rolling Stone UK how the spirit of Live Aid still resonates powerfully today. We’re also giving readers the chance to grab a pair of free tickets to a special performance of the show celebrating the 40th anniversary of Live Aid.

When Bob Geldof first sat in on early workshops for Just For One Day — The Live Aid Musical, he did what he’s always done best: observed, listened and waited until the time was right to call things out. “The first [draft] was … about me and my life. And that’s not the story at all. So, I just said, ‘No, that’s not what this is,’” he tells Rolling Stone UK.

Now playing in the West End after a record-breaking premiere at the Old Vic, Just For One Day — the fastest-selling musical in the theatre’s history — tells the story of Live Aid without slipping into nostalgia. Featuring the music of Queen, David Bowie, Madonna, Elton John, Bob Dylan, The Who, U2, The Police, Paul McCartney and more, it reimagines the 1985 event that brought the world to a halt — not just as a concert, but as a cultural and political flashpoint.

Ten per cent of all ticket sales from the run are donated directly to the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which has to date raised over £800,000, continuing the legacy of using music to drive real-world impact.

“Saying ‘fuck’ a lot is the key indicator apparently,” Geldof explains with a subtle smile, referring to how he’s portrayed on stage. “Craige Els — who plays me — is a great bloke. At the age of nine in Liverpool, his granny used to make him stand on the table and do impersonations of me. So, it’s fucking weird for him, like destiny.”

Geldof didn’t want a hagiography. He had no role in the writing itself, which was handled by political satirist and West End regular John O’Farrell (Mrs. Doubtfire, Something Rotten!), but he kept a close eye on how the show was evolving. “John O’Farrell is quite a political person and so I said, if anything, it has to have some contemporary relevance and matter like it did 40 years ago,” he says. “Had it been an exercise in nostalgia, I would have said no.”

The musical is directed by Luke Sheppard (& Juliet, The Little Big Things) and has earned widespread acclaim. Baz Bamigboye wrote that it “blew the roof off” the Old Vic. WhatsOnStage praised how it “rocks in all the right ways”, and The Telegraph described it as “rip-roaring”. But it’s the show’s emotional and political charge that sets it apart.

Live Aid was never just about music. Indeed, it arrived during a moment of deep political and economic tension in the UK, and Geldof is clear that the show should reflect that. “You cannot divorce Band Aid and Live Aid from the political, social and economic moment of the 1980s,” he says. “You must remember that this took place when Margaret Thatcher was the most powerful woman in the world. She had a newer version of what economics needed to be and the cost of that was quite brutal. Along with that, we had aphorisms like ‘There’s no such thing as society’ or ‘Greed is good’ from Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. That was the prevailing thinking, and people looked to individualism.”

Live Aid took a stand against that narrative. Geldof and his peers used the tools they had — media, music, influence — to make an intervention. “This was a huge political lobby for good,” he says. “We took that ethos of ‘greed is good’, landed this massive spaceship at Wembley Stadium and said, ‘Actually, no: greed isn’t good; greed is stupid.’”

The spark for all of this came from a BBC report by Michael Buerk and Mohamed Amin, which brought the Ethiopian famine into UK living rooms. Geldof still sees that moment as critical. “It was a lesson in how to remove yourself objectively but still be full of shame and disgust and rage and say exactly what needs to be said,” he says. “I was in the media world and I had access to the means to expressing my disgust. I was a popular pop singer and a lot of the new young acts at the time were my friends. And my missus [the late Paula Yates] knew them. There was the New Romantics and all those pop stars. They were fucking great and lots of them were friends.”

That shared understanding helped Band Aid and Live Aid move from well-meaning ideas to landmark moments. The musical now attempts to capture that, not just in spectacle but in spirit.

“To reimagine the sense of why Live Aid worked on a tiny stage is an achievement,” says Geldof. “And I’ve never been to a West End show where I’ve seen standing ovations at half time!”

But Geldof has no desire to be the centre of the story. His hope is that the show reaches beyond the original audience and sparks something new. “What triggered this resonance 40 years down the road is that something else was there,” he says. “If this prompts a kid who’s been reluctantly dragged along by their parents to think that they could do something like Live Aid, then that’s great.”

Just For One Day – the Live Aid Musical is now playing at Shaftesbury Theatre until January 2026. Book tickets at theliveaidmusical.com