(Gibson) On this day in 1985, Joni Mitchell, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty all appeared at the first Farm Aid concert. The event to help small farmers in the U.S. was held at the Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois, Champaign. Gibson looks back:At the historic Live Aid concerts to benefit starving citizens in Africa, held in London and Philadelphia in the summer of 1985, Bob Dylan not only took the stage to play some rough and (almost) ready tunes with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, but he also made a controversial and unexpected statement: "I'd just like to say I hope that some of the money that's raised for the people in Africa maybe they could just take a little bit of it maybe one or two million, maybe and use it, say, to pay, er, the mortgages on some of the farms
that the farmers here owe to the banks."
Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof was furious, calling Dylan's comment a "crass, stupid, and nationalistic thing to say." The press gave Dylan a hard time but fellow musicians Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp sat down and thought about what Dylan had said. They all knew that there was indeed a farming crisis in America. more on this story
