Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World, BBC Two review - how Bob Geldof led pop's battle against Ethiopian famine

“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. “He’s persistent.”

He spoke, of course, of Bob Geldof, then best known as the singer with Dublin band the Boomtown Rats, but destined to be remembered as the driving force behind Band Aid and the subsequent massive Live Aid concerts which took place on both sides of the Atlantic in July 1985. Experts believe the shows were watched by 1.9 billion people (onstage at Wembley Stadium, pictured below).

The Boomtown Rats had some success on the UK charts, though the Americans never showed much interest, but Geldof became the flag-bearer for a new era of showbiz activism. This three-part series is a vivid tribute to his determination, energy and sheer bloody-mindedness as he responded to news reports of the appalling famine in Ethiopia (from the BBC’s Michael Buerk) by gathering together as many pop star buddies as he could find, and herded them into a London studio to record “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” It was the golden age of Britain’s New Pop (Duran Duran, Culture Club, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet etc), and Geldof apparently bumped into several of them on Chelsea’s King’s Road and invited them aboard.

Ultravox’s Midge Ure recounted the way they wrote the song in question, which began with Geldof’s primitive demo version on which he sounded like a bad Bob Dylan impersonator. “Bob’s not a guitar player,” Ure added wryly. Between them, they got a vaguely finished version nailed down and invited everyone with a chart profile they could think of to come and perform on it. Waiting nervously outside Sarm West studios in Notting Hill, Geldof was terrified that nobody would come, but was then amazed to see everyone from Duran Duran, Phil Collins, the Spandau boys and Paul Weller to George Michael, Boy George, Sting, Bananarama and Bono (pictured below) turning up.

The whole project went nuts. The single raised £1m in the first week, every record pressing plant across Europe was enlisted to manufacture more copies, and in New York record stores sold out of it within an hour.

It was huge, but Live Aid was huger still. Instigated by Harry Belafonte, a glittering cadre of American artists had banded together as USA for Africa to record “We Are The World”, bringing together such pop titans as Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner and on and on, with the great Quincy Jones handling production. It promptly topped the US chart and became the biggest-selling American single in pop history, even if the professorial rock critic Greil Marcus thought it sounded like a Pepsi commercial.

Thus a transatlantic hook-up seemed like a logical move, though staging a globe-spanning live telecast had never been attempted before. Nobody was even sure the technology could cope with it, but the twin concerts at Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s John F Kennedy stadium became musical and socio-political benchmarks of the era. Despite the fact that Geldof hadn’t wanted Queen to perform (their set was arguably the highlight of the event), and even if Paul McCartney’s microphone didn’t work as he sang “Let It Be” (David Bowie at Live Aid, pictured below). In this pre-Oasis era, tickets for Wembley were £25 each.

Apart from the music, this series does some probing into the political background of the Ethiopian famine. The Ethiopian regime wasn’t much interested in noble humanitarian gestures. For instance, we hear about the forced relocation of Ethiopians trapped in the country’s famine-stricken north, when they were crammed ruthlessly into Russian transport aircraft and carted off with consequent substantial loss of life (the Ethiopian government were Marxists with close ties to Moscow). It seems the government were willing to use starvation as a weapon against various armed rebel groups. Geldof recounts meeting Ethiopia’s President Mengistu, who asked Bob if he could give him £1m. Geldof retorted that “I think you’re a cunt.”

Geldof’s fearlessness and clarity of thought – he always stressed that his focus was on saving people’s lives, rather than being embroiled in political debate – seem remarkable, though as we head into episode three we find the focus shifting to Bono and the “Commission for Africa”, and the involvement of Tony Blair and George W. Bush in addressing a new Ethiopian starvation crisis in 2003. It feels like a very different programme as issues such as Third World debt relief and an Aids pandemic begin to complicate the picture, and the notion of a bunch of wackily-dressed pop stars banding together to save the world looks like something from another time and another place. These days, some of our musical practitioners seem more interested in eradicating people than saving them.

• Episode 3 is on BBC Two at 9pm on Sunday 13 July. All episodes available on BBC iPlayer

• More TV on theartsdesk