Did Ant fail to deliver?
QUESTION The 1985 Live Aid concert is chiefly remembered for the brilliant performance by Queen. Did any act fall flat?
The Live Aid footage we see these days is almost always of Queen. They were the best act on the day — though they cheated by turning off the volume limiters on the PA.
The Led Zeppelin reunion in the U.S. (Live Aid was a dual-venue benefit concert performed simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and at the John F. Kennedy Stadium, Philadelphia) was a car crash: Robert Plant’s voice was ragged after playing three solo gigs in the run-up; Jimmy Page’s guitar was out of tune; and Phil Collins, drafted in to play the drums, didn’t know the material.
The performance of their hit song Whole Lotta Love was execrable. Page was highly critical of Collins: ‘he was just there bashing away cluelessly and grinning.’
Collins fired back: ‘It wasn’t my fault it was c**p. If I could have walked off, I would have. But then we’d all be talking about why Phil Collins walked off Live Aid, so I just stuck it out.’
There was also the bizarre moment The Thompson Twins were joined by Madonna and guitar legend Nile Rodgers to butcher The Beatles’ Revolution. Simon Le Bon’s voice decided to re-enter puberty with a falsetto performance of A View To A Kill and Nik Kershaw invited Wembley to join in the solo in The Riddle in an unusual way: ‘I wanna see you whistle!’
Crosby, Stills and Nash were off-key, with one critic suggesting the trio ‘might be ready for ceramics classes at the old hippies’ home’. Crosby was in bad shape anyway — he was out on an appeal bond for drug and weapons possession.
Bob Dylan’s rambling performance with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood angered Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof, but was no worse than his own out-of-tune singing with the Boomtown Rats.
But some consider the nadir to have been Adam Ant, who didn’t get a record sales boost from Live Aid.
he had a string of hits in the early eighties including two No 1s in 1981: Stand And Deliver and Prince Charming. Ant wanted to perform two songs at Live Aid, but Geldof restricted him to one. Bizarrely, he chose to play Vive Le Rock, an album track that no one had heard of, instead of a stadium-pleaser such as Antmusic. Nevertheless, thanks to his energetic performance, it wasn’t that bad.
Adam Ant regretted doing Live Aid and summed it up in an expletive-laden rant: ‘Doing that show was the biggest f***ing mistake in the world. Knighthoods were made, Bono got it made, and it was a waste of f***ing time. It was the end of rock ’n’ roll. Now hippies run the world, like f***ing Glastonbury . . . I hate hippies.’
he had a point: Live Aid ushered in the era of the proselytising celebrity, ordering us to save the planet while hiding their money in offshore accounts and jetsetting between mansions.
Mark Allen, London N12.
QUESTION Did a Boy Scout once build a nuclear reactor in his garden shed?
DAVID hAhN was an American Boy Scout who built a breeder reactor in secret in his garden shed in Commerce Township, Michigan.
After receiving The Golden Book Of Chemistry experiments, he had become fascinated with science.
At 17, he collected elements, attempting to own the whole Periodic Table, and was fascinated by radioactive materials, which he began to amass.
he extracted americium from smoke detectors, radium from luminous clock faces, tritium from gunsights and thorium from camping lanterns. Claiming to be a professor, he wrote to a Czechoslovakian firm that sold uranium to commercial and university buyers, obtaining samples of uranium-235 and uranium-238.
By 1994, his reactor had been constructed within a bored-out block of lead. hahn panicked when it started emitting almost 1,000 times the average background radiation.
The local police called in the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1995, the U.S. environmental Protection Agency declared hahn’s home a clean-up site. They were a bit late as his mother had already disposed of some of the material at the town tip.
hahn had a sad end. After serving in the U.S. Marines, he struggled with mental health issues, leading to a downward spiral that resulted in a drug and alcoholrelated death in 2016 at the age of 39.
T. E. L. Wilson, Kidderminster, Worcs.
QUESTION Where in the world were metal horseshoes first fitted?
The oldest archaeological evidence for metal horseshoes comes from a preRoman tomb near Corneto (modern Tarquinia), 50 miles north of Rome, dating from the 4th century BC. These were a form of hipposandal, a metal shoe fixed to the hoof with leather straps.
hipposandals have also been found at Roman sites such as Virunum, in modern day Austria, dating to the time of emperor Trajan, who reigned from 98-117AD. however, there’s no evidence they were nailed to the hoof.
In 300AD, emperor Diocletian issued an edict fixing prices for everyday goods, including those of the mulomedicus (horse doctor), but fails to mention anything relating to shoeing.
The first written evidence of horseshoes appears in 900 AD when the Byzantine emperor Leo VI of Constantinople refers to ‘crescent shaped irons and their nails’ in a list of cavalry equipment. This would make sense as the process of iron smelting became more efficient after 800 AD.
William the Conqueror brought shoeing smiths with him for his invasion of england in 1066. By the time of the Crusades, shoeing was commonplace.
Brett Simonds, Lymington, Hants.
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