...FARM AID’S 10TH BIRTHDAY TRIUMPH
OCTOBER 1
It may not have
been the most star-studded version of the annual Willie Nelson shindig, but it was the first to sell-out prior to showtime and would net nearly $1 million, twice the amount made by any of the three previous Farm Aid concerts. On a sunny October morning, some 47,000 music fans headed to Louisville’s Cardinal Stadium, in Kentucky, to see Nelson, founder Farm Aid members John Mellencamp, John Conlee and Neil Young, plus helpers like Hootie & The Blowfish, The Dave Matthews Band, Blackhawk , The Supersuckers and Steve Earle fill out the seven hours. “Eat your heart out, girls,” roared Willie as he was joined on-stage by female farmer Mattie Mack in a cowgirl dress. Later he’d reminisce: “Ray Charles and I were talking at We Are The World and I said, This is great but wouldn’t it be something for the people of our own country? Then at Live Aid I heard Bob Dylan say: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we did something for the farmers right here in America?’” Willie recalled that he,
Neil Young and John Mellencamp then convened to plan a supershow. In just a few weeks, they’d put together a bill that included Dylan, Billy Joel, B.B. King, Loretta Lynn, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and many other main names. That first Farm Aid, dubbed ‘A Concert For America’, was held in September ’85 at Champaign, Illinois, attracting 78,000 and raising a huge cash fund
for the USA’s family farmers. Not that things had been easy. As John Mellencamp recalled, “I went to Washington in the beginning with Willie and the guy we most needed to see just asked, ‘You guys bring your guitars?’ When we said ‘No’ he just got up and left.” Farm Aid came about because America’s independent family farms were in trouble. In 1970, US farmers owed $50 billion to the banks. By Farm Aid’s launch in 1985, the debt stood at $215bn. Few could pay back their loans. Previously, with the economy in good shape, they’d been encour-
“WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF WE DID SOMETHING FOR OUR OWN PEOPLE.”
aged to buy more land, borrow more money to expand. But when the economy collapsed, the farmers were forced to sell up, the increase in industrialised agriculture only exacerbating their situation. In 1995 President Clinton was urged to veto any farm bill that would force family farmers from their land. Clinton responded, “Our nation’s agricultural success comes from the hardworking men and women who till the fields and grow outdoors and they deserve our respect, gratitude and support.” Even so, that year the farm crisis continued to force more than 500 farmers off their land every week.
It wasn’t just cash Farm Aid supplied; at Louisville’s show a newspaper reported local farmers contributed 75,000lbs of fruit and vegetables, and concert- goers donated canned goods at the stadium. Neil Young, opening with Comes A Time, and including
The Needle And The Damage Done, and a cover of Ian & Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds in his set, pleaded with the US Government to help abolish factory farms which were polluting the nation’s rivers. Huge conglomerate farms wiped out everything, he claimed, including the environment, the family structure and just the overall goodness of American life. He loved family farms. “When I was a kid back in Canada, when I was about five or six years old, a farm started on the other side of the tracks,” claimed Young. “I remember they were the happiest days of my life.” It was Dave Matthews’ first time on a Farm Aid bill. He made an immediate impact with a highly-charged version of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower. Matthews owned a farm of his own in Virginia, and Mellencamp described him as enthusiastic: “Not one of those guys who half-asses anything.” He’d become a Farm Aid board member and would tell writer Dave Hoekstra, “When the band played for the first time in Louisville, Kentucky, I liked the whole sense of it. It didn’t matter if you were new singers like us or a legend like Willie. There was a sense of purpose that I enjoyed. It also made me reflect on my life, my own involvement, and how I live”. Willie was totally involved at Louisville, jamming with Eddie Spaghetti and his Seattle-based Supersuckers on Bloody Mary Morning, linking with Neil Young for On The Road Again, and basking in the good vibes generated all around. A report on the event claimed: “The crowd was really congenial. Fans made permanent friends across the aisles, all while groovin’ on the baseball field turned concert stadium” Farm Aid continued, and in 2015 celebrated its 30th anniversary with a concert in Chicago. Not bad for an event that Bob Geldof described as “crass, stupid and nationalistic”. Fred Dellar