VIDEO: Queen, Live Aid and Samantha Smith 30 years on

Live Aid happened 30 years ago today. I was 13. I got up early to start watching the London performances and kept on watching till it was over. It was a sunny Saturday and my parents were not pleased that I spent the whole day inside.

Did it make much of a difference in the grand scheme of world hunger? Looking at the headlines today, I’d say, “no.” Did it make me aware that people in the world were hungry?

Yes, it did.

It also got me as close to a Queen concert as I ever got.

Their performance affected me the most, and still moves me today. They played my favorite song: “Hammer to Fall,” written by Queen guitarist Brian May.

For you who grew up tall and proud
In the shadow of the mushroom cloud
Convinced our voices can’t be heard
We just wanna scream it louder and louder and louder
What the hell are we fighting for
Just surrender and it won’t hurt at all
You’ve just got time to say your prayers
While you’re waiting for the Hammer to Fall.

The words spoke, and still speak, to my childhood fears of nuclear annihilation and Ronald Reagan with his finger hovering over a big, red button. Lying in bed at night, I’d hear a plane flying towards the jetport in Portland and be convinced it was the Russians coming for us. I’d sit up against my pillows and wait for the blinding flash.

Freddie Mercury sang the words I believed before I even knew what the words were. I knew mutually assured destruction is the dumbest idea anyone ever thought up — all that money wasted on an inevitable war you couldn’t win.

A couple years before, Mainer Samantha Smith had flown to Moscow on a mission of peace. I idolized (and had a crush on) her. She died in a plane crash a month after Live Aid. I cried. I played “Hammer to Fall” over and over again on my boom box, rewinding the tape back to the starting numbers on the counter each time.

Samantha Smith

Samantha Smith

Freddie Mercury died six years later.

In my head, Live Aid means Queen, which means “Hammer to Fall,” which leads to Samantha Smith, which makes me feel sad and hopeful and full of rage against the men in power who made me feel so scared as a kid.

I still kinda have a crush on Samantha Smith. I visit her statue at the Maine State Museum when I get the chance, I think of what she might have done, had she gotten to grow up, like me.

I also wonder if she’d ever heard “Hammer to Fall.”

Troy R. Bennett

About Troy R. Bennett

Troy R. Bennett is a Buxton native and longtime Portland resident whose photojournalism has appeared in media outlets all over the world.