The surprising pilot of Phil Collins’ Live Aid helicopter
In theory, Live Aid should have been the most memorable day of Phil Collins’ career. Not only did Collins perform at Wembley Stadium in London and with Led Zeppelin at the American leg of Live Aid in Philadelphia, but a celebrity pilot made it all possible.
Collins was the only performer to feature on both legs of Live Aid, but it was a day of two halves for the Genesis frontman. In London, everything went swimmingly as the 72,000-strong crowd lapped up his performance with Sting as they delivered a greatest hits set. However, rather than soak up the moment, Collins was immediately escorted into a helicopter, and soon, he was above the Atlantic ocean.
Fascinatingly, the person tasked with getting the stars of the musical world swiftly in and out of Wembley Stadium was BBC Radio 1 presenter Noel Edmonds. The broadcaster owned a fleet of helicopters and volunteered to assist backstage.
For the most part, Edmonds was ushering artists into helicopters and ensuring the operation ran smoothly. However, with Collins, Edmonds took things into his own hands, and reportedly, he was personally responsible for the drummer making it on time to Philadelphia.
“I remember running on stage. It was massive, there were so many people out there, and the atmosphere backstage was incredible but completely chaotic,” Edmonds later told the Daily Mail.
He continued: “As I ran on [promoter] Harvey Goldsmith was in the wings shouting at me, ‘It’s Phil Collins, and you’ve got to take him in the helicopter when he goes’. I went to the front and shouted out, ‘Phil Collins!’, turned round and saw Sting walking towards me. He just looked at me and said, ‘Wrong’. The biggest blooper of my career.”
Thankfully, Edmonds successfully managed to transport Collins to Heathrow, and a few hours later, he was deputising for the late John Bonham in Led Zeppelin. However, Collins would later rue his decision to agree to play with the legendary group.
In short, their disastrous set was riddled with difficulties, and Collins was made the scapegoat. Immediately after they finished playing, Jimmy Page told MTV: “One drummer was halfway across the Atlantic and didn’t know the stuff.” In Collins’ autobiography, he admitted: “I got pissed off. Maybe I didn’t know it as well as he’d like me to have done, but… I became the flagship, and it looked like I was showing off.”
In an interview with the Sunday Times in 2021, Page looked back with regret at the reunion and labelled it “not very clever”. The guitarist also took a swipe at Collins and added: “The drummer couldn’t get the beginning of ‘Rock and Roll’. So we were in real trouble with that.”
Rather than portioning the blame at the door of Collins, Page should instead be pointing the finger at Noel Edmonds, who was responsible for making the sorry episode happen in the first place.
