How the Cars Overloaded the Donation Phone Lines at Live Aid

Forty years ago, the Cars, unwittingly, crashed the donation phone lines in the U.K. during Live Aid.

The group had actually already played "Drive" during its Live Aid set in Philadelphia a couple of hours before a video made by Canada's CBC Television was introduced by David Bowie after the end of his performance at London's Wembley Stadium.

The Ric Ocasek-penned track from the group's 1984 album Heartbeat City was already been a big hit in both countries -- No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. (the Cars' highest chart position ever) and No. 4 in the U.K. The video, directed by actor Timothy Hutto and featuring Ocasek's future wife, then 19-year-old model Paulina Porizkova, had been a fixture on MTV and other video outlets.

Read More: 40 Best Live Aid Moments

But the CBC crew turned it into something even more impactful. The team used "Drive" to soundtrack devastating footage of a young, malnourished child in Ethiopia struggling to stand.

In his memoir, Is That It?, Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof writes that, "The juxtaposition was so bizarre. The child's pitiful courage turned the poignancy of the song into a profound sadness. Who's gonna pick you up when you fall down? We can't go on saying nothing's wrong. Who's gonna drive you home tonight?"

CBC presented the video to Geldof during his daily round of three-minute interviews with a variety of outlets; he tells UCR that, "They said, 'Our journalist Brian Stewart has put this film together. We couldn't show it on CBS because it's too extreme. They won't show it, but we want to give it to you...We just want to see your reaction.'"

Watch CBC's Live Aid 'Drive' Video

Geldof took it to the record label office where he was working from. "I slipped the video on and I started looking and I put the phone down, mid-conversation," he recalls. "The editor in Addis Ababa, in the Hilton, was piecing together the film they couldn't use...and was splicing it together for the library, and he was listening on his Walkman, as you do, to ('Drive'). And halfway through he suddenly realized he was cutting to the suggestion of the lyric and the beat of the song...and he layered that over this appalling horror.

"At 11 o'clock I had to go and meet (Live Aid promoter) Harvey Goldsmith and David [Bowie] to discuss what songs he'd do. I got there, and before we start I go to David, 'We should watch this.' And David just sat there and started crying. He said, 'I'm giving up a song, and I'll introduce this.' I said, 'Look, don't give up a song. If you give up a song the world goes and makes itself a cup of tea, and we've lost them.' And he said, 'I'm giving up a song and I'm announcing this or I'm not doing the concert.' I looked at Harvey and Harvey just went (shrugs).

"So obviously the great showman, (Bowie) understood perfectly what he was doing. He didn't over-egg the pudding; he sang 'Heroes,' the crowd sang 'Heroes' -- here was youth in excelsis, in all its beauty and health, girls with their tops off standing on their boys' shoulders, dancing and singing. And then (Bowie) says, 'Thank you very much. I'd like you to look at this' and on come the Cars."

The moment is captured in the new, multi-part documentary Live Aid: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World, premiering July 13 on CNN and the BBC. "It`s extraordinary to watch people's faces," Geldof says. "The girls try and cover themselves up, almost like somehow they're ashamed of their nakedness, that they're the undignified one and the elegance is on the screen. And the boys are numb; they're holding their girlfriends' legs on their shoulders and the girls are trying to scramble off their backs and the guys are just staring at the screen. And the phone lines just collapsed."

The CBC video was shown twice by the BBC as well as in Canada, but not on the MTV and ABC broadcasts in America. Geldof writes in Is That It? that "The effect of the film was traumatic on everybody who saw it" --- including BBC program hosts who were opening weeping after it aired -- "but it also put the concert in perspective."

In the book he also notes that Ocasek was also moved to tears when Geldof showed him the video. Bowie later told BBC radio that, "I thought it was a very important piece of footage. The point wasn't to promote singles, the point was to bring awareness to the situation."

The Band Aid Charitable Trust that Geldof started with the all-star benefit single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" continues to work towards famine and poverty relief around the world. Donations can be made to bandaidtrust.co.uk.