“Of course, nobody knew the impact it would have at the beginning,” Rossi continued, “but even then I was aware that most of big business just kept its head down and thought, ‘We’ll let these rock’n’roll dickheads do this and it will go away’. And it did. And that annoyed me.
“I mean, there was this British Airways TV advertisement that they’d spent £2 million on, just to tell us they were the world’s favourite airline. And I was thinking, ‘Who gives a shit?’ How often do you book a flight and say, ‘I want to travel on this airline?’. They could have done themselves a lot more favours by giving that money to Live Aid.
“And the oil companies, they could have donated their budget for that one day’s global advertising – all that stupid bollocks about how ‘our petrol makes your car go faster’ – and we could have raised twice as much. But they didn’t rise to it. And I find that a bit sad,” he concluded with a shrug.
