Surely by now everyone has seen the VH-1 best gigs ever short about Live Aid where they focus on how Queen blew everyone else away.
Talk about a quote I do NOT identify with when Bob Geldof talks about how nobody saw it coming that Queen would be the stand out band.
Let's see, Queen at Wembley in front of a British audience, televised around the world.
Obviously Mr. Geldof isn't a Queen fan. I would always expect Queen to beat out the rest live. And I am pretty sure that the UK fans at the gig expected it too.
I think that Geldof said that because the media was pretty hostile towards Queen at the time, so for them to come out and do what they did, which as you said the fans would have expected, blew people away, basically reminding them Queen was still the best.
M.H
Quite right, M.H. Queen were never popular in the media during Freddie's life, so only people who had seen them live new how good they were, especially given there was little live footage of them available at the time. I don't think Bob Geldof was surprised they were good, like all of us he was amazed that Queen were just so far ahead of anyone else, which I dont think anyone disputes. Many bands struggled on the day because they tried to plug new material, but Queen did the sensible thing by playing well-known hits and putting 200% into their performance. It was their finest half-hour.