In the artists' area [backstage at Live Aid] there were a lot of additional people standing around wearing lanyards with complicated credentials, giving it the appearance of a garden party. At my own shows I usually refused to wear any kind of pass, reasoning that if people couldn't be bothered to connect my face with the one on the poster then I should probably not be playing the venue. 
     However, on this occasion, I was anxious to keep my ID in view in case I was ejected for not being glamorous enough. I had recently grown a beard. My hair was then still black but my beard betrayed my Grandad's auburn colouring. 
     'Auburn' was flattering it. I looked as if I had glued someone's ginger wig to my chin. 
     Backstage, I ran into Paul Weller, who helpfully opined, 'That beard makes you look ancient'. 
     I suppose that was the idea.
     I'd last seen Paul in 1983, when we sang his song 'My Ever Changing Moods' together at a well-intentioned but long-winded theatre event called The Big One. 
[...]
     My main contribution, other than singing a couple of songs with Steve Nieve and my duet with Weller, was to lurk in a wardrobe and act as a punchline.
     The actress Susannah York had organized the event. During the third hour of the show, she starred in a mildly racy skit in which two lovers are faced with a 'three-minute warning' of the nuclear apocalypse and confess their wildest sexual fantasies to each other.
     Having listened patiently to a catalogue of rather tame erotic desires, Susannah's character breaks down and admits that she had always fantasized about being ravaged by a Prussian Hussar in full dress uniform, on which cue I burst out of the cupboard, stuffed into exactly that drag.

     Late at night after the sessions [for Armed Forces], I listened repeatedly to the newly released All Mod Cons by The Jam. What I felt about it was nothing like rivalry, more just admiration. Paul Weller and I were writing completely different songs, but The Jam's record was such a big and different step up from their previous release that I was moved to put aside a good song like 'Tiny Steps' simply because it owed too much to the music and lyrics of This Year's Model. 
     I wondered how many great records one year could produce. This was only July.