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>>> This article is from the latest issue of Rolling Stone, on news stands until June 29th
Kevin Wall's head is down, sorting through the blizzard of messages on his BlackBerry as a taxi whisks him through London's Oxford Circus. He just left a meeting with a representative from Prime Minister-elect Gordon Brown's office and is headed to a lunch with Ashok Sinha, head of the U.K.'s largest environmental coalition, Stop Climate Chaos."I just got a text from Bob Geldof," Wall says. A few days earlier, Geldof, who organized the anti-poverty Live 8 concerts with Wall in 2005, publicly criticized Live Earth, the concert Wall and Al Gore are organizing to combat climate change. "It's just an enormous pop concert," Geldof told a Dutch newspaper. "I would only organize Live Earth if I could go onstage and announce concrete environmental measures from the American presidential candidates, Congress or major corporations. They haven't got those guarantees."
Did Geldof text to apologize? "Not exactly," Wall says. "He just said, 'Relax.' " A veteran concert promoter and venture capitalist, Wall has helped produce some of the world's largest shows, including Live Aid in 1985. He and Geldof are old friends, and Wall says they're planning to meet about the many "concrete measures" - including calling for a three percent reduction in carbon emissions from all developed countries - Live Earth is working toward. Stewing over Geldof's text a moment later, he adds, "I tell you, he better do some fucking press for me. That guy owes me."
If all goes well, Live Earth will be the biggest concert in history, a twenty-four-hour event spread across nine cities, with the Police, Kanye West and Dave Matthews Band (in New York); Madonna, Genesis and Red Hot Chili Peppers (London); Linkin Park (Tokyo); Snoop Dogg (Hamburg); and Jack Johnson (Sydney) topping the bill (see map below for information). With just weeks to go before the July 7th event, Wall and his team are scrambling to nail down artists, arrange travel and lodging for performers and crew, sell hundreds of thousands of tickets, and coordinate TV and Internet outlets that will broadcast the event around the globe.
Live Earth grew out of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth: Last year, after being invited to an advance screening, Wall saw an opportunity. "I was incredibly moved and very disturbed," he says. "There's a ton of noise around global warming, but there isn't a message of actions that individuals, government or corporations are asked to take. I thought we should create this event and get all the big media companies and artists who I've worked with in the past."
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When Gore signed on, Wall and his company began assembling the roster and securing venues. But just two years after Live 8, the new event has failed to attract much buzz here - and has garnered hostile press in the U.K. (A major concern is that the air travel and production involved in Live Earth could hurt the environment more than the event helps.) Early on, the organizing team pushed Gore and Wall to announce concrete objectives that would deflect criticism like Geldof's and give the show some gravitas. "We just keep saying, 'It's a launch event,' and that's why we've held back," says Marianne Troup, a Live Earth publicist based in London. "We've deliberately not even announced the consumer solutions we're talking about, which has given us some bad press, people going, 'Is it just a concert? What's the point?' "
After months of planning, Gore and Wall recently initiated regular conference calls with activists like Sinha and David de Rothschild, an environmentalist who wrote The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, which will be sold at the shows and offers dozens of tips for consumers (everything from which light bulbs to use to paying attention to how far your food travels before it gets to you). The intention is to create a "manifesto" - specific action points organizers will ask politicians, corporations and consumers to sign off on as part of Live Earth. "From this stage, it's no more fucking excuses: No more coal-energy plants can be built," says Wall. "Three percent a year reduction in carbon emissions in all industrialized nations. You can't depend on your governments anymore. We have to mobilize the army, and that's what we're about to start doing."
Live Earth strives to operate in as ecofriendly a way as possible: Several staffers are dedicated entirely to helping artists minimize the environmental impact of getting to and playing the shows, and each artist is given a "Green Handbook" of touring tips, such as where to get biodiesel for their trucks and how to offset carbon emissions. And in London, the team has been discussing a deal with Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic Airlines to reduce the carbon footprint for flights - which could be a great PR boon, deflecting some of the criticism of Live Earth.
A consummate showman, Wall is convinced Live Earth's symbolic moments matter more than any manifesto. He has spent weeks trying to get permission from the U.K.'s power grid to buy into his idea for one of the shows' most spectacular moments: A presenter will ask everyone watching on the BBC to turn off all the lights and electronic devices in their homes except for their TVs. "We'll have aerial views of London and video of the national electric meter, which will go whoosh," says Wall as he mimes a dial turning to zero. "It will be one of those things where people can't see the effect of their single action, but when it's many, they can see a big effect - it'll be fantastic." Except for one problem: "The grid people are worried about what will happen when everybody turns their lights back on at the same time," he says. "It could blow out the system. We'll figure it out - that's a battle I have to win."
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But Live Earth's organizers know it's the stars that will determine how much attention Live Earth gets. While the team has assembled an impressive lineup, it has yet to announce reunions or collaborations equal to Live 8's, where Pink Floyd played together for the first time in twenty-four years and Paul McCartney joined U2 to play "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Wall pushed hard for a Led Zeppelin reunion, but Robert Plant will play an affiliated solo show in Romania the same day. "Those are the kinds of things that take something and really raise it into the cultural zeitgeist," says Aaron Grosky, head of talent and programming at Live Earth's headquarters in Los Angeles. "Those are the things you take away from these events and absolutely things that we've got planned."
That's not to say that there aren't spectacular performances in the works: The London show will open with an all-star drum circle, slated to include Dave Grohl and Phil Collins, and rumors have widely circulated that U2, Radiohead and Guns n' Roses will be added to lineups in various cities. "We have had conversations with Bono, and he is very supportive of what we're doing," says Grosky. "Let's leave it at that."
After hours of meetings in London, Wall and his assistant head over to catch the Chelsea Flower Show, which has several displays about ecofriendly gardening and farming techniques, moments before it closes. Seeming at ease for the first time in days, Wall strolls along aisles filled with fragrant air and lush, technicolor displays of nature at its finest. The peace is broken by the beep of Wall's BlackBerry. A text message arrives - the Branson deal has fallen through. Disappointed, Wall hurries through the rest of the displays and into another taxi. Tomorrow morning he flies to Tokyo to fight another day.
>>> This article is from the latest issue of Rolling Stone, on news stands until June 29th