PHILADELPHIA — Forty years ago — on July 13, 1985 — Scott Martin, Lisa Giangrasso, and 90,000 others at JFK Stadium watched Mick Jagger and Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, Madonna, the Pretenders, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and more, at the South Philadelphia half of the mega charity concert for African famine relief.

But Martin and Giangrasso had slightly better Live Aid seats than most. They watched the show hosted by Jack Nicholson atop a 30-foot perch on the side of the stage, while attending to a giant cold air balloon emblazoned with the Live Aid logo.

How did they get there? Because Martin had a Bridgeport balloon advertising business in partnership with Terry Cooper, who built the scaffolding that flanked the stage. The stage where Philadelphia’s Hooters followed show opener Joan Baez, and Hall & Oates performed with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations. And Ashford & Simpson were joined by Philly soul great Teddy Pendergrass.

Barely a month earlier, on June 10, Irish rocker Bob Geldof had announced that Live Aid — nonprofit concerts raising funds for the survivors of the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia — was to be held in both London and Philadelphia and beamed via satellite all over the world. That gave organizers just over a month to pull off the biggest concert event in history.

“Five weeks?“ says then-Electric Factory Concerts promoter Larry Magid — who Geldof told The Inquirer this year was “the real hero of Live Aid” — in the CNN four-part series "Live Aid: When Rock ’n’ Roll Took on the World," which premiered July 13.

“You can’t do the show in five weeks. It’s just insane,” Magid says, who was in charge of Live Aid in Philly, with the aid of San Francisco promoter Bill Graham.

“We were all going to bask in the sunlight of this show, or we were going to look f— stupid.”

Martin and Giangrasso, who lived in Ambler at the time, first heard about Live Aid on their car radio. Martin immediately pulled over and used a pay phone to call the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau.

He wanted to get involved.

“I’m a promotional guy,” Martin said in a recent interview, sitting with his wife Lisa Martin — the couple was married in 1987 — and their daughter Ellen Rada, with Live Aid memorabilia spread out on a table.

The concert raised “around $450 million in today’s money in one week” Geldof says, “which would have been impossible without Philadelphia.”

Martin’s initial proposal was to have a giant 50-foot hot air balloon emblazoned with the Live Aid logo — a silhouette of the African continent, with a guitar neck extending out of the top — hovering above the stadium.

That was shot down as too dangerous — hot air balloons use propane fuel. Martin adds that the Convention and Visitors Bureau rep wanted the balloons to serve as advertisements for Philadelphia, rather than the Feed the World slogan inspired by a 1984 BBC News report about children starving in Ethiopia, which was Live Aid’s righteous cause.

Martin and Cooper had a better idea. They met with Magid, showing up unannounced at JFK days before the concert. He took to the idea of two cold air balloons, each 30 foot high, floating above platforms on either side of the stage. Each emblazoned with a 10-by-15-foot nylon banner.

“I was thrilled,” Magid recalled this week. “I got a call that there were these two guys with a balloon at the gate. It was great. It was an open stadium so we needed to dress it up and make it look good. The balloons were fantastic.”

The balloon on the left, as one looked at the stage, showed an image of Robert Indiana’s sculpture that gives LOVE Park its name. The one on the opposite side showed the Live Aid logo.

Both were visible throughout the 11 hours of the Philly show, not only by the crowd on a 95-degree day at JFK, but by 1.9 billion people watching in over 100 countries around the world.

Martin and Giangrasso attended to the balloons — to make sure they didn’t float away and remained lit after nightfall, when Patti LaBelle was emoting on “Over The Rainbow” and Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”

“I was singing my face off, honey,” she says in the CNN special.

That’s how Martin and Giangrasso, and a few friends, found themselves watching the stars from a perch 30 feet above the stage.

And it’s how Martin encountered the show’s host, Nicholson.

“His trailer was by the bottom of our ladder,” Martin recalled. “So he opens the door, and all this marijuana smoke comes out with him.”

“Oh yeah, a lotta smoke,” said Lisa Martin, who was looking down from above and was hoping to meet Nicholson, then starring in "Prizzi’s Honor."

“I said, ‘Jack, come climb up the ladder with me up to the balloon, so we can get a picture of you,’” said Scott Martin.

Nicholson started climbing, while Joe Piscopo — who also introduced several acts that day — held the ladder.

“It was fully extended, like 30 feet. And he’s going, ‘I think this ladder is going to break.’ I’m talking to him like we’re old friends. I’m saying, ‘Don’t worry Jack. Keep going up!’

“But then he gets about halfway, and goes ‘I can’t go any higher. I’m scared as s—! I gotta go down. I’m shaking!’”

Lisa Martin never got to meet Nicholson. And though she and her husband had an incomparable bird’s-eye view, they didn’t really get to schmooze with celebs. “I wanted to meet Jack,” Lisa Martin said. “But I only got to meet Paul Shaffer.”

Scott Martin also got to meet Mayor Wilson Goode who, according to Magid and Geldof, relented to pressure and offered the use of JFK for free. Philadelphia was desperately in need of good news two months after the bombing of the West Philadelphia compound of the Black liberation MOVE organization, which killed 11 people and destroyed a city block.

Martin and Cooper went back the following day to retrieve their gear, and picked up the banners.

The Martins kept them bagged up in storage, while their daughters Ellen and Karen were regularly regaled with stories of their parents’ adventures at Live Aid. For many years, the banners were kept in a converted chicken coop/warehouse in Woxall, where Scott Martin also stored goods brought back from Guatemala, Ecuador, and Indonesia to sell at events and malls around the Philly region.

Then one day, the Martins had a rude surprise: the LOVE banner had been all but destroyed by nesting mice. Which made the second banner — luckily, intact — all the more treasured.

“Oh my God,” Rada said with a laugh. “Every time I talk to my Dad, he brings up the Live Aid banner.” The Martins showed it off with pride this week, as the 40th anniversary of the momentous concert approached.

The couple isn’t sure what they ultimately want to do with it.

Rada has tried to contact PBS’s "Antiques Roadshow" in hopes of assessing its value, but hasn’t heard back. Seeing it displayed in a museum, like Philly’s Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel or the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, is another intriguing option.

The banner, of course, still serves as a memento of a day that seems unreal four decades later.

“It was a dream,” said Lisa Martin. “I was sitting on top of the world with a gazillion people and the most incredible musicians playing. Time just flew. I don’t know how I got home. I was just like, ‘Wow!’”

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