Inside Live Earth: The Struggle Behind Al Gore's Concert for the Planet

>>> 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."