LONDON (AP) – Bono effortlessly worked the crowd. Bjork strutted the stage in Tokyo. Bill Gates was treated like a rock star. And Nelson Mandela outshone the rock stars.

Live 8’s long, winding road around the globe yesterday has been an eclectic, unprecedented extravaganza.

Paul McCartney and U2 opened the flagship show of the 10-concert festival in London’s Hyde Park with a rousing performance of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

A thunderous roar erupted from the 200,000-strong crowd as the two iconic performers belted out the first line: “It was 20 years ago today …” – a nod to the mammoth Live Aid concerts that raised millions for African famine relief two decades ago.

From Johannesburg to Philadelphia, Berlin to Tokyo and Rome to Barrie, Ontario, musicians and fans gathered for a global music marathon to raise awareness of African poverty and pressure the world’s most powerful leaders to do something about it at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland next week.

Organiser Bob Geldof promised to deliver “the greatest concert ever”. Crowd estimates taken at Live 8 venues indicated close to one million people attended the shows.

At 5:00 pm London time (1600 GMT), Geldof introduced a live link to Philadelphia, where the US concert, hosted by Will Smith, was getting underway.

On Independence Day weekend in the United States, Smith said people had united for a “declaration of interdependence”.

“Today we hold this truth to be self-evident: we are all in this together,” Smith said. He was beamed around the world by satellite as he led the global audience in snapping their fingers every three seconds to signify the child death rate in Africa.

British newcomers the Kaiser Chiefs kicked off the show in Philadelphia with their hit I Predict a Riot. A sun-drenched crowd of several hundred thousand people stretched down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway from the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Black Eyed Peas worked up the crowd with Let’s Get it Started and Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up, before Bon Jovi appeared to perform their stadium-rock classic Living on a Prayer.

Alicia Keys, Def Leppard, Toby Keith, the Dave Matthews Band, Jay-Z, Keith Urban, Maroon 5, Rob Thomas, Sarah McLachlan and Stevie Wonder also were on the bill.

Earlier Bono, dressed in black and wearing his trademark wraparound shades, wrapped the London crowd around his finger, getting tens of thousands to sing along to the anthemic One and Beautiful Day. The crowd cheered when a flock of white doves was released overhead.

“So this is our moment. This is our time. This is our chance to stand up for what’s right,” Bono said.

In Johannesburg, Mandela drew bigger cheers than any of the acts at Mary Fitzgerald Square.

“History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks,” Mandela told a crowd of more than 8,000 people. “I say to all those leaders: Do not look the other way, do not hesitate … It is within your power to prevent a genocide.”

Geldof appeared onstage to introduce Microsoft billionaire and philanthropist Gates, whom the crowd greeted with a rock star-scale roar.

“We can do this, and when we do it will be the best thing that humanity has ever done,” Gates said.

The crowd joined in as REM sang Man on the Moon, then heard UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declare: “This is really the United Nations.”

“The whole world has come together in solidarity with the poor,” Annan said.

Geldof briefly put on his rock-star hat – literally, wearing a peaked cap identical to one he sported as lead singer of The Boomtown Rats 25 years ago – for an impassioned rendition of I Don’t Like Mondays.

Madonna performed Like a Prayer hand-in-hand with Birham Woldu, an Ethiopian woman who as a malnourished toddler appeared in some of the most wrenching footage of the 1984-85 famine.

Her life was saved, Geldof said, in part through donations from Live Aid viewers.

Organisers’ estimates of the crowds and broadcast audiences seemed overblown, from Geldof’s claim that three billion people were watching around the world to talk in Philadelphia that a million people were at that show.

But Live 8 was huge nonetheless, with a mile-long crowd stretching from the front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and more than five million page views on America Online’s music site, www.aolmusic.com, which broadcast all 10 concerts in their entirety. AOL said more than 150,000 people concurrently streamed its video, the most ever.

“There’s nothing more to do now,” Geldof said backstage. “It’s either crap or it’s great. And so far it’s great.”