January 28, 1985—Late in the evening, following the American Music Awards, an all-star gallery of pop musicians streamed into A&M Studios in Hollywood to record “We Are the World,” a milestone in musical humanitarianism.
The session could have produced well-meaning chaos. After all, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written the lyrics for the tune—meant to raise funds for African famine relief—at the last minute. Combining the vocal styles of several musicians, never mind 45 with incredibly distinctive ones, is not easy. (There was also the matter of all those limos pulling up in front of the studio--how to maintain crowd and media control?)
Master producer Quincy Jones, however, kept everything on an even keel, helped in no small part by the well-meaning but pointed advice he offered everyone: “Check your egos at the door.”
The event wasn’t the first all-star pop musicians’ humanitarian fundraiser (The Concert for Bangladesh, to name one prominent example, was held 14 years before). It wasn’t even the first to gather musicians in a studio (two months before, Bob Geldof had rallied a largely UK supergroup, Band Aid, to record the megaselling single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” for the same cause of famine relief).
Nevertheless, the impact of “We Are the World” was huge, becoming the fastest-selling American pop single of all time. In the quarter-century since the release of the single and video, according to the Web site for the effort, USA for Africa, $63 million has been raised from sales of the album, single, cassettes and related merchandise.
The driving force behind the effort should not go unmentioned: Harry Belafonte (in the image accompanying this post, of course). The involvement of the charismatic singer-actor surely would not have surprised those who recalled his prominent role in organizing and fundraising for the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, including the 1963 March on Washington.
In the mid-1980s, Belafonte’s original idea had been to mount a benefit concert featuring black musicians for African relief, but he came around quickly to an idea by Ken Kragen—a manager whose client was Richie—that an American counterpart to Band Aid—i.e., an even more diverse gathering of musicians in a studio—would be even better.
I think there’s a reason why the best-known quote coming from this event was Jones’ “Check your egos at the door.” When you get right down to it, is there a better way for getting anything done in this world?
(By the way, it’s once more into the breech for several organizers of this effort. Richie and Jones are organizing an all-star remake of the tune, to benefit this year’s urgent humanitarian cause: Haitian relief. Stay tuned…)
The session could have produced well-meaning chaos. After all, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written the lyrics for the tune—meant to raise funds for African famine relief—at the last minute. Combining the vocal styles of several musicians, never mind 45 with incredibly distinctive ones, is not easy. (There was also the matter of all those limos pulling up in front of the studio--how to maintain crowd and media control?)
Master producer Quincy Jones, however, kept everything on an even keel, helped in no small part by the well-meaning but pointed advice he offered everyone: “Check your egos at the door.”
The event wasn’t the first all-star pop musicians’ humanitarian fundraiser (The Concert for Bangladesh, to name one prominent example, was held 14 years before). It wasn’t even the first to gather musicians in a studio (two months before, Bob Geldof had rallied a largely UK supergroup, Band Aid, to record the megaselling single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” for the same cause of famine relief).
Nevertheless, the impact of “We Are the World” was huge, becoming the fastest-selling American pop single of all time. In the quarter-century since the release of the single and video, according to the Web site for the effort, USA for Africa, $63 million has been raised from sales of the album, single, cassettes and related merchandise.
The driving force behind the effort should not go unmentioned: Harry Belafonte (in the image accompanying this post, of course). The involvement of the charismatic singer-actor surely would not have surprised those who recalled his prominent role in organizing and fundraising for the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, including the 1963 March on Washington.
In the mid-1980s, Belafonte’s original idea had been to mount a benefit concert featuring black musicians for African relief, but he came around quickly to an idea by Ken Kragen—a manager whose client was Richie—that an American counterpart to Band Aid—i.e., an even more diverse gathering of musicians in a studio—would be even better.
I think there’s a reason why the best-known quote coming from this event was Jones’ “Check your egos at the door.” When you get right down to it, is there a better way for getting anything done in this world?
(By the way, it’s once more into the breech for several organizers of this effort. Richie and Jones are organizing an all-star remake of the tune, to benefit this year’s urgent humanitarian cause: Haitian relief. Stay tuned…)
No comments:
Post a Comment