The Greatest Night in Pop, review: the story behind We Are the World is much better than the song
The concept of the idealistic rockstar took wing in 1984 after Bob Geldof watched Michael Buerk’s BBC report about devastating famine in Ethiopia. Forty years on, all that remains in the UK of that noble act of charity is an annual bit of tinnitus in shopping malls. Do They Know It’s Christmas? featured many a shooting star whose gleam has long since dimmed. The story in the US, as told at feature-length in The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix), is altogether different.
Check your ego at the door, wrote super-producer Quincy Jones on a sign he put up in the A&M Studio in Los Angeles as the cream of American rock, pop and soul assembled like an overpopulous Mount Rushmore to record charity single We Are the World in January 1985. It would be quicker to list the luminaries who didn’t clock in straight after attending that night’s annual American Music Awards (Madonna, Prince...). Geldof, downbeat in denim, soon wiped smiles off famous faces with a sobering pep talk.
The initial idea came from long-term activist Harry Belafonte. “We have white folks saving black folks,” he told Lionel Richie. “We don’t have black folks saving black folks. That’s a problem.” Richie co-wrote the song at the home of Michael Jackson while unpromisingly distracted by chimp, myna bird and roaming snake. He opted for a stately anthemic beat. “There’s your template,” he recalled here as, astonishingly, he hummed Rule Britannia.
The ace he could play in the recording studio, to concentrate minds and put out fires, was that he’d just cleaned up at the AMAs, which he also hosted. And there were fires. Stevie Wonder improvised a Swahili lyric, prompting a bewildered Waylon Jennings to walk out. Cyndi Lauper was a squeaking agent of chaos. Prince’s singing drummer Sheila E felt used as a magnet to lure his Purpleness. Dionne Warwick remembered being unsure about sharing a microphone with Willie Nelson.
Yet even the unlikeliest pairings – of black/white, young/old, gravelly/sweet – weirdly gelled. Mainly the long night generated loveliness. The blind led the blind when Stevie Wonder showed Ray Charles to the bathroom. Al Jarreau, before he got completely pissed, led a breakout rendition of Banana Boat (Day-O) in homage to Belafonte. Diana Ross asked Daryl Hall to autograph her sheet music, triggering a mass signing session.
At the heart of this mega-celebrity choir, Bob Dylan nervously scowled like a clueless Martian picking up on the ways of Earthlings. He even got Wonder, who impersonated him, to show him how to sing his solo, which to his evident relief he nailed after much coaxing from Jones.
Richie is the modest hero of this fly-on-the-wall reminiscence, Bruce Springsteen and a goofy Huey Lewis the best supporting players. “Man,” said Jones after the long overnight session, “those white boys really brought it.” At dawn Ross couldn’t bear to leave, not wanting this harmonious gathering of giants at the summit of Olympus to end. You may feel similarly about an absorbing, star-spangled hagiography. As for the song’s artistic merit, and deeper impact, that’s quite another story.
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