When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well let us realise
Oh, that a change can only come
When we stand together as one, yeah, yeah, yeah...
THEY STOOD TOGETHER despite their gargantuan egos, creative differences and even adulation for each other, to pull an all-nighter. They tried, improvised and perfected their lines. And they made a change, worth $63 million, for the famine-affected people in Ethiopia. ‘We Are The World'―penned by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, and released in March 1985―was a fervid appeal to human compassion and decency, a call to action like no other, as the people behind it knew that a beautiful song has the power to unite the world. Jackson called it “a love song to inspire concern about a faraway place close to home”.
Between 1983 and 1985, a famine in Ethiopia, caused partly by drought and partly by a debilitating civil war, is estimated to have killed between four lakh to five lakh people (according to some accounts, the death toll is about 10 lakh) and displaced more than 20 lakh people. The desperation and deaths, which reminded people of the kifu qen (evil days) or ‘Great Famine’ that happened a century earlier, decimating nearly up to one-third of Ethiopia's population, moved the world to tears.
Singer, activist and The Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, who learned about the “biblical famine” from a BBC news report by Michael Buerk, had, in December 1984, brought together a charity supergroup―Band Aid―of predominantly UK and Irish singers that included the likes of Paul McCartney and Sting, and came out with a single, 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', to raise money for the victims of the famine.
Inspired by 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', civil rights activist and singer Harry Belafonte wanted to do something similar―bring together the finest American musicians and make them perform a song to raise money for the Ethiopians in distress. Belafonte pitched the idea to Lionel Richie through Ken Kragen, who was a music producer and manager for some of the popular stars then. In the Netflix documentary, The Greatest Night in Pop, Richie recalls being approached by Belafonte, “‘We have white folks saving black folks. We don’t have black folks saving black folks. We need to save our own people from hunger.’ He was trying to get us, the younger group, involved in what was happening in Africa. I said, ‘Of course.’” Richie roped in Jackson, who was excited about the project. Soon, Kenny Rogers was on board. Kragen initially thought of having about 10 to 15 artists, but eventually the number swelled to over 40.
Members of All For Rock, who paid a tribute to the song after it turned 40 this March | Vishnudas K.S.
From Richie to Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Rogers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Steve Perry, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Kim Carnes, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles, the recording room from where the song of collective empathy arose had the greatest musicians of the generation. Except Prince. But then the isolationist that Prince was, it would have been a miracle bigger than 'We Are the World' if he agreed to be in a room full of people, which included Jackson with whom he was having an ongoing professional feud.
Belafonte, Kragen and Quincy Jones, who set up the greatest lineup ever of superstar singers―USA for Africa, knew that most of them would be present at the 1985 American Music Awards on January 28. And so, this turned out to be the day the marvel that 'We Are The World' was born. Those who would not be present at the event, like Springsteen, too, managed to reach A&M Studios by the time the awards show, hosted by Richie, ended.
Not that all was rosy in the recording room, despite the note outside the door that read 'Check Your Ego at the Door'. Legendary loner Dylan was visibly uncomfortable; Sheila E. thought she was brought in only to charm Prince in; Cyndi Lauper reportedly said, “It sounds like a Pepsi commercial”; there was a debate over the word 'brighter'; and Waylon Jennings walked out midway after Stevie Wonder suggested that a line be sung in Swahili. As time passed, the realisation that they had just one night to pull off this wonder crept in. And they did just that. Setting aside their style, aesthetic and creative differences, (and in Lauper's case, her ornaments as well because they were jingling too much), they made a song that stayed on top at Billboard Hot 100 for a month and won four Grammys in 1986.
As the song turned 40 in March 2024, a group of rock musicians and music aficionados, under the banner of All For Rock (AFR), came together to pay tribute to this timeless and iconic anthem of solidarity. AFR, formed by Joe Peter―a singer who was part of bands like Exodus and Evergreen in the late 1990s, and who currently is a music/theatre director with GEMS school in Dubai―and two fellow music enthusiasts in 2003, was a collective of musicians who swear by the belief that ‘music is the best intoxicant’. However, the fraternity became defunct after Joe moved to the UK and got busy with other bands there. More than two decades after its initial launch, Joe, with a group of like-minded musicians―T.J. Gopinath, Suraj Pallan, James Peter, Moncy Francis and Alisha Mathew―decided to revive the community, and do it with a bang, by paying tribute to 'We Are The World'.
Joe tells THE WEEK that it was The Greatest Night in Pop that gave him the idea of a tribute. “I thought it would be a great idea to bring together the stalwarts of rock music in Kochi and Kerala to pay a tribute,” he says. “We had our doubts, but it was easier than expected.” The collective of musicians―Vinod Varma, Joe Peter, Darshan Shankar, Rose Johny, Alisha Mathew, Isabel Maria George, Ancel Edwin, Captain B.K. Iyer (GoGo Samy), George Peter and V.J. Traven―released a cover tribute to 'We Are The World' on March 24, at Kochi's Gokulam Park Convention Centre on an evening filled with the untamed energy of rock and roll.
“‘We Are The World’ holds a lot of memories. We look up to all these singers, and all of them on one stage together, it is quite a jewel of a moment,” says George Peter, lead singer of the band 13AD.
Nearly four decades after its release, the song continues to be etched into the collective memories of music aficionados across the world, transcending time and space, and embodying values of altruism, hope and universal brotherhood.