"We Are the World" by USA for Africa: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings
you the secret history and little known facts behind your
favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your
supergroup of scintillating details. You're Quincy Jones of quite interesting facts,

(00:23):
and for the next two hours, we are your world.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
My name's Jordan run Togg and I'm Alex Igel.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
And today we are talking about one of the best
selling songs of all time, a song that boasts more
top tier talent than perhaps any other, a song that
brings new meeting to the phrase well it's the thought
that counts. A song that I have definitely never sat
down and listened to. Start to finish, we are talking
about We Are the World, by the one off supergroup

(00:51):
calling themselves USA for Africa. Say Yeah, it's not as
pithy as a name as the UK counterparts bandid I
know It's not the first overstuffed charity record to come
onto the scene again, the honor belongs to Don't They
Know It's Christmas Time by band Aid. But this one
has never been topped in terms of scope. Everything about
it is so huge, some might say overblown, and bloated.

(01:14):
In fact, I will some forty five by my account,
of the biggest names in music crammed into a single studio,
setting aside their musical and sometimes personal differences, for a
greater cause. Together they work till sunrise to make a
seven minute musical message of hope for a brighter day
for an Africa ravaged by famine. And though the song

(01:35):
itself has been described by Stereogum writer Tom Bryan as
a quote tranquilizing musical irritant, it is raised over eighty
million dollars for charitable causes, which done more for the
world than Hey yeah, Brohemian Rhapsody ever did so hard
to knock it, but it's hard to remember now, but
We Are the World is really the first of its kind,

(01:57):
or at least in the first wave, alongside the band song.
We take it for granted now that there are all
these celebrity charitable projects, but this is really the first
time that a big group of stars mobilized behind a
single project. It was so obscure that when they were
recruiting artists to sing on it, the organizers had to
go out of their way to even explain what this was.
It was pitched as a space age woodstock for a

(02:19):
new generation, which is a great quote and sort of
a gathering of a new kind of tribe to look
out for their fellow man. That was the optimistic pitch.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
At least.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Sinex have said that even more money would have been
raised if the artists and their label bosses had merely
donated a few percentage points of their income instead of
staging a big, splashy display.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
But eighty million is like what Clive Davis's annual bonus
at this time.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, I don't really have a follow up to that.
I do feel that raising awareness was key, and we
Owe the World really helped shine a global spotlight on
Africa and its issues, making it really top of mind
in American homes for the first time. Musically, it's pretty inexcusable, right,

(03:03):
it's fine, just off of the case. It's fine as
is off in the case. The more stars you throw
on a song, the worse it gets. I call it
housemates syndrome, you know how like in the common area
of your house or apartment, like the little entry away
or whatever, the part that no one person actually owns,
it just kind of goes the hell because no one
takes ownership of it.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
That's what happens with supergroups.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
It's all just like responsibility gets spread too thin and
then as a result, so does the blame. And that's
why supergroups don't work in my opinion anyway, Heigel, what
do you think about We of the World.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Oh, it's dogship, but it's it's just so fascinating. I mean,
I think earlier we called it. I called it the
highest talent to lowest quality ratio of all time. Yep.
I can't think of anything any other single artistic achievement.
It's like if every Renaissance master the Ninja Turtles were

(03:57):
named after, got together to paint the Sistine chain apple
and came up with like dogs playing poker. Yeah. My
personal obsession with this with charity singles extends furthest to
stars by here in aide Oh yeah, oh, which is
the the Ronnie James Dio led charity project. Yes, with

(04:21):
twelve guitar solos and like six vocalists all just doing
their doing their damnedst.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
How long is this? Is it a long song? With
all those solos? There are all the solos like four seconds apiece?

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Uh? I think they get like four bars I've only
I've never again, nothing I've ever I've never actually heard
this song. I've only seen the full length YouTube documentary
about it, which is hilarious because it is like every
single la hair metal guitarist coming in, uh and just
wanking it. Apparently I was just looking it up. Ronnie James,

(04:55):
Dio's widow, said that it has raised over three million
dollars three billion.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, it's not very dight.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, I know, I know, But but counterpoint, did we
are the world have Dio?

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Did it have any guitar solos?

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah? Exactly how many guitar solos did they have? Yeah?
I don't know. I think Bono was wrong when he
said rock and roll can change the world, but it
can raise money. And that's kind of what I've always
tried to do. I have no interest in anyone writing
protest songs anymore. But I can cut a check and

(05:38):
I can throw shows that I did. I don't do
it anymore, but I threw that then cut checks. So
that's what I believe in. And yeah, man, I just
the assemblage of ego and personality. I mean, I don't
I guess I don't want to call it ego personality
because it seems like they are the egos were actually
checked at the proverbial door mostly, but man, just the

(05:59):
where else you can see Dean Warwick help Willie Nelson
find his place on a piece of sheet music as
he comes in a half beat late.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
I urge all of you to watch the documentary on
the making of We Are the World on YouTube. It
is It's like the way that like I'm a celebrity,
get me out of here should have been. It's the
weirdest thing in the world to see these forty something
celebrities in this not very big space just awkwardly interacting
with each other all night. They're like kept awake for

(06:29):
like twelve hours. It's great.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah you think they You think they did that naturally
it was nineteen eighty five, so no, draw your own conclusion. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
So, while I might not be able to speak to
the song's musical merits, I am endlessly fascinated as you
are by We Are the World, both as a relic
of a very specific era, kind of the last hurrah
of the monoculture, and also just the truly bizarre circumstances
under which it was made. You know, as you mentioned earlier,
with so many personalities and ego neuroses, you better believe

(07:02):
we have some incredible stories.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
I'm just so excited.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
This is probably the most anecdote rich episode we've ever had.
I'm just thrilled the dive in from Michael Jackson hiding
in the bathroom in terror just ravigate to Lionel Richie
getting spooked by MJ's missing snake, to Prince blowing off
the session and bailing his bodyguards out of jail, to
Cyndi Lauper's wardrobe difficulties, Bob Dylan's intense stage fright, to

(07:29):
the surprising reason why Huey Lewis was given a solo
when Smokey Robinson was not, Plus all the reasons why
everyone loved Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen. Besides the obvious,
here is everything you didn't know about We Are the World.
So when you talk about we Are the World, the

(07:49):
first person everyone usually thinks of is Quincy Jones. He's
traditionally viewed as the mastermind behind this the Apex of
all charity singles, but it was actually the recently departed
Harry Belafonte who jumps started the project. He was watching
a news report of the Ethiopian famine one night shortly
before Christmas in nineteen eighty four, and this report included
footage of a volunteer doctor being interviewed as a line

(08:12):
of sick, malnourished children stretched beyond his tent, and this
doctor was asked, how can you handle working in these
conditions when the problem seems so massive, almost irreversible? How
can you get up every day to face such an
awesome task? And the doctor replied, I take them one
at a time. And this simple answer is essentially what
spurred Harry Belafonte to action. Also, obviously it's important to

(08:33):
note that We Are the World was done in the
wake of band aids Do they Know It's Christmas? The
nineteen eighty four charity single organized by Bob Geldoff of
the Boomtown Rats fame and star of Pink Floyd's.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
The Wall, and also me juror the other guy who
did Do they Know It's Christmas Time? Remember him?

Speaker 1 (08:50):
That's in the UK band Ultravox, Okay, moving on and
band aid The original British charity supergroup featured members of
U two, Wham Culture Club, Duran, Duran, Phil Collins, Paul Weller, Sting,
and the rest other stars from the UK, and for
years it was the biggest selling single in British history.
So I Hard Belafonte was seeking to make a star

(09:13):
studied Yankee equivalent to help alleviate the Ethiopian famine, which
at this point had killed nearly a million people in
just under two years. And so the first thing Harry
Belafonte did was contact a very influential entertainment manager and
fellow activist named Ken Cragan, and Ken Craigan is probably
the least famous name involved with the star studded spectacle,

(09:34):
but he's the secret MVP if we are the World.
His first move, Ken Craigan was to draft his client's
Lionel Richie, who volunteered his writing services for the song,
and Kenny Rogers. And he also got Stevie Wonder involved
through Lionel Richie. He was his old Motown label mate
and I love this. Lionel Richie spent days trying to
find Stevie Wonder and as we discussed in our songs

(09:55):
in the Key of Life episode.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Stevie's quite the independent spirit.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
To track down and getting him to return phone calls
was next to impossible, but thankfully they had some help
from a holiday miracle. On Christmas Eve, Lionel Richie's wife
was at a fancy la jewelry store doing some last
minute Christmas shopping.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Well, who should walk in but Stevie.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Wonder and he asked her for some help picking out
some gifts. And he said, I will if you call
my husband immediately, and he did and he agreed to
sign on. Does that count as blackmailing?

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Extortion? Please? Extortion? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (10:30):
So now, this project was initially envisioned by Harry Belafonte
as a benefit concert rather than just a recording, but
Ken Craigan he wasn't so hot on this concert idea.
He'd been the manager for the late folk singer Harry Chapin,
the guy Who's sang you know Kat's in the Cradle
with the bad Dad anthem Taxi. That's a great song,

(10:51):
not the theme song to the show Taxi, but past
the other one. He was very active Harry Chapin in
fighting hunger and homelessness and did a lot of fundraising.
And Following Harry Chapin's death in a freak car accident
in nineteen eighty one, Ken Craigan had been working for
years to try to put a benefit show together in
his honor, and he quickly discovered that charity concerts are

(11:12):
a gigantic pain in the ass. He also remembered what
a relative financial disaster events like George Harrison's concert for
Bangladesh was, and also the No Nukes concerts in the
late seventies. Just charity concerts really tough. Money rarely goes
to the right place, bad idea. So instead, Ken Craigan
suggested a recording session instead to do a charity single,

(11:33):
although I guess in Quincy jones retelling of the story,
he says that when they first brought him on to
the whole USA for Africa project, it was meant to
be a tour, which sounds like a nightmare, and he
said that would have never worked with all those artists.
It would have been the shortest tour in the history
of music. But this was also in the same spate
of interviews when Quincy was talking about like knowing who

(11:54):
killed JFK and dating Avanka Trump and stuff.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
So grain of salt.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
So I've heard conflicting versions on how much Michael Jackson
and Quincy Jones were brought into the mix for We
Have the World. One version is that Lionel Richie asked
Michael Jackson to come aboard, and Michael said he wanted
to bring his Thriller collaborator, Quincy Jones.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Two.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
I question this because despite their motown connection, Lionel Richie
and Michael Jackson really barely knew each other. Their last
big connection was in nineteen seventy one, when Lionel's band,
the then unknown Commodores opened for thirteen year old Michael
when he was in the Jackson Five, which must have
been galling for Lionel opening for a thirteen year old.

(12:33):
Lionel even told him soon after they met to start
discussing this charity single. The idea of me and you
even being in the same city at the same time
is pretty ridiculous, So I guess they were kind of
miles apart socially didn't really know each other. The other
more plausible version of how Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones
came into the mix is that Ken Craigan called in
Quincy Jones, who again was super producer extraordinary produced Thriller,

(12:57):
the biggest album in the world.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
What more do you need?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Worked with everybody, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and the rest
and the rest. So when Ken Craigan called Quincy, Quincy
was like, well, what if I try to get Michael,
And within thirty minutes Michael signed on and agreed to
help co write the song too. So Quincy decided to
take some time off from doing music for his film

(13:21):
production debut, The Color Purple, which also won everything. This
Guy's touch is won a boatload of awards, won a
bunch of Oscars or nominated for I think eleven Oscars
to lend a hand of the project that would become
We Are the World, and he talked about how he
got the gig in an interview with Yahoo Music. He said, quote,
I think I was chosen to produce We Are the
World because I'd produced an album for Donna Summer a

(13:41):
couple of years earlier. On that album, we had a
track called State of Independence that needed a choir. I
wanted the best choir I could get, so about a
third of the artists on We Are the World were
on that.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Track, so I was on familiar ground.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
If I hadn't worked individually with over half these singers before,
there's no way I would have signed on that Donna
Summer song is wild? Do you know it State of Independence.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
No, but I love the idea of Jim Vangelis being
involved and we are the world and I have revision,
I've red conded in my head so that now he
did all the synth programming to it, which is not true.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yes, Vangelis the composer who wrote the Chariots of Fire theme.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Can you hum that? Hum that please? Bum bum bum
bum bum. Also Blade Runner, I mean, like the guy
who's just a synth a true synth wizard.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yes, so that song was written by Vangelis. And the
chorus that Quincy's talking about. It features Lionel, Ritchie Diale Warwick,
Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Brenda Russell, Christopher Cross, Diane Cannon,
James Ingram, Kenny Loggins, Peggy Lipton.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Who Quincy Jones was married to at the time. The
actors helped Old Twin.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Peaks, Yeah, Patty Austin, Michael McDonald, and Stevie Wonder, and
the song Ranks is one of Brian ENO's favorite recordings.
Since I didn't State of Independence, Yeah, didn't.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
I'd never heard this song before researching this episode. You know,
I just I I'm fully I know there's like a
whole strain of when I am trying to call non
racistly like middle class black R and B that I
really am not super familiar with, like Luther Van Dross
and some of the stuff in the eighties. I don't
know who James Ingram is other than the guy who

(15:25):
did Somewhere out There with Linda Ronstadt from an American Tale.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Oh yeah, but he had hits Like.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
I wickied him because I was one of the names
I didn't recognize, and then I looked him up and
I was like, oh, this guy big deal. Yeah. Yeah.
I also forgot who Kim Carnes was. Oh, Bendy Davis, Yeah,
ng whips Yeah, great song. Songs written by Jackie DeShannon's
you know that I didn't. I didn't.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Her original version is weird. It's like a Dixie Land thing.
Oh yeah, but it's Jackie DeShannon.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
She's cool.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
But yeah, it's done a summer song with this insane chorus.
It's kind of a waste of talent because on the record,
this chorus of all those huge names I just mentioned,
it sounds like a MIDI chorus, Like it sounds like
it could be anybody.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah. I don't understand why they went through all that trouble.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
During a spate of Insane twenty eighteen interviews, Quincy Jones
accused Michael Jackson of jacking the baseline from the song
State of Independence for Billy gen Interesting, which I can
kind of hear amusingly. During the sessions for We Are
the World, Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates bumped into
Michael Jackson when he was hiding in the bathroom, which

(16:41):
we will get to later, and according to Darryl, Michael
immediately apologized to him for ripping off the I can't
go for that, no can do bassline for Billy Jean,

(17:06):
and according to our Hall, Michael said, I hope you
don't mind that I stole that, And I was like, what,
you did a good job of stealing it, because I
didn't even notice. I guess he was referring to the
intro kind of a pumping bassline that was in the bathroom.
There weren't many places to go.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
I can kind of hear that, actually, yeah, or it's
just like the default sequencer preset that came on every
synthesizer from the eighties, Like you know, every time you
talk about Michael Jackson hiding in the bathroom. I'm reminded
of one of my other favorite musical anecdotes of all time,
which is that one time Steve Perry was visiting Van

(17:44):
Halen and at backstage and a food fight broke out,
and the debauchery and the severity of the food fight
was such that Steve Perry retreated to the bathroom in tears.
And I think it was in Rolling Stone, but the
line that forever has haunted me is a food fight
erupted that left Steve Perry in the bathroom covered in guacamole, crying, crying, crying,

(18:08):
crying softly to himself in the bathroom, Comma covered in guacamole.
It's funniest mental image. He's such a sweet boy in
any of it. The whole production was ramped up once
Quincy Jones and his impressive Rolodex were brought into the mix,
so to speak, commercial brand masterful. After news broke throughout. Uh,

(18:34):
I don't know whatever be in this warren of rat
tunnels was the nineteen eighties music industry. Irving azof ascended
from hell to tell everyone. Ken Craigan did most of this. Actually,
Harry Belafonte called him a day or two after their
first talk and said, have you thought about this thing
that I pitched? And Ken told him in an all

(18:55):
time rejoinder, well, I have a song written by Michael Jackson, Liono,
Richie and Stevie Wonder. Quincy Jones is producing, and Kenny Rodgers,
Kim Carnes and Lindsey Buckingham have all agreed to be
on it, to which Harry Belfonti presumably said, oh, you
have it handled them. So Ken is cooking, as he wrote,
hold on, hold up, let him cook. Ken later told

(19:18):
the Mirror on the second of January, less than four
weeks before the session, I decided I'm going to get
two artists a day, and I'm going to work from
the top of the record charts. I already had Michael,
who was number one, Lionel was maybe number three, Prince
was number two. My idea was, by the time I
got into bed, I would add two artists until I

(19:38):
got to fifteen to eighteen artists, and once he got
Bruce Springsteen, he didn't need to make any more calls
because the word was out and people were calling him
task to be on this song. Craign continued to the Mirror,
Lionel Richie has a great line. He says, you are
who you hug. Oh yeah, everybody wanted to hug Bruce Springsteen.

(19:58):
What is he? Andrew Cuomo too soon? Everybody wanted to
hug Bruce Springsteen. True, everybody wanted to stand next to
Bruce Springsteen. Bruce was the boss, and certainly with the Rockers,
if Bruce is there, they want to be there. One
person who did not want to hug Bruce Barbara Streisand no,

(20:23):
there were a number of people who did turn this down.
Barbar Streisen chief among them. She supposedly agreed, but her
team talked her out of it, and she made amends
years later by signing on for the twenty ten remake
of We Are the World to benefit victims of the
Haitian earthquake? Was that the same Haitian earthquake that y
Cleft Jean defrauded in an attempt to defraud I believe so, Yes,

(20:49):
great legacy. Eddie Murphy supposedly turned them down because he
was busy recording Party all the time, which Eddie Murphy
man made a lot of bad choices in his career.
Vampire in Brooklyn, What did we just Yeah, Pluto Nash
what did we just talk about that? He turned down

(21:11):
Oh to make Holy Man? Rush Hour? He turned down
Rush Hour, He turned down We Are the World. Murphy
later said that when he realized what he'd done, he
quote felt like an idiot. Agreed. Linda Ronstadt was supposed
to come, but she had the flu and her doctor
wouldn't let her fly. In her place, they got Dion Warwick,
who was able to get the night off of her

(21:32):
gig in Vegas courtesy of Hotel impresario Steve Wynn. David Byrne.
Can you imagine David Byrne on this song? David's bit
like mouth noises? Yeah. David Lee Roth and James Brown
were desired guests but apparently couldn't be reached. David Lee
Roth on this song would have been hilarious. Oh damn,

(22:01):
it is the open show that I'm only gonna give
it to you one more time, just strutting around with
like a ball of Jack Daniels. That would have sent
Michael Jackson to the bathroom and terror. Perhaps the most famously,

(22:21):
Madonna was not included. And We Are All the World.
There are many different accounts for why this is, depending
on which PR team is being interviewed at any given time.
The most familiar is that Madonna had just had her
first number one with Like a Virgin, and that the
session would have conflicted with dates on her Virgin Tour phrasing.
Because of this, her management wanted to strike while the

(22:43):
iron was hot and told her to turn down the
opportunity to sing on it. But in twenty twenty, Now Rogers,
who produced all of her best albums in the early
early stages and who was close to her, said on
Serious XM that she was intentionally snubbed, never asked to
participate in USA for Africa. He said, Madonna wasn't invited

(23:04):
to sing on the recording, and it was a slap
in the face because everybody was in Los Angeles for
the American Music Awards, and it was really sort of
not nice. Does he write the lyrics for Chic? I
know she felt bad, But when Madonna performed at Live Aid,
she didn't participate in the live version of We Are

(23:26):
the World, which featured That live performance featured many people
who hadn't been on the original recording, so maybe there
was some intentional snubbing there. She was just like, well,
if you don't want me, then you don't want me now,
like I don't want to do this, I think she Nope,
what do you think about Madonna? You know what I
think about Madonna? I mean look. She later tried to
compensate by adopting a number of children from the country

(23:48):
and then using, you know, racial slurs on social media,
addressing like a sub Saharan tribeswoman for awards shows, giving
meandering remnists, this is about her own life. At a
tribute for Aretha Franklin, She's an ally. What can I say?
Change begins at home anyway. Ken Craigan reportedly turned down

(24:12):
fifty people thereabouts who wanted to be part of it,
most notably John Denver. Oh it's like shooting a puppy now.
You turned down old Johnny D with a suitcase full
of muppets with him. Yeah, man, Ken told The Mirror
John Denver had been a client of mine. I knew
him well, and he was a tremendous activist for hunger

(24:33):
and poverty in America, presumably anti not force. Quincy felt
that he would skew the song too far towards the
commercial pop area. Yeah, but not. Kim Carnes, the biggest
one hit wonder on that, and he wasn't that hot
at the time. His heyday was in the seventies. Yeah,
that's the real answer. He was right, Quincy was right,
but I felt really bad about it. If I had

(24:55):
to do it again, I certainly would have seen that
John would be a part of it. Kim Carnes so
hot right now. Ken also regrets not booking Joan Biaz,
who he felt, along with Bob Dylan, had in fact
birthed the very notion of the charity single with her
music related activism in the sixties, which is correct considering
Bob Dylan abandoned that scene as soon as it sprang,

(25:18):
board him to fame, while Joan Bias continued her legacy
of activism. So forty five musical icons on this but
not Prince, which we will get to. And Huey Lewis.
Huey Lewis is there too, and his bat and his
bat is this whole group? Was it Clover? Was it
the same guys who became who backed Elvis Costello or

(25:40):
Miam Is true? I think some of them, not all. Yeah,
we love Huey Lewis here at TMI, friend of the
po Huey Lewis, Well, we do.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
But I still although he does nail his solo, the
fact that he got it over Smokey Robinson really Bett
Mittler and Uh, I guess those are the two most
deserving of solo.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Can you imagine eighties lou Reid on this? Huh? Whoa
cook it on my gym? Can't be any worse than
eighties era Bob Dylan. True, I'm kind of surprised Clapton
wasn't on this is it because of the whole openly
racist thing in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
No, it's America's you say for Africa?

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Well, yeah, yeah, I guess that's true.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
The only brit On here is Bob Geldoff, and they
invited him because I think they kind of felt like,
I don't. I think they invited him at the last minute.
They invited him to come and address the crowd, and
once he was there was like, do you want to sing?
That's I believe that's how it went down.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
But anyway, so they have they have a cast list,
if you will, but they don't have a song. The
official story was that Stevie Wonder was supposed to help
write it with Michael and Lionel, but this didn't happen,
supposedly because Stevie had to do stuff like Lady in

(26:56):
Red the soundtrack to that, but probably most likely due
to the fact that Stevie has no concept of time
and does things on his own internal schedule and logic,
which can be summed up as whenever he feels like it. Yeah.
There was a twenty twenty article on ARP dot com
that said Stevie left town right before they were supposed

(27:17):
to begin writing and didn't come back until the day
before recording sessions where it's supposed to start, which, in
his defense, is actually pretty generous timeline on Stevie time,
because it wasn't like it was an after yeah, or
he called and he he called that one dude and
was like, you have ten minutes to write me another
verse for was it pastime Paradise on sid Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Also, I mean, this is the same guy who called
his manager thirty minutes before he's supposed to be on
stage in Seattle, was like, I'm leaving my house in
LA right now.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
So Stevie was out. Michael and Lionel instead went to
the the Jackson Family Estate, INCA know a cursed place,
no doubt. Sorry, I'm editorializing and this is so funny
to me. Imagine if you will, and I hope they

(28:12):
were sitting on the floor cross legged for this, Lionel
Richie and Michael Jackson listening to a bunch of assorted
national anthems from across the world. Yeah what deutsch landou
bar ales rub Tanya Russia national anthem? Yeah? Whatever that

(28:32):
I say, the Tetris theme song, that's a more Uh.
What is the Australian national anthem? Oh, We've got Big
Balls by c DC. Uh, what's the what's uh?

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (28:48):
I think it's y y Z by Rush? Is the
Canadian national anthem? This is gonna get playfully racist, uh,
Richie said. We put all of that into a heads
and came up with a rhythm that sounded familiar, like
a world anthem. We didn't want a normal sounding song.
We wanted bombastic, the biggest thing you got. They worked

(29:10):
on this song every night for a week in Michael's bedroom,
kept company by Michael's albino python, which unsurprisingly scared the
shut of sweet Lionel Richie. He kept hearing the sounds
of I don't know what does a python sound like
as it slithers around the room. Well, I guess hissing, yeah,

(29:33):
he told The Independent later. I'm on the floor in
Michael's bedroom. I don't think he had a bed. He
just slept on the floor. There's a bunch of albums
around the wall, and I hear over my shoulder there
was a damn python, a Boa constrictor, a python. Who
cares what the hell it was. It was a big ass,
ugly ass snake. I was screaming, and Michael saying, there

(29:54):
he is Lionel. We found him. He was hiding behind
the albums. I said, you're at a your freaking mind.
It took me about two hours to calm my ass
back down. You found Barry, you found Aunt Diana. What
was his python? His pet python's name? You found your name.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
You found Marlon Lionel.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
You found Little Janet. But the writing sessions were marred contentious.
I guess they just had different working schedules. Lionel's writing method, amazingly,
it was to drive around LA's empty freeways in the
middle of the night at like four am and right,
whereas Michael liked to wake up at five thirty am
to daydream in the studio. But they bonded. I shouldn't

(30:37):
have said contentious. They got along, they sang, they danced,
and they dicked around, and Quincy Jones sit there tapping
his watch. He wrote in his memoir, Michael and Lionel
were there hanging, sitting around, talking about motown and old times.
I said, my dear brothers, we have forty six stars
coming in less than three weeks, and we need a
damn song. The initial kernel of the song came for

(31:00):
Michael stepping from a rhythm that he used to sing
to his sister Janet in his autobiography Moonwalk. He writes, Janet,
what do you see when you hear this song? She said,
dying children in Africa? He said, you're right, That's what
I was dictating from my soul. That is a world
that is a new high in celebrity hagiography. Janet, what

(31:23):
do you think when I sing you this rhythm dying
children in Africa? You're right, my god, incredible all time quote.
Then he recorded as classic. Michael Jackson and I urge
anyone to go check these out recorded a demo all
by himself. You gotta go listen to the beat it
demos that have you heard? You've heard those right where

(31:44):
he's just like beat boxing and has like singing every
single individual note of chords and harmonies. Incredible. So he
surprised Quincy and Lionel with a demo that he did
in a single night, and then they had to come
up with the lyrics. They were aiming for simple, easy
to sing and memorable. They snuck in a Beatles reference
with the nod love is all We Need, which I

(32:07):
believe Billy Joel sings.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
He hated he hated that line. He hated most of
the things about this song. He hated the key, he
hated the line. I thought he's a tough key. He's
a tough key. I mean, we'll get to that later,
but again, just pitch perfect. Gotta go watch the video.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Billy Joel looks like he had a can of Schlitz
in his hand and a shiner. He's got like a
five o'clock shadow. He does not look like he can
be seen folding up his lyrics sheets in like in
in the background of someone else singing, just kind of
staring around, by his own admission, eating sandwiches and drinking beard.
During these sessions.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
He has the flu he's jet lagged, that he's flown
in from New York especially for it. He still has
a scarf on Christy Brinkley's in the other room with
a bunch of much more famous, much more attractive.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah yeah, not that it ever mattered to him, because
he bounced right from her to another model light years
out of his league. They were the ill finalizing the
words for what would ultimately become the lyrics to We
Are the World the night before the first sessions began,
finishing it in one two and a half hour burst.
They changed We're taking our own lives to We're saving

(33:14):
our own lives, which good choice, guys, and they changed
there's a chance we're taking to there's a choice we're
making so that they wouldn't be making it about them.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, that's a weird line in the documentary that accompanied
We Are the World. Jane Fonda, who hosts the documentary,
likens that line or saving our own lives so quote
from John Dunn, any Man's death diminishes me because I'm
involved in mankind, sure man.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Okay man.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Famously, the recording date for We Are the World was
immediately after the American Music Awards on January twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty five. Lionel Richie was hosting that awards show,
so it was a long day for him. Quincy Jones
figured that scheduling it on the day of a big,
glitzy show award show, was the only time he could
get three dozen rock stars together in the same place

(34:08):
in the same night, not for charity, but on a
night when we all got together to pat each other
on the back. Cool, but at least it's better karma
than a regular board show after party. The location of
the session was a closely guarded secret, as ken Craigan
later said, if that address shows up anywhere, we've got
a chaotic situation that could totally destroy the project. The

(34:29):
moment a Prince Michael Jackson, a Bob Dylan drives up
and sees a mob around that studio, he will never
come in. And so as a result, not even the
artists were told until the very last minute. On the
day of the session. The address that was on the
official invite that each of the artists received from Quincy
was blacked out at ken craig It's request. It's just

(34:49):
worth noting that obviously they would never get away with.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
This in the social media smartphone age. I just think
it's so interesting that they could pull us off.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Just in case the word got out, several dozen security
guards swarmed around the perimeter of Hollywood's A and M Studios,
which was a former film studio built by Charlie Chaplin
and now it's the Jim Henson Studios, with a statue
of Kermit the Frog out front, dresses Charlie Chaplin's character.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
At the tramp.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Over one hundred and fifty audio technicians spent the afternoon
setting up a complex av system, and you know, the
star power for the song ensured that it would be
the most well documented occasion and show based history at
this point. And just before nine pm, the stars began
to arrive from across town at the Ames and it's
sweet artists who were competitors over there at the awards

(35:37):
show were now compatriots. At least that's how they tried
to spin it in the documentary, aware that doing a
charity record in black tie kind of sent the wrong
kind of message. Quincy Jones urged casual attire, saying after
the American Music Awards, we all change out of our
clothes because we don't want to make a Hunger record
in tuxedos. A man is away with words, also very good,

(36:00):
very good point. And he also famously issued a friendly
warning to all concerns with a sign hung above the
studio entrance reading check your egos at the door. And
Stevie Wonder was on hand to act as a greeter,
joking to each new arrival that if the song wasn't
recorded in one take, he and Ray Charles would personally
drive everyone home.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
He loves that, he loves that. Yeah, oh, Stevie.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
And parking was such a tricky situation, and just space
in the studio was such a premium that one high
ranking music executive acted as valet out front just so
he could hang out.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Who was it?

Speaker 1 (36:36):
A guy named Ron Oberman who was the guy who
brought David Bowie to America for the first time. David
Bowie spent the night at his parents' suburban house in
Silver Spring, Maryland. I interviewed his brother from My David
Bowie podcast. Huh, Yeah, he was a big deal, an
R guy at Mercury Records, and I don't know what
he was doing around we of the world time. But yeah,

(36:57):
speaking of cars, is a great story about Bruce. So
many great Bruce Springsteen's stories involving cars, one of many
great Bruce stories we'll touch on in this episode. On
none of the recording, many stars arrived at the studio
and stretched limos. Bruce arrived solo, pushing his way through
the crowd and a leather jacket with cut off gloves,
and he proudly tells ken Craigan and some of the producers,

(37:19):
I got a great parking space over by Librea. He's
parked his rental car in a supermarket parking lot and
walked over. Love that Keny Craven later marveled in the mirror.
Everybody else came by Limo, Bruce drove himself, parked across
the street and walked through the crowd, and they didn't
even realize it was Bruce coming through.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
I love that. It's so good now.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Other versions of the story have him driving his own
pickup truck, but I think that was actually Kenny Rodgers,
who did in fact drive his own Dodge pickup truck
to the sessions, which.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Is also very good. Straight from his chicken, his local
after where he was checking the franchise, the local Kenny
Rogers roaster's franchise.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
But this Bruce springsy thing is all the more endearing
considering that he just finished the latest leg of Was
Born in the USA tour the night before in Syracuse,
his fifteenth gig that month, and he had flown in
especially for this. So the man's got stamina and he
did not disappoint. It is exhaustive. Liner notes of the session,
writer David Breskin describes Bruce Springsteen thus, everyone looks like

(38:20):
himself at the session, but Springsteen somehow more so. Blue
shirt hanging out of his black jeans, open black leather jacket,
black high top boots with green canvas trim and laces
cinched four islets from the top, black leather fingerless gloves
which you won't take off all night, and a face
of five o'clock shadow and Bruce's vocal part. I think

(38:41):
it's one of the best of the bunch. I've seen
a lot of people say that it's terrible online. I'm
never gonna go on record saying anything that Bruce Springsteen
does is terrible.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
But I thought, I thought he's got the soil. Yeah,
he brings a different energy to it, says the part
of it is the tour I never knew when I
was watching, like hearing about this before that he had
come off of a heroic tour. But yeahteen gigs that month, Yeah,
that's wild. And also fifteen Bruce Springsteen gigs is like
six months of regular person games. Yes, so to show

(39:10):
up and then just hunger dunger, dang your way through
a song about dying Africans like God love him well.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
He asked Quincy Jones for some direction, and Quincy said
that I want you to be like the cheerleader of
this chorus, which, of course that's the role Bruce Springsteen
was born to play. And he literally worked up a
sweat doing this chorus. You can hear it on the take.
I swear he did. That was one take too that
he nailed it of course.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Going back, oh.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, and going back to Breskins piece, Springsteen rolls up
his sheet music and sticks it in the back pocket
of his jeans. His voice is rough, pained, gone, reduced
to essence, perfect for this part. When he sings his
veins jump out of his hands. Two character lines cut
across the bridge of his nose, and he exhales twice
hard after each phrase. After a nearly flawless first take,

(39:57):
he humbly asked Quincy something like that. Quincy can only
laugh exactly like that.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yes, there's so many great Springsteen in the studio stories.
One of my favorites is he was on one of
the many people who's on Warren Yvon's last record, and
he plays, Yeah, he plays a solo, a guitar solo
on a song, and when he got done playing the
guitar solo, the amp died. The amp like caught fire
and died, and it was like, I can go to

(40:26):
Valhilo now.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
After his verse in the session for Real the world,
I guess, the entire crowd of musical dignitaries burst in
the spontaneous applause, which.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Was not something they did easily, especially Darrin Ross. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Quincy Jones later described Bruce as quote one of the
hardest working cats I've ever met in my life. I
kept waiting for him to get tired and sit down
and rest, but he kept saying, want me to do
it again. So inclosing, Bruce Springsteen is the best. Prince,
on the other hand, was less of a team player.
He performed at the Animas that night, delivering an iconic
version of Purple Rain that's gone on to become one

(41:06):
of the most legendary performances of that Awards show ever,
but he, to use the British phrase, couldn't be arsed
to do we are the World. He declined to participate
in the project for reasons that are disputed, though widely
assumed to be part of his ongoing rivalry slash feud
with Michael Jackson, which rage throughout the decade.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I feel like you gotta take this, Yeah, I mean,
you positive that they were too alike in certain ways.
You know, they were born in the Midwest to devout
religious families. They're incredibly disciplined men in their pursuit of
art and music, and devolved into drug addicted reclusivism in

(41:47):
their stately Xanadu's Prince plays much better bas though, Yeah,
I mean Prince. Prince's first record is for You in
nineteen seventy eight, which is just a year before mj
comes out into his own with Off the Wall, and
Prince's animalsity can probably be traced to the end of

(42:09):
nineteen eighty two, when Thriller came out in December, just
two months after Prince's nineteen ninety nine came out, and
Prince probably should have taken that personally because Thriller crushed
everything under its boothill. But yeah, Michael Jordan Gift and
I took that personally. There was another incident that they

(42:29):
were There's James Brown concert in nineteen eighty three, and
James called Michael Jackson on stage and Michael did his
whole James Brown dance routine that had been beaten into
him by his father since childhood. And and then Michael
calls Prince up on stage and cruelly someone hands him
a left handed guitar, which is just you know, setting yourself,

(42:51):
setting up for failure, and then kind of does some
dancing and knocks or something on stage.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Oh he knocks over this ghy Ants street lamp prop
like overside. Have you ever seen this clip?

Speaker 3 (43:03):
No?

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I haven't. Oh please pull it up right, I can't.
How have you never seen this? I don't want to
say Prince sad you mean something. He's not even sad.
He just looks like he doesn't care. He's just like
all right, fine, like but then he would then he
would seethe later. There's a great Quincy Jones line in it.
Quincy claimed that Prince was so mad about this that

(43:25):
he then tried to run over Michael in the parking
lot with his limo, which is funny to me because
it presupposes Prince was either driving or had a driver
who would commit vehicular manslaughter of the biggest star in
the world at Prince's behest. I don't know which of
those two are funnier, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Michael Jackson loved this clip so much that he had
it on film and he would watch it at screenings
at his home when guests came over, and he would
laugh and just cackle about, to use his words, what
an ass Prince had made of himself.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
I can't believe you've never seen this. So that was
the background, that was the content.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yes, anyway, it would stand to reason that Prince maybe
wouldn't want to work with Michael, but Ken Craigan claimed
that Prince didn't come to the Wee of the World
session because he was nervous to work with other people.
Speaking to the Mirror, ken Craigan said, one of the
reasons Prince didn't turn up is because he always recorded
alone and not with an engineer. He would go into

(44:20):
the studio do his own engineering and record every instrument
and sing, and no one else would be there and
Lionel Richie said something similar during his appearance on Watch
What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. He claimed that Prince
would only sing on the track if he was alone
in a separate room, and that just wasn't in the
spirit of the event. However, Princess protege Wendy melvoyne, Are

(44:42):
you familiar with her?

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, she's the guitarist who did the Purple Rain intro live.
It was like her some inordinately short amount of time
in the band that she nailed that well.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
She offered a different reason. She told author Alan Light,
good guy friend of mine, for his book Let's Go
Crazy Prince in the making of Purple Rain, Prince felt
like that song was horrible and he didn't want to
be around all those mothers. It supposedly Prince sent his
manager to tell Quincy Jones that he wouldn't sing on

(45:15):
the song, but he'd play guitar, and Quincy's response, I
don't need him to play guitar, And in another retelling,
Prince himself called during the middle of the session from
whatever nightclub he was at, which I love, and was like, ouh,
play guitar if you want, and Quincy said the same thing.
I don't need you to do that. And yet another

(45:36):
petty story. There's a legend that Prince bailed on the
Wheel the World session because Bob Geldoff, who will see
is not especially chill, called him a creep and hurt
Prince's feelings Geldof.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's rich coming from a guy like Geldoff who looks
like a poster child for sleep deprivation. And inbreading what
was the.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
Russell brand joke? It makes sense that Gellup knows so
much about famines. He's been dining out on live aid
for thirty five years.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Yeah, So the world may ever know the truth of
why Prince didn't turn up at the Weird of the
World session. He never told his side of the story publicly. However,
we do know what he got up to that night
instead of singing on a charity record.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
I love this.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Prince's managers very wary of the bad press once it
got out that Prince refused to do this charity single,
so he started a rumor in the middle of the AMAS,
where he'd just given an amazing performance.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Mind you, that Prince was starting to come down with
something he was feeling sick.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Instead of going home, Prince went to a nightclub on
Sunset Strip called Carlos and Charlie's and while there, two
of the twenty bodyguards that accompanied him that night took
a swipe at a photographer and they were arrested in
the resulting scuffle. So instead of singing about feeding Africa,
Prince supposedly was busy bailing his two over zealous bodyguards

(46:58):
out of jail that night, and this incident was later
parodied on Saturday Night Live and a sketch featuring Hulk
Hogan and Mister T as bodyguards and Billy Crystal as
Prince Ooh singing a song called I Am the World,
which is that's medium funny?

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Was it Crystal and blackface like he loved doing? I
would assume so yes.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
In the end, Prince contributed the track to the full
length USA for Africa album that accompanied the release of
the We Are the World single, and so that was
kind of his way of doing something, and Huey Lewis
took his solo on We Are the World, which, as
we'll get to, I have thoughts about. My favorite anecdote

(47:42):
from the Michael Jackson Prince feud was from the rehearsals
for the This Is It tour in two thousand and nine,
the tour that Michael died in the middle of rehearsals
of the tour. Director Kenny Artaga was worried about Michael
because he wasn't sleeping, and Michael informed him that God
channel's ideas through him at night, which is why he
says awake and our Taga told him, you know that's cool, Michael,

(48:03):
but you really need the rest, and without missing a beat,
Michael replied, you'd understand if I'm not there to receive
these ideas, God might give them to Prince, so.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
To speed clearly or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Continued until Michael's dying day, but there was obviously a
tremendous amount of respect between these two men too. Before
the Purple Rain Tour, Prince went to see Michael Jackson
on the Victory tour with his brothers just to sort
of scope him out, and Michael Jackson went to all
four of Prince's shows at the Forum on the Purple
Rain tour, so clearly they were interested in what the
other were doing. And while we're here, we have to

(48:38):
talk about the Ping Pong incident. I know you love
the ping pong incident.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, they found themselves at the same recording studio. Prince
was working on his miss somewhat misbegotten follow up to
Purple Rain Under the Cherry Moon, Jackson on his perhaps
even more misbegotten film Captain EO. And there they started
playing ping pong and Prince, you know, Michael tremendous dancer,

(49:03):
tremendous physical person, physical singer and everything. But Prince was
like a high school basketball star yea, and apparently also
a vicious ping pong player. Jackson fumbled his paddle while
Prince was you know, going hard, and Prince supposedly yelled.
Did you see that he played like Helen Keller. I

(49:27):
would cry if Prince compared my ping pong playing to
the most famous blind person in American culture non Stevie
Wonder or Ray Charles Category.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Oh there's also the aggressive slap based story, which.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
I believe you have you have recounted on this podcast. No,
I've never on here. You know this story. You've told
you have told me this story. But that's why I
think it's It was on this podcast, but might have
just been on Twitter. I think it was just Yeah,
it was just you and I.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, will I Am was in Las Vegas and New
Michael was out there. I was like, Hey, I'm gonna
go see Prince night. Do you want to come? I
got good seats, like right in the front, and Michael's like,
oh okay, sure. And then Prince from the stage sees
that Michael is sitting right there in front, and he
walks off the stage, just gets right in his face
and plays what will I Am is described as aggressive

(50:16):
slat bass right in Michael's face. And the next day
at breakfast, Michael was talking with will Aam and he's like,
you see Prince, that Prince, he's always been a meanie
is the phrase he used.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Oh boy, Yeah, there's something so sad and Dekenzie and
about their respective ends, just like propped up by drugs
so that they could go out and keep doing this
thing that they'd been driven to by their distant fathers.
How much was Prince driven because obviously with Michael, with
Joe all the abuse as a kid that then I

(50:50):
don't think he was as bad. But I think Prince's
dad wasn't not confusing him with Billy Corgan or Billy Joel.
No Somebody's dad was like, you'll never be as good
a guitarist as me was I Mariah Carey's mom was, well, yes, Toler,
you will never be the singer that I will. Oh yes,
I was wrong. Prince's father said in nineteen ninety one

(51:11):
that he named his son Prince because he wanted Prince
to do everything I wanted to do. Prince was not
fond of his name and wanted people to instead call
him Skipper.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
You're kidding me as a kid or as a kid.
I don't know which is okay.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Three separate citations of that on Wikipedia Skipper Big Gilligan's
Island fan or apparently oh yeah, his father threw him out.
I forgot about that, right, yes, yes, yeah, oh boy.
But again there was mutual respect between Prince and Michael.
Following Michael Jackson's death in two thousand and nine, Prince

(51:48):
told the French newspaper Lemonde, We're always sad to lose
someone we love. As you meditate on that, we'll be
right back with more too much information after these messages.

(52:11):
If Prince really did have stage fright, though, he wouldn't
have been the only person who did. Bob Dylan, Uh
famously an interesting presence on stage, as an interesting presence
in the Weird of the World video, would you describe
him as looking confused, disassociating. Yeah, yeah, he was weirdly.

(52:36):
I want to say weirdly, but I guess maybe not.
It makes sense, but he was the person that everyone
else was like extremely jazz to see him, him and
Bruce and Ray, Yeah and Ray.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Diana Ross saw him and jumped into his lap, which
is which could not have gone well.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Dina Ross also greeted Stevie Wonder by approaching him and
stroking his braids. So she doesn't have boundaries except with
people under her who are not allowed to make eye
contact with her. Willie Nelson and Huey Lewis back to
Bob Dylan into a corner, both talking to him about golf.
What do we think about that Bob Dylan could not

(53:19):
give less of a shit, Huey Liwis.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
You can see it in the documentary. I think it
was in David Breskin's liner notes for this too. Huey
Lewis says to Bob, Wow, it's like you are the ball.
It's really true. Some shots man, you can just see them.
They happened for you and some in the middle of
the swing, you know it won't work, and they're talking like, Bob,
do you play golf, and Bob says, I heard you

(53:45):
have to study it, so no, wait, Bob, he looks
like he just wants to get out of the session
from the moment he steps in ALGIAU Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Went up to him and said, Bobby, in my own
stupid way, I just want to tell you that I
love you, and Bob Dylan just walked away from him,
prompting Algero to burst into tears and cry my idol
at a retreating Bob Dylan. Kim carn said he was
easy to talk to, though Bruce Springsteen, another super fan,

(54:19):
wrote in his memoir that Bob was the father of
my country. Uh, but you know, Bruce Springsteen's a chill guy.
He probably didn't lose it too publicly about that. In
the documentary, there's a ten minute clip of Stevie Wonder
at the piano trying to teach him his part because
Quincy had to clear the studio for Dylan to record

(54:41):
his part, and Stevie's at the piano trying to teach
Bob Dylan his part. Doing a Bob Dylan impression to
Bob Dylan, uh, and then he goes up to the
mic to try and record it. Quincy Jones and Lionel
rich You are looking him on, and Quincy says, just
do your thing, man, that's something nobody can do better
than you.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Well, that's what they were saying, because Bob apparently like
he was trying to be like a real singer with
when he was surrounded by all these other singers and
they're like, no, you don't say anything like Bob Dylan.
We want you to just sound like you. And that's
why they were all And there's just this incredible ten
minute clip. So this this We have the World documentary.
It's like an hour long. Ten minutes of that hour

(55:23):
our Bob Dylan failing to nail the one line he's
supposed to sing, and it's just him at the piano
with Quincy Jones and Stevie Wondering. Stevie Wonder Quincy Jones
are increasingly frantically singing their Bob Dylan impressions to him, trying.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
To get him to mimic his own voice.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
It's incredible, it's it's really sad, like you can see
him struggling.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
It's like the most human I've ever seen Bob Dylan. Yeah,
except forking himself about the last Waltz too, he like revoked. Yeah,
I thought the thing with the last Waltz he like revoked.
He said that it was okay to film, uh, and
then at the tail end end of it he was
like no, Like right before he went on stage, he
was like, don't film me, and they were like, I

(56:05):
think Scorsese or somebody was like, just do it anyway,
And it wasn't like when he got out on stage
he saw the cameras, it wasn't gonna stop. But I
think that's why he looks awkward in that. I mean,
other than the fact that he's Bob Dyla, he's a
incredibly weird dude.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, he looks really self conscious, which you know makes
sense considering that there are four video cameras filming him
as he's trying to sing and three still photographers.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
He says, I don't think that's any good at all.
You can erase that, and then he says he asked Quincy,
is that sort of it? Sort of like that, and
Quincy hugs him and says it's great, and Bob says, well,
if you say so, And.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
For the first time, we're making we're saving our own lives.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
It's jewe we make a life way just you and me.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
That's more buckwheat than they.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Should have given a harmonica solo. Actually, yeah, that's cool.
And upon receiving that compliment from Quincy Jones, Bob Dylan
smiled for the first time that night, and Springsteen, ever
the cheerleader, gets on the mic and says, you sounded fantastic.
Dylan later first thing he said when he got up

(57:15):
to the mic. Bob later said in an interview on
twenty twenty, people buying a song and the money going
to starving people in Africa, is you know, a worthwhile idea.
But I wasn't so convinced about the message of the song.
To tell you the truth, I don't think people can
save themselves. You know.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Was this in his Christian phase eighty five? That would
have been probably like right in transition, I oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Lionel said that Bob Dylan was the one he was
most nervous about actually showing up. He said, when Bob
says I'll be there, you have to say to yourself,
did he get the right day? The right time, but
Bob was one of the first people there. Steve Perry
of Journey was the first, which if there's anything Steve
Perry has, it's wanting to please energy and a tremendous one.

(58:01):
Michael was the second MJ and that led Quincy to
announce God is with us and Steve Perry hung his
head and the sad Walking Away music from Charlie Brown played.
But even Michael Jackson was nervous. When it came time
to take the group photo for the sleeve of the single,
which was going to be featured on the cover of

(58:22):
Time magazine, he was nowhere to be found, and according
to Ken Craigan, they found the King of Pop hiding
in the bathroom, curled up on the countertop because he
was so intimidated by the stars. Lindsay Buckingham, famously of Fleetwood,
Mac and Cocaine, ran into him in the bathroom, saying

(58:43):
it kind of freaked Michael out. He was quite nervous
just to be startled by someone walking in and I
just nodded my head. I'm imagining like super coked outs. Lindsey,
who does like the backing vocals on the end part
of the chain when they're doing running in the shadows
and he's like, run, run, Run, Run roun run run,
just like kicks the door open in the bathroom. He's
got its farmer hat on his little acoustic electric guitar,

(59:07):
frantically finger picking and screaming. And Michael Jackson, because he's
a wizard, let's curl up on the famica. Lindsay just
rails a huge line of coke and goes back in.
Billy Joel would remember. Michael Jackson is sort of a
bizarre presence in the studio, frequently wandering off to quote
a remote part of the studio with his makeup kit,

(59:28):
and he kept like putting his nose on because I
think the tip of his nose was kind of falling off,
and he kept dabbing at it with makeup or smearing
it with something that is so sad, my god. But
you know, MJ is pretty good spirits there. He's dancing,
he's laughing when he flubs a take. And he allowed
Quincy to call him their private nickname in public, smelly,

(59:51):
which came from their term for the a good funk
or good you know, good vibes on a track of
funky jam. Smelly jelly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
I also heard that it might possibly have been a
joke because Michael is very fastidious with his appearance and
very clean, and so that was Quincy's joke by calling
him smelly, because he was very much not so.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Some of the other stars were perhaps a little nervous
because they were cut off from the umbilicus of their
support staff, you know, the small army of personal assistants
and publicists and managers that were the lifeblood of any
I was gonna say of any celebrity, but especially celebrities
in the nineteen eighties. Uh, there's a strict policy against

(01:00:32):
allowing anyone into the main studio who wasn't personally involved
in the recording, except except Dunesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau. It
could be a thousand guests, Yeah, right, a thousand monkeys
with a thousand typewriters could not come up with the
name Gary Trudeau. Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Gary Trudeau though.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
First cartoonist the one A Pulitzer.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
He was doing two weeks worth of Dudes Mary's strips
about we are the World?

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Am I correct? Am I correct? In reading this?

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I think there was just like a farcical Daryl Hall
later told Esquire everybody usually walks around with their assistant
or they're entourage. But you had to walk in the
door yourself, just you and be in this room with
a lot of people like you, with your peers, many
of whom I had never met, and vice versa, they
had never met me. Thank you, Daryl, that is what
that phrase means. Uh, it was what's the word slightly disconcerting?

(01:01:29):
Two words. I'm a pretty self sufficient guy, but I'm
used to walking into a situation having some support around me.
Daryl Hall sucks great singer realized. I think I assume
this was a tough interview. Welly, he seems really full
of himself. Yeah, although there's supposedly isn't there like a
lost album that he did with Robert Fripp? Yes, yes

(01:01:52):
there is. Bat Whips the stars. Didn't know exactly who's
going to be there, and I don't know. It's kind
of a cute, kind of a first day of class vibes.
Billy Joel hugs Michael Jackson, Kenny Loggins hugged Bruce Springsteen,
Dinah Ross hugged Chila E. Bob Dylan hugged no one
except Quincy Jones. Daryl Hall added to Esquire, We're all like,

(01:02:16):
whoa what are we doing? Everybody had to figure out
how to relate to each other, so everybody started to
act like they were in eighth grade chorus. It was
the weirdest thing I'd ever experienced. All these superstars, whatever
you want to call them, we all turned into junior
high school kids and chorus, and Quincy became mister Jones.
That's how it shook out, laughing like kids. Paul Simon
walked in and asked where he could hang his coat.

(01:02:39):
All four foot eight of Paul Simon, they heard they
heard a meek squeaking and looked down. Kenny Rodg just
lifted up his foot and lifted up his big ass
cowboy boot. The rest of the friends and family were
sent to the Charlie Chaplin Memorials down stage next door,
watching the proceedings through huge video monitors, and it was

(01:03:01):
quite the ticket. Each artist was allowed to invite five people,
so the room was filled with five hundred of LA's
Glitziist Jane Fonda, Steve Martin, Dick Clark, Kareem abdul Jabar,
Sidney Poitier, Christy Brinkley, and Brooke Shields. Journalist David Breskin
described the opulence in his session notes. The normal home

(01:03:22):
of Soul Train and countless pop videotapings features couches, rugs,
more than twenty five tables with seatings of eight, two
bars serving wine and beer, three catering stations laid in
without mountains of food, one hundred and twenty five folding
chairs strategically placed before, five video monitors, and two huge
movie screens. Kenscha palms and Ficus benjamina, plus two dozen

(01:03:44):
flowering plants, azaleas and cyclomen. That's the most plants I've
ever had to name in a damn podcast episode. Nine
video games and a pool table for those who get bored.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
I just love that they taped Soul Train in the
same sound stage where Charlie Chaplin worked.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
What do you think the video game were? Pong Frogger, Tapper, Galagha,
dig Doug Donkey, Kong, Donkey kong Et, Bob Geldoff ruins everything.
They welcomed Bob into the studio, which is a mistake,
but only fair considering he was the man behind the

(01:04:20):
charity supergroup band Aid, which helped inspired the whole USA
for Africa thing God I hate Bob Geldoff. Bob not
known as being a kind of go with the flow,
sort of sit by the river kind of guy, nearly
torpedoed the vibes when he saw the massive spread of
food laid out in the adjacent green room. Someone had

(01:04:40):
donated it. According to afore mentioned journalist, David Preskins, account
several kinds of pasta, salad, tordelini, lasagna, something called baron
of beef. The hell's that mean? That's what you call
a Texas cattle rancher? What is a baron of beef?

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
A baron of beef originated when Henry the eighth was
served as spit roasted double surloin beef.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
So it's two cuts of surloin wore like stitch together.
He dubbed it sirloin the baron of beef. It was
sent making a joke and the borschbolt comedian potato skins,
parmesan chicken fruit, twelve hundred pounds of ice, two twelve
foot dessert buffets, and breakfast at three am.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
A bad look for a hunger single.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Fair enough, but Bob Geldoff thought that the producers had
spent money on this food instead of it being donated,
and started saying, you know, grabbed the mic in the
green room and started ranting, you people are here eating
all this food when there's people starving in Africa. When
he was doing band Aid, he went out and got

(01:05:49):
fast food for his crowd of assembled British A listers
and left that. Eventually someone was able to calm him
down and insist to him that they weren't partying and
that the food had been donated, but he was upset.
He was heard several times throughout the night muttering I've
never seen more millionaires in one room. Harry belle Fonte
made a strange comment which actually I respect quite a

(01:06:11):
bit in that night. He said, if a bomb hit
this place, the business would have a lot of catching
up to do. He's not wrong, No, he's not. To
kick off the session. Quincy Jones invited Geldoff to say
a few words, and Geldoff, reading the room, said.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Well, maybe to put you in the mood of the
song you're about to sing, which hopefully will save millions
of lives. I think it's best to remember that the
price of life this year is a piece of plastic
seven inches.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
Wide with a hole in the middle, and that I
think is an indictment of us. And I think what's
happening in Africa is a crime of historical proportions. And
the crime is at the Western world has.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Got billions of tons of grain bursting in its silas,
and we're not releasing it to people who are dying
of hunger. And I don't know if we in particular
can conceive of nothing. But nothing is not having a
cardboard box to sleep under a minus ten degrees. Nothing

(01:07:20):
is not having any drink to get drunk on, not
having water. And you walk into one of the cargaged
iron huts and you see meningitis, the malaria and typhoid
buzzing around in the air, and you see dead bodies
lying side by side with the live ones. And on
a good day you can only see one hundred and

(01:07:41):
twenty people die slowly in front of you, and some
of the camps you see fifteen bags of flower for
twenty seven and a half thousand people.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
And it's that that we're here for. And I don't
want to bring anybody down, but maybe it's the best
way of making what you really feel, wire really here tonight,
come out through this song. So thanks a lot, everybody, let's.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Help worse, and so the session begins.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
The musical track had already been recorded about a week
before the sessions. Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, and
Lionel Richie went to Kenny Rodgers private studio, a personal
studio Lion's Share Recording in Hollywood and recorded the backing
track of the song. Thirteen year old Emmanuel Lewis from
TV's Webster was also there at Michael Jackson's insistence, and

(01:08:30):
the pair had a playful fight shooting popcorn kernels at each.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Other in the middle of the session, and Emmanuel Lewis
sat on Michael's lap.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
During playback and they shared grapes there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
It is Seriously, that's the worst thing I've ever heard
in my damn life. Anyway, Emmanuel Lewis was there, yeah,
eating grapes from Michael Jackson's lab, one of many young
boys who would eat fruit from Michael Jackson's lap throughout
the years. Gross. Ah, that's so weird. Why did you
put that image of my head? Dude? I should have

(01:09:02):
sent you into a vocal booth alone to record this. God,
I have to think about that. That's living in my
head right now. Why grapes?

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Somebody sent out for a banana too? Ah yeah. To
record the instrumentation for We Are the World, they use
some of the same musicians that Quincy Jones had employed
on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller, including Greg
phill Gaines on keyboard, John Robinson on drums he's the
drummer in Rufus, Michael Bodeker on synthesizers, Plio da Costa

(01:09:37):
on percussion, Lewis Johnson, who's the basis for Brothers Johnson,
Steve Picaro from Toto Toto of Africa Fame on synthesizers,
and David pich on synthesizers as well. Not as excited
about him as I was about the guy from Toto.
Michael Jackson and Lionel Richard recorded a guide vocal on
the backing track, which they sent to all the artists

(01:09:59):
to help them in the song, and Quincy Jones mailed
numbered cassettes to all the participants along with a note
that read, in part, my fellow artists, in the years
to come, when your children ask what did mommy and
daddy do for the war against famine, you can proudly
say this was your contribution.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Ah, how many children, how many rich Nepo babies asked
themselves that what did mommy and daddy do in the
war against famine?

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Well, actually, I'm sure their parents never shut up about it.
I'm sure they never had to ask.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Actually a son name was black Ops and the Congo
would you like see my necklace of ears? Were you
win the ship? I don't know why I find this
so funny.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Ken Craigan's organization called the FedEx president personally and got
them to agree to send these forty five cassette tapes
out to the celebrities at no charge. So that's like
like three hundred bucks right there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
I said Jesus to do this today and wouldn't get
there in time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
FedEx agreed, but they refused any offer of credit because
they were worried if word got out that everyone would
call and be like, yeah, can you send this for free?
It's it's for charity, but yeah. Despite all this effort
of making this demo cassette and sending it out and
even getting the fee waived by the FedEx president himself, most.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Of the celebrities didn't take time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
To listen to the cassette and the first time they
heard the song We Are the World was when they
got to the studio, which once again they couldn't be
artist to do the bare minimum the recording. Yes, the
recording of the vocal parts began a little after nine
pm on the night of January twenty eighth. Michael Jackson

(01:11:51):
did his parts first while most of the people were
still at the AMAS across town, and he and Quincy
Jones debated until the very last minute about singing you
and I or you and Me, and they decided that
you and Me was more soulful and country like, so
they went with that, and then by around ten thirty
the full session was underway and Quincy Jones kicked things
off by announcing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
Okay, let's start chopping wood.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
And they did the big choir session first because they
wanted to stop people from bouncing after they record of
their solo part, which is smart. So much of the
session or just studies and like you know, group dynamics
and psychology. It's like when you're you're a multi band
show and your band goes first, then you just leave
right after, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
After, Well, sometimes you can't if you have to borrow
their amp oh so yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
After Bob Geldof's introductory speech about the horrors of famine,
everyone was handed a lyric sheet and a foldable chart
of the music and guided to their bit of tape
on the floor with their name scrawled on it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
And I love this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Before the session began, Quincy Jones decided where everyone would stand,
working it all out in cards like a wedding planner
doing a seating chart, and he put the tape on
the floor with each singer's name on it, and in
his autobiography explained, we didn't want to encourage decision making
during the session, any decision where they would stand, what
they would sing, when they would sing. We had to

(01:13:16):
think it through and spell it all out. Over the years,
I'd learned the hard way that once a group this
size and the stature gets involved in making decisions, you're
in trouble again. I mean being a producer. Oh not
much of being a producer is about just like being
a psychologist, you know. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, But still,
despite all this planning that went into the seating arrangement

(01:13:36):
or standing arrangement, I should say thanks to Quincy Jones,
not everyone was happy with their space.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
On the bleachers. Diana Ross, who was basically like an
aunt to Michael Jackson dating back to nineteen sixty nine
when Motown and all their press releases claimed that she
had discovered the Jackson Five, complained to Michael that she
didn't like her spot, and Michael relayed this to Quincy,
who moved her to a prime space the front row
between Michael and Stevie. Wonder, God, she's the worst. It

(01:14:06):
wasn't that thing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
Like after Michael Jackson died, it came out that he
was gonna, like if his mother had died before him,
he was gonna leave his kids to Diana Ross. And
Diana Ross apparently like had no idea, Like that was
news to her. It was like no, but she was
the legal, like the legal guardian of Michael's kids if
his mother was incapacitated. Hmmm, Like could we all just

(01:14:30):
do that? Like if I could I just like send
them to me? No, I mean like just on like my.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Will, but like you know, in the event of my death,
Diana Ross is the legal guardian of my children.

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
And then what if we all just agreed to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Do that to send them to Diana Ross, Yeah, or
her estate like care of if we had more cloud,
I would execute a viral trend of getting Diana Ross's
She's still alive, right, She's still alive? Yes, okay, of
getting people of a flood of paperwork going to Diana

(01:15:07):
Ross's office, thousands of people signing away their children to well, no,
she didn't know it until after Michael died.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
It was like you just like in your will, just
like you would think that they would have had a
discussion about it, but apparently they never did. And she
just discovered that had Michael's mother died, she would have
been next up to care for his kids. And she
was like, that's news to me. And Katherine Jackson still alive.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
That's a great premise for a children's movie, is children,
So were showing up at Diana or horror movie? It's
good set up. It's a children's movie, horror movie, children
showing up at Diana Ross's house unsolicited.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
National lampoon, Diana Ross vacation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
My god, you're gonna have a hard time editing this.
We're like, what not even halfway through? Oh? Thank god? Okay,
we are Oh are we?

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
The twenty one soloist in order were Lionel Richie Stevie Wonder,
Paul Simon, Kenny Rodgers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, Billy Joel,
Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Diane Warwick, Willie Nelson, Algera, Bruce Springsteen,
Kenny log And, Steve Perry, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper,
Kim Carnes, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles, and the A

(01:16:21):
List backing choir of twenty three, by my account, was
filled out by the likes of Bette Midler, who didn't
get a solo, Smokey Robinson, who didn't get a solo,
The Pointer Sisters, Okay, understand, LaToya Jackson, Understand LaToya remainder,
the remainder of the Jackson five Waylon Jennings, Harry Belafonte, Shannett.

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):
Maybe she was too young. I don't want to know
she was still doing would have come out, Oh yeah, yeah,
you're right. I don't know. Maybe she was.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Harry Belafonte, Lindsay Buckingham, Jeffrey Osborne.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
I don't know who that is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Sheila E presumably filling the Prince quotient, John Oates, who
did not get a solo, even though Daryl Hall did,
and you even get to stand next to Daryll, which
I find really funny. I had Huey Lewis's backing band,
the News and we can't forget band Aid architect Bob Geldoff.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
Yeah, poor John Oates.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
He talked about his solo snow but an interviewed with Esquire,
he said, I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed.
I was obviously not worthy, but at the same time,
it was cool when Darryl and I performed together. Daryl's
the lead singer, He's the guy. He's got an amazing voice,
and of course he deserved it the solo. Quincy and
Lionel and Michael knew exactly what they were doing. When
you're dealing with those three guys, you're dealing with guys

(01:17:38):
who really know how to.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Make a record. That's very generous of them. I feel like.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
I'd like to do a little study of who got
a solo versus who got stuck on the chorus, because
this is just wrong to me. Bette Midler and Smokey
Robinson didn't get a solo, but Huey Lewis did, and
they let him bring all of the news.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Hey, they're in that contract you signed for Hugh, you
get the news. Like the shirt says, no Huie, no news.
No thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
Heigel for our band as a uniform, the only uniform
we ever had.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
Bought us all that T shirt right before the pandemic
and we never got to show that night. Now you know,
I'm really sad.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Lionel and Quincy Jones worked out who was going to
sing all the solo spots, and as co writer, Lionel
Richie got first DIBs on the opening line, which he
understandably took because he wanted to get it out of
the way first. But because the parts were so brief,
they decided you need to have a really identifiable voice.
So that was part of the logic that went into
thinking of who gets a solo and to achieve the

(01:18:42):
harmonic vocal overlap of the voices because the lines, they
would sing parts of it together just so.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
It all flowed nicely.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Lionel, Quincy Jones and vocal ranger Tom Baylor worked hard
to pair off people who sang in the same approximate range,
and Baylor worked really hard.

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
He did his homework.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
He bought several dozen records made by each of the
artists and spent days leading up to the sessions just
listening to them over and over again and try to
get a feel for all the artists in their range.
And for Baylor this was the opportunity of a lifetime
to pick and choose who sang what I mean, it
was just the ultimate chorus. But for Quincy Jones it
was stressful. He likened it to quote putting a watermelon

(01:19:21):
in a coke bottle. In other words, too much stuff,
not enough space. And I'm sure he was worried about
offending people like, you know, sorry, you don't get a solo,
bet Miler, But Huey Lewis needs his space.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
I don't know why I'm taking that. I love Huey Lewis, yeah,
and he does a great job on it too, I know,
but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Smokey Robinson's lack of a solo was really puzzling to me.
One version I heard of it why he doesn't have
one is that Smokey wasn't even part of the initial
invitees and he just showed up, and obviously no one
wanted to be the one to kick out Smokey Robinson,
so he stayed. The other version I've heard is that
Smokey was slated for a solo but then was called
way on a family medical emergency before his Parker recorded.

(01:20:03):
Considering they recorded all the solo spots between like four
and eight in the morning, I'm guessing that isn't the case.
But yeah, allegedly, Huey Lewis's solo line but if you
just believe, there's no way we can fail was originally
set aside for Prince, which to me just makes it

(01:20:24):
all the more puzzling that he got a solo, because
that was like a game time call. Somebody looked around
the room with the line of talent and pointed at
him and said, you're up. Sorry, Bet and Smoky.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
So I like your fixation that Bette Midler like Smoky
I get. But oh, the divine miss m it's a
great singer. You should have given it to Lindsey Buckingham.
Oh well, yeah, it's got a distinctive voice, that's true. Yeah,
Waylon Jennings. Can you imagine, Oh my god, he probably

(01:20:57):
would have dropped a slur. We'll talk more about that later. Witalan,
that's not even on the lyric sheet. Just already drunk.
Uh yeah, Huey Lewis. He does a great job. He
knocks out of the park.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
He's also one of the nicest guys I've ever interviewed,
so i'll I should stop slagging him off. He had
a cute thing to say about the Weird of the
World experience. It was an amazing night.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Imagine meeting all those people since I'm talking to the
av Club in twenty twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:21:28):
Most people don't get to meet those people in their career.
Just to all be there in the same room, it
was fantastic. I got to hang out with Bruce Springsteen
a little bit. I haven't seen Bruce Springsteen in ten years, probably,
but I know that we're pwells in a way because
of that we shared that experience together. I don't know
if that makes you friends, Hueye, but.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
It's so much more adorable that it's like completely one sided.
Like if you guys, Bruce would probably be nice about it,
but he'd be like, no, I don't know him, and
Juey Lewis is like we are brothers, bonded and blood.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
You'll notice speaking of people that seem slightly out of
place in the USA for Africa lineup, that among the
musical icons is comedian Dan Aykroyd. For years, I assumed
he'd been invited in the wake of his Blues Brother's success,
which earned him a number one album that kind of
made him an honorary rock star. But apparently that's not true.

(01:22:21):
He basically wandered into the session. He told New Hampshire
magazine quote, my father and I were interviewing business managers
in LA and we walked into this office of a
talent manager and I realized we were in the wrong place.
I was looking for a money manager, not a talent manager.
I had managed myself at the time and always have.

(01:22:42):
But the manager, presumably Ken Craigan, said so, as long
as you're here, would you like to come and join this?
We're the world thing? And I thought, how do I
fit in here? Well, we did sell a few million
records with the Blues Brothers and my other persona I
am a musician, so I showed up and was a
part of it. But it was totally by accident, and
I love this. A funny moment occurred later that night

(01:23:02):
when Dion Warwick heard unexplained voices in her headphones, which
well the remains of another audio track that weren't supposed
to be there, and it's a phenomenon in studio parlance
called ghost voices. And when she said, oh, I got
ghost voices, Kenny Rodgers chimed in who you Gonna call?
Which is a medium funny Ghostbusters reference.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
Someone had to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Yeah, Sadly Dan Ackroyd was out of the room at
the time and missed it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
I wish Steve Martin would have come in with his banjo,
his banjo and his bunny ears on. Yeah. Unfortunately, many
of the involved artists hated this song, which is fair
good reason. It's not a good song. But the day
that they according to Ken Craig, in the day before
they were set to record, one globally renowned rock group

(01:23:47):
that he refused to name, threatened to pull out because
they thought it would harm their street cred. Who do
we think that was, Jordan? I mean, the only group.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
In here, well, there's the Pointer Sisters. They're not a
rock group though, and he specifically said up notes is
the news.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Oh hmm or Hall of Notes? I guess do we
think which of those two men, those two groups do
you think were more desirous of protecting their quote quote
unquote street crib well, I would say hall of O.
It's but they're not a rock group. Yeah, that's sad
about the news. Here about the news. You hear about

(01:24:28):
the news. Ultimately, Bruce Springsteen, as he often does, save
the day by telling this band, I didn't come out
here to walk away. I came here to save lives.
I came here to feed people. I'm gonna be there.
And sure enough, the next day everyone showed up except Prince.
Except for Prince who did not care about feeding people. Uh,

(01:24:50):
he just cared about beating Michael Jackson and bailing Is
two of his twenty bodyguards out of jail for manhandling
a photographer. Billy Joel's you know, the cute atmosphere in
the studio, but there there was people immediately started trying
to play uh producer, you know, and and Billy Joel
later said at Test Squire, I don't think anybody liked

(01:25:12):
this song. There was a lot of side eye. There
were a lot of people looking at at the other person.
And I remember Cindy Lauper saying it sounds like a
Pepsi commercial. There were a couple of chuckles and a
few grunts. Uh, that was all coming from Bob Dylan.
Actually that was pretty much the consensus. I think, yeah,

(01:25:33):
there's choice. We're making the Pepsi slogan at the times,
choice of a new generation. Both line of Richie and
Michael Jackson were Pepsi shill men. Billy Pepsi sent Michael
Jackson's hair on fire, he sure did, and started him
on his painkiller journey. So in a way, Pepsi killed
Michael Jackson saved a untold number of African children. But

(01:25:58):
so really with the butterfly effect on this, yeah, really
quite When Lady Justice takes both of those things into
her scales.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
It's the Egyptian Heart and the fellor it's Mummuary on TFI.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
Wow, weird. Now entering It's Proud fourth month, we are
tunneling up our own asks for this one. Joel told Esquire.
I looked at these lyrics. Well, yes, Joel, as you
mentioned earlier, did not like the song and hated the
lyrics that he was given. He looked at them and said,
that's what I get the truth. And it was kind

(01:26:37):
of a low part too. I think a lot of
people were trying to be virtuosos when it came to
their part. I know Cindy did. Cindy jumped into this
whole other octave. But she can do that. She's a
great singer. I think everyone wanted to put a little
filigree on it, so they jumped out. I looked at
my part and I thought, don't even try, just hit
the mark and shut up. It wasn't a time to
show off for me. He is correct, Cyndi lauper Cort

(01:27:02):
has four bars and in the second one skyrockets up
an octave, and immediately after Kim Carnes sings her line
going into the refrain, does another skyrocketing like vocal ad lib.
It's amazing. It's so disrespectful, I said earlier. It was
like Alan Iverson stepping over someone he knocked over on

(01:27:23):
the way to his zoo. On the way to the hoop.
During one one through, Billy took a moment to walk
over to the piano in the studio and play the
song himself, confirming that it was in the key of E,
and then he said, E I hate E snakes. Why
why did it have to be a KIV is a
hard it's hard, well, it's tricky for men. That's why

(01:27:45):
a lot of bands tuned down a half step or
a whole step or whatever, because for men typically that
vocal range is like, that's why a lot of blues
stuff is in open D tuning, because it's a tricky range.
For men, you can't always take up the octave. It's
just a I understand Billy where he's coming from. From that, still, though,
I don't think he got the short end of the
stick lyrically, I believe that went to Willie Nelson, who

(01:28:09):
was given the line as God has shown us by
turning stones to bread, which I don't think is in
the Bible.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
No, that's a misquoted Bible line.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
Yeah, is it? The beating the swords into plowshares? Is
that what they were going for? And they just didn't
bother to cross reference it. I think they just I
think Lionel Richie wanted to get out of Michael's room
before the snake came back, and they just just I
think it's right. Perhaps that's why a confused really stumbles
into that line a full half beat late. It's like, wait,

(01:28:42):
is this right? Sidney Lauper showed up as Cyndi Lauper. Yeah, well,
what do you think of Cyndey Lopper? I love Claer. Yeah. Yeah,
she's a tremendous vocalist. She's really interesting as far as
the she's this weird lineage of like New York songwriter

(01:29:03):
like that that she's so unusual, has like old like
vaudeville piano on it, but she's this new wave figure.
She's got tremendous vocal range. Yeah. Cyndy Lapper Whips Dude.
One of my favorite Prince covers too, When you Were Mine.
She's a great cover when you Were Mine on there,
but you know, she showed up with enough jewelry on

(01:29:23):
it that it up playback by banging against the mic
stand and had to have it removed piece by piece,
take by take. Cindy Cristy was like, wait, what's that jangle?
We keep getting that? Is there like somebody playing the tambourine,
Like what is that? And then they find like, oh,
I can't do it. Cyndey Opper voice, it's my bracelets. Yeah,

(01:29:47):
it's a Betty Boop voice essentially. Yeah, she's like, I
RL Betty Boom. Quincy Jones seems to harbor a grudge
about this. He was told Vulture in twenty eighteen she
had a manager come over to me and say the rockers,
I don't like the song. I know how that works.
We went to see Springsteen, Hollanos, Billy Joel and all
those cats, and they said we love the song. Well,

(01:30:07):
Billy Joel didn't. So I said to Lauper, okay, you
can just get your show over with and leave. And
she was fitting up every take because her necklace or
brace that was rattling in the microphone.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
It was just her that had a problem. Maybe that's
the one Ken Craigan's talking about. And he thought she
was in a band or something playing fast than loose
with the term band.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
It was not the end of her wardrobe problems, she
later told Interview Magazine. When I finally got there to
the session, I had a jacket on an Italian general's
jacket with tails, and I see Michael Jackson's jacket this
was in his quasi military phase, and I said, oh no,
So I took it off. Also because I had moossom
that was flaking all over the jacket, so it looked

(01:30:49):
like I had yellow dandruff. I was standing next to
Billy Joel, who was gracious, and Bruce Springsteen, what what
the hell is that quote?

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
She didn't go out of her way to say that
Bruce Springsteen was also gracious, which leads me to believe
that something happens which I don't want to think about.

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
I love the idea of Bruce Springsteen breaking character for
like the first time in his life and looking down
at Cindy and being like, girl, you are a mess.

Speaker 5 (01:31:17):
Just like something sweet in this Something the documentary, She's sweet,
just something extremely bitchy Cindy does, despite murdering her, come
to the rescue of kim Betty Davis as Carnes, who
had a sinus infection, struggled to sing her sign part
and she was too embarrassed to admit this to Quincy
or afraid, and she confessed this to Cindy, who stepped

(01:31:42):
all over her on the track.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
Carnes later said, Cindy was incredible. I said, oh my gosh,
this is too high for me and I've got such
a cold, and she said, let's figure it out, which
in the final product means let me step all over
your face. She's holding her up vocally. No, no, she
does not. You hold someone up vocally by going under
them or doubling them. You don't immediately say watch how

(01:32:05):
high I can sing Sickoh, oh, you have a sinus infection.
Check this shit out. Come on. And I say this
as a cide laupera fan. Uh, but Cindy was kind
of the scrappy little underdog on the sessions. Most people
in the room were rooting. For barely two years earlier,
she'd been playing holiday inns. You know. She almost lost

(01:32:27):
her voice at one point too. She was singing in
a band called Blue Angel, and I think she like
blew out her vocal chords for that. When that band
was they wanted to sign her without that band, and
she refused. If memory serves correctly, she wanted to sign
the whole band, and then that backfired later on when
they broke up. But she told journalist David Breskin, who
was there for the session, she said, I'm a little

(01:32:47):
blown away. Can you believe you're sitting in a room
with Ray Charles playing the piano. I mean, just start
off with that. It's good to get everybody off their
rumps because a lot of people have so much and
some people have nothing. So it makes you think every
time you eat something and don't finish it. I struggled,
I starved. I was in the hospital twice for malnutrition,
once for maultnutrition and dehydration because I had no food

(01:33:08):
to eat just this year. I thought about where I
came from, and I can't believe it. It's a very real
thing to be hungry. I think how hungry I was.
But I would maybe get to eat something during the day.
If I didn't eat one day, I'd eat the next day.
But these people, they ain't eaten for weeks. Just imagine
that all in that Brooklyn Honk.

Speaker 1 (01:33:27):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more, too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
God, this is so tim funny. Another one point of
contention during the recording process was Michael Jackson's use of
nonsense syllables.

Speaker 1 (01:33:53):
Jordan remind me what those syllables were, shalem sha, linge, bob.

Speaker 2 (01:34:00):
And possibly others felt that those syllables somewhat undermined the
seriousness of the undertaking, possibly could even be construed as offensive,
being as that they are just gibberish that vaguely sounded
African to the so in vogue doesn't line in all
night long? Isn't there like there's like a quasi African?
Is that actually African I that I don't know All

(01:34:24):
Night Long h the two genders of the lyrics in
All Night Long? Uh in my Google search from Hollywood
dot Com. Richie did such a good job that Africans
often compliment him on his Swahili. They come up and say, Lionel,
it's amazing. A couple more search results down. Lionel has
admitted that certain African lyrics in the song were actually

(01:34:46):
made up. Jury's still out on that one, anyway, h Lionel.
Richie insisted that Jordan, what was that again? Shalem shlinge
was an actual Swahili phrase, It is not Stevie Wonder,
as only Stevie Wonder could called a friend in Africa
from the studio, and suggested replacing those with an actual

(01:35:10):
Swahili phrase that translated was we are the children, we
are the world. This is at which point tensions boiled over.
The cameras were shut off and Ray Charles reportedly shouted,
say what it's three o'clock in the damn morning Swahili.
I can't even sing in English no more? And Waylon

(01:35:33):
Jennings left the studio muttering, no good old boy sings
in Swahili, which God that sounds racist and a count's
various whether or not he even came back. None of
the group photos show him in it, but he does
have a credit as part of the chorus. And of
course Bob Geldoff with a finger in the air saying,

(01:35:55):
actually Ethiopians don't speak Swahili, and it would be best
to sing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
What sing for the people who've got money to give
ah rather than people who are starving, because you are
singing to people who you were making an appeal to
those people and not to the people who are actually starving, which.

Speaker 2 (01:36:17):
God, I hate you. What a wet fart of a
human being. Aljirou came up with one World, Our World,
which got modified to one World Our Children. Tina Turner,
so tired she is visibly singing with her eyes closed,
said I like Shalombetter, who cares what it means. Tina

(01:36:39):
had a headache that night and her duet partner Billy Joel,
who is himself getting over the flu, told her that
he had an aspirin in his pocket. She said, no,
I don't take that. I only use homeopathic. Billy Joel replied,
I don't know what that is, but I ain't got
any Eventually, Ray Charles tired of the debate and announced
ring the bell, Quincy, ring the bell translation the fight

(01:37:02):
is over. And in the end they went with the
English line one world, our children, so let's start giving.
Oh you got to do the Ray Charles sections. You
do it. You love Billy Joel more than I do
as much as I love Raychrol.

Speaker 1 (01:37:16):
That is true, that is true. I love Ray Charles.
In this hole we are the world saga. Lionel richiegu
has called him the most popular guy in the room.
Bruce Springsteen was probably a close second, and many of
the participants in the session didn't know ahead of time
that Ray Charles would even be there.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Billy Joel, who'd.

Speaker 1 (01:37:34):
Flown in from New York that morning and was still
wearing his winter coat that night, couldn't get over it
because Ray Charles was just his ultimate hero. He wrote
New York State of Mind in an attempt to emulate him,
and when Ray Charles arrived, Billy Joel exclaimed, that's like
the Statue of Liberty walking in and he was visibly
shaking when Quincy Jones introduced him to Ray and he said, Ray,

(01:37:54):
this is the guy who wrote New York state of mind,
and when Billy explained that this song was an oma
to him, they struck up a lasting friendship and within
a year they recorded a duet together called Baby Grand which,
despite my love of both these artists, I had never
heard until earlier today.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
And it's actually really good, and the videos really so.
The video is adorable. It just opens with the two
of them singing side by side and Ray Charles like
ad libbing around a very sincere Billy Joel's It's incredible.
It's so adorable anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
And Ray inducted Billy Joel into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
So that's they love that. I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:32):
I love when artists get bigged up by their heroes.
They think that's the sweetest thing. Bruce Preestein also compared
Ray Charles to a landmark, compared him to the Washington Monument.
But Ray Charles himself had a special kinship with Willie Nelson.
He and Willy kept ducking out to Willie's notorious tour bus,
which they parked around back behind the studio and yeah,

(01:38:55):
I know, and during their other tet tet, Willie Nelson
recalled telling Ray wouldn't it be nice if he did
something for the people in our own country, which planted
the seeds for farm aid, which continues to this day.
But these sessions for we of the world meant a
lot to Ray Charles. As he'd been to Africa and
witnessed the effects of the famine firsthand.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
He knew all.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Too well that thousands would die that very night while
they were singing. And as he told journalist David Breskin
during the session, I put my hands on these children
and their skin feels like cellophane on bone. You have
to feel that, man, That's unreal stuff. I ain't talking
about skin, I'm talking cellophane on bone. And Ray truly

(01:39:37):
he brought that sense of gravitas and seriousness to the session,
in addition to the.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Levity that he also displayed.

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
And you know, if Quincy Jones was the producer of
the record, Ray Charles was sort of the band leader.
John Oates remembered Ray as being the only one in
the room who could pull rank and keep everyone in line.
He said, Ray Charles, being who he was, commanded a
certain def and said respect from everyone, even though he
didn't assert himself in any weird way. He was just
standing in the middle doing his part. Lionel, Michael and

(01:40:07):
Quincy were running the show. It was their song, their production,
and everyone's very respectful trying to make it happen. There
were moments when people and I won't name any names
because it isn't worth it, and the chorus started to
put their producers hats on. They started to say, well,
what if we did this, what if we did that?
And coming in with their ideas, it was obvious that
it was a complicated thing to pull off in general,
and having too many cooks in the stew would be

(01:40:29):
a giant catastrophe. Ray every once in a while would
just pipe up, come on, hey, let's go listen to Michael.
Let's get this thing done. He was there to sing,
and he sensed that it could go south very quickly.
He commanded a lot of respect, and I thought that
was very cool. And Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, they
go way back to the clubs in Seattle back in
the forties. They met when Quincy was fourteen and Ray

(01:40:51):
was sixteen, and Ray called Quincy sixty six and Quincy
called Ray sixty nine. Those were their nicknames, and I
I don't even want to know.

Speaker 2 (01:41:02):
You know why they called his backup singers the Raylettes, right, No,
because he had to let Ray.

Speaker 1 (01:41:08):
I'm picking up on the context, but I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
He had a gang of all female backing singers called
the Rays, and to become a Raylette you had to
let Ray. The implication is that true. I've heard I
think it might even be in Ray in Ray Jesus,
what do you have to do to get the nickname

(01:41:31):
sixty nine? Well, what is sixty six then? But stuff? Uh,
I don't want to know.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
Even though there was just a few years apart, Quincy
always felt that Ray was much more mature because he
had his own place when he was a teenager and
he had two girlfriends, which Quincy was very impressed by
because he would be And Quincy was also very impressed
with Ray Charles because he overcame his adversity his blindness
to be come one hell of a musician. Speaking to
GQ in twenty eighteen, which is also known in Quincy's

(01:42:06):
world as the Troubled Era, Quincy had this to say
about Ray. He was the most independent blind man you
could ever witness. He'd go cross street lights, go to
the supermarket shop count has changed with no help, no
damn Kynes and no cups, nothing like that. His mother
wouldn't let him do it, and the only time he
got blind was when the girls were around and he
start walking in the wall so they'd feel sorry for

(01:42:28):
him and help him.

Speaker 2 (01:42:30):
Stevie Wonder took a similar.

Speaker 1 (01:42:31):
Approach in life and took great delight in messing with
people by proving that he was far more able than
he seemed. He famously, when he was on tour, would
memorize the layout of the lobby of the hotel they
were staying at and then just walk around, you know, unassisted, perfectly,
making it seem like he knew exactly where he was.

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):
Going, but you know he did.

Speaker 1 (01:42:53):
And there was a great moment during the Wheel of
the World session when Ray Charles asked where the bathroom was,
and sure enough Stevie was like, oh, yeah, don't sorry,
I know, I'll show you, and he led him down
the hallway to the toilet, the blind, literally leading the blind.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
I guess he must have. I mean, he must have
memorized the floor plan like he used to do in
the hotels, right, Yeah, probably, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:14):
Quincy Jones he didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Exactly have it easy either, though in fact his upbringing
was I would argue maybe the most Dickensian of anyone
in the Wheel of the World session, aside from maybe
Tina Turner. I know this because I just wrote his
premature obituary for People magazine. If people know what that is,
they pre bit. If the bank obitu yeah, pre bit.
If the bank them in advance. For artists of a

(01:43:38):
certain age, let's have them on hands.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
Hope.

Speaker 1 (01:43:39):
I'm not giving away any secrets that they don't want
out there anyway. Quincy Jones he was born in Chicago's
notorious Bronzeville neighborhood, where his father was a carpenter who
worked for the city's most notorious gangsters. Dead bodies were
a frequent sight in his childhood, and he recalled one
hanging from a telephone pole with an ice pick through
its neck. His mother, Sarah, was prone to erratic behavior,

(01:44:04):
like suddenly heaving Quincy's birthday cake onto the back porch
in the middle of his fifth birthday celebration, and Jones
would remain haunted by the memory of her being taken
away from his home in a strait jacket when he
was a boy. And also I don't even know if
I can read this. And also of the time he
visited her in the psych ward only to find her
eating her own fecal matter. Quincy Jones, Ladies and gentlemen.

(01:44:26):
After his mom was institutionalized, Quincy was sent to live
in a Louisville shotgun shack with his grandmother, a former slave,
who taught him to catch rats that she would fry
them for dinner. And he reunited with his father once
he remarried, and the family was relodicated to Seattle.

Speaker 2 (01:44:43):
Where he would meet Ray Charles.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):
But his abusive stepmother made life at home hell. She
refused to call Quincy by his name until he was
fifty seven.

Speaker 2 (01:44:51):
He was always Jones boy.

Speaker 1 (01:44:54):
In other words, she wouldn't call him by his name
until after he made We Are the World. And I
guess she used to beat him regularly. Then there was
the time in the seventies when the blood vessels in
his brain versed. So yeah, Quincy Jones, hell of a life.

Speaker 2 (01:45:10):
Hmm. But the sessions that wasn't all bad. It wasn't
all but the session. Let's look on.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
Let's look on the bright side here. Despite Bob Geldof's
little outburst. The sessions were, for the most part, light.
There was one playful moment when the crowd broke into
a spontaneous version of Harry Belafonte's Do or the Banana
Boat Song, which is a fitting tribute to the guy
who sort of started the whole venture, and also, as
Harry noted, the song is about a boat that carries food,

(01:45:40):
so again it's a fitting song. Billy Joel later said,
there was a table piled up with cold cuts, sandwiches
and stuff Bruce Bruce Springsteen, and I kept wandering over
to this daily table, hitting on a beer or a sandwich.
It wasn't like church, you know, and I love this.
Billy Joel managed to sneak his fiance, model Christie Brinkley,

(01:46:00):
and to introduce her to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon,
presumably still trying to make up for the fact that she.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
Was way out of his league. Didn't he also date
like El McPherson too, Yeah, yeah, I just love the
fact that he picked like. He didn't introduce her to
chiseled out of Bruce Bruce that jawline, or like even
Jerry and Darryl Hall, like any of the other alpha men.
He was found the two nebishier guys in the room

(01:46:27):
and was like, this is my wife. He's the only
two men in here shorter than me. Oh adorable.

Speaker 1 (01:46:34):
There's a great story where Bruce Springsteen drank a Budweiser
and left the can on the risers where they were
all standing, and Michael Jackson's personal photographer, who was on
hand because of course Michael brought his own photographer, spotted
it and suggested that Michael pose with it, thinking that
it would be really funny to see, you know, squeaky
clean Michael Jackson with a Budweiser can, and Michael initially

(01:46:55):
refused because he said it would just be bad for
his image, but the photographer was like, Oh, come on,
who's ever gonna find out?

Speaker 2 (01:47:00):
Please, It'll be funny.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
And then a few days later, this photo made it
into the New York Post and the photographer had a
toll melt down because he was trying to figure out, like,
who leaked this image? Like Michael I talked to Michael
into taking this photo for fun, and now it's in
the paper, and you know, he clearly didn't want it
out there. Eventually he learned that Michael did it himself
as a prank on this photographer to make him sweat.

Speaker 2 (01:47:26):
Sick man.

Speaker 1 (01:47:30):
Diana Ross, whose reputation as a diva had long preceded
her I like this, took pity on video director Tom
Trivitch Around four am. She broke her hamburger intwo and
called him over, saying come here, come here, you haven't eaten,
and he was surprised, shall we say, by her thoughtfulness,
later telling es Squire, I.

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
Don't want to say she was well, let's just say she'd.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
Been difficult other times I'd been working with her.

Speaker 2 (01:47:54):
He didn't mention that she had already chewed that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
Half spat it. Now it's like a mama bird. There's
another image for me. A lot of good images from
mend this. Quincy Jones made a joke in the middle
of the session that they were available for proms, which
I find funny. It's just in Quincy Jones' voice available
to proms too, baby, But no, okay. All in all,

(01:48:20):
they got the pretty light and before the sessions were over,
many of the singers took their music sheets around.

Speaker 2 (01:48:25):
They got everyone to sign it like a little yearbook. Cute.

Speaker 1 (01:48:29):
Kenny Rodgers apparently was the one who kicked off the trend.
He said, once we sang it all the way through
and realized how well thought out it was, we realized
that the song was something special. So I took a
shoot of music from the session and started getting people
to sign it. Once I started, Diana Ross started, and
then everybody was running around trying to get everybody. My
copies framed on the wall of my house in Atlanta,

(01:48:49):
and John Oates did the same thing. He later said,
I framed in my studio in Colorado. When people come
in and see it, they freak. I made sure I
got everybody. I even got Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder
to sign for once. I had the presence of mind
to do something like that, and it's my most treasured possession.
Stevie Wonder signs by giving his fingerprint. But Ray Charles,
he has pretty decent penmanship. That might be because I

(01:49:11):
think Ray Charles wasn't born blind. I think he went
blind when he was like four or five. Maybe was
lie or something. Something.

Speaker 2 (01:49:19):
Dickenziean and horrifying. Quincy Jones assigned music sheet hangs in
his den. He says, it always makes me smile when
I look at it, start reading those names. This is
all fine. No, I just kept thinking of like he's like,
and I know which one of them actually killed JFK.

(01:49:40):
The recording session, which as you may remember, took place
after the AMAS that night, went from ten thirty pm
until eight am. They didn't even start recording their solo
parts until four am. Quincy originally planned to record the
individual line separately in isolation boots, but it was getting
late or early, so he opted for a quicker but
riskier method, placing twenty one microphones in a U shape

(01:50:03):
and getting them all to record side by side. Taking
this kind of chance is like running through hell with
gasoline drawers on, he said in a sound bite for
the Ages. Any talking or outside noises, laughing, giggling, even
a creak in the floor could ruin the whole thing.
An uncharacteristically shy Cindy Lauper asked Quincy if she could improvise,

(01:50:25):
and he sounded thrilled, responding absolutely, this is not right
of spring. At one point during the rehearsal, Cindy cried, Hey, everybody,
stop laughing when I'm singing. You can laugh when I talk,
but not when I sing. You laugh when I talk,
but not when I'm sing. Boop boo boo boop. At
another moment, Stevie Wonder messes up and line overchie cracks.

(01:50:48):
Stevie messed up? Is that legal? That's great? That's good U.
The assembled choir was just about to record a take
when two guests arrived in the studio unannounced. David Breskin's
liner notes recount the following moment. The mood is lighthearted.
Everyone's telling lies and joking around. The artists have caught
their second win. Just as they're ready to record, two

(01:51:10):
Ethiopian women guests of Stevie Wonder walk into the room.
One woman says tearily, thank you on behalf of everyone
from our country. The artists are stunned. No one speaks,
a deep, penetrating silence. The women cry, The artists cry.
It's the moment when the stars come crashing down to earth.
It's the moment no one will forget. It's a moment

(01:51:31):
of no photographs. The women, shaken, are led from the room.
Quincy breaks the silence softly, saying it's time to sing.
But the feeling in the room remains. Whatever show business
pretension remained in the room after Geldoff's initial speech five
hours ago. Is vanquished for good. Here we are having
a good time, says Lionel, and reality walks in the door.

(01:51:52):
It took them seven takes to get the final take
of this, and the group once again erupted into spontaneous applause.
Charles left somewhat early. Was he the oldest guy? That's understandable.
Ray Charles would have been ready for bed, although he
did announce I haven't had no good love since January,
and it was January according to Rolling Stone. His vocal

(01:52:14):
solo was recorded a few days later. H Tina Turner
for some reason shouted out Fishburger in celebration for nailing
her part. Is that you know? Is that like an
old blues thing? Not as far as I know. Maybe
she just likes the mcfish.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
Mick fleet was micphish Burger saw something there?

Speaker 2 (01:52:37):
Anything there? Well, No, that's that's actually pretty good. Mike
Fleetwood's fish and Chips a competitor for Kenny Rodgers roaster.
Oh all right, we're doing We're onto something here, Jamie.
Can we get Mike Fleetwood on the phone. I want
to pitch something to him. Bruce Springsteen again, fresh off
of months of touring, gave Lionel his autograph, after which

(01:52:59):
Lionel declared he's now officially on vacation. Bruce told everyone
how good the track was, before saying I want to
get a soda, and with that he walks out of
the studio, passed six limos in the parking lot, across
the street to his rent a car in Librea and
he's gone.

Speaker 1 (01:53:14):
That's his exit line. I'm gonna go get a soda.
That's his Irish goodbye.

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):
What kind of soda Werner's guys?

Speaker 1 (01:53:23):
Oh man, he's a chuer wy fago. He's a squirrez
of mellow yellow guy.

Speaker 2 (01:53:29):
He would be mister pib Yeah, that I buy around
six forty five am. Quincy starts asking for a few
more vocal fills. Stevie ever the jester quipsque, just point
to me when it's my turn.

Speaker 1 (01:53:44):
Okay, He's got a million of them. No one has
made more jokes about being blind than Stevie Wanter.

Speaker 2 (01:53:52):
By Sunrise, only Quincy Jones, Lyona Richie, Diana Ross, Ken Craigan,
and the arranger Tom Baller remained in the studio. Michael
Jackson may have also been there, he reportedly requested footage
from the event to view before it was made into
a scizzle reel and sent to the press. When they
asked him what his address was, his face went blank.
I just know how to get there through the backstreets,

(01:54:14):
he replied.

Speaker 1 (01:54:17):
So did he not know his own address or was
he really not willing to give his own address out
and he was just feigning at ignorance.

Speaker 2 (01:54:25):
There's something so quietly sinister about that. I only know
the backway. Richie was so exhausted he claims to have
no memory of hosting that night's American Music Awards ceremony
and winning five awards, including Favorite Pop Rock Mail Artist.
Thirty five years later, when asked about the day, the
first thing he says is, let us first trace the
meaning of the words delirium and exhaustion. That's the one

(01:54:48):
where he kept being like outrageous, Yeah, yeah. Ken Craigan
would later recall we were huddled in a circle on
the floor of the studio, tightly hugging each other and
crying like crazy from the experience of the night. Arguable
architect of the session had an ignoble end to his
long night. His Jaguar had some sort of electrical problem,
so he had to drive home to Beverly Hills with
its door open and the alarm blaring. When all was

(01:55:11):
said and done, the session reportedly had not cost a
penny despite an operating budget of two hundred grand. They
got over a million dollars in goods, and servants has
donated Ah again song. Tom Bryan, his number one's column
for Stereogum, said, we Are the World is a tough hang.

(01:55:31):
It's a glacial and unending seven minute ordeal, an ongoing
series of stars stepping up to deliver their most anguished
and worried wails. Most of them only get a sentence
or less, so they put everything they have into singing
hot air platitudes. It's time to lend a hand to life,
the greatest gift of all. We Are the World as
pure musical goo, a shiny, rhythmless trudge that's only there

(01:55:52):
to melt into the background. The focus instead is on
the singers. Some of those singers sound pretty great, whatever
her feelings are. The song. Cyndi Lauper howls the absolute
out of her one big line, and Jackson himself is
sensitively shivery on his solo moment some of them, like
Dylan and Springsteen, sound like but mostly though, they're a

(01:56:12):
mismatched mess, a big group of people who don't have
any chemistry with one another and who aren't entirely certain
why they're all there. The song is a chore, and
it sounds like one. Brian does, however, concede later on
that the song was indeed created with the best intentions.
Released on March seventh, nineteen eighty five, we Are the
World became the fastest selling American pop single in history

(01:56:34):
up to that point, moving eight hundred thousand copies within
three days of its release. The radio edited to this
was six twenty two. Jesus There was also the first
single since the Beatles Let It Be in nineteen seventy
to enter Billboard's Top five within two weeks of its release.
I love how the Beatles side note are just like
shorthand for all chart achievements. Everything, every significant chart achievement

(01:56:59):
is like, yeah, this was such and such in relation
to the Beatles doing it first, or longer or more
of it. When it finally yeah, Well, when it finally
hit the top spot, it became the first and only
number one song of the Hot one hundred four, Bruce Springsteen,
Bob Dylan, Steve Perry, Willie Nelson, and al Giau. After
staying at number one for four weeks, Madonna oo chittuny ah.

(01:57:25):
That is her name, right? I thought it was checkone
but oo chi chune Uh. Sorry, just got sidetracked. Think
about how much I hate Madonna. Knocked off by Madonna's
Crazy for You, not even the best song called Crazy
for You. We Are the World became the first ever

(01:57:47):
single to be certified multi platinum. It received a four
time certification by the RIAA and the nineteen eighty six Grammys.
The song and its accompanying video won four awards, Record
of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Performance
by a Duo or a Group with Vocal and Best
Music Video Comma Short Form, What's Best Music Video Long Form?
They So I Don't Care. Eventually, it sold upwards of

(01:58:09):
twenty million copies worldwide, making it the best selling single
of the decade. In one year, the song raised forty
four and a half million dollars for famine relief in Africa,
and all told, raised over eighty million in humanitarian aid
for Africa and the United States, and still pulls in
about a half million dollars annually. The song was included
on the album We Are the World, which featured nine

(01:58:30):
additional songs, including if Only for the Moment Girl by
Steve Perry Prince and The Revolutions four, the Number, the
Tears in Your Eyes, Trapped by Bruce Springsteen in the
East Street Band, and the Rest Jordan.

Speaker 1 (01:58:45):
The first money for this venture came two days after
the session during a press conference held with Quincy Jones,
Harry Belafonte, Ken Craigan, and Bob Geldoff among a few others,
and Ken Craigan was talking about the freebee USA for
Africa sweatshirts that were gonna have out to all the
reporters present, and Bob Geldoff interjected semi jokingly, sell them,

(01:59:05):
don't give them, And so they settled on selling these
sweatshirts for ten dollars a pop to all the reporters,
and by the end of the press conference he been
handed five hundred and ten dollars, which were the very
first direct contributions to USA for Africa, and it was
reported the happiest that anyone had seen Bob Geldoff during
the entire experience, which I Believe, and two months after

(01:59:27):
releasing Were the World, the USA for Africa charity organization
received its first check for its record sales, and Ken
Craigan went straight to Africa to help. He later said,
the first check we picked up was for five million.
We picked that up in May. Then we immediately put
a trip together to go to Africa and we flew
up a huge cargo plan fool supplies and Ken wasn't
alone in his trip to Sudan. He also made it

(01:59:49):
with a group of twenty six that included charity board
members and doctors, and they spent the next few years
making sure the money went to those who needed it
the most. They focused on providing food and supplies to
organization that had demonstrated a commitment to the cause and
also shown that they could use the donations effectively. This
was a big problem with things like Live Aid and
George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, where a lot of the

(02:00:10):
money got squandered by either dishonest charities or just mismanaged charities.
They also ensure that the money would be doled out slowly,
with a percentage of the money earmarked for long term
self reliant development and solutions. To systemic problems. Ken Craigan
defended this decision by saying, quote, we could go out
and spend it all in one shot, maybe save some
lives in the short term, but it would be like

(02:00:31):
putting a band aid over a serious wound, for adding
that it would likely take an estimated ten to twenty
years to make a difference to Africa's long term problems,
probably more like forty to fifty years these days. Conversely,
Bob Geldof's distributions from Live Aid have come into scrutiny.
Spin magazine had a whole expose that reported that the

(02:00:52):
donations that he raised were accidentally used to fund the
brutal Dictator.

Speaker 2 (02:00:57):
Whoops, oops, all Dictator. Where were you on that one, Bob, Yeah,
oh yeah, Soul speaks with Heeli there. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:01:06):
But in addition, is still pulling in a sizable amount
of cash each year, some half a million. We Are
the World started a ripple effect of charity singles, some
merely bad, others on par with genocide. Despite their abysmal
musical quality, it's still obviously a positive thing that they
exist at all. There's tears are not Enough by the

(02:01:27):
Canadian supergroup Northern Lights which includes a.

Speaker 2 (02:01:30):
Surprisingly decent lineup. There's Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Geddy, Lee
and Murray and Brian Adams, among others. It's not Bad.

Speaker 1 (02:01:38):
And then there was the aforementioned album, courtesy of a
heavy metal coalition calling themselves here in Age That's Really Good.
Features heavy metal artists like Rodney, James Dio and members
of Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue and Moore, boasting
a truly bonkers ensemble of lead guitarists in addition to vocalists.

Speaker 2 (02:01:58):
It's just, Oh, it's so good. Imagine all of the
sensitivity and and and and any and saying that's whatever
sensitivity is present in We Are the World. Imagine stripped
out and yarled through the assembled throats of some of
LA's most leathery coke addicts and c boodlist tired men.

(02:02:22):
You know who's present there, Neil Sean, Oh, my enemy
of the pod, Neil Sean. I don't know. You've had
good luck with Neil Sean. It's just really me. So
jury's still out on Neil shot on his wife, didn't you?

Speaker 3 (02:02:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:02:41):
I sure did, White House gate crasher Michelle Salahi. There's
also Sun's City, which.

Speaker 1 (02:02:50):
Is more of a protest record than a charity record,
and I think there's a subtle difference there. But the
Stevie van Zinte Helm song raised awareness for the evils
of apartheid. And there's also the number one hit That's
What Friends Are For with Stevie Wonder, Dion Warwick, Elton
John and Gladys Knight, which raised money for amphar and
Aged charity, and as we mentioned earlier, Willie Nelson was

(02:03:11):
inspired to start farm Aid following his participation in USA
for Africa.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):
We Are the World was performed live.

Speaker 1 (02:03:18):
On a handful of occasions with a suitably starry cast,
most notably at Live Aid, which was held just a
few months after the song was released in nineteen eighty five,
and it was also sung I have no memory of
this at an inauguration event for Bill Clinton in January
of nineteen ninety three, which features vocal help from the
First Family, Kenny Rodgers, Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, and

(02:03:40):
we touched on this earlier. We Are the World was
re recorded on February first, twenty ten, in order to
raise money for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti
that killed two hundred thousand people. This twenty first century
version of the song featured Justin Bieber. I shouldn't have
led with that, Barbara streisand making up for the fact
that she skipped the original one. Rob Thomas of Matchbucks
twenty Pink wild lef Jean Jamie foxx Jeff Bridges.

Speaker 2 (02:04:07):
I guess he's yeah, sort of saying yeah, he would
have been right on Crazy Heart.

Speaker 1 (02:04:11):
Oh yeah, you're right, okay, and a duet between Janet
Jackson and her late brother Michael. Supposedly the Jackson families request.
I guess they controlled the rights to the song because
he was a co writer, so I guess they could
make whatever demands they wanted. What's more, this is really
interesting to met Lionel Richie even talked about recording a
third version of We Are the World to raise money
for COVID nineteen relief in twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (02:04:34):
This failed to occur, but an imagined thing. Yes. Tom Bryan,
the stereo gum writer, did a fantasy recasting.

Speaker 1 (02:04:42):
For this twenty twenty version of We Are the World.

Speaker 2 (02:04:46):
Let's pick that apart, shall we must?

Speaker 1 (02:04:48):
We just for a moment, all right, It's not like
it's pushing midnight and we're our third hour of this.

Speaker 2 (02:04:55):
Too much riffing about well, never mind, that's all cutting
room floor. Yeah, you'll hear any of that.

Speaker 1 (02:05:03):
Wonder Cevie Wonder is being recast in twenty twenty as Beyonce.

Speaker 2 (02:05:07):
I can see that. That's fine.

Speaker 1 (02:05:08):
Yeah, Paul Simon is Lana del Ray. I don't understand
that at all.

Speaker 2 (02:05:13):
No, it would be like father John Misty. Yeah, even
somebody a.

Speaker 1 (02:05:17):
Little more cloud or gravitas.

Speaker 2 (02:05:19):
Or like bonavert itbe Bonaver.

Speaker 1 (02:05:22):
Okay, put a pin in that, Kenny Rogers, Lil nas X.
I don't understand the comparison there. If anything, I'd say,
like Willie Nelson, he's still alive.

Speaker 2 (02:05:34):
Get prop him up in front of the microphone againis
Brad Paisley? Yeah fine, Yeah, James Ingram I didn't know
who he was in the original, so I can't really
comment on this. They recast him as Khalid sure, DJ
colle It or Khalid, oh Khalid? Excuse me? Moving on,
Tina Turner, Gucci Mayne, that's just dumb, Bill, Joel post

(02:05:56):
them alone, that's also dumb. Michael Jackson, Drake, Well, we
know one thing they have in common. Diana Ross Lil Wayne,
it's Rihanna. Yeah, it's Rihanna.

Speaker 1 (02:06:09):
Well, I don't Understandwick Lady Gaga.

Speaker 2 (02:06:13):
Yes, that's good, that works really well. Willie Nelson whis Khalifa,
no weed thing. Willie Nelson would still be in it.

Speaker 1 (02:06:21):
It would be Willy Nelson, Nelson playing himself, Willie Nelson
as himself, Al Girou, James Blake, I don't see that.

Speaker 2 (02:06:29):
It would be Sam Smith. I think, uh, Bruce Springsteen,
Ariana Grande hell is that? No, you need some kind
of token big dumb um. It would be the kid
from Gretel van Fleet. They need like a rock person
in there.

Speaker 1 (02:06:43):
Right, NOI Blake Sheldon, No, it's two country.

Speaker 2 (02:06:48):
They need a token Heartland rocker who's like the token
Heartland rocker in twenty twenty three. Imagine dragons. I don't
even know if that's a genre anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:06:56):
Adam Levine, he's not a hardline.

Speaker 2 (02:06:59):
Drive me to drink, Bud Kenny Loggins, Quavo, Yes, Steve Perry,
Harry Styles, that's a one to one. I respect that.
Darryl Hall, Sway Lee whatever, Huey Lewis, Lizzo, Sure, Cyndi
Lauper Little UZI vert whatever Kim Carnes Sea, Yeah right,

(02:07:24):
she has forgotten more number ones than Kim Carnes ever
got with him Desert Mile of Bob Dylan, Billie Eilish. No,
it would be who's like a spokesperson of their generation thing, Sharon.
I'm just thinking, who's who's the last guy you saw

(02:07:44):
on TV playing guitar with a guitar? Yeah, Ray Charles,
Bruce Springsteen. Okay, that's the most media in the room,
Old Tim. It should be Smoky Robinson. They should, they
should address their error and give corn old horny, Old Smokey.
You just released an album called gasms. Oh I never

(02:08:07):
want have you? Have you heard about gasms? Yeah? Yeah? Good?
Well that was dumb. Do you know that whye Cliff
Jean's Haiti charity, established after that earthquake, is alleged to
have spent nine million dollars, with half of it on
travel and salaries and consultants fees. Investigations into them still

(02:08:30):
open in Haiti. Hope for Haiti became the most watched
telethon to date on TV.

Speaker 1 (02:08:36):
What wow, I doubt I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (02:08:40):
Yep. They closed it in twenty twelve. They fixed Haiti,
what's your outro? Jordan take us Home? Well.

Speaker 1 (02:08:53):
Regardless of his musical merits, We Are the World helped
create an environment where musicians fell responsibility to take a
stand for humanitarian concerns, and as insufferable as that can
sometimes be, I would argue that that's a very good thing.
And the song also went a long way towards putting
the tragedies of Africa in the international spotlight, which is important.

(02:09:13):
The song remains a career highlight for all involved. Quincy
Jones recalled on a twenty fifteen USA to Day interview,
I don't think that night, that experience will ever truly
be duplicated again. I know and believe in the power
of music to bring people together for the betterment of mankind,
and there may be no better example of this than
the collective that was We Are the World. And speaking

(02:09:34):
of that once in a lifetime recording session, Lionel Richie
told Esquire, we came in like little kids on their
first day of kindergarten, and we were all kind of
looking at each other. Everybody was kind of freaked out,
standing next to each other for a brief moment, and
then all of a sudden we realized it's.

Speaker 2 (02:09:48):
Not about us.

Speaker 1 (02:09:49):
We're actually using our voice and our celebrity to save
some people, and it's about us giving everything we have
to save their lives. So I think the brilliance of
that evening was started out as forty five artists looking
at each other and going, yeah, I'm famous and you're famous,
and we left as a family.

Speaker 2 (02:10:09):
Did they truly give everything they had? Or did they
give a night and their sea game for a decently
catered buffet? Lionel answer the question. Lionel asked if he
would write another Week of the World.

Speaker 1 (02:10:30):
Lionel Richie said it wasn't necessary because the lyrics to
the song are still relevant today. He said, you don't
need any new words. What we were trying to say
back then was let's take care of our brothers and
sisters over there, because one day it might just happen
over here. And I think that's an appropriate level of
egotism and wide eyed idealism to sum up the whole affair.

Speaker 2 (02:10:54):
What do you think, Kyle, I just can't get Michael
Jackson feeding Emmanuel Webster grapes out of my hand. Emmanuel
Lewis character you played his Webster white grapes, red grapes?
Would it have been better if they were raisins? Worse smaller?

Speaker 1 (02:11:13):
I have to get his fingers closer to his mouth.

Speaker 2 (02:11:14):
Oh well, folks, well, I think I'm Willie Nelson coming
up to the microphone a half beat early in this,
and you're diale Warwick, gracefully holding up my script. This
has been too much information. Approximately a third of this

(02:11:35):
will make it to air. Thank you for listening. If
you want to hear the offensive outtakes, and consign a
waiver benmost five bucks, which will donate to ourselves. Thanks
for listening, Malex Eigel.

Speaker 1 (02:11:55):
And I'm Jordan run Tug. We'll catch you next time.
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's
executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg. The show's
supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 2 (02:12:12):
The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtgg
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (02:12:16):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Punk Orchestra.

Speaker 2 (02:12:20):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.

Speaker 1 (02:12:22):
For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts,
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"We Are the World" by USA for Africa: Everything You Didn't Know