The Greatest Night in Pop (2024)
A gathering in 1985 when music's megastars warned the world of catastrophe
The assembled musicians were determined to draw attention to the suffering in Africa
The Greatest Night in Pop (2024)
Streaming on Netflix
This new documentary, grandly but not inaccurately titled The Greatest Night in Pop, recovers in archival footage one night of music-making that struck an urgent, alarming note.
The event sent a revelatory message from within, of all places, pop culture: suffering that was nobody’s fault had to become everybody’s responsibility.
The rousing, lilting anthem that emerged from the session, “We Are the World”, pleaded to the whole planet as Africa cried for help.
And indeed, this one song accomplished a far-reaching goal. Its soaring words and melody got listeners to heed their hearts. Its makers wanted to pump up the volume about those in dire need, to stir compassion for people in agony who couldn’t help themselves.
On January 21, 1985, in Los Angeles the venue was an A&M Records recording suite, closed to the press and the public. Even the musical superstars’ personal assistants were barred. Artists only.
It helped that genuine affection and mutual admiration flowed through the room. Before the night was over, they’d all cracked jokes, scarfed down fried chicken, chili and fish, and shyly asked for each other’s autographs.
All the talent in the room couldn’t help being impressed by all the talent in the room.
In they came, in a tidal wave: Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, Tina Turner, Kenny Loggins, Al Jarreau, Huey Lewis, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Hall & Oates, Bette Midler, Cindy Lauper, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Billy Joel, Sheila E., Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson and many more, totaling more than 40.
Most had just come from the evening’s glittering signature industry event, the American Music Awards.
On live TV that celebratory bash had been hosted by Lionel Richie, who not only performed two numbers on the broadcast but also bagged six awards. “What a night,” we see him proclaim to AMA’s black-tie audience.
His was just getting started. Richie, speaking on camera today, recalls each facet of the now legendary recording event, from the song’s conception to the last note sung right before dawn.
He and Michael Jackson wrote the uplifting anthem (the phrase We are the world was Michael’s). On the crucial night it was laid down, Richie was chief facilitator in the studio, which makes him the perfect choice to guide us through the event.
Since he and Jackson were co-songwriters, it’s fitting that first to show up in the studio on the crucial night is Michael. He wanted to give producer-orchestrator Quincy Jones, the session’s maestro, a hint of how the night’s recording might go.
Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones stay focused while a packed room of artists stands by
As the other stars arrived, they saw a sign posted by Quincy. It read: Check Your Ego at the Door.
The demand for discipline was heeded. Everyone we hear performing rises to the occasion, working to make the song soar.
It helped that genuine affection and mutual admiration flowed through the room. Before the night was over, they’d all cracked jokes, scarfed down fried chicken, chili and fish, and shyly asked for each other’s autographs.
All the talent in the room couldn’t help being impressed by all the talent in the room.
But there were bumps. Bob Dylan needed reassuring; the crowded room inhibited him. Richie notes that for all the starry participants this night was like the first day of kindergarten.
Wonder, who everyone seems to turn to for consolation or stress-busting laughter, handily puts nervous artists at ease. Yet at one point Stevie wants to insert lines in Swahili. No, bro, the room concludes, not happening (good ol’ boy Waylon Jennings left at the mere suggestion).
Cyndi Lauper, powerfully belting a solo line, kept getting reverb on her mike, a strange jangling noise. It turned out her metal ear rings and ropes of beaded jewelry were being picked up. She laughingly removes them. All good.
There were startling grace notes. One came when singer-actor-activist Harry Belafonte, a prime mover for the event, earned a glowing tribute from the room.
Al Jarreau begins to sing Belafonte’s signature song, “Day-O”, and the whole room joins in the serenade to the veteran entertainer. Belafonte’s humble smile beams to the gathering.
Prince telephones to say he’ll join the group if he can do a guitar solo. Richie tells him guitar solos simply aren’t needed. With rejection apparently not in his playbook, His Royal Badness never appears.
He’d been scheduled to sing a solo line, and with his non-appearance there was suddenly a vacancy. Loggins quickly suggests Huey Lewis to take the spot.
Lewis, recalling the moment for us on camera, admits he was terrified. He suddenly needed to devise a three-part harmony with Lauper and Kim Carnes.
Richie fully understands Lewis’ unease. The room was atomic with talent. As Jones put it to Richie, “When it’s time for you to sing you’re going to give 200%, because the class is looking at you.”
We see Lewis come through with power and polish. That kind of push to deliver the goods permeates the night.
Everyone felt the commitment, but time, Quincy keeps reminding them, is running out. They started a little after midnight. They don’t begin solos until after 4:00am.
Cindy Lauper and Bruce Springsteen take a much-needed break before their solos
The project was top secret, but that doesn’t account for its impact. It takes knowing a bit of social history to understand why those singers volunteered to perform a musical act of faith.
For weeks in 1984 television’s nightly news broadcasts had shown shocking footage of children starving in Ethiopia. We weren’t simply seeing poverty in Africa. That grim fact we’d learned about.
This was starvation. Poverty can be struggled against. Starvation ravages flesh until there’s no human being left.
We witnessed on television the fly-flecked faces of mothers and children so malnourished their bones pressed against their dry, withered skins.
This sight, broadcast in advanced countries, was new. To help the needy, in England on November 25, 1984, singer-songwriter and activist Bob Geldof led a recording session called Band Aid.
English pop stars recorded “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, an anthem that implored nations with means to help where aid was desperately needed.
In America, after Belafonte saw what Geldof had done, he told his music manager Ken Kragen, “White people are helping Black people. Black people aren’t helping Black people. That’s a problem.”
Kragen and Belafonte sprang into action. Unsurprisingly, chart-topping musicians Black and white didn’t turn away a plea from Belafonte and Quincy Jones. By then Michael Jackson was also committed to the effort.
Did the song that resulted, “We Are the World”, born in this archival footage right before our eyes, stem the pestilence?
A little, yes. And its sales still help across the planet. But we now know that climate fluctuations and social upheaval pose bigger threats than music or the most well-intentioned musicians can quell.
Yet when this soaring song hit international airwaves, a catastrophe got under the world’s skin and pricked consciences perhaps more widely than any disaster since WWII.
Here we see the nitty-gritty of a night that actually made a difference.