In October of 1984 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wanted to write a song that could be recorded and sold to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Bob Geldof later appeared on BBC radio and called for recruits from British and Irish music stars to help make the sales of the recording larger. On November 24, 1984, the song was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, and was released four days later.
How many artists could you name? Of course all of them are thirty years older now! The song still remains one of the most sold singles ever and is the second highest selling single song in British history. Band Aid (as the group was named) would go on to spawn Live Aid and We Are The World (a group of American singers who recorded a single with the same name), Northern Lights (a group of Canadian music stars), and Hear N' Aid (a heavy metal super group led by Ronnie James Dio as well as fellow Dio members Jimmy Bain and Vivian Campbell). Here's hoping for a 40th anniversary version. But not needing a charity to feed the hunger around the world would be even better.
November 1984. Rustler Steak House. Newsletter plea from me for everybody's to buy the single (even if they didn't like the song) to raise money for famine relief. It's hard for most of us to remember nowadays how unusual and rare it was back then to have a song released for charity. Only the following year, as you mentioned, it became a common place thing but Band Aid was a trailblazer in that regard. Before that, the only previous example I can remember was George Harrison's CONCERT FOR BANGLA DESH a decade earlier. "DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS" revived the concept for the so-called greed decade of the 1980s and also gave us a classic Christmas song.
ReplyDeleteYou might be right about the Bangla Desh concert. The 80's was certainly the greed decade.
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