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Christie Brinkley, arrived and gave each other a Richie began to ask people to get in their places. to help fight the famine.
quick peck, then she was shown to the Chaplin “Everybody was sort of left-footed,” Hall says. Harry Belafonte saw the report and had an idea
Stage while he ambled over to the big wooden door. “We were all like, Whoa, what are we doing? Every- to organize a concert of all African-American musi-
Dionne Warwick was doing a residency at the body had to figure out how to relate to each other. cians to raise money for the cause.
Wynn Las Vegas and recalls that Steve Wynn had So everybody started to act like they were in the He called Kragen for help.
given her the night off to participate—flying her to eighth-grade chorus. It was the weirdest thing I’d “Harry,” Kragen said. “The thing about a concert
Los Angeles for the night in his jet. “I was ordered ever experienced. All these superstars, whatever is it’s next to impossible.”
by Mr. Quincy Jones to be there,” Warwick says. you want to call them, we all turned into junior- Kragen used to manage Harry Chapin, the super-
“When Quincy speaks, everyone listens.” high kids in chorus, and Quincy became Mr. Jones. star free spirit of the seventies, until the day Chapin
Bette Midler. Cyndi Lauper. Kenny Loggins. Wil- That’s how it shook out. Laughing like kids.” died in a car accident in 1981. Chapin was always
lie Nelson. It was like a record store come to life. Jones stood at a blond-wood podium on a raising money to fight hunger and homelessness.
Everyone looked a little mystified. Smiling, yes, wheeled platform—the kind you’d see in a middle Kragen had been trying to put together a block-
but . . . maybe not quite sure what was happening. school music room. With everyone in their places, buster concert to support Chapin’s legacy, and the
At one point, the gate opened for a man on foot: Jones introduced Bob Geldof, referring to him as logistics were hell.
Springsteen. Jeans, black leather jacket, gloves with “the inspiration for this whole thing.” (Ross, in the But he had another idea. Not a concert.
the fingers cut off. Twenty-four hours ago, he was first row, clapped and shouted, “Yay, Bob!”) “A song! Geldof has shown us the way,” Kragen
on a stage in Syracuse. He drove himself to the stu- A few months before, in October 1984, a British told Belafonte. “And we’ve got bigger stars here.
dio in a rental car, and he told Kragen, “I got a great journalist named Michael Buerk traveled to Ethio- Let’s go right from the Billboard charts. Who’s big?
parking spot right on La Brea!” pia to report on the famine. He brought with him We want to sell records.”
Stepping from the parking area into the ante- Mohamed Amin, a Kenyan photojournalist, who Belafonte now stood on the top row of the ris-
room and finally into Studio A was like leaving the filmed footage of gaunt children with ribs exposed ers, next to one of the guys from Ghostbusters (Dan
natural world. “Everybody usually walks around from hunger and flies on their faces. Aykroyd, Blues Brother), watching his old friend
with their assistant, or their entourage,” Hall says. Their report aired on the BBC, where Geldof saw Jones introduce the Irish punk with the big heart.
“But you had to walk in the door yourself, just you, it and quickly wrote “Do They Know It’s Christ- “Bob just came back from Ethiopia, and he’d like
and be in this room with a lot of people like you, mas?” The song was popular during the holiday to talk to you,” Jones told everyone.
with your peers, many of whom I had never met, season that year and would raise about $10 million Geldof stepped forward, his collar turned up, his
and vice versa—they had never met me. It was—
what’s the word?—slightly disconcerting. I’m a
pretty self-sufficient guy, but I’m used to walking “We all turned into junior-high kids in chorus, and Quincy became Mr. Jones,” Hall says. “That’s how it shook out.”
into a situation having some support around me.”
Inside, a simple sign hung over the entrance to
the studio, taped to the wall. This sign would
become famous, a piece of “We Are the World”
lore. But it was real. Jones hung it himself: chick
your igos at thi door.
Rock stars don’t all know one another, and some
of the most famous humans on the planet were
meeting for the first time. But in a strange and spon-
taneous instinct, many of them hugged. Joel hugged
Jackson. Loggins hugged Springsteen. Diana Ross
hugged Sheila E. while Bob Dylan stood behind
them, not hugging anybody.
Black risers had been set up at the far end of the
studio, facing the control booth. Jones and Bahler
had put down tape with everyone’s name on it. Jack-
son, who had basically grown up with Ross, had
looked at the layout earlier and said, “Diana doesn’t
like where she’s standing.” Jones just nodded—he
got it—and Ross ended up in a prime spot in the front
row, between Jackson and Stevie Wonder.
This was for the first task of the evening, which
Richie wanted to get to right away: the chorus.
“My job was to kind of make sure everybody stays
on point,” Richie says. “Quincy was gonna hold
down the recording session. And Michael was going
to be—I laugh at this—he was going to help me keep
order, but of course Michael at that particular time
didn’t do a lot of talking. And I was exhausted from
the TV show, and then we go right into ‘We Are the
World.’ Well, it was . . . a bloody train wreck.”
After the giggly hour of greeting and hugging and
awkward but endearing introductions, Jones and

86 SUMMER 2020 PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRY BENSON