Thirty-nine years ago, the biggest music stars in the world crammed into a recording studio in Los Angeles for an all-night session that they hoped might alter music history.
We Are The World was a 1985 charity single for African famine relief that included the voices of Michael Jackson, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick, Lionel Richie, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen.
Fans get a chance to almost step into that recording session this month with the Netflix documentary The Greatest Night In Pop, a behind-the-scenes look at the complex birth of a megahit. It starts streaming Monday (Jan 29).
“It’s a celebration of the power of creativity and the power of collective humanity,” says producer Julia Nottingham. “The amazing thing about the song is it’s such an inspiration for so many artists.”
The filmmakers got fresh insights after landing interviews with Richie, Springsteen, Robinson, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Loggins, Dionne Warwick and Huey Lewis – and for an added bonus spoke to them inside A&M Studios, the site of their triumph in 1985.
“I knew it was important to recreate those memories by just sort of walking into that room and what that energy created for them,” said director Bao Nguyen, who was only two when the single came out.
The filmmakers married never-before-seen footage taken from four cameras that captured the USA for Africa session with audio from journalist David Breskin, offering insight into the dynamics and drama in the room that the official music video could not.
The Greatest Night In Pop isn’t shy about exploring some of the more unflattering things, like Al Jarreau having a bit too much wine and how Dylan was out of his element, needing Wonder to mimic how the Nobel laureate might approach his solo.
Lauper accidentally prolonged the recording session because her jangling jewellery fouled up the recording, while Prince, who was at a Mexican restaurant on the Sunset Strip, offered to do an isolated guitar solo. Sheila E confesses she felt like she was invited to the recording session just to lure Prince in. In the end, Prince never made it, robbing the single of a Jackson-Prince double punch.
“For me, it was just important that we told a story that was honest,” said Nguyen. “It is an honest story about the night and all the things that could have gone wrong – that did go wrong – but at the end of the day, it became this beautiful family.”
The details in the doc are glorious: The image of Joel kissing then-wife Christie Brinkley before heading into the studio, and the nugget that Springsteen drove himself to the location in a Pontiac GTO. Other highlights: Watching singer-songwriter Joel explore an alternative lyric, the stars gathering around Wonder on a piano for the first run-through, and Richie, ever the ambassador, smoothing over potential disputes.
