The Untold Story of the Race to Record “We Are the World”

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well now, let’s rewind almost four decades to the night 46 of America’s biggest music stars gathered in the same studio to record the charity single, “We Are the World.” The artists were told to “check their egos at the door” in the name of helping people affected by famine in Ethiopia and other African countries. Well, the record became one of the top selling singles of all time, raising $60 million for the cause. And the remarkable all-nighter behind it is the focus of a new Netflix documentary, “The Greatest Night in Pop.” Here’s a clip from the trailer.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just thought we pulled together as many artists as we could and figure it out. It was just a wish list.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I said yes without knowing it was going to be on it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bob Dylan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stevie Wonder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Paul Simon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cyndi Lauper.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bette Midler.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Billy Jones.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Steve Perry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Willie Nelson.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we have Tina.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kelly Neat (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Diana Ross.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody was there.

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GOLODRYGA: Also, there was that night, was — also there that night was Tom Baylor, a vocal arranger who worked on the song. Hari Sreenivasan speaks to him alongside the film’s director, Bao Nguyen.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Director Bao Nguyen and vocal arranger, Tom Baylor, thank you both for joining us. Tom, I want to start with you. You were there that night. How did you hear about this project? How did you get involved?

TOM BAYLOR, VOCAL ARRANGER, “WE ARE THE WORLD”: Well, Quincy Jones and I started working together early in the ’70s, and he had heard some arrangements. I got a call and he said, what are you doing? Do you have time to come over? And I said, sure. So, I went over and he said, I just heard from Ken Kragen and this is what’s happening. And that’s when he said, you know the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” And Bob Geldof did a great job with that. And it’s a wonderful song. But here’s the concept. You know, look at what Geldof did, and we’re going to do it with more people because we know that the American Music Award, Ken put this together immediately. And he said — I think it took him five minutes to really make the map that we would follow from there on.

SREENIVASAN: So, there’s literally a night where you’re about to record a song with probably the biggest names in music in America, certainly, all assembling under one roof for just a few hours.

BAYLOR: By the time the stars came in, the song was written. But it was only written seriously a few days before that. And it was wonderful being on that team. We had meetings where we normally, when we go on to record, we don’t think of what could go wrong.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

BAYLOR: You know, but with this, we had to go in and say, what could go wrong and what are we going to have for it? It’s like Quincy was the general. And we were looking at it as going to war. You only have one shot. You know, you don’t go out there and say, oops, I forgot my bullets, you know. So, that was kind of the way it started.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two.

CROWD: We are the world. We are the children.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The greatest artists of a generation came together to save some lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Must be in a dream.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello, hello.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But we only had one night to get this right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let’s get this party started.

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SREENIVASAN: Bao, what made you interested in making this film?

BAO NGUYEN, DIRECTOR, “THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP”: Yes, I should say that I was only two years old when the song came out.

SREENIVASAN: I didn’t want to embarrass you there, but yes.

NGUYEN: You know. But I mean, I remember the song growing up because my parents, they had recently come over to America. They were Vietnamese refugees. And they spoke very little English at that time. This was the mid-80s. And they had Lionel Richie Records. They had Kenny Rogers records and they had the record of “We Are the World.” So, I remember hearing that song growing up in my household and in a way, the song was a bridge to my American upbringing and my parents’, you know, refugee immigrant upbringing.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

NGUYEN: And so, it had personal resonance. I didn’t understand the global impact of the song until my producer, you know, Julia Nottingham, who I produced my last film with, she came to me with the story of “We Are the World.” She was like, do you know the song? And I was like, of course, I know the song. But when she told me how it all happened in one night and sort of the global impact of the song once it came out, it became really interesting for me as a filmmaker to see like how I can turn what was seemingly, you know — I mean, obviously it’s a very iconic song, but for people who don’t work in the music industry, we don’t really know how the sausage is made, in many ways.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

NGUYEN: And to hear how unique it was. And as, you know, Tom was saying, it was one night. It was a lot of, sort of, troubleshooting, a lot of impossible tasks that had to be done in getting all these, you know, 40 plus superstars in one room to record a song that was written a couple of days earlier. I found the story to be really compelling on top of how much, you know, residents the song had globally.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I arrived at the studio, I realized it was the cream of the crop of pop music for that time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God. Oh, my god.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s just overwhelming.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Walkie-talkies is how we communicated. Who was showing up? Who was here? Who just got here?

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SREENIVASAN: There’s a point in the film, Tom, where you mentioned that Quincy Jones put up a sign that said, what, check your ego at the door?

BAYLOR: That’s correct. That’s correct.

SREENIVASAN: And how did that many people, who are literally on the top of their game, you know, extolled by everyone in music, showing up at a massive awards, how are they expected to do that?

NGUYEN: Well, you know what, they got the feeling because we were there for a higher purpose, all of us. And it was told to us earlier. Everybody that worked on that did it pro bono. All the cameramen, the studio, all of us, and it has been pro bono ever since. And they raised so much money. So, we knew going in that we were there to save lives.

SREENIVASAN: So, Bao, how did you kind of discover this archive? What was available? And then, what struck you when you realized what you had to work with?

NGUYEN: I mean, I think I owe it all to my producer, Julia Nottingham, who, you know, we had never worked on a music documentary together and we had no connection to Lionel Richie or the Michael Jackson estate. And Julia happened to be working with this company called MRC, which at the time owned Dick Clark Productions, and they produced the American Music Awards. And we knew the American Music Awards were the important, you know, aspect of the story. And so, MRC told Julia to call this guy Larry Klein, who’s in the film. He’s the producer of the American Music Awards. And so, she cold calls him and does a pitch of the film. And Larry’s like, I’ve been waiting for this call for 35 years. And he was the one who connected us to Lionel, to USA for Africa, which is, you know, the entity that basically was formed for the song. And they had on this footage. You know, over the course of decades, the footage has been damaged and it hasn’t been kept in the best shape, to be honest. Some of it was found in the trunk of a car. And I had — you know, they made this recording for the music video and for — there was, you know, a TV special that Jane Fonda hosted immediately after the song came out. And that was the intention of the recording. There was no — you know, no one would think 40 years later that film would be made and put on Netflix, right? So, we got lucky and it goes to the tenacity of our producers. And also, you know, I think the richness of the footage isn’t just the visual archival. A lot of the archival that was recorded didn’t have any audio or the audio was going straight into the recording mix. And so, you would only hear when they were singing the song. All these sort of side conversations came from the work of David Breskin, who was a journalist covering the recording for “Life Magazine” at the time. And he turned on his Dictaphone, immediately when he got the assignment, he did all these interviews with Ken Kragen and with Lionel with Quincy Jones. And we hear a lot of those conversations in the beginning of the film. But it was also him, you know, holding up the dictaphone to Bruce Springsteen when Bruce Springsteen’s recording and doing sort of the side takes and everything like that where we get, again, that texture and that richness of the audio matching with what we got from USA for Africa.

SREENIVASAN: Tom, what’s amazing is when you see footage of these superstars without their entourages, it’s almost like going back to like some sort of high school band camp vibe, where they’re just normal human beings.

BAYLOR: Normally when an artist goes into a recording studio, we start in the booth to learn the song or to talk about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to record it and everything. Because it’s like a womb. It’s a safe place to learn and become acquainted with what we’re going to do tonight. Well, with 46 people, we could not put them in the booth. So, we had to do it in the studio, which is huge. So, when we got in the big room, I felt an unsettledness, and my job was to get them all singing it, but there was, I felt no negativity. It was just a little bit of looking around and think, oh, my God, I got every one of her records. Oh, I love her. I love him. I love — you know, I mean, all of the stars were doing that. And it was great. It was a great idea. Again, Ken Kragen, that there was no entourage because they entered and they’re all like a band camp. Just what you said, you nailed it, man. And — but what really broke the ice was Diana Ross.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Diana walks up to Daryl Hall with her music in her hands and says, Daryl, I’m your biggest fan. Would you sign my music for

me? And we all looked around and said, holy moly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Soon as she did it, it just started happening all over the room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Seeing Cyndi Lauper asking Lionel or the boss, you know, that’s dope that they want to get each other’s autograph. And then

they come and ask me and I’m like, they want my autograph? Like, wow, that’s really cool, you know.

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BAYLOR: And for the next 45 minutes, we signed each other’s music. And at the end of that 45 minutes, we went from being unsettled to being a family. And that broke the ice. And it was like — and Quincy comes out of the booth and said, let’s chop some wood.

SREENIVASAN: Bao, what was the most surprising part when you look through this? Is there a musician or a performance or a look that somebody gave that stuck out to you or it was unexpected?

NGUYEN: I mean, as we were talking about, I think, like seeing these icons of icons really be like they’re at the first day of school, right, it says that in the film, it felt like the first day of kindergarten. I think we — anyone around the world sort of knows that feeling of being the first — you know, at the first day of school. And to see like Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen feel that way. It was something that was really humanizing and just like created this proximity that, I think, was really important for the film, is to take these great artists and bring them into a room and bring them to a space where every keyword can feel like they felt the same way. I mean, in terms of like specific scenes, I think Bob Dylan, for me and his journey in the film and through the night, it was really unique and really inspiring in many ways. Because again, you know, he comes into a space that’s not necessarily a space that he’s used to and then he asked for help. You know, he asked for Stevie Wonder’s help to help him sing his line, which I think is such a beautiful, touching, vulnerable moment that again, Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan. Stevie Wonder is Stevie Wonder. But for them to kind of help each other out in that moment was really beautiful.

SREENIVASAN: So, Tom, I got to ask how in the world — how does your brain work where you put these pairings together?

BAYLOR: Well, you use the magic word. You said, how did you get your brain to do this, I didn’t. I followed my instincts. I made a list. Quincy and I made a list of the probable soloists. And once — and Quincy said, I have two requests, because Lionel was the first one to start this song, to write it, I would like for his voice to be the first voice we hear. And then on the first chorus, because Michael finished the song, we’d like to have Michael to sing the first chorus. And then halfway through, and this is Quincy’s wonderful sense of humor, he said, I want Diana because they’re so close. And this will prove to people that they’re not one person. So, anyway, that was the way, but that was what — that was my template. And he said, now the rest of it’s yours. So, once we had — if you listen to that first chorus, Michael has a very pure voice. And so does Diana. And after that, I knew that there was another chorus coming up. And who was going to do that? And immediately, in my imagination, these singers started standing up. It was Springsteen to come in and sing it the way I’m talking right now. You know, it was, we are the world, you know.

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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, SINGER: We are the world. We are the children.

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BAYLOR: That is so different than my Hugo (ph), that beautiful, pure loving sound, you know. So, that’s the way it worked. And then I started looking at the — and as I looked at the next solo possibility, the person that I picked hopped up in my imagination. I’m serious. It was like they were waiting out line and they — and I opened the door by looking at the lyric and in they come in. That’s the way it came together. Seriously, it took me only about 30 minutes to assign.

SREENIVASAN: Bao, there were several times where you kind of referenced the fact that it’s now later and later and later in the night. It is now earlier and earlier in the morning, right? And I don’t think people realize that this was an all-night jam session with these huge names.

NGUYEN: As you were asking earlier, these voices are the voices of a generation. It’s easy to kind of just shine a camera on someone and just let them go. But it’s really creating those moments of tension, of vulnerability, of anxiety that created the propulsiveness, I think, of the night and making it not just kind of a conventional music documentary, but something that would be engaging to audiences who might not know who some of these artists are and might not know what the song is. And so, I was always trying to engage the storytelling aspect with also this, you know, fly in the wall observational style of just being in the room with all these amazing artists. And again, you know, to see how in one moment they are very nervous and when they step up to the mic, you know, the beauty of human creativity and artistic ability just shines so quickly. And that was really interesting to me as an artist and just seeing people’s process, how nervous they get right before they have. And I think sometimes, you know, that sense of grit, that pressure and just all these artists around them make them shine even more.

SREENIVASAN: Hey, Tom, you think that that’s — this is possible today?

BAYLOR: I think the glue for this entire endeavor was that we were serving a higher purpose. It wasn’t about us. We were tools in doing something that was going to feed people, give them medicine and give them clothing. And that was why we were there. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been there. And I think that that permeated the entire night. I felt that it really was a flowing, loving night. And I love the fact that Bao put the last statement in there when we were leaving at 8:00 in the morning. And it was — we was down to Ken Kragen, Quincy Jones, Diana Ross and me are walking out of the studio and, of course, the sun’s up. It’s 8:00 in the morning. And we’re walking to our car and all of a sudden, I hear Diana crying and Quincy is walking with her. And he says, Diana, are you OK? And she said, I don’t want this to be over. And that was, to me, really the hallmark of the night, is that it was such a great example of we were there to make something and we did it.

SREENIVASAN: Tom Baylor, the vocal arranger for the song “We Are the World,” and Bao Nguyen, the director of “The Greatest Night in Pop,” you can see that on Netflix now, thank you both for joining us.

BAYLOR: Thank you, Hari.

NGUYEN: Thank you.