'No one knew what was coming next'
In 1984, Sir Bob Geldof was roused to action by a news report on the Ethiopian famine. Forty years later, he’s still amazed Band Aid came together…
Brian Aris/Band Aid
- David Hepworth
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At the time of the first Band Aid recording in 1984, I was one of the presenters of BBC rock show Whistle Test. When the producer told me to be at a Notting Hill recording studio on Sunday morning because “apparently Bob Geldof’s making some kind of charity record”, it was said with a look we now call “side-eye”. The stock of the Boomtown Rats singer was not high.
Forty years later, Geldof admits his second career might never have started had the first not foundered so badly. Their 1984 album had not troubled the chart. At the close of a gloomy October day spent trying unsuccessfully to interest anyone in their new single and, “thinking the best part of my life might be over”, he slunk home early to his girlfriend Paula Yates and their young child.
“That’s how I saw Michael Buerk’s report about the Ethiopian famine on the Six o’Clock News,” he explains. “Le Bon and Boy George and Bono and the rest of them would have been out being rock stars. I wasn’t. I was on my sofa.”
Galvanised by what he saw, he conceived the idea of a fund-raising single, plundering the family’s phone book for top pop names to sing on it. “Although they had pushed our lot aside, I knew all these people through Paula and The Tube [the Channel 4 music show she presented]. I’ve got Polaroids of people like Simon Le Bon at my place, asleep on the sitting room floor because they were just exhausted.”
The song Do They Know It’s Christmas? was arrived at by putting together a pre-existing Midge Ure composition with a fragment of a song Geldof had failed to interest the Rats in. “Midge sent me the tune and I said, ‘Dude, that’s f***ing Z Cars.’ He said, ‘Better than anything you can write.’ Midge will grudgingly admit there may also be an element of The Dam Busters there.”
It proved serviceable. A new BBC documentary of how it came to be recorded, put together from footage shot on the day that has lain in a vault ever since, begins with Geldof and Ure waiting like nervous party hosts to see who turns up first. “Midge said to me, ‘Who’s coming?’ I said, ‘Oh, everyone,’ but still I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think Spandau would come back from Japan. Why would you?”
As he set about making Band Aid happen, Bob Geldof wouldn’t take no for an answer. Richard Grassie
By the time I arrived that day, Sting, Paul Weller and Spandau Ballet were already there. By mid-morning, the faces were rolling in so freely that you stopped taking note. Boy George made his big entrance in the evening, having flown in from New York on Concorde. Such were the times.
Four years earlier, most of the oiks in that room wouldn’t have been able to scrape the price of a cab; now here they were in front of the cameras, savouring their moment, doing their bit, feeling their juice, not entirely sure where they were. Geldof can’t be sure of the name of the bewildered band member who recorded a message apologising to “all our Ethiopian fans” for not being able to tour there, so he must remain the day’s Unknown Soldier.
The pop historian in Geldof is captivated by the film, likening it to the Maysles brothers’ famous footage of the Beatles arriving in New York in 1964. “There’s no filter. What I love about it is the contrast with We Are the World [the US equivalent recorded the following year]. There you have these giants, people like Ray Charles, Tina Turner and Willie Nelson, but back in the UK there are these spotty kids just out of school. They’re charming, guileless, innocent almost. They’re rivals for sure, but they’re laughing and carrying on. Then you have a previous generation, like me and Weller and Midge trying to keep it together. Everyone crowds into the studio control room, which is the very opposite of Quincy Jones, let me assure you. It’s wonderful, it’s moving and no one in that room, me included, had a clue what was coming next.”
Midge sent me the tune and I said, ‘Dude, that’s Z Cars’
There are aspects of the day Geldof has forgotten or didn’t notice back then. Paul Weller, at the time in his Style Council phase, arrived sporting a walking stick. “I imagined he and I hadn’t got along, but in the film I can see him sitting behind Midge, chipping in.”
He’s forgotten that he phoned Frankie Goes to Hollywood, who were overseas, to beg even the tiniest contribution from the year’s hot property. The sequence where he’s heard introducing a visibly nervous Bono (“He wasn’t sure U2 should be there at all, and he was iffy about Le Bon’s bouffant”) to a clearly shy George Michael (who says, “I get nervous around pop stars,” before transforming his vocal line with an artful tweak) has a touch of Stella Street. “It’s mad in retrospect. Two years later these people were the determinants of pop music all over the world.”
The world outside the window of Sarm Studios remains distinctly 1984. Holland Park looks shabby, the reporters use notepads, people smoke, calls are made on rotary dial phones and nobody asks why the chorus contains only four women. “It has to be seen in the context of its times,” he says. “You don’t get Band Aid without Loadsamoney [Harry Enfield’s 80s comedy character].” The soloists line up to record their lines in front of each other. These are done “dry”, meaning nobody else can hear the track they’re singing to. Under such conditions, even Pavarotti would sound like a drunk.
The press report on the Christmas hit. Daily Mirror
“It was like school. ‘Who’s going first?’ ‘Not me, f*** off.’ Midge was like the kindly teacher and I was there tapping my fingers impatiently. Anyway, Paul Young stepped up and volunteered to do the first line.”
Bob is seen reminding them what they’re singing about. “Bono took me aside and asked if I was sure I wanted him to sing this line about ‘Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you.’ I was able to say, this is not soggy liberalism; this is coded anger, like Michael Buerk’s report. And because he’s got a voice from God and he can absorb the sense of a song like few others, he nailed it.”
In time, Bono’s bravura delivery of that zinger attracted a fan club. When, on its 20th anniversary, a subsequent generation of pop stars gathered to record the song, both Robbie Williams and Justin Hawkins tried to bag the line for themselves. “They were still arguing when the door swings open and in walks Bono, who says, ‘Are we doing my line yet?’ He came back and sang it again in 2014, when we were doing it for the Ebola crisis.”
What the film can’t capture is the behind-the-scenes arm wrestling of the week between completion and release, during the course of which Geldof learnt to go to the top. “I did a deal with the Daily Mirror by calling [owner] Robert Maxwell. The old shyster rang me at 3am, saying he was going to charge for the poster of the Band Aid line-up. I told him he couldn’t. When Top of the Pops said they couldn’t play the record because it wasn’t yet in the charts, I went to [BBC1 controller] Michael Grade. He said, ‘Why don’t I give you five minutes before Top of the Pops? Can you get someone to introduce it?’ I said, ‘I could f***ing do that,’ and he said, ‘Mmm, perhaps somebody else, Bob.’” Anyway, David Bowie did it. I asked him to wear my Feed the World T-shirt, which was based on Katharine Hamnett’s [designer T-shirts]. Of course, it looked s**t on me and brilliant on him.
“I was having difficulty getting the Musicians’ Union to sign off on all these people being present. I’d come to the end of my tether. The only way to get it to Radio 1 was to leave the MU and start our own union. If we started the Pop Music Union, left the MU and said to the BBC, ‘You can play none of these artists’ records without the PMU’s consent,’ it would have meant that Radio 1 would have come off air. I understood the power that was in that room.” The union settled; the Geldof MO was established.
As we wind up, I remind him that 40 years earlier, I had asked if this would be the end of his involvement with charity – he said yes. He laughs. His morning has begun, as most days do, with ten emails of Band Aid Trust-related matters. “But if you asked me again today, the answer would be the same.”
'It was extraordinary'
Mark Ellen was editor of Smash Hits magazine and attended the 1984 recording. He recalls shy stars and one surprising ice-breaker…
Did you think Band Aid would be successful?
I admit I initially felt a bit sceptical. Bob Geldof hadn’t had a hit for four years and was generally considered, in Smash Hits parlance, “down the dumper”. But he had the gift of the gab, he was a brilliant negotiator, and he was a bridge between the older artists — Status Quo, Genesis — and the younger ones, like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, who he knew through his then girlfriend, Paula Yates.
How did the artists behave on the day?
Pop stars back then were rivals who slagged each other off in the press. Paul Weller hid behind me, saying, “I’m hardly everyone’s favourite person.” People initially kept themselves busy, so they didn’t have to
talk — John Taylor was eating chilli con carne Bananarama were watching TV. The ice breaker was Culture Club drummer Jon Moss, who saw Phil Collins, shouted “My hero!” and ran over and hugged him.
Who was the biggest star in the room?
Boy George. He was stuck in New York, but Bob called him and he flew in on Concorde. Eventually, he arrived, with crimson hair. He was the biggest household name at the time, the one everyone’s mum knew. Had he not turned up, the record would have had far less impact.
What happened when they began to sing?
They recorded the chorus first, then each vocalist had to step up in turn and deliver their lines. It must have been nerve-racking, trying to cram all your vocal personality into five seconds. But, somehow, they all managed it.
Forty years later, how do you feel about Band Aid?
Now there’s a convention of stars doing charity singles, which Band Aid started. At the time, seeing all those famous faces together in one room was extraordinary. I’ve always felt very proud that it was British, and the rest of the world followed. It felt quite out of step with the individualistic 1980s. Band Aid was a rare moment, when people stopped and looked around. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but it was wonderful.
'It was like a Navy Seals operation'
Rob Parfitt
Mariella Frostrup then one of Band Aid’s PR team, remembers a sense of reverence on the day, and the moment she knew it had worked…
How did you come to work on Band Aid?
Bob was one of my clients. He came into Phonogram Records and tried to take over my desk. He’d seen a news item on TV and it had reduced him to tears. He said he had something important to do and didn’t have a moment to waste.
What was your role?
My job was to help coordinate all the big bands and big egos. It was like a Navy Seals operation in terms of how to present it to the media. Back then, every call was on a landline, every press release sent by fax, and you had to rewrite from scratch anything with a mistake. The amount of manual labour was not inconsiderable!
What is your strongest memory of recording day?
I was very used to those bands joshing around, but there was a kind of reverential silence as they all slipped into the studio — extraordinary when you’re talking about a bunch of young, scampy, egotistical people. It felt as though something important was going on, and the ones who turned up in limousines seemed pretty embarrassed. I think they soon realised it wasn’t just another showbusiness gig. It felt part of something bigger.
When did you first realise what a phenomenon it would become?
I walked down Oxford Street the day the single came out and heard it playing in almost every shop I passed. Then it went to number one, and just flew.
Forty years later, how do you feel about Band Aid?
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The lyrics, especially Bono’s line, encapsulated Bob and Midge’s sense of rage, and determination that we should all get off our well-padded bottoms and do something. Sadly, that remains true today. The world hasn’t changed as dramatically as we’d have liked it to, and we’re cynical about the people who try. People find Bob a bit Marmite, but he started a global movement and raised millions for a cause he believed in.
I still get shivers down my spine when I hear the original.
Authors
David Hepworth
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