Lionel Richie, Prince and a grumpy Bob Dylan: The untold story behind ‘We Are the World’
As he took in a recent screening of a new documentary on the making of “We Are the World,” Lionel Richie found himself — even now, four decades after the all-star charity single was released — gripped by a creeping sense of anxiety.
“You have to understand: It was an impossible thing to pull off,” the veteran pop-soul singer says of the one-night recording session that gathered 46 famous artists at the historic A&M Studios on La Brea Avenue on Jan. 28, 1985. The mission, timed to an influx of talent to Los Angeles for that evening’s televised American Music Awards, was to cut the song Richie and Michael Jackson had written together to raise money for famine relief in Africa; the challenge was getting it done before the assembled A-listers — among them Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Joel, Tina Turner, Huey Lewis, Kenny Rogers and Bob Dylan, all under the direction of producer Quincy Jones — scattered the next morning.
