The Greatest Night in Pop

Nothing will ever be the same after tonight.

- - Nothing!

Some of the artists, some of the people, some of the personalities…

Tonight is gonna be one of the most unreal nights we've ever experienced,

and I'm glad I have a good seat 'cause I don't wanna miss a thing.

- Your timing is perfect. - God, hey.

- Bruce, Lionel, you're all good? - Good. Yeah.

Bruce… Oh, Smokey's here too.

- Happy new year, baby. - Steve!

The greatest artists of a generation came together…

…with all of our ego…

- - …with all of our talent,

to save some lives.

Must be in a dream, huh?

Okay, guys.

Hello. Hello.

But we only had one night. They're not coming back tomorrow.

Let's go! Now, here's what we're gonna do.

It was busy and buzzy,

and people didn't know what we were gonna be doing.

You're exhilarated, you know, just from the unusualness of the evening.

There was nothing more chaotic

than trying to rope this creative ball of energy together.

This was history happening right now.

- One, two. - Let's put it on tape!

All right, let's go!

Legends of rock music.

The most super of superstars.

Are you ready for me?

Here is a unique young singer.

The most exciting superstars in the music world today.

I'm comin' in.

Comin' in hot.

All right.

Let's get this party started.

I will try to take you back as far as I can remember.

In the early '80s, I'd left the Commodores.

Ken Kragen, my new manager,

he said, "Well, first of all, your songs are more famous than you are,

so we're gonna stick your face next to all of those wonderful songs."

Mr. Lionel Richie!

My solo album and stuff was happening,

and so the career was taking off.

I'm a night person,

so everything in life was happening after one o'clock in the morning.

- -

And then, one night, I received this call from Ken

that changed everything.

Ken Kragen ran a talent management company.

He had the most stellar reputation.

Ken Kragen!

Ken was a superstar.

He was as much a superstar as the artist,

but he was a superstar in the business of music.

One morning, there was an unplanned meeting.

We walked in, and we're greeted by Harry Belafonte.

That stops you in your tracks.

You're looking at Hollywood royalty.

He's legendary.

I just knew something big was about to happen.

Harry Belafonte was an elder statesman.

He had graduated from being a working actor and singer.

He was still doing all that stuff,

but, for the most part, we looked at him as this iconic figure,

and he had such social impact.

We believe that artists have a valuable function in any society,

since it is the artists who reveal the society to itself.

Much like civil rights needed to be amplified,

Harry Belafonte felt that the issues of poverty in the world,

certainly in Africa, needed to be told.

For some time now, we have been hearing reports

of another famine in Africa, this time in Ethiopia.

But with all else that's going on these days,

so often those reports don't have much impact.

People starving in Africa

was as far away from us as you could be.

It was just something that we saw on commercials or in documentaries.

This mother and the baby she bore two months ago

wrapped together in death.

A hungry child dies silently.

In Africa, they're dying by the thousands.

How do you look at all this overwhelming force

of need and hunger?

Something must be done.

Harry Belafonte said, "Let's do a concert,"

and Bob Geldof had already done the Band Aid single

about, oh, a month or so before.

I said, "Harry, let's just take the idea that Bob already gave us.

Let's do it. But let's get the greatest stars in America to do it."

Kragen said, "I just got off the phone with Harry Belafonte."

And, uh, basically what he said was, "I need you."

Harry said, "We have white folks saving Black folks."

"We don't have Black folks saving Black folks."

"That's a problem."

"We need to save our own people from hunger."

He was trying to get us, the younger group,

involved in what was happening in Africa.

I said, "Of course."

It's not that I didn't have enough to do.

I mean, I was hosting the American Music Awards.

Had just been offered that invitation.

I'm about to go on my big solo tour.

The one thing for sure I knew, I wanted Quincy involved because

he's the master orchestrator.

He's a successful performer,

but he's better known as a producer and composer

who's worked with everyone from Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra

to Little Richard and Paul Simon

to Diana Ross and Michael Jackson,

Mr. Quincy Jones.

At that particular time, you could not be a producer

and be any hotter.

He had the respect of every musician on the planet.

It'd been something I had been thinking about a lot before,

you know, and Lionel called, and, uh, he said, "Let's go."

You really had felt the need for that of all times, you know,

'cause this is the most the world's ever needed each other.

It started from there, and we went on to the obvious phrase of

"Who's gonna do this thing?"

Lionel and I got into his limo, which happened to have a phone in it.

I said, "Let's get you and Stevie Wonder to write a song."

We called Stevie. We couldn't find Stevie.

Lionel continued to try Stevie all through the night.

They all wanted Stevie Wonder. Who wouldn't?

He already had that soulful, epic, legendary status.

And also they were all close with Stevie.

But when Stevie says, "I'll call you back,"

you just wait for him to call you back on whatever timetable it's going to be.

And after that, I had Quincy on the phone.

He says, "Well, I'll see Michael tomorrow."

"I'll run it by him, see what he thinks."

The man whose record, Thriller, has just become

the biggest-selling album ever,

who earned more Grammy nominations this year than anyone in history.

Michael Jackson is the man of the '80s.

Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Jackson!

Michael and I go back to the early Stone Age days.

We were brought up in Motown,

and, as lead singer of the Commodores and lead singer of the Jacksons,

we bonded right away.

I've been working on this…

Been hidin' out. That's what you been doin', I know you have.

When he first learned how to drive,

the first place he drove was over to my house.

But he couldn't drive on the freeway because he was scared to death,

so he knew every backstreet in the world to get to my house.

But Stevie wouldn't call me back,

so Michael and I needed to start writing without Stevie.

I said to Michael,

"I can write the song by myself. You can write the song by yourself."

"But if we gonna do this together with Quincy Jones, it has to be huge."

This is my first time in the Jackson household.

- That's when you do Vegas? -

I realized we'd never written anything together,

and we've never spent time together.

- However you wanna do it. - Doesn't bother.

- There's a choice. - I've got 'em.

- This is the Sonny & Cher team, hear this. -

I realize he can't play, so he hums every part,

tapes and tapes of "dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum…"

Excuse me? I mean, it's just layered and layered of him humming.

It was pretty… amazing.

We had to identify right away what kind of song do we want.

Do you want one of those? Or do you want an anthem?

[stamping, vocalizing "The Star-Spangled Banner"]

No. That's not what we were looking for.

There it is. There's your template.

And once you have that, now what are we gonna put on top of it?

We went through various songs we thought were just sausage.

His line was, "Where's the jelly?"

He called me "Lion-el."

"Lion-el, I want you to check out

Bubbles the chimp."

But I don't wanna hold the chimp.