BAND AID – "Do They Know It's Christmas"

Except that Ethiopia is largely Christian (although what were the groups affected by the famine in 1984? Can’t remember). My ‘do they know’ joke was going to be about their adherance to a different calendar. So who knows when they celebrate Christmas.

Much more to say here, but a lunch date beckons!

I always thought the intro sounded a lot like Vienna – reflecting Midge Ure’s input. There’s something compelling about the record as an artefact – it isn’t just of its moment, it is that moment – but as Billy says at ♯3 the lurching mood and vocal ‘stylings’ are jarring to say the least.

I struggle with conspicuous displays of charidee which irritate the puritan pilgrim side of me. It’s along way from:
But when you give to the poor do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving be in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

As a record this is pop’s equivalent of that scene in Citizen Kane where Kane is speaking at a political rally, dwarfed by the huge image of himself at the back of the stage. The song is much, much, more than a song; it’s a potent icon of its time. At the beginning of 1984 the darkest shadow over our world was the threat of nuclear annihilation; by the end of the year we were made aware of new horrors in the world. CND began to decline from this point on, even as the Cold War began to fade away beside the glimpse of rising dissent in parts of the world hitherto ignored.

SIt’s almost impossible to assess DTKIC simply as a song rather than as a phenomenon. But fortunately, if we can manage to deconstruct it, what remains isn’t at all bad and I’d be inclined to give it a 7. Its natural precursor in pop terms is, presumably, All You Need Is Love. (I wonder what mark Tom will give to all the other inc… hop hop hoppity hop aaaaAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHH!

And so, dear Populistas, we come to the parting of the ways for Popular and me. This is the moment I’ve anticipated for some time, exactly halfway through the 1980s, when both my own life and the world of pop both reach a major watershed. By Christmas 1984 I am living full-time in London. Not long into the new year I’ll be working there too, commuting daily on the Central Line between Notting Hill Gate (or Holland Park once I got tube-wise) and Bank. I found a berth in the backrooms of the City in the run-up to the Big Bang and it was a life-changing experience – one may not necessarily approve of what was going on but it was undoubtedly an exhilarating place to be and by no means entirely inhabited by greed-is-good go-getters as the myth would have it. And anyway, I am no longer engaged with the charts. In 1984 there was a smattering of number ones I knew nothing of before I found Popular, something that hadn’t happened in Popular terms since the very early 1960s. In 1985 the ones I don’t recognise are the majority. It’s time for me to pass on.

All credit to Tom for a blog that’s kept my attention for five years now, since the project got a mention in the Guardian. It’s been a wonderful journey and the company has been great. Of course, if I’m passing this way in the future I might just drop in for a brew. After all, even dear Waldo couldn’t keep away in the end!

Bon voyage!

On Christmas ’84, I caught the making-of-Band-Aid documentary on MTV during a momentary period of post-present relaxation. There’s a bit in it where Bono sings his part in the studio with no accompaniment, no effects, no playback. Now I heard Bono before; MTV had played the “Sunday Bloody Sunday” video a whole bunch of times and I was rather impressed by it. But what came out of his mouth was such a grotesque, painful, self-absorbed whine the likes of which I had never known that I spontaneously burst out laughing. And of course I immediately felt bad about it, because–after all–ETHIOPIA. (To say nothing of ARTISTE.)

The structure is a mess – I’m all for non-v/c/v/c/m8/c (to fade) number ones (plenty more to come) but this openly sounds like they were making it up as they went along. The ending is a redux of the hated Hey Jude. And the lyric, almost every line, is patronising (“pray for the other ones”) and clumsy. Most of us like a twinkly, twilit Xmas living room – does anyone really banish shade at Christmastime? Just Bob and Midge (and maybe Paul Young, seeing as he didn’t question it).

Personal shit: the big finale was Stuck On Repeat in my head while I was trying to do one of my first year town planning exams in 1986.

re 7: debatable! At least one star on that who trumps all the main players here.

re 14: Likewise. Sad. Are you leaving to spend more time with your family, or on E&B FC programme notes?

Good point Tom about the disintegration of the pop hierarchy as represented by this collective. I would suggest that Band Aid/Live Aid might have postponed the cull until autumn 86 a theme to which I’ll return.

Considering how quickly it was cobbled together it’s not a bad song although like much of Midge’s work it’s well-crafted rather than inspired. By the way I’ve read the intro was sampled from Tears For Fears’s “The Hurting” but it does sound like “Atmosphere” too.

There’s some great anecdotes about the recording session in Midge’s autobiography “If I Was” . My favourite concerns the B-side which is basically just a compilation of pious messages over the backing track. Apparently Spandau Ballet’s spare part, Steve Norman,submitted one that went ” Steve from Spandau Ballet here. I’d like to say Hi to all our friends in Ethiopia. Sorry we can’t make it down there but maybe we’ll get to tour there next year” !!!

I must painfully confess something here. I didn’t buy it. As a second year student I wasn’t managing my grant as well as in the first year but that’s no excuse. The thought does trouble me now and again (Catholic guilt for you).

Yes, those some of those lines are terrible, but for a rushed job I don’t think DTYIC is bad. It’s certainly a darn sight more palatable that the godawful charidee aggregations to come. 6 is about right for a record that wasn’t supposed to be a poised work of art, but a last minute response to a humanitarian crisis.

“I think it’s easy to take pot shots at the lyrics, but given the subject matter it was never going to be easy to strike the right balance between getting across a message without sounding patronizing.”

Well, that’s the problem. There were songwriters out there who could manage a non-patronising lyric about famine. If you’re not up to the job, don’t try. Or put your ego aside aside and ask someone (not Midge Ure) to give you a hand.

Marilyn was asked, but not Morrissey. Shun the indies, get Kershaw on the blower! No wonder Moz said that the record had inflicted more pain in the world than the famine (not saying I agree…).

To paraphrase one of the singers on this record, a year has passed since I wrote my note (well, more like eleven months, but who’s counting?). Readers may recall that at that stage I was ignominiously sent to the stands by the referee for some truly atrocious and borderline psychotic behaviour here for which I offer no excuses other than the fact that I was at the time extremely frustrated and totally fucked up for various extra-Popular reasons. Which of course is no excuse at all. I do, however, offer profound apologies to the various other hapless members of this community who were forced to put up with my bullshit. I wish it hadn’t happened but, as another 1984 hit puts it, people are people, and as yet another 1984 hit puts it, I am what I am. What can I say (hang on, wasn’t that a 1977 hit?) except that (to misquote a 1976 hit) sorry can change from being the hardest to the easiest word to say if life changes for the better, which I am happy to say mine has. So here be my olive branch for those who are prepared to accept it.

Last time I was here I wrote about a communal Christmas singalong which was pretty much the polar opposite of this one. In the interim my favourite era of pop has passed by, and while I’m afraid I haven’t taken meticulous note of everything that’s flowed under the Popular bridge in the interim since (a) since last I was here my wife has joined me in London and, as I intimated above, life is infinitely better as a result and (b) my hands have been full (together with other projects which aren’t a direct concern here, but do include a book which is due to be published next autumn plug plug) with assessing the albums on my main blog (plug plug 2) but to look at this half decade of number ones you’d be mildly perplexed at what all the New Pop fuss was about. The chart toppers alone hardly begin to reflect the slow revolution that was bubbling throughout this period – are there any less representative years of number ones than 1981 or 1982 (except perhaps 1967)? And the ones for 1983-4 in quarter-century retrospect do look a wee bit stolid, un peu Dale Winton’s idea of the eighties. No, New Pop (Mark I) was all about moments (in love) – Clare Grogan’s tongue, Billy’s beret, the awesome impossibility of “O Superman,” David Sylvian’s eyebrows – and while the Frankie trilogy is still maybe my favourite trilogy of singles in all of pop (“where sex and horror are the new gods” and the trio of number ones swept all of those up), “The Power Of Love” is as poignant and clutching a farewell to an era as “You Never Give Me Your Money” was to its.

This didn’t mean the end of New Pop, as such; as Robin Scott remarked back in 1979, “it’s all around you,” and its lessons were to be absorbed, mutated and re-learned over the next couple of generations (including, most excitingly, the present one). But Band Aid does draw a pretty firm line under the whole period.

If we’re talking about assessing charity number ones purely on their merits as records, then it would not take long to analyse “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Essentially it is a cheap, shitty little tune which sounds like the theme from Z-Cars played on a Stylophone. And that’s not me talking – those were the words of Bob Geldof when first he heard Midge Ure’s backing track. Over it come the voices of prominent British pop stars of the day, some solo, others in harmony and at the end everyone together, singing for charity in the manner of those old Decca All-Star Hit Parade compendiums of the ’50s where sundry leading crooners took turns in singing each other’s hits.

If only it were that simple. But it is I think absolutely impossible to consider these records in some idyllic notion of etiolated aesthetic isolation. There were of course precedents, notably George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, not to mention “All You Need Is Love.” But the Band Aid single, and consequent phenomenon, was – to paraphrase Danny Kelly’s remarks about Sgt Pepper in his introduction to the NME’s 1985 Top 100 albums poll, an Exocet to the heart of pop, and pop records in particular, which as a side-effect of attempting to save actual lives struck several near-fatal blows to popular music.

As “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the last word to the experimental idealism of 1967-75 , so can this part be aptly closed down with “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The irony of its being co-written and co-initiated by the leading light of the last gasp of glampop (Slik) need not be underlined. We can applaud to a certain degree the “bloody doing something about it” activity arising out of the determined apathy of punk and the subsequent aesthetic liberation of post-punk and New Pop.

However, Band Aid was determined to attack and resolve a painfully central question about music and its role, if any, in changing the world, however slightly. All those Lennon sales pitches about peace and having no possessions were all very well, and anarchy is never less than tempting – but what price any of this against the undeniably greater factor of saving the lives of millions of people (though, again in my year’s absence, I have had occasion to rethink my views about the 1980-1 Lennon triptych/hidden quatrain of number ones quite radically)?

The solution Geldof found was an uncomfortable one. As general post-Band Aid trends would go on to confirm, it very quickly turned out to be an option of better music or a better world. And even the efficacy of Band Aid and Live Aid in terms of the latter can be questioned, since most of the billions raised by the enterprise seem to have gone straight into the pockets and coffers of the ruling Ethiopian elite, all the better to crush and control their hapless subjects. As Geldof himself realised by the time of Live 8, it was the system which needed changing from the ground upwards rather than sending in astronomical sums of undefined money – i.e. relief from the ruinous interest rates demanded by the West in terms of Third World debt repayments, an end to the industrial/military interdependence which actually favours tinpot tyrannies in famined nations over workable democracies, and so on.

Does that therefore mean that Geldof simply shouldn’t have bothered? This is a hugely uncomfortable question. By decrying “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” one is in danger of favouring mass deaths so that we fortunate Western consumers can continue to avail ourselves of higher-quality art. Yes, it should have been done in preference to not having been done. But still there are those side products which in another way have proved massively destructive.

Possibly only someone in Geldof’s position could have turned Band Aid into action in 1984. In the same week that “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” went to number one, “Dave,” the then-current single by the Boomtown Rats, was sitting at number 100. The Rats, four years after their last top ten hit, were fading fast, and so Geldof’s evenings were quieter; quiet enough for him to be sitting in front of the TV to watch Michael Buerk’s Nine O’Clock News report from Ethiopia. The author of “Looking After Number One” then speedily set about disabusing that song’s central notion; inspired by Lennon’s “Instant Karma,” Geldof and Ure wrote the song, recruited as many musicians as they could assemble in West London of a late autumn Sunday morning, recorded and mixed the single, and released it in the space of some 2-3 weeks.

It was all done on the turn of a determinedly amateur dime, and sounds it. Of the featured singers, Paul Young and Boy George appear to carry the bulk of the song while George Michael, Simon LeBon, Tony Hadley and Sting do their respective vocal party pieces and Bono is left with that deliberately ambiguous, if clumsy, line. The lyric is awkwardly phrased (“clanging chimes of doom”?) but obviously heartfelt, at least in Geldof’s heart if not necessarily in those of anyone else present.

What counted though, besides the direct (hopeful) life-saving effects, was what this all meant to the concept of the pop record as an art form and/or simple three-minute tickler in itself. In addition, of course, it slaughtered and buried New Pop. No more room for shiny yellow philosophical abstracts; this was cold rationalism run carefully riot. No more room, either, for the divided loyalties essential to any pop movement which can count itself as truly alive – in the Christmas 1983 edition of the BBC’s children’s programme Saturday Superstore Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and the Police – in their entirety – all appeared as guests, but each group refused to be filmed in the company of the others or even talk to the others. Twelve months later and we have Simon and Sting and Tony all shaking hands, mucking in together and being mates – what was the point, then, if it had only ever been about business? It torpedoed the concept of rivalry which would take a decade to resurface with the (engineered) Blur/Oasis “war.”

Moreover, by assessing the personnel on “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and subsequently those invited to Live Aid, we were conveyed a horribly clear diktat about who mattered and didn’t matter in pop – suddenly there was a pecking order. Nearly all of the original motivators of New Pop were conspicuous by their absence; Heaven 17 and Bananarama were there, Phil Oakey was invited but (pace Bill’s post at #3, and this is how he put it in a radio interview at the time) angrily declined when the rest of the Human League weren’t. Frankie Goes To Hollywood were gigging in New York and couldn’t attend the recording but Holly Johnson (together with Bowie, McCartney and Big Country) did a specially recorded message for the B-side (“I can’t get the laugh right Bob”) which Trevor Horn astutely and mischievously made the centre of his 12-inch remix. But as for ABC, Adam Ant, Marc Almond and the Associates – and these are just the “A”s – commercially they were all more or less washed up by the end of 1984, lucky even to squeeze into the Top 40 for a week. The ambulance chasers – the Durans, the Spandaus, the Wham!s, those eager to please – all dutifully turned up; Jon Moss helped out on drums alongside Phil Collins but Boy George flounced in too late for the photo shoot. Those who still awkwardly stood outside, and/or apart from, the 1984 mainstream – the Smiths, New Order, Scritti – were not asked; others unable to attend but who subsequently turned up at Live Aid included the Thompson Twins, Sade, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox.

Perhaps the most peculiar inclusion of all was Paul Weller, the sole representative of “punk” (if we don’t count Geldof) present. Since he’d spent the best part of three years loudly slagging off nearly all of the artists in the studio, hardly anyone would talk to him except Phil Collins, Marilyn and his old mates Bananarama – though he was awestruck by the unexpected and unannounced appearance of Kool and the Gang, in town to promote their “Fresh” single and just dropped into the studio, he spent most of that Sunday trying to convince fellow musicians to participate in a fundraising single for the striking miners (only Heaven 17 agreed, and helped produce the Council Collective single “Soul Deep” which sold considerably less that season than Band Aid). He must have wondered why he’d even bothered (he can be heard, deep in the mix, on the line “where nothing overflows”).

In its five weeks at the top – it debuted the same week as Wham’s only UK million-selling single, the double-sided “Last Christmas”/”Everything She Wants,” entered at number two, where it was compelled to stay for the entirety of Band Aid’s run at number one (the first occasion in UK singles chart history where the top two were both new entries, but since George Michael was prominently featured on “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” he could hardly complain) – it passed the three million sales mark, shattering the record set by “Mull Of Kintyre,” and would remain the UK’s all-time best-selling single until 1997. The effects, as we are bound to see in 1985, were immediate – all of a sudden, pop in itself was no longer enough, yet Geldof was only setting in active motion what the Beatles had started back in the sixties. But now there seemed little, if any, room for fun, mischief or sex; the Frankie trilogy, with both “The Power Of Love” and Welcome To The Pleasuredome still in the top three, already seemed like a vaguely decadent and indulgent remnant of another era. Now the scene would be set for Soul and Sincerity and Good Works and Efficient Passion; the old values had speedily reasserted themselves, and charity records would soon routinely ascend to number one, not because they were good records, but because…well, do we want a better world, and can that better world still accommodate better music? The subsequent evidence might suggest that the two are incompatible. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is a poor pop record which ended up being maybe the most important pop record, such that it seems “indecent” even to give it a mark. But the mark it has left on pop may take centuries to wash away.

(Good God, 2284 words – this is why I need an editor…)

Nice to see you back, Marcello!

I didn’t buy this but I bought ‘Soul Deep’ and ‘Strike!’ by The Enemy Within.

I’m wondering in what order Bob and Midge called the various pop stars to get them to participate and if there was ever a sense of “well, Sting and LeBon and Boy George are doing it so I’d better be there too..” behind some of the decisions.

Altogether now – #2 Watch: Five weeks for ‘Last Christmas/ Everything She Wants’ by Wham!

A lot to say about those two fantastic songs.

i definitely have a soft spot for this song. as a four-year old with a 10-year old sister, this was a Major Event in my household. it’s become one of those songs where you feel that the holiday season isn’t quite complete until you’ve heard it at least once (just the once being preferable, of course).

still, one of my pet peeves is faux-‘dramatic’ contrasts in art, and unfortunately it is the key device used throughout this song. it’s easy and it’s lazy. how dare we celebrate anything while someone somewhere is having a hard go of it? several of the participants here learned a lesson in the importance of the guilt-trip in Pop, and would use it to great effect in the coming years (Phil Collins and Bono, I am looking at you).

after all, here we sit typing away, happily poking fun at “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, while people in other parts of the world are suffering. may i propose a charidee single featuring the Popular regulars, to be recording and filmed at the upcoming get-together? make sure to reserve the line you’d like to sing by initialing the sign-up sheet (i’m taking “it’s good to be Popular/but better to be free”).

Hi Marcello. Also nice to see you over on Yet Another Year In Pop. I barely pop in here myself, not knowing most of the music and often not having the time to listen.

Other business:

Had no clue about this “Marilyn” so I went a googling.

Results 1 – 10 of about 13,400 for marilyn “do they know it’s christmas”. (0.24 seconds)

First hit: BAND AID – “Do They Know It’s Christmas” | FreakyTrigger

Also, here’s Nick Tosches’ “The Heartbeats Never Did Benefits,” which offended me when I first read it in Fusion back at the time of the Concert For Bangladesh, and I suspect it still would but also know that some of its attitudes (in that piece and many others) seeped into me and became mine. Won’t have time to reread this morning, but looking briefly at the start, Tosches is no better than some of you guys at knowing which religion is associated with which country, though Tosches could well be deliberately making the “mistake,” as he is with the Krishnas, all part of his takedown of piety. (By the way, the first musical group ever to be associated with “punk” is, indeed, the Heartbeats, Tosches being the one to make the association, the piece being “The Punk Muse” in summer of 1970, iirc, “muse” being as important to Tosches as “punk,” the punks being the ones envisioning the muse.)

I really liked “Calling Your Name” – very smart New Pop take on Northern Soul, one of Langer/Winstanley’s best productions.

For those curious to investigate further, his solitary album has recently been reissued on CD by Cherry Red.

ok time for me to admit I have something in common with Peaches Geldof.
We have Fathers who share the same alma mater – Blackrock College South Dublin don’t ya know?
Anyone who has read Geldof Seniors autobiography “Is That It?” (worth a look as it’s far better than anything he’s ever put on a disc bless him) will know young Bob even as a teenager no shrinking violet had many a run-in with the Masters at the strictly authoritarian and devoutly Catholic Blackrock and even long after the Boomtown Rats became famous the gangly vocalist was considered an embarressment to his former school.
Attitudes changed because his charity work and my Dad recalls going to a re-union at Blackrock in about 1985/86 as he walked in he was faced with a poster of the Band Aid organiser with wording along the lines of

BOB GELDOF – HERO OF BLACKROCK COLLEGE

Well it’s one way to impress your Teachers.

A day is long time in pop(ular). Nice to see Punctum back in the house – fully recommend his albums blog as a companion piece to this (kind of).

So, Band Aid. I bought it of course – I felt I had to. I was, like so many, caught up in the moment. It did, after all feature quite a few of the artists whose work I had bought into over the last few years. I was,at the time, a little disappointed that Bowie wasn’t able to make a contribution to the A side – I think he was supposed to sing the opening line instead of Young – but thankfully that passed. A lot of what I have to say about this has already been said and probably more succinctly than I could. The intention behind the project far outweighs the recorded results. The record itself doesn’t entirely hang together despite reasonable contributions from all involved. The verses are ok but the middle 8 and the final refrain are pretty ham-fisted and grate somewhat. It certainly didn’t fit with my idea of a Christmas single and I still wince when I chance upon it on a Christmas Compilation.

Personally I like to believe that none of the artists involved thought that it would enhance their respective careers – I always got the feeling that their participation was well intentioned even if there was an air of competitiveness in their presence – they couldn’t possibly know what the future held (other than perhaps a one hit wonder due to their fame and the projects charitable aspirations). Live Aid, however, was a different matter.