Lionel Richie on Greatest Night in Pop Doc, Recording ‘We Are the World’

In the Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, tensions are high as more than 40 of the top musicians of the ’80s, including Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross and Cyndi Lauper, only have a few late night hours to record the anthem “We Are the World.” 

The tension is so palpable that it was still present decades later at the January premiere of the documentary, recalls Lionel Richie, who co-wrote the song with Michael Jackson and was a producer on the doc.

“When we did the premiere, Huey Lewis was sitting with me, and he leaned over to me and said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to make it.’ And I said, ‘Huey, it was 40 years ago. We made it,’ ” Richie says, laughing. 

The song was recorded in January 1985 by the supergroup of stars, which also included Ray Charles, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner and Harry Belafonte —the latter proposing the idea of recording a song to raise money for food and relief aid in Ethiopia. The only time slot that worked for all artists was immediately following the American Music Awards, which Richie was hosting, and musicians began gathering at around 10 p.m. at a recording location that was kept secret from the public.

After some initial “chaos,” as Richie puts it, reined in by producer Quincy Jones and Richie himself, the recording was completed and the song became a worldwide hit. The documentary, directed by Bao Nguyen and which covers the behind-the-scenes emotions, nerves and triumphs, also has taken off.

“We believed that we were going to stop hunger and save lives, and you saw it actually as it just unfolded in front of all of us,” Richie says. “And the fact we had this footage was just amazing. Just watching our naive selves, our childlike selves — there’s a part of your life that is so sincere that it almost encapsulates what made us all artists in the first place.”

The documentary has been nominated for three Emmys, including outstanding documentary or nonfiction special. This gives Richie, a producer on the film, his first Emmy nomination, which he called a great honor, particularly since he never expected to be up for Emmys contention.

Richie spoke with THR about how he came to be the one telling the story of the night and all the drama it entailed. 

What made you want to participate in the documentary?

I was driven by the fact that the story needed to be told once I started realizing how many people said, “Well, Lionel, were you there?” “What do you mean, was I there?” And then you realize that time erases what really happened. And so when they sat me in that room and said, “OK, now tell us the story of ‘We Are the World,’ ” I didn’t realize at that point that I was going to be the narrator. I was just putting it down as, “OK, let me just give you some markers.” And what they did was they put the documentary together exactly as I was saying it.

What was it like first walking into the studio to record the song? 

Most of us were meeting each other for the first time. And you walk into a room with Ray Charles and [Bob] Dylan and then there’s Quincy [Jones], and then there’s all these cameras going. I described it as the first day of kindergarten. You know how you walk in the door and your parents leave you, and you have to kind of figure out and navigate your own insecurities at that moment in time? Well, that’s what it was. We had to make friends quickly. And I remember asking Quincy, “Are we going to have people show up one by one to put their vocals on?” He said, “No, we’re going to have them in a circle. We’re all going to sing looking at each other.” You can’t get any more pressure than that. Are you kidding me? But at that particular time, we were all up for the challenge, and we delivered.

Was there anything that surprised you to see in the documentary? 

What I will tell you was we looked awfully calm. We didn’t feel like that. I think everyone in that room did a great job of acting under pressure, but inside of all of us, we kept saying, “Holy shit, there’s Ray Charles. Holy shit, there’s Billy Joel.” Meanwhile, we came together as a family instantly, and the proof of that was at the end — we were hugging each other like we had been through boot camp together. What surprised me was how quickly we became a family, and even though Quincy [put up a sign that said] “Leave your ego at the door,” I didn’t feel, not one time, that there was an ego problem. There was just this harmony of, “How do I make my part the best part ever,” and “I hope I don’t screw this thing up.”

You were on a tight deadline to lay down all the vocals, which is illustrated in the documentary by a clock showing up onscreen. Did you think you would be able to finish the song at the time? 

Bao, when he put this together by putting that clock in, that was the way our stomachs felt. We, first of all, had to get past the overall presence of all of this talent. The second thing is, we had to corral this talent. And I remember Quincy saying to me, “Under no circumstances do we say, ‘I’m not sure about this. What do you think?’ ” He said, “You have 45 of the most creative artists in the world. You’ll have 45 different versions of ‘We Are the World.’ So what we want to do is make sure that the answer is, ‘We know what we’re doing.’ ” And as you saw during the documentary, we had chaos. And we lived through the chaos. I think once we got through that period of [Stevie Wonder trying to add Swahili to the song], we were pretty much smooth sailing. But we were at 3 a.m., 3:30 or 4 a.m. before we started the lead vocals. So, we were in doubt up until about 6 a.m.

It was fun seeing Stevie Wonder presented as a kind of troublemaker in the documentary but also as a problem-solver, particularly when he imitates Bob Dylan’s voice to him.

That’s what makes creatives creative. We’re all troublemakers in that room, for God’s sake, you can’t single out Stevie. It’s just that each person there had an idea of their part, but they had to kind of invent their one line. All they had was one line to sing. And the person who had the toughest time was poor Huey [Lewis] because we kept stopping before we got to him. We kind of labeled [Stevie] as a troublemaker, but Stevie was the savior for a lot of us. I think Bob was overwhelmed with all these singers around him, and he’s a character. I mean, his voice is iconic, but for a moment there he was just intimidated that “Maybe I have to sing this thing.” But once he found out, “Just sound like Bob Dylan,” he had to go back and ask the question, “What does Bob Dylan sound like?” But once Stevie got him together, he was great.

Do you think artists would be able to do something like “We Are the World” today? 

I just kept thinking the whole time [I watched], in between my tears and my laughter, that trying to pull something off like that again today would be a bloody nightmare. I mean, it’s just because we have technology to the point where we can’t sneak up on anybody because everybody is already livestreaming before you finish it.

It’s so wonderful to visit again, to see the dedication of these amazing artists as they just drop their guard completely and show up. What you saw in the documentary was no one came with security. No one came with a glam squad. No one came with their managers. They were in the other room. But they walked into that studio alone. That’s almost impossible today.

Have you been asked to write another “We Are the World”-type song? 

Oh yeah, they’ve asked. And the truth of the matter is, I told them, “The only thing we want to do is play it again.” You don’t have to write another song to say people are dying. You don’t have to write another song to say people are starving to death. You don’t have to write another song that says people need people. We need each other. And so my answer has always been, “Play the song again.”

If you win the Emmy for this, you’d just need a Tony to have an EGOT. Have you considered Broadway? 

You don’t do things for the award of it all, but when they do come up, it just sparks that little competitive human nature, to go, “Hmm, I wonder.” But that’s the child inside talking. I’m taking this moment in time to just inhale the present moment. This is pretty spectacular, and to give this song and this story to the world, this is the best teaching tool I could ever imagine for this song, because now the world won’t have to ask the question, “Lionel, were you in the thing?”

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.