Photo: Band Aid Trust/Brian Aris/Camera Press
Words: Linn Branson
It's Christmas time and once again the great, not so great, the good and bloody awful band together to save the world. Thirty years after the original Band Aid, stars descended on the backwaters of Notting Hill yesterday (November 15) to record a new charity single version of 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'
Once again organised by Bob Geldof, who masterminded the original in 1984 (and whose career has really gone nowhere since, unlike the majority of those on the first version who saw their profile and profits rise after the Band Aid concert), he addressed participants "like the headmaster" before they sang the chorus, saying "OK, this is what it's about. When you sing this, be aware that the rest of the world will be singing it with you." Well, perhaps a few One Direction fans (although, judging by tweets posted when their idols appeared on The X Factor wearing Remembrance Day red poppies, asking why they were all wearing flowers, it's unlikely they have even heard of Ebola; or like the former TOWIE airhead Amy Childs, think Ebola is a new boy band), but "rest of the world"? Come on, Bob, the world has moved on in thirty years and where once this was an iconic moment, it is now viewed with a more cynical eye.
Who can forget the 16-hour rock concert on July 13 1985 that raised around £65million and was watched by a global audience estimated at 1.5 billion (apart from One Direction fans who undoubtedly will never even have heard of it). As nations watched and millions coughed up their donations in the misguided belief they could effect some lasting change, in subsequent years it emerged that not only were substantial amounts of money (said to be up to 20 per cent) siphoned away from relief efforts to fund guns for Ethiopian warlords during the Eighties, but there is still death, disease and poverty.
Emeli Sande said: "Bob gave a really touching speech before we started singing so I think that really got everybody in the mind frame that we
needed to be in to remind us it's fun but we're here for a really serious reason. It was him expressing how passionate he was about this cause and how it's so unnecessary that so many people should be dying."
But what good, really, is 'Do They Know It's Ebola' going to do? As Ian Birrell, journalist and co-founder of Africa Express, speaking in The Observer, says: "The only good thing is to learn the toe-curling lyrics of that patronising song are being rewritten...Band Aid kickstarted an age of celebrity activism, with the idea that stars, slogans and stunts are sufficient to solve complex political problems. The majority of Britons oppose aid policies in their name; this then backfires by assisting the rise of Ukip, an isolationist and pessimistic force. And let’s look at Ebola, an epidemic I have covered in Liberia that demonstrates again fatal failures of sluggish international institutions and most of the aid industry. This trite song will raise a comparative pittance, ignores Africans and has a logo implying the virus struck the entire continent. Patronising and perpetuating myths again. Nothing wrong with wanting to help - but plenty wrong when naive foreign interventions do more harm than good and hurt people they claim to help. Band Aid should have learned its lessons and stayed silent."
Some stars appear to be in agreement. Adele allegedly turned down the chance to be part of the celeb fest. "I got through to someone, not her, but she’s not doing anything at all at the moment. It’s fine, I understand it’s not for everybody and other people support in different ways," Geldof is reported to have said. "I put the call in. I didn't speak to her. I spoke to Jonathan (her manager) and he says, 'I can't speak to her. I try but she won’t pick up the phone'." Astounding, as one would have assumed 'Saint' Bob would have had her personal number on speed dial.
Damon Albarn has also questioned whether Band Aid 30 is a suitable way of tackling the Ebola crisis, suggesting that the project may patronise the whole of Africa. In an interview with Channel 4 News, the Blur frontman was critical of the project: "Having been to many countries and gotten to know many people, it always seems that we have only one view of it. There's also this assumption that in Africa everyone knows what's going on. Our perspective and our idea of what helps and our idea what's wrong and right are not necessarily shared by other cultures. There are problems with our idea of charity, especially these things that suddenly balloon out of nothing and then create a media frenzy where some of that essential communication is lost and it starts to feel like it’s a process where if you give money you solve the problem, and really sometimes giving money creates another problem."
The new version of 'Do They Know It's Christmas' features new lyrics, such as, "Well tonight we're reaching out and touching you" to replace Bono's original line "Well tonight thank god it's them instead of you." Still pretty turgid, and unlikely to win an award for best song lyrics, nonetheless.
The single will be premiered on The X Factor tonight (November 16) - profit-making double whammy weekend for Simon Cowell and Syco, then - and becomes available to buy online on Monday (November 17) with the physical release following on December 8. The single will cost 99p to download or £4 to buy on CD, and is likely to be a firm favourite to take the Christmas number one spot.
Whatever the rights or wrongs, Observer commenter davidcallun1957 might sum up the feelings of many:
"I think that we would all be better off without this ridiculous celebrity culture, where very rich and not particularly talented people lecture to the general public about issues such as Ebola while promoting their media/show business profiles and so enhancing their earning power.
"It was Michael Buerk who helped break the Ethiopia Famine story in 1984, and yet here he is accepting £150,000 for appearing on a celebrity reality show in Australia a few days after defaming a rape victim on a boring and pretentious BBC programme called The Moral Maze. Why does Buerk not give the money to Band Aid to help the Ebola victims, given that he earns a packet from the BBC anyway?
"Bono salutes the new corporation-friendly tax regime in Ireland, panders to Bush and Blair and is the friend of the Clintons and the Obamas: yet there is nothing from him about Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, the human rights violations of Paul Kagame, or the military coup d'etat in Egypt and the resulting massacres of unarmed women and children.
"Geldof panders to the UK establishment, as much as to the Atlanticist/New World Order establishment, and even to the point of speaking out against Scottish Independence when he is not even a UK citizen. I regret that it is necessary to say this, but I should have thought that Geldof would have been better employed demanding some answers about what exactly happened to his late daughter. That affair does seem rather murky, and I am sure that most right-minded people would think that drug abuse that leads to the demise of young people is a grave matter of public concern in its own right."
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