The Making of Do They Know It's Christmas?

The Making of Do They Know It's Christmas? is a BBC production released in 2024 that I found to represent the kind of documentary I prefer.  Just the footage, mate.  No latter day commentary via talking heads recalling the event.  No critics or anyone elses offering their memories or takes.  Director Nigel Dick was there at Trevor Horn's Sarm West Studios in the Notting Hill area in London in 1984 to capture the assembly of some of the U.K's biggest names in pop, collectively known as Band Aid.  Organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, the supergroup -which included George Michael, Sting, Bono, and Boy George - recorded vocals for "Do They Know It's Christmas?", a song written to be benefit famine ridden Ethiopia.

Dick's film does not go into this backstory or include interviews.  I'm sure there are other docs out there that do.  This is fly-on-the-wall stuff.  The camera follows everyone around, capturing moments big and small, trivial and historic.  It's fun to see George Michael describe Wham's upcoming holiday song, "Last Christmas", to an interviewer long before it became a punchline.  Watch Sting's amused expressions.  Gaze at Bono's boots, which upstage everyone.  See Phil Collins, who brought his own kit, drumming over the base track.  Horn a bundle of enthusiasm. And many others we may not recognize, perhaps unaware of the phenom of which they are a part.  Geldof and Ure scramble to make everything happen in a day's time.  They need the track out by Christmas and want it to go to #1.  They got their wishes, and it raised more money than they could've imagined.

Some perhaps unintended irony on view: Geldof noshing a plate of food.  Members of Kool & the Gang relegated to the margins. Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley bagging on the lyrics.  These have been the source of derision for many years, moreso lately.  How should we take the line Bono delivers?

Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you.

I read that he didn't want to sing it.  I like to believe his delivery is a sneering takedown for the comfortable.  A guilt trip.  Elsewhere, the song proclaims that the only flowing water is the "bitter sting of tears."  I'm sure there were conflicting reports from those who actually spent time in Ethiopia.  Many feel this song reeks of  colonialism.  You could argue, I guess.

Geldof and Ure would later say that the song's quality (and the song itself) ultimately didn't matter.  The activism behind it and the result did.  I always liked the tune, even the primitive keyboard track.  Geldof would go on to organize the mega concert Live Aid the following year.  Would love to see a doc of that one too, again without the 21st century doc tropes.  The footage is somewhere.  Begin the remaster!