Celebrities
On August 1, 1971 Ex-Beatles member George Harrison enlisted the aid of fellow musicians Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan and many more in a concert at Madison Square Garden to raise money for Bangladesh famine relief. Known as "The Concert for Bangladesh", it was attended by more than 40,000 people.
In 1984 Irish musician Bob Geldof and Scottish Ultravox member Midge Ure organised a charity fundraiser record for the starving of Africa. Under the name of Band Aid, they collected together most of the singers then making the British pop charts and got them singing together on a charity single called "Do They Know It's Christmas?" The pair followed up with re-recordings of the song, with different groups of musicians, in 1989 and 2004.
The following year, 1985, Geldof and Ure followed up their success with a large-scale concert: Live Aid. This led to other fundraising famine relief projects such as Sport Aid and Comic Relief.
The success of this single was followed by several other 1985 celebrity ensemble songs benefiting famine relief, including American group USA for Africa ("We Are the World"), the Canadian Northern Lights ("Tears Are Not Enough"), and the heavy metal group Hear 'n Aid ("Stars").
Read more about this topic: Famine Relief
Famous quotes containing the word celebrities:
“A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Passengers in 1937 totaled 270,000; so many of these were celebrities that two Newark newspapers ran special airport columns.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)