Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute - Harry Belafonte, Sting and Stevie Wonder

Harry Belafonte, Sting and Stevie Wonder

Harry Belafonte: Hollingsworth went to New York to ask Harry Belafonte to give the opening address of the concert. Belafonte made it clear he was upset that, with so many musicians appearing, he was being asked only to talk.

Hollingsworth told him the audience was not the right culture for him. He feared that Belafonte's singing would turn the clock back 30 years and would lose much of the television audience across the world. He was already worried about losing the audience as a result of using African singers and dancers whom many people would not have heard of. On the other hand, Belafonte, as a highly-respected, internationally-known personality, would be an effective speaker. Belafonte told him he would think about it, but Hollingsworth should also think about him performing.

The two spoke a week later, with each taking much the same position, although Hollingsworth added that Belafonte could sing if he could get a category A artist, such as Bruce Springsteen or Mick Jagger or Elton John, to sing with him. Belafonte did not get any of those, but came back with a list which Hollingsworth said was not good enough. Eventually, Belafonte agreed just to give the opening speech.

Sting: Hollingsworth went to great lengths to get Sting to perform at the concert. The singer was associated with human rights issues, partly as a result of his song They Dance Alone about the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and was at the height of his popularity. Sting's manager Miles Copeland, however, refused even to put the proposition to the singer because he would be on a world tour at the time and the Wembley concert would not fit in. The final tour schedule showed Sting due to perform in Berlin the night before Wembley and elsewhere in Europe on the evening of the Wembley concert.

Several weeks before Wembley, Hollingsworth went to Switzerland where Sting was playing and booked himself into the same hotel. He got reception to put him through to Sting (using the singer's actual name, Gordon Sumner), told Sting that his management had refused to let him talk to the singer, and asked to meet him. Sting told him to come round to his room.

Hollingsworth told Sting that he would fly the singer and his band to London on a private plane after his Friday evening Berlin concert, drive him to Wembley in the morning where an identical set of equipment would be set up on stage for him. Sting would then do a sound check and open the show a few minutes after mid-day, the first act of the concert (after an opening speech and a set of South African show dancers). As soon as he had done his half-hour slot, he would be driven to the airport and put on the private plane taking him back to the continent. Sting agreed.

Copeland was furious about the agreement and shocked that Sting would open the show rather than be one of the closing acts. But the event was being organised not as a live concert but as a television show and that, according to Hollingsworth, meant a top act at the beginning when "the largest audience tunes in to see how it's going to be". At least one big act was planned for each hour of the 11-hour day in a bid to keep the audience.

Stevie Wonder: One of the first artists that Hollingsworth tried to sign up was Stevie Wonder. He could never get through to the singer, though he phoned him every Friday at his studio. Senior members of the team told him each time that the matter was "under consideration".

On the Wednesday before the concert, Wonder phoned back, asking whether there was still space for him. Hollingsworth told him there was a 25-minute slot – time that had originally been kept open for Prince and Bono to sing a duet together but which the two singers turned down. Wonder agreed the booking. This was never announced but was to be a surprise for the audience. In the event, the singer caused a major backstage drama when he refused to play and walked out of the stadium – though he returned later.