Bob Dylan and The Best Scene from 'We Are the World: The Night That Changed Pop'

The Netflix documentary about the USA for Africa's all-star cantata is a morality tale with some moments of truth, like when His Bobness has to play his part and can't do it.

It’s not when Al Jarreau is so drunk he can’t hit the notes. Not when Sheila E leaves irritated because she realizes that she has only been invited to attract Prince, her highly coveted employer. And not even when Waylon Jennings goes away refusing to sing in Swahili as Stevie Wonder suggested, something that no one will do in the end anyway. The best scene in the documentary We Are the World: The Night That Changed Pop concerns Bob Dylan.

This is not the famous sequence of the video clip of the song in which everyone joyfully sings the chorus, and Dylan stands there immobile, his gaze lost, a stranger who opens his mouth now and then, but little and at random. It’s when Dylan doesn’t know how to do his job, or rather what is thought to be his job: singing. We are towards the end of the session of the pro-Ethiopia single We Are the World. After recording the choral chorus, producer Quincy Jones moves on to the individual parts. They are recorded by positioning the soloists not in a separate room but all together, arranged in a semicircle, perhaps also as an incentive to get the most out of their short performance while being exposed to the gaze and judgment of their peers.

Front cover of the 'USA for Africa We are the World' record album, the music on which was designed to raise awareness and funds for a worldwide hunger relief program, 1985. The sleeve features a group photograph of the number of the contributing performers. The records success led the way for the Live Aid concerts later that year. (Photo by Blank Archives/Getty Images)

So it’s Dylan’s turn. With the room still full of stars, a little excited for the event and a little exhausted from the very long session, the musician who changed the course of rock history (for once, that’s not hyperbole) stands there with headphones on your head and papers in your hand. The clock inserted into the assembly indicates half past five in the morning. Everyone is ready to see the genius in action, but

Dylan can’t sing; he just mumbles something. “You can do it,” says a voice-over coming from the audio control room. He starts again and again, uncertain words coming out of his mouth, a few notes, almost nothing. “I have to try it a few more times.”

He is in obvious difficulty; it is clear that he does not know how to take the two simple sentences that concern him, “there’s a choice we’re making; we’re saving our own lives.” Maybe it’s a question of intention, of intonation, of attack; maybe there are too many people in the studio for his tastes. Quincy Jones arrives and says that if he wants, he can sing in a different key; it would actually be wonderful if he did. In short, he permits him to make mistakes and considers that mistake a virtuoso. As Huey Lewis, who was entrusted with the part of the missing-in-action Prince, says, a producer must also be a psychologist. In the end, he comes up with a trick. Stevie Wonder sits at the piano and sings the part, imitating Dylan, who learns it by imitating his impersonator. It’s after 6. The colleagues are made to leave; Dylan smiles, and he makes it.

It’s the most interesting and authentic scene because it tells us something about that formidable gathering of stars and how they are related. Because it puts us face to face with the limits of a music giant, and in these times of self-celebration, we don’t see that often. And because it demonstrates a fact that doesn’t always emerge from documentaries of this kind, namely that pop is not just one thing, that there are intuitive and technically complete musicians like Wonder who can do anything. Some don’t miss a note that sounds like robots, like Auto-Tune, better than Auto-Tune. And then there are the Dylans who have a personal and sometimes even “wrong” way of making music. But they come up with masterpieces that way. And everything is forgiven.

The segment on Dylan is certainly not the only interesting moment of Bad Nguyen’s documentary dedicated to the We Are the World sessions released yesterday on Netflix; even if many stories, including the one about His Bobness, were already known, in some cases, they had already seen. It may not have been the greatest night in pop as the original title says, nor the night that changed pop, as per the Italian version, but it was the rare opportunity to bring together so much American star power under one roof, with everything that results, including an irresistible Ocean’s 11 effect, as the director called it.

Perhaps We Are the World would not have been released if the American Music Awards had not taken place on the evening of January 28, 1985, in Los Angeles, a very rare occasion to have so many famous singers in one city. It was thus decided that, once the ceremony was over, they would go straight to the A&M Studio, starting with the presenter and star of that edition of the AMA, Lionel Richie. Others would have arrived independently, like Bruce Springsteen, very tired and fresh from the Born in the USA tour. The tension that underlies the first part of the film arises from here: will everyone arrive? How will they behave? Will it be done in time?

Autographed sheet music for the charity single 'We Are the World' at A&M Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, January 1985. The song, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, was recorded by 'USA for Africa' to raise awareness and funds for a worldwide hunger relief program. (Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)

The documentary tells it thanks first of all to the memories of Richie, who acts as a narrator, clear conscience of the project, and nostalgic guide in this grand tour of the past, but also to the audio recorded that day by Life journalist David Breslin and the cameramen present in the studio. One presented an invoice to no avail and went home with a t-shirt and a great story to remember. And who knows who has the piece of paper that Quincy Jones hung on the studio door before the singers arrived: ‘Check your ego at the door.’ With all that ego in the way, the song would never have been born. Without that ego, the singers would never have gotten into that studio and done those things.

The documentary also tells what happened before January 28th, the writing of the song by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, the recording of the demo, and even before that, the conception of the project by Harry Belafonte. If, in the case of Band-Aid, it was the whites who helped the blacks, this time, it would be the blacks (at first Jackson, Richie, Jones, and Wonder) who helped other blacks. And Lionel Richie’s story of the attempts to write something good at Michael Jackson’s house is hilarious, between a snake that roams freely, the chimpanzee Bubbles to look after, the Indian blackbird and the dog arguing downstairs because, words of the king of pop, ‘the blackbird can talk and the dog is envious.’

Suppose We Are the World had to be simple enough to be interpreted by 46 voices and make it as easy as a drink commercial to get people to buy it en masse. In that case, The Night That Changed Pop is a moral fable in which, apart from small contrasts and setbacks, he talks about the sessions as an undertaking from which everyone emerges as a winner, including singers whom Netflix viewers perhaps don’t even know today. Among the little accidents along the way, Cyndi Lauper doesn’t want to show up because, according to her boyfriend, the song is bad, and then she has to redo her part several times because the necklaces make noise when they bang against each other. Then Prince asks, on the phone from a club in LA, to record a solo in a separate room, and Richie tells him no, that he has to play the game like the others, and he gives up.

Among the beautiful things the colleagues who improvise Day-O to pay homage to Belafonte, the big names like fans who exchange autographs on scores, Bob Geldof who silences the class of undisciplined stars by telling what he saw in Ethiopia, Michael Jackson who arrives in advance and sings alone, a few sentences that are worth the documentary, Diana Ross who leaves the studio last and cries because she doesn’t want it to end. The scenes that are not seen and are only told are also memorable: Stevie Wonder offering to accompany Ray Charles to the bathroom (in 1985, you could still make jokes about disabilities) and Paul Simon saying if a bomb had killed everyone in that studio, John Denver would be number one again.

Being, above all, a celebration of what happened between the evening of January 28th and the morning of January 29th 39 years ago, the documentary does not explain how the 80 million raised from the sale of the records were used, as if the gesture was enough and more than enough. Nor is there any discussion of the controversial aspect of initiatives like USA for Africa, namely the overlap between the charitable intent and the self-celebration of the stars. The underlying idea is that without the latter, there would be no former. The only moment in which the quality of Jackson’s text is questioned is when Smokey Robinson, who can afford it, asks to change a passage about “giving,” suggesting the exhortation “let’s start giving.” We Are the World was about raising money for the people of Ethiopia, but also about the idea that you can save yourself by doing something and glorifying positive star power.

When Dylan finally sings his part, he knows he hasn’t given a great performance. He would like to do it again; Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones exaggeratedly tell him that it is perfect. Jones hugs him. “If you say so…,” replies the singer-songwriter. He later said that he was not convinced of the song’s message. “I don’t think people can save themselves.” Maybe people don’t, but stars do.