Midge Ure On Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ As Charity Single Turns 40

On Nov. 25, 1984, a group featuring some of the biggest names in British pop music — including members of Duran Duran, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, the Police, Bananarama and Wham! — recorded a charity single to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Co-written by the Boomtown Rats’ Bob Geldof and Ultravox’s Midge Ure, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid generated humanitarian funds for the effort and set the stage for the massive Live Aid event in 1985.

Forty years after its release, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” not only became a holiday music standard but it’s popularity and success spawned three remakes in 1989, 2004 and 2014. On Mondayt, a new mix of the song spearheaded by legendary producer Trevor Horn was unveiled combining elements of the 1984, 2004 and 2014 versions and collectively featuring the likes of Sting, Boy George, Bono, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Sam Smith, Seal, Sinead O’Connor and others. The special 2024 “Ultimate Mix” will appear on the new “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” compilation this Friday commemorating the 40th anniversary milestone, according to a news release.

“I think the concept and the social meaning behind it — the social reasons for doing it – still resonate,” Midge Ure, the song’s co-writer, says recently of the original song’s legacy before the announcement of the new mix. ‘The long-term aftermath of Band Aid and Live Aid is that younger generations understand the concept of charity because we used a medium that they understood.”

“We used a medium that they got, which was music,” he continues. “It wasn’t politics. It was music. And it kind of forever changed their views on caring because up to that point, charity what was perceived as something old people do, something you do when you get really ancient like I am now.”

MORE FROMFORBES ADVISOR

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

By Kevin Payne,Contributor

Best 5% Interest Savings Accounts of 2024

By Cassidy Horton,Contributor

The story behind “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” began when Geldof in 1984 saw a BBC news report on television about the crisis in Ethiopia and later rang up Ure. Before working with Geldof on the song, Ure — then of Ultravox — had never worked with the Boomtown Rats singer although they knew of each other.

“Paula Yates, [Geldof’s] girlfriend at the time, was a journalist,” Ure recalls. “So she knew everyone in the music industry. We all knew Bob through Paula. Bob used to come and see the Rich Kids [Ure’s previous band] when we played in Ireland and stuff. And we would go and see him when he was playing in London.”

“I just happened to be standing next to Paula when he called her after seeing the initial footage on the BBC about the famine in Ethiopia,” Ure adds. “So had it been [Spandau Ballet’s] Gary Kemp or [Duran Duran’s] Simon Le Bon standing next to her, it would have been them co-writing the song.”

Ure, who also produced the track, describes that day when all of the members of pop music royalty gathered at London’s Sarm West Studios as a mixture of awe and awkwardness.

“We all knew of each other, but you hadn’t necessarily met,” he recalls. “So you’re in a room with people that you’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m standing next to whoever it happens to be. I’m standing next to Sting.’ So there’s a fanboy element of it as well as still having to keep your boss’s hat on because I had to record I had to teach everyone the song because they’d never heard it.”

For Ure and Geldof, it was a tremendous task to have the song rush recorded and mixed so that it could be released in time for the holiday season. “‘Record all the vocals, record all the chorus vocals, record Phil Collins’ drums, and mix the record within 24 hours,’” says Ure. “So I’d spent four days playing all the music, all the stuff. I’m the only person on the track except for Phil Collins. So I spent four days piecing this thing together after Bob and I came up with the concept. But only 24 hours to do all the hard work. And that was a tall order. So I had to keep my boss’s hat on. ”

In retrospect, it is a remarkable feat for stars like Le Bon, George Michael, Boy George and Paul Weller to be working together instead of acting as rivals on the pop chart. Any expectation of the rock star treatment in the studio during the recording was checked at the door.

“I didn’t see any ego stuff at all,” Ure recalls. “None. There was a classic moment when Bob had to phone up Boy George who had forgotten all about it and to get out of bed in New York and get on the Concorde, which he did at his own expense. We didn’t have any money to do any of this.

“He flew in that night and he had a croaky voice and he was behind the microphone learning the song. And he said, ‘Look, can someone get me a brandy?’ And I had to press the intercom button and say, ‘There’s no one here to get you anything, George. There is nothing here. There’s no sandwiches. There’s not even a glass of water you can have unless you take it from the tap, from the faucet.’ So I said, ‘You have to go around the corner to the little shop and buy a brandy if you want one.’ It was so incredibly basic. So there were no egos. There was nothing. Nobody demanded anything. You know It was done with the right spirit.”

Upon its release on Dec. 7, 1984, the original “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” became a chart success when it peaked at number one on the British pop chart (it later hit number 13 on Billboard in the U.S.). As of 2017, the song had sold 3.8 million copies. A trust, with Geldof and Ure serve as its trustees, was established to provide “relief of hunger and poverty in Ethiopia” and “the relief of sickness and the preservation of health among people residing permanently or temporarily in Africa.”

“So because Bob and I wrote the song and gave the songwriting royalties to the Band Aid Trust for another 75 years or whatever—that’s as long as I think the copyright lasts,” Ure says, “that will generate income for the cause. So goodness will still come from it long after we are gone.”

Joining the ranks of other popular holiday songs throughout the decades,”Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has become a classic with its new 2024 incarnation hoping to achieve similar status. “We didn’t realize it at the time,” says Ure, “but [if] you write a Christmas song, there’s a very good chance it’s going to get played every Christmas. And it does. So it lives on in hearts and minds mainly in a good way, which is great.”