ALISON BOSHOFF: Exactly forty years after the Christmas hit was released… A sea of cocaine, the biggest stars in pop at each other’s throats – what really went on the day they recorded the Band Aid single

The day of the Band Aid recording – Sunday, November 25, 1984 – was long and lively.

Everyone who was anything in the British music scene had turned up and, predictably, there was sniping, arguments and bad behavior, fueled by the twin engines of ego and cocaine.

The location for this eclectic gathering was Sarm Studios in London’s Notting Hill, with Bob Geldof (then lead singer of The Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure of Ultravox at the helm. Sting, Duran Duran, George Michael and Bono were among those who joined them to sing the iconic hit Do They Know It’s Christmas?

After the single was released a week later – on December 3, exactly 40 years ago today – the single sold twelve million copies and was followed eight months after its recording by Live Aid, the spectacular double concert on both sides of the Atlantic. , which raised £40 million for charity on the day alone – equivalent to more than £100 million today.

But now it’s all too clear how this collection of do-gooding divas laid the groundwork for decades of fallout, snide remarks and festering disputes. And it seems the ‘Band-Aid curse’ lives on.

Last month, pop star Ed Sheeran, 33, who sang on the 30th anniversary recording of the Christmas hit, said his vocals had been used without his permission on the remixed 40th anniversary edition released last week. He would have “respectfully” declined the request if asked, he added.

Sheeran’s point is that many in today’s more politically correct world view the lyrics of the song as offensively patronizing towards Africans.

It remains to be seen whether anyone will want to record a single for the 50th anniversary.

But back to 1984. On the day of the recording, the Grinch was undoubtedly Paul Weller of The Jam. Everyone involved (even Weller) attests to his sour presence.

He said recently: ‘Everyone got away with a bang [cocaine] in the toilets. It probably would have been fine for me in the 90s, but I wasn’t into it that much then. I was completely out of my comfort zone.’

The late George Michael recalled: “Paul Weller decided to attack me in front of everyone. I said, ‘Don’t worry all your life, take a day off.’ ‘

Weller, it turned out, hated all the ‘new’ acts, like Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran – and had even less time for the serious Sting and Bono.

More than twenty years later, Weller ostentatiously spat at a photo of Sting during a Teenage Cancer Trust gig and later also said of him: ‘F*****g terrible man. Not my cup of tea at all. F*****g bullshit. No sharpness, no setting, nothing.’

Weller was equally baffled by Geldof’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Brits in 2017, snapping: ‘Why did he win that? That can’t be because of his music, man. I mean, when it comes to his charity work in Africa, there’s no way around it, but Boomtown Rats – f*** off.”

The only person Weller seemed to like on the recording was Culture Club’s Jon Moss. They discussed how much they both hated then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

But of course Moss had his own problems. A secret love affair with the group’s frontman, Boy George, which involved alleged physical and verbal abuse on both sides, only ended after a forty-year war when Moss finally sued George and the rest of the Culture Club for having him ‘turned off’. They settled out of court last year for a sum of £1.75 million.

Band Aid has proven to be something of an emotional crucible for many of those involved, for better or for worse.

Some of the lesser-known acts, like one-hit wonder Marilyn, simply faded into obscurity. He developed a heroin addiction and lost everything a few years after his 1983 Top Ten hit, Calling Your Name.

“I was living on income support, £50 or whatever a week, and doing as many drugs as I could get my hands on,” recalls the former star, whose real name is Peter Robinson. Others, like Bob Geldof, would remain in the spotlight – and in his case for the most tragic of reasons.

Bob’s then wife Paula Yates was instrumental in bringing the stars together as she knew many of the acts from her presenting role on TV music program The Tube. She had a particularly close bond with the ‘boys’ of the Spandau Ballet.

But within twelve years of Band Aid, Geldof and Yates divorced. Paula had left Bob for INXS star Michael Hutchence, with whom she had a daughter.

Hutchence was found hanged in a hotel room in 1997 after an argument over family travel arrangements with Bob. Three years later, Paula also died from a drug overdose. Bob and Paula’s daughter, Peaches, tragically died in 2014 at the age of 25 from a heroin overdose.

The outsiders at Band Aid’s 1984 recording session were rock band Status Quo. But in his 2019 memoir, singer Francis Rossi said he and guitarist Rick Parfitt found everyone that day “as nice as pie.” “And I didn’t expect how much of us had in common when it came to cocaine. Our corner of the studio soon became the meeting place for many others.

‘The only one I hated was Boy George’s girlfriend Marilyn. He had had exactly one hit single: his first and his last. The way he acted, you would think he was the real Marilyn Monroe.

‘He made such a big deal about being gay and not being sure which toilet to use. I told him to use the gentlemen, but put the chair down. That way he could have the best of both worlds. Oh, the look he gave me.”

Late arrival Boy George told reporters when he finally arrived at the studios, “Every band that snubbed each other is here today!”

It was an awkward day for George Michael because it meant spending time with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon.

They had been publicly taking shots at each other for years in a fairly good-natured manner and came in arm in arm to give the press a photo and something to write about. But their amiable chemistry soon turned around.

George Michael was particularly outraged when, in 1986, at Wham’s great The Final concert at Wembley, he was told that Le Bon wanted to crash the party and get on stage.

Years later, he recalled that when security told him about the plan, he responded, “Tell him to fuck off!” When the Duran Duran star did join him for the final song, I’m Your Man – despite not knowing the lyrics – George went out of his way not to sing with him.

Newspapers at the time insisted that Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were at odds, but their rivalry was only as thick as Nick Rhodes’ base: more childish one-upmanship than enmity.

On the eve of the recording, both bands were in Germany.

Spandau’s Martin Kemp recalled: ‘While drinking with them that evening we found out they had hired a private Learjet to fly them back to Heathrow the next morning. So what did we do? We also rented a Learjet. We wouldn’t let those bouffant handsome boys stand on stage. We would race them back! And that’s what we did: our pilots radioed each other from plane to plane to see who won.’

Kemp recalled how the band decided to arrive at the studio in a huge Bentley to ‘steal every last bit of spotlight from those Brummie chancers’.

But this turned out to be a PR disaster. “If you saw the Band Aid video you might remember how some of the other artists showed up that day,” Kemp said. ‘Paul Weller took the subway.

Sting walked in with a folded newspaper tucked into his jacket. Now there’s the Spandau Ballet, arriving to help the starving children of Ethiopia in a luxury car, having just raced across the Channel on Learjets.’

It got worse. When a member of the band – unnamed by Martin – was asked by reporters in the studio if he had a “message for the people of Ethiopia”, he replied: “Yes, I would like to say hello, and sorry that we have not done. We were able to go on tour there this year, but we hope it can be accommodated quickly.’

As Martin said, “It wasn’t our finest hour.” So if Ed Sheeran thinks Band Aid 2024 isn’t PC, maybe he should be thankful he wasn’t in that recording studio forty years ago.