With only a month to go until the AMAs, Kragen and his team of 50 set about piecing the line-up together at a furious pace. The likes of Fleetwood Mac’s Buckingham, The Jackson Five, Bette Midler and the table-thumping godfather of rock’s mid-Eighties famine relief efforts Bob Geldof were reduced to mere faces in a chorus line of 46 stars. USA for Africa, as the band would be known, was not short of spotlight hoggers – among its ranks could be found Jackson, Dylan, Charles, Joel, Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner.

Such were the scenes at A&M Recording Studios in Los Angeles on 28 January 1985, when the biggest musical stars in America – minus Madonna and Prince, plus Dan Aykroyd – convened to record “We Are the World”, the USA’s answer to Band Aid’s “ Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. When you put together, for one night only, the greatest supergroup ever constructed, even with a sign saying “check your egos at the door” at the entrance, sparks are going to fly.

Lindsey Buckingham disturbed Michael Jackson hiding in the bathroom, and Waylon Jennings stormed out when the row got too heated.

Who sang we are the world