8.  "WE ARE THE WORLD"

To pretend that I was less than shamelessly thrilled at the chance to open the USA portion of the biggest rock and roll show in the history of the world would require a sophistication I haven't got. I was given six minutes at the top, which would put me in an unfilled stadium eleven hours from prime time. At the very least, I would be picked up by every international television and radio news and every newspaper and magazine that had a deadline, and many that didn't, just because I was the opener. And though many of my friends in California would sleep through the 6:00 a.m. opening, my friends in France would probably see it at 3:00 p.m. In any event, I had six minutes to make some sense out of yet another "historic moment." I had six weeks to plan my six minutes, and no doubts that the appropriate combination of words and songs would come to me in time. I was ecstatic.

I was on tour when the invitation came. Excitement was building everywhere. TV interviewers were starry-eyed, asking questions about Woodstock versus Live Aid, and whatever happened to all those years in between. The room service maids and people on the street traded rumors about who the latest invitees were and who might make a surprise appearance. One nineteen-year-old girl stood talking to me on a curbside in Andover, Massachusetts, dreamy but determined.

"I'm goin' to Philadelphia."

"You are?" I said, surprised. "Where did you get tickets?"

"Oh, I don't have tickets. I just gotta be there. It's our Woodstock, you know."

There was a growing mystique in the air about the rock and roll world which disturbed me. It was hinted that the people of the world of glitz were suddenly going to live lives of sacrifice and commitment, and change the world by sharing our wealth. More than once I had heard the expression "lifelong commitment to end hunger," and it always made me cringe.

Research from our office told us that Bob Geldof, mastermind of the international fund-raiser, was not going to be duped by dictators, black marketeers, and red tape. And that he was smart enough to know that hunger will not end today or tomorrow or in fifty years unless we restructure everything from our psychologies to our economies. The rhetoric developing in the States, on the other hand, was direct from EST Hunger Project-highly inflated and unrealistic talk about "making a commitment to end world hunger starting today" which gave the misleading impression that by nightfall the very concept of hunger, disquieting to those of us who eat, would have vanished from the face of the earth. We needed only to make this mysterious commitment. And the rock and rollers were now in the forefront of this massive social change.

In fact, there had not been an event since Woodstock approaching the sheer enormity of this one. The current word was "awesome." Live Aid would be awesome. Everybody knew it. We all wanted to be there. I imagined the bloodletting and the IOU-waving going on between managers and Bill Graham, the man who decided who would perform and who would not. So when a reporter treated us entertainers as though we were making a sacrifice, it was embarrassing. Yes, we all paid our own ways to Philadelphia. My rented plane, the only way to get to Philadelphia from Chautauqua, New York, by morning, would cost seventeen hundred dollars. That money was not a sacrifice. It was an investment.

I began to think about my six minutes. "Amazing Grace" was the obvious choice of openers. But most kids don't know it, and they don't sing along except on the hooks and choruses of their favorite rock and roll songs. I started to sing the one song known by all the kids which had a singable chorus and even a hint of social content. I flipped Private Dancer out of my Sony and slipped in "We Are the World." Perfect. I could do two verses of "Amazing Grace" for the older generation and the cameras and then break into "We Are the World" for the kids, and with luck, at least forty or fifty thousand people would sing along. I yanked off the earphones and grinned into the wall mirror. I said, "Good morning, Children of the Eighties! This is your Woodstock!," and started to dance. My whole six minutes came to me then, as I stood listening to the tape and scribbling down words and timing little speeches with a stopwatch, looking out at the silly Styrofoam swans on the lake where I was staying in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Amazing Grace: the grace to recognize and appreciate our gifts, and the grace to feel the needs of others. To be moved is to be touched in the spirit of goodness by the spirit of goodness. The Children of the Eighties needed to experience that goodness on a grand and unifying scale. Maybe, just maybe this upcoming mega-media event would move some folks, somehow. I went to sleep at 4:30 in the morning and woke up every half hour. I was excited as a six-year- ld child before an Easter egg hunt. And would stay that way until July 13th, and a little bit after.

***

Nobody is at the airport to pick us up when we arrive in Philadelphia. The East Indian cabbie takes us past the stadium where we peer out at a parking lot full of cars and vans and trailers. Bare-chested young men are sitting on vehicle roofs holding halter-clad young women (the halters are the first visible feature distinguishing Live Aid from Woodstock), drinking good ol' American beer and eating, hollering to each other and trying to hurry the sunup. The cabbie asks if we are here for the concert. We say yes. Do I sing? He is peering in the rearview mirror. He asks my name and when I tell him he nearly runs us into a tree. His wife, he says, has all of my albums, etc. He is very, very happy and turns off the meter, shaking his head. He brings us quietly into the Four Seasons Hotel. I am not recognized by the kids who have lined up to scream at Mick Jagger and Tina Turner and Don Johnson and Duran Duran. I smile to myself, hug the cabbie, and give him an autograph for his wife. The Four Seasons is all pastels and perfection, as always, but tonight the lobby is filled with rock and rollers and newspeople and groupies and hustlers. I am in my room by two o'clock, tired, wired, and thinking about what to wear. I turn my suitcase upside-down, littering the floor from wall to wall to get a good look at my entire out-of-date collection of rags and feathers. By three o'clock I have finally ironed a yellow parachute skirt and cobalt blue blouse, dug out the belt with the big silver circles and the necklace made of spoon ladles linked together, and the nineteen-dollar black sandals bedecked with rhinestones. I spend an extra twenty minutes hunting down my half slip, which, after swearing in whole paragraphs and dumping out all the carry-on luggage, I find tucked up in a dress I've already hung in the closet. I fall onto the bed and doze off instantly, my adrenaline suddenly losing the war against Dramamine and exhaustion.

Like a soldier I awake a few minutes before reveille and answer my five-thirty wake-up call cheerfully, trying to sound as if I've been up for hours. I shower quickly and try some vocal exercises and find, to my delight, that my voice has not had time to relax, so instead of being early-morning husky, it is still loose from the concert the evening before. I sing and dress, put on makeup and order coffee and eggs and toast, but only the toast goes down, and there's Mary polishing my spoon necklace. Jeanne and the rest of the troops somehow are in the lobby by seven. I look around me at the first wave of performers. There is something pathetic about rock and rollers in the morning. They are pastier than normal people, even the black ones, like the Four Tops, who are also on the seven-thirty run to the stadium. But there is general hilarity, because if rock and rollers are ambulatory, they wisecrack.

By seven-thirty it is over eighty degrees out. We roll into the stadium, nearly running over a few bodies which look like rejects from the fountain of Lourdes. A long snaking line of ticket holders inches toward the main gate. Most of the people look clean and rosy. We are whisked efficiently into the backstage area, where, in one of the enclaves, I have an air-conditioned van available to me from my arrival till one hour after my performance, at which point the next group will get the van and I am on my own to roam luxuriously about with a backstage pass. The Hooters, Philadelphia's up-and-coming rock band, has the van next to mine. We greet each other, and I hear what will be the general theme of the day from young handsome rock and rollers: "I was raised on your music!" "My mother has all your albums," and "Meeting you is a great honor." It wouldn't be if you knew what I was thinking about your cherubic little mouth, kiddo, is my silent response, but I give each of them a reasonably maternal hug and let them believe what they have to. I retire to my trailer and ask everyone to leave me alone for at least thirty minutes. And I go over and over my set. The greeting, the recognition of the Children of the Eighties, the kind of New Wave prayer, and the songs. I feel suddenly sick to my stomach and dizzy. A doctor friend says to drink liquids and not relax. I drink a soda pop and walk around the room. I'm in there for nearly an hour and a half, but it feels like five minutes.

They come to escort me to the green room. All the saliva in my mouth evaporates on the way. I have to go to the bathroom desperately, but it's too far and won't do any good anyway, so I sit tight, sip water, and ask Mary not to let anyone talk to me.

It's time to leave the green room. We are led down the long tunnel and up the stairs to the stage. I am ushered into a nook to have my picture taken, but it jars my concentration, and I say "Not now, please, maybe afterwards." I sit down again and go back into a trance. Eventually I am led up to the curtain, stage left, with Mary pulling and Jeanne pushing, like parents taking a kid to the dentist. I see the Cuckoo's Nest's own Jack Nicholson preparing to step out at nine o'clock sharp and welcome the crowd. I go down on one knee, feeling safer, I guess, close to the ground. I spot Bill Graham also down on one knee, just to my left. He looks terrific, fresh-shaven, and is wearing a clean white shirt. We've been on bad terms since the Dylan/Santana/what's-her-name tour, but today he has already greeted me, and now he is smiling like a nervous kid, and I am smiling too. I go over and hug him and kiss him on the cheek.

Jack is ushered out in front of the gigantic beautiful painted gauze curtains, and the day begins for real. The noise reminds me of the first time I ever saw the Beatles. It was in Denver, Colorado, in 1965, in the Red Rocks Amphitheater. When they trotted out onstage the sky lit up with flashbulbs, and the night was bright as high noon, and the kids screamed at such a pitch that I found myself cupping my hands over my ears and crying. If all the wheelchair people had gotten up and waltzed around in circles, I would not have been the least bit surprised.

Jack is talking, but I can't distinguish the words over the roar of the crowd. My heart knocks recklessly around in my chest. Through the gauze, I can make out thousands of bobbing heads and waving arms. "Lord, God, Father, Mother, I am in your hands," I say to myself, and the curtains are opening and I am hugging Jack, funny, sweet, Five Easy Pieces Nicholson, and then I'm on the roller coaster, buckled in, and the switch is pulled, and I turn and face the crowd. My first impression is that the entire scene in front of me is almost exactly as I imagined it would be. The stadium is not yet full, the public is crazed with excitement. The only shock is the uniformity of the rosy, American glow of the crowd. YUMARFs. Young Upwardly Mobile American Rock Fans.

"Good morning, Children of the Eighties! This is your Woodstock, and it's long overdue." There is an enormous roar of what I take to be approval. "And it's nice to know the money out of your pockets will go to food to feed hungry children. I can think of no more glorious way of starting our part of the day than by saying grace together, which means that we thank each of us, his and her own God, for the many blessings that we have in a world in which so many people have nothing. And when we say this grace, we also reach deep in our hearts and our souls and say that we will move a little from the comfort of our lives to understand their hurt, their pain, and their discomfort. And that will make their lives richer and it will make our lives real. 'Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound...'"

I am pleased at the response, though the people are so excited they might cheer for anything. Nonetheless, there is a good spirit abroad this morning, a good and generous spirit. I won't know until days later that the things I said and sang touched many people, which is all I ask.

It is ninety degrees when I leave the stage. My troops and I run into the Four Tops, laughing and gulping coffee outside in their trailer while four pretty black women gaze sleepily through their clotted lashes at Ozzy Osbourne, wondering if he actually eats bats' heads and if what he's doing is really making music. I slip into the trailer and eat a cinnamon roll, wondering how my six minutes really went, and then right away it's time for interviews, tons of themout in the sun, around corners, by potted trees, back in the trailer. Each reporter is looking for a story, trying to figure out what Live Aid really means and what part it will play in history. I get nauseated and dizzy and dream of my cool room in the hotel. Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul and Mary) enters the main gate in a shoulder-padded jacket, with entourage. This is not a good day for them; they have not been invited to sing their own set, only to join Dylan at the finale, and even that won't happen. She pays me a compliment on singing so early in the morning and making the high notes, and I hug her and think, You and I, Mary, will always be printed on the page in history books that tells about the folk boom of the sixties. And there is that Beach Boy, with the good cheekbones. I hug him and we joke about his cheekbones, and then he disappears behind a plant. I hear him answering embarrassing questions about how it feels to be a part of the magnanimous world of rock and roll, now that it is into benefits and sharing. I'm tired and more cynical than usual, and all the est-ian style Hunger Project people drive me nuts. I don't trust anything they say. I flash back to Woodstock:

It was so real to be rag tag, mud-bound,
All around,
Brown acid, body paint,
Freaking, streaking,
Bearded and beautiful,
Botticelli maidens,
Virgin hippies,
Bathing naked, they're
Leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever ...

I want to take a nap. I'm in the middle of a sentence when I spot Don "Miami Vice" Johnson. This will not be news to his multimillion female viewers, but I find myself suddenly wide awake and having a hot flash. I excuse myself from a conversation and walk around all the tables and chairs, musicians and roadies in the food tent as if I were walking through them, looking at "Miami Vice" Johnson" all the way, and I walk right up to him and look him smack in his sparkling eyes. For someone who likes soft skin and peach fuzz, I wasn't slowed down one rpm by his Actor's Guild five-day stubble, not at all. Christ, not since Kris Kristofferson, I think to myself, a man-man, not a boy-man, and I just say right out, to his sparkling eyes and Ralph Lauren hair and not entirely uninterested look of surprise, "Hello, gorgeous. Could we discuss the possibility of rape?" Why, you haven't been a superstar very long, Don Johnson. There's something about you that's fresh as lilac water. And then, fortunately, you laugh. We hang out, just a little, and someone takes our picture, and I don't know what on earth he thinks about me, but I was honest.

Tired and hot and icky, heading for the van back to the hotel, I am cornered by a familiar-looking cockeyed face. The glasses are askew, or perhaps the eyes. I recognize Ken Kragen, mastermind of the USA for Africa record and video benefit bonanza to which I was not invited. He says he must talk to me a minute. "Richie called me from California," he says, hustling me by the elbow, away from the crowd. "He's flyin' in for the finale, and he wants you in it! He saw you this morning,. and he thought you were great! I did, too. You were great. Anyway, he wants you in the finale. We're gonna end with 'We Are the World,' of course. That's why it's so great, you know, that you opened with it, just perfect! Anyway, we're going to be rehearsing at five o'clock and Lionel will be in and he really wants you to be there, he told me to tell you PERsonally." This man is desperate, I think to myself. Oh, yes, I remember, and the light dawns. Stevie and Michael Jackson (black superstar politics, I heard) are boycotting the show, and Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper couldn't make it. Dylan probably doesn't want to take part. I guess they are looking around for replacements. I'm tired. I honestly don't know if I'm coming back over, I tell him, I'm going to sleep, and then maybe just stay in the hotel and watch it all on TV, but I will certainly let him know, and I thank him very much for the invitation. I feel depressed, just when I suppose I should be feeling" great."

The hotel is like an oasis, my lovely room made-up and waiting, with its big picture window and bathroom full of fine hotel bubble bath and shampoo and body lotion, and a TV control right by my pillow. I lie down and flip on the TV and put three pillows under my head and luxuriate. I can wind down or wind up or doze off or watch the show or just listen. I try to watch, but my eyes are leaden. Shortly after seeing Sally Field for the third time in twenty minutes, I am asleep and don't even hear background music. I wake up and peek at Greg Walker dominating good ol' Santana's set, and I'm happy for him. I am smiling when I doze off again. Somewhere in' the afternoon, I am awakened by Paul Young's "Every Time You Go Away." And then I'm out again.

As I begin to come out of the heavy sleep, I see a face I don't recognize on the screen. It must be coming from England because the swaying audience is dotted with union jacks. The singer is dressed in black, and has long, slightly messy· brown hair. He is streaming with sweat, and some of his hair is stuck to his cheek, in road map designs, making me want to brush it back. The song is cosmic, heavenly, lilting, and persistent. The singer jumps in the air and stomps around in heavy boots. He doesn't fuck the microphone the way rock stars do when they realize that technology has made it possible for them to extend their egos out over a crowd of thousands. No, this young man is deadly serious about something, and is expressing himself with such tenderness it is enough to break my heart. He calls to the audience. They call back. He sings little bits of songs from the fifties and sixties, all in his utterly unique sound, and they sing back. He is directing a choir. They are the choir, and they are transported. Am I making all of this up? Possibly. The group's name appears next to the Live Aid symbol superimposed over his mystical dance. U2, Live From Wembley Stadium. This is the group my fifteen-year-old advisors have told me to watch. This is the group they say is political, even pacifist. The singer is working his way down toward the crowd, jumping onto a narrow wooden skirt a few feet below the stage. He is gesturing to the crowd, waving someone toward him. He takes the long drop into the orchestra pit, and continues his sign language invitation. Eventually, a young girl is lifted bodily and handed over the fence which separates him from the crowd. She is simply passed over like an offering. She lands on her feet and is in his arms, and he dances with her. She is probably stagestruck and in shock, and her head is sweetly bent down, and for the next few seconds he is cradling her as they dance.

I can't recall ever having seen anything like it in my life. It is an act, but it is not an act. It is a private moment, accepted by seventy thousand people. The dance is short, sensuous, and heartbreakingly tender. He breaks away from her and is helped up to the level just under the stage, and there finds another girl, dances with her the same way. All this while the percussion and hypnotic guitar continue relentlessly, lyrically, with the audience waving their arms back and forth, back and forth, a part of the ritual. The singer moves back onto the stage, and, still pouring with sweat, continues with the song. His voice is nothing special. It is unsteady and cracks. But it is compelling, as he is compelling. There is something about his seriousness which has captivated me.

Rock stars can look and be serious, but it is usually about themselves or their inflated vision of themselves. None of us who stand in front of a hundred thousand people hearing our voice (and band) amplified, tampered with, echoed, and smoothed into cosmic velveteen can escape certain grandiose delusions about ourselves. But this Irish lad is involved with something more than self-aggrandizement. Granted, his ego is well intact, and he is a superb showman, but there is something more going on. And I would like to know what it is. That I would like to be wrapped up in his arms like the little English girl there is no doubt. But if my instincts are correct, there is something which preempts flirtations with him. Something bigger than him or me or us combined, or our music combined. Something to do with politics, kids, freshness, and breakthrough. And love.

Out of the hours of Live Aid that I saw by the end of the day, the high point was witnessing the magic of U2. They moved me as nothing else moved me. They moved me in their newness, their youth, and their tenderness.

I call my folks, who have been watching (well, on and off) all day (monitoring) and are proud of their little girl. I ask my dad if I should take part in the finale. He says, "Well, honey, it's a good cause, and a day worth remembering," and he votes yes, and Mom takes the phone and echoes "Yes! They need more of you, honey." I smile. I know they will always love me. And I would love to sing in the finale. I was just so hurt by those bastards leaving me out of their We Are the World party ... but that's history.

I take a cold shower, put on a fresh T-shirt. I want to go over to the media event of the decade and hang out. It is not at all cool for superstars to spend the day walking from tent to tent, talking to people. The really hot items, like Tina and. Mickey and Madonna, stay hidden. Others just wish they had to stay hidden. I know I can roam around, and besides, I like interviews and chats and meeting people. I will watch the show on TV, have a beer with Bernie in the Hard Rock Cafe, and cruise around watching people.

The lead singer from Judas Priest, wearing dog collar, leathers, chains, and a tiny silver cross dangling from his left ear, tries to shake my hand respectfully and say all the proper things one says to a legend, so I hug him and he asks if I am aware that Judas Priest recorded "Diamonds and Rust." I laugh and say in his ear, yes, I heard it long ago, before my son even knew, and his manager is standing two feet away, saying, "I don't believe this. I don't fucking believe this." I float off through the cast of thousands. Even here, in the area set aside for "performers only," there mill friends and family, groupies, and selected hip and groovy nuisances. Surrounded by girls, members of Duran Duran are hovering behind a divan in front of a closed-circuit TV screen. I sit on the floor next to an attractive young man who is falling asleep between questions babbled to him by a pretty little groupie who wants to be in bed with him or anyone. He sits up and is polite to me when he sees who I am, and begins to ask me political questions. We talk about Central America, and we make hash out of the Reagan administration, and it's actually kind of fun. People think they have to talk politics when they meet me. I don't mind, but today I'd just as soon spoof around. I run into Joel Selvin from the San Francisco Chronicle. He is wearing an Indiana Jones hat. We shoot the breeze for a while. Am I aware, he asks, that there are only four "acts" on the Live Aid bill which were also on the bill at Woodstock? No kidding, I say, pleased. There was me, the Who, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Santana. Joel laughs at my obvious delight.

I decide to go and check out the rehearsal for the grand finale and run smack into Ken Kragen.

"Fantastic!" he says. "We're just putting the thing together! You'll be singing the first two lines of the chorus with Madonna." He has wheeled around and is walking me to the van. "And then Sheena Easton will take the 'There's a choice we're making .. .' " He prattles on, hoping I won't notice that I'm being bulldozed. Madonna? Why not? Let's treat the world to two madonnas at once, and a good case of culture shock.

The rehearsal van is a movable feast: Mary Travers, Dionne Warwick, Duran Duran, Sheena Easton, to whom I give a big hug because I think she is Madonna, and then I just think she is unhappy. I sit down on the edge of a couch to the right of John Taylor's chair and wisecrack with him.

One of the est-ian types is in charge of getting us organized. I'll give them this much: They seem as if they had all been through est training and know how to assert themselves, and that's the kind of person you need as choral director for a van full of flakey, sunstroked, scatterbrained singers. He shouts out directives. Madonna and I will walk up to the red mike as Harry Belafonte is finishing the intro, and we will sing "We are the world," etc., and then Sheena Easton will sing "There's a choice we're making, we're saving our own lives," and the three of us will finish, "It's true we make a better day, just you and me." Where is Madonna, anyway? Is she exempt from rehearsing? I guess so. Just then, in comes "Miami Vice" Johnson, all smiling and grubby and gorgeous, and I pat the couch next to me for him to sit down, which he does, and I decide to entertain him. His delightfully surprised expression probably means that he never expected me to be fast and funny and a nasty gossip.

I am luxuriating in the company of men. John Taylor is the quintessential Narcissus, his complexion perfect, his pretty alabaster face framed with wavy black hair, his extravagantly lovely eyes direct from the soft cover of a dime store novel, his languid body at ease in draping jackets. He's a sort of New Wave d'Artagnan, though without the fire, and is surprisingly witty. He has returned my attentions to a moderate degree. "Miami Vice" Johnson, whose TV show stands for everything I've spent my entire life fighting against namely, the glorification and justification of violence-well, he is some charismatic hunk of maleness, with the disarming touch of everlasting youth, the boyish quality of Brando and Dean. He has all of their intensity and sex appeal, and what he may lack in depth, he makes up for in clothing. He is an upwardly mobile undercover agent dressed in thousands of dollars worth of guaranteed-to- wrinkle linen, and, I assume, custom getaway shoes. Even his T-shirts have that wonderful natural-dye, safari stone-ground look that doesn't come for anything less than fifty dollars a shirt. I gaze at his splendid dimple and think it would be nice if he were wearing his gun belt. I love excitement. I realize that I no longer know how to conduct myself around men.

The group disbands as Ken Kragen is telling us that Harry will be flying in between shows in Atlantic City, and Lionel will be here any minute, and we will be joined onstage by a chorus of forty children. What utter chaos, I think, and reluctantly leave my lovely men. I head off to visit the stage, and pass the cute little devil who sings for the Cars. He had sung an excellent set and is now being interviewed by a TV crew. I interrupt his serious responses by giving him a friendly tweek on the cheek and calling him a cute little devil. I don't wait around for the response. Really, I think to myself, I am unmanageable. Who let me out of the cage? And how long have I been in it? Happily, the cute little devil and his wife find me later and tell me they think I'm terrific. I apologize for my behavior.

I pass a TV screen and see a replay of Madonna's performance. What will happen to you, baby child, when the spotlights dim and the morning sunlight finds your eyes red from weeping? Come and see this old madonna, who will tenderly serve you jasmine tea and say quietly in response to the unformed questions struggling up from the ashes of your fiery young life, "I understand, sweetie, I understand." But for now, in the diamond glow of success, dance and sing and bump and grind in your jangling glitz necklaces and skintight mini bun-huggers ... Someday maybe those handsome Playboy tits of yours will find a more earthly purpose and you, a more fulfilling life ... Trips to the supermarket will not be easy at first.

I walk around and do some interviews and, out of the corner of my eye, spot Udo Lindenberg, German rock star, on the screen. I sit on the ground, pull my knees up under my chin and think about Germany, where I bought my parachute skirt, and I listen to Udo read a strong political statement in his thick accent, and I cheer him on inwardly. Yes, he is saying, it's nice, a concert for the hungry, but the real issues, inseparable from the fact of hunger and famine, are armaments, unfair distribution of wealth, etc.

Though his speech is a little left wing and brash for my taste, I am happy to hear it, and happy to see my friends and compatriots with whom I have something in common. I really live in another world, I think to myself. It doesn't make me unhappy, but it does make me lonely. When Udo finishes the speech, I clap loudly because I can't help it. I am a stranger in my own land, always looking to feel comfortable without selling my soul.

Today, I'm just going to have fun, and one day soon, I will have a record deal, and I will make a beautiful album which is strong and melodic and filled with excitement, and has three of my own songs on it, and there will be a gorgeous picture of me on the cover, grey spikes and all. And when you open it up, there will be a huge picture of me dressed in the black crepe evening gown I bought at Nordstrom's, with its sequined Egyptian profile covering the left breast, and purple ostrich plumes extending at least a foot off the left shoulder, no right shoulder at all-only my tan slender arm, bent at the elbow, back of my hand to the camera, flipping a giant bird to all the major record companies in the United States of America.

It's time to go back to the rehearsal van. Excitement is building. Richie has arrived, and Patti LaBelle, whose presence is electric and dominates the room. Harry and Julie Belafonte blow in from Atlantic City. Harry is as handsome as he was when they wouldn't let him hold hands with Petula Clark on the screen in the fifties. It is announced to me that I will now be singing with Chrissie Hynde. Fine, I think, wondering who Chrissie Hynde is and what happened to Madonna. Chrissie Hynde is nice, but nervous ("Madonna can't make it, so you're stuck with me"), so I chat with her as the van fills up. Duran Duran is back, and Peter Yarrow comes over and takes my hand and just shakes his head, and shakes it and shakes it, I guess because he can't think of anything to say. He is a good soul. I've known Peter since we sang on a TV show together in 1960. He hasn't got a single hair on the top of his head. I smile, thinking of Puff the Magic Dragon, and give him a hug, and I don't think he has said a single word.

Mr. Miami Vice doesn't show. Paul and Mary do. So do a bunch of movie actors and Melissa Manchester. She is buddies with Patti LaBelle. We begin our ragtag rehearsal, which sounds instantly like a tent revival. We are on the wings of high- lying birds, and we do sound superb. Our choir director is panicking and asks everyone who is not performing to please leave the room. Patti LaBelle's flock of children and a few hangers-on shuffle reluctantly to the next room, but remain wide-eyed at the door. Cher pokes her spiked head in the door and makes her way through the party to the couch. She has Indian hands like mine.

That little van is a purse of diamonds, cut and uncut, polished and raw. We can all sing. We sing for the joy of it. We really sing. Patti LaBelle is in a state of wild exhilaration and begins to outsing everybody. Philadelphia is her home, and Live Aid will do no harm to her current comeback. She hits that high G so many times it makes our heads spin, but it's nothing to what she'll do on the stage ... She is dressed in a white and black gown, and white and black polka-dot pumps, and she has some winged contraption on her head, like a helmet with two corrugated shark fins fanning out in different directions. They are covered with polka-dots, too, and we are supposed to think the whole arrangement is her hair. I almost touch one of the fins, but I'm afraid she'll back up and cut my finger. Her nails are one full inch long and white as paste. But, boy, can she sing. I tell her I'd love to stand next to her onstage, and then realize that Melissa seems to have a franchise on that spot, so I drop the subject, though Patti is gracious and says yes, indeed, she'll give me one whole side, and one whole side of Patti LaBelle is plenty of room.

We have gone over the song at least ten times and are getting nutty, like kids before a football playoff. Ken shouts new instructions. We must all go to the green room NOW for twenty minutes and then up to the stage. We are yakking and gossiping and hanging out and getting cranked up ... I hear Dylan in the background. He is onstage with two of the Rolling Stones. I don't see their set until two weeks later on a video: they look like three extras playing the undead in an old Vincent Price movie. Melissa and I start to chat and head off for the green room. She is wearing a silver ring on the middle finger of one hand. It has little chains attaching it to a matching bracelet on her wrist. It's the first time I've ever seen a finger in bondage. I admire the whole contraption, and she tells me that her life is different now that she works with street gangs.

We are sitting dutifully in the green room under the bright lights of a television crew, chatting and trying to appear spontaneous on film. Dylan drones on. I realize that his show will end soon, and that Melissa and I must be in the wrong place. We fly out into the milling crowd and look desperately around for anyone from our group. There is no one in view.

I run up to a security guard and ask him if there is another green room somewhere, but he doesn't know. Melissa and I are like two campers who can't find the fireside sing on the farewell night. I take her hand, and we start running to find the entrance to the tunnel to the stage, but it's like a bad dream because neither one of us knows where it is. I am still holding her hand when I grab another security guard by the arm and say, "Please get us to the stage." He can't leave his post, but he points out the tunnel and we run lickety-split, my spoon necklace clanking, her ringlets bouncing; and still clutching hands, we arrive at the top of the stairs in time to see all the stars of the milky way pouring out of a curtained-off area, heading toward downstage, looking like a bunch of kids who got loose and went berserk in the wardrobe room of a circus. I make a last joke to Melissa and look for Chrissie. I am a good little camper at heart, always trying to follow instructions in my own way until I realize the instructions are wrong.

We are gathered in back of the curtain now, in a mad jumble. I look for the "red mike" in the arsenal of equipment which is being set up for us, but I can't find it.

Dylan is nearing the last verse of "Blowin' in the Wind," and I laugh out loud when I think of Ken Kragen saying, "When Bob's finishing up 'Blowin' in the Wind,' Lionel will appear from behind the curtain and put his arm around Bob and say, 'Bob, we've got some of your friends here tonight,' and the curtain will open and there we'll all be!" Dylan will hate it. He can't stand anything going on behind his back.

We are all laughing and hugging and waiting for the big moment. I can't find Chrissie. I dart in and out of the stars looking for my singing partner. Dylan finishes his song. I find Chrissie and grab her hand. The curtains are opening. Dylan looks confused and tiny next to Lionel with his smiling face and easy manner. The familiar chords begin and I look frantically for the "red mike." Lionel begins to sing and the audience is screaming. The stars have fanned out over the whole stage. It's Harry's turn now, but we can't hear him. He must be hoarse from Atlantic City, I think, and I scan the stage one last time for the red mike, but see none, and very suddenly it's almost our turn, and I tug Chrissie, who is quite calm and very sweet through this entire scene. Belafonte's mike is the safest one to use because it is on at last, and we can hear his silken, husky voice and he's on the last line before our grand entrance, so I pull Chrissie up with me behind Harry and nose my way under his arm like a puppy looking for attention, and his fine eyebrows go up ever so slightly in surprise, but there is time only to say "Excuse me" because it is instantly our turn, and I grab the mike with one hand and Chrissie's hand tight with the other, and we give it all we have.

Unfortunately, the engineers have another set of instructions probably that we will be at the red mike-because for the first few notes there is no sound, but then there is sound and it is fantastic. I turn the mike toward Chrissie, knowing my reputation for monopolizing it, and Sheena appears to our left. We are barely finishing up our little contribution when Sheena takes the mike with a quiet ferocity, leans away from us, and in a splendid two lines works out all her frustration at not performing, but only speaking as a hostess. Well, not all her frustration. She hoards the microphone like a newly discovered family heirloom and sings our trio as a solo, leaving me leaning awkwardly toward the unavailable mike and Chrissie completely out of range.

All of this couldn't matter less. We are having a feast of good cheer and song, and the audience is wild.

I think vaguely that I'd like to find Patti LaBelle, just to fly with that voice for a while, but I realize that the aggressive stars are reaching for microphones, and don't feel like competing, so I turn around and head off the front lines and into the crowded stage. I run smack into Peter, Paul and Mary, and Peter asks in a shout over the din if I'd like to link arms with them, but I shake my head no and thank him and slide on through the ranks to the second string, which includes Duran Duran. I go and stand next to John Taylor because he's so gorgeous, and he nestles me nicely in his arms and there we stand, singing our lungs out just in back of forty little kids who have filed onstage.

I am very happy. In fact, I could stay there all night. We can hear Patti and Dionne and Melissa and Lionel, and the rest is a great hodgepodge. Lionel is waving at us to shush and let the audience sing along. Everyone shushes except for Patti and Dionne. I listen to the exhilarated, sunburned, saturated audience, and wonder what the day has meant to them and what it will continue to mean. It's our turn again, and everyone is hugging or kissing or singing or dancing, and eventually the song is over and all the stars are people and all the people are stars, and the day is over.

I hug John Taylor and walk off toward stage left, bumping into everyone and grinning and hugging. The drums start up again and we start the chorus one more time. I run into Mickey Jagger who is dancing his naughty, sexy snake dance by the drums, and I dance with him for a minute. Cameras materialize, and I'm afraid he will think I'm a nuisance, but it is such fun I keep dancing until he snakes off into the crowd. I spot Tina and go up behind her and put my arms around her leather-clad body. She gives a nervous look over her shoulder, sees it's me, and grins a big "Hah!," so I hug her and she puts her head back on my shoulder and we finish out the song, wailing a harmony up to the moon. She laughs her tiger laugh and I let go of her and hold her away from me. She is soaked from head to toe and so hot if you turned a hose on her she'd sizzle. Two hairs from her wig are clinging to her drenched bosom and need to be picked off, but I don't want to embarrass her, and anyway, someone comes to escort her down the stairs from the stage. My concert agent and friend, Peter Grosslight, materializes and sneaks me quietly downstairs and among the wiped-out, grimy, hardworking stagehands and security people, and past them to the hordes of hotshots, managers, bigwigs, little wigs, groupies, photographers, reporters, and, here and there, performers running for cover.

Peter has saved a seat for me in a bus with Tina, her manager Roger, and their folks. We squeeze in, then Chevy Chase hitches on and then Kenny Loggins. We all sit in the van drinking warm beer, joking and guffawing. Tina is wearing a filmy white ruffled number which seems more like a nightie than a dress. Each time she laughs it falls off her right shoulder and she yanks it just hard enough to get it almost back up, but not quite. I don't think she has a stitch of underwear on. What makes you so pure, Ms. Turner? I mimic her raspy speaking voice, telling stories to make her laugh and watch her marvelous brown face and perfect teeth in the bounce from the backstage security lights.

"Miami Vice" Johnson runs past in front of our van holding his kid in one arm, a string of excited fans trailing him like the tail of a comet. I finish up someone's warm beer and put my head on Rogers's shoulder and shut my eyes. I see the two hairs on Tina's bosom, and the little map of hairs stuck to the youthful Christ-like face of the Irish singer from U2.

***

At this writing, a month and a half after the concert, I still feel as I did then, that time and the actions of people in the entertainment business will determine if Live Aid, as a day of sharing, was a one-shot affair. I hope that the singers and dancers of that glorious July 13th circus are willing to share again and again, and not always wait around for an appearance in the big tent. I ask for the politicization of people, when it should be enough that they are willing to share a little. Perhaps I always ask too much.

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