Day After Day #48: Sun City

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Sun City (1985)

I visited my daughter in Toronto over the weekend and after we went to dinner one night, we decided to watch the Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, which is a fun behind-the-scenes look at the making of "We Are the World," the 1985 charity single featuring some of the biggest names in pop music at the time. It's really well done and even though I was never a huge fan of the song itself, seeing how it all came together is pretty great. The effort was inspired by the Live Aid concert and the Band Aid charity single that came out the previous year to raise money for starving people in Africa.

The mid-'80s was prime time for charity records. A supergroup of Canadian artists dubbed Northern Lights released "Tears Are Not Enough" in May 1985 to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Performers included Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Anne Murray, Bryan Adams, Geddy Lee and Mike Reno of Loverboy. The following year, Ronnie James Dio organized the Hear 'n Aid project to fight famine in Africa, featuring lead vocals from Dio, Rob Halford, Don Dokken, Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot, Geoff Tate of Queensryche and others, with guitar solos from a slew of shredders including Vivian Campbell, Buck Dharma, George Lynch, Yngwie Malmsteen, Neal Schon and others. The song itself includes a ridiculous number of solos, but it's kind of a fun listen anyway.

But this series is about songs I actually like, so I'm going to write about another song jam packed with big names that came out that year: "Sun City." This wasn't a charity song, however; this was a protest song in opposition to apartheid in South Africa, the system of institutionalized racial segregation that ensured the country was dominated by its minority white population. Put together by Steven Van Zandt (better known as Little Steven of the E Street Band), the project was credited to Artists United Against Apartheid. Van Zandt wrote the song about Sun City, a luxury resort and casino developed by hotel magnate Sol Kerzner in Bophuthatswana, an independent state of South Africa's apartheid government. There was an international boycott of Sun City by performers for years, but some played there, including the Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Paul Anka, Rod Stewart, Elton John and Queen. 

Van Zandt had originally wanted to use Sun City as a parallel with what was going with Native Americans, but journalist Danny Schechter suggested doing a twist on "We Are the World" to push for change. Van Zandt, Schechter and music producer Arthur Baker then assembled a hugely diverse lineup of musicians to take part, including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Bob Geldof and Daryl Hall, who were on "We Are the World." But they were also able to get Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Bono, Pete Townshend, Ringo Starr and his son Zak Starkey, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Run-DMC, the Fat Boys, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Joey Ramone, Stiv Bators, Michael Monroe of Hanoi Rocks, Jimmy Cliff, John Oates, Bonnie Raitt, George Clinton, Peter Wolf, Jackson Browne, Kurtis Blow, Bobby Womack, Darlene Love, Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin, Pat Benatar, Herbie Hancock, Peter Garrett, Nona Hendryx, Clarence Clemons, Gil Scott-Heron and others. The song was included on an album that featured additional songs from some of the participants. One of the songs was "Silver and Gold," written by Bono and featuring Richards and Wood (U2 later released their own versions of the song on Rattle and Hum and as a B-side).

The video, directed by Jonathan Demme, filmed most of the artists performing the song on the streets of Manhattan and in Washington Square Park, with some artists filmed performing in a studio.   

The song itself is an uptempo combination of hip-hop, R&B and rock that doesn't mince words and has a super-catchy chorus of "I, I, I, I, I, I ain't gonna play Sun City!" It's definitely a combination of some folks you wouldn't normally see together on a song (Ruffin, Benatar, Kendrick and Springsteen on one verse; Clinton, Ramone, Cliff and Hall, and Love on another, Ruben Blades, Oates and Dylan on yet another), but damn if it doesn't work.

"Relocation to phony homelands/Separation of families I can't understand/23 million can't vote because they're black/We're stabbing our brothers and sisters in the back."

The song got good critical reviews but only about half of U.S. radio stations played it because of lyrics criticizing President Ronald Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement." Here in the Boston area, the song got a lot of play on WBCN, where Schechter worked in the '60s. I don't remember seeing the video a lot on MTV, but I was living in a dorm that didn't carry that station on the lounge TV. "Sun City" hit #38 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #21 on the UK Singles Chart, #8 in Ireland and #4 in Australia and New Zealand. Of course, it was banned in South Africa. The Sun City album reached #31 on the Billboard 200 chart. It was a struggle to get the documentary about the project aired, since PBS refused to run it, saying it was promotion for the artists involved. 

The album and single raised more than $1 million for anti-apartheid projects, but its impact was definitely felt worldwide and in 1994, apartheid finally ended when Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa's first president.

Van Zandt has remained outspoken on social issues, but also reached a different level of fame when he joined the cast of the Sopranos as Silvio. I'm guessing his character probably wasn't as concerned about apartheid in 1985, but it's good that Little Steven was.