Athena Tyler is an Italian-American musician who rose to fame as the lead singer of a girl band with her sisters, called 'Sorelle'. She has amassed millions of dollars and now lives alone in a luxurious mansion. Although she no longer sings, she has...
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On Set of 'The Greatest Night In Pop'—December 29th, 2023
Athena and Michael Jackson—married for thirty years—were sitting in front of the camera crew with Lionel Richie sitting beside them.
"Okay, so basically what we're gonna have you do is tell us about the process of We Are The World. You know, the writing of the song, the recording, the American Music Awards, how the decisions of who would be on it were made. How you roped Athena into it," one of the camera crew said, "Just talk us through all of it—the whole process."
Lionel nodded and straightened up in his seat, "I guess I'll start and Michael can take over when he's ready?" he said, getting ready to tell the long tale of the legendary song, "The greatest artists of a generation came together—with all of our ego, with all of our talent, to save some lives. Must be in a dream, huh? But we only had one night. They're not coming back tomorrow. There was nothing more chaotic than trying to rope this creative ball of energy together. This was history happening right now," he explained, "I will try to take you back as far as I can possibly remember. In the, um....the early '80s, I'd left the Commodores. Ken Kragen, my new manager, he said to me, 'Well, first of all, your songs are more famous than you are, so we're gonna stick your face next to all of those wonderful songs.' Uh, my solo album and stuff were happening, and so my career was taking off. I'm a night person, so everything in life was happening after one o'clock in the morning. And then, one night, I received this call from Ken that changed everything," he paused a nostalgic glint in his eyes, "Uh, Kragen said, 'I just got off the phone with Harry Belafonte,' and, uh, basically what he said was, 'I need you,' and uh, Harry said 'We have White folks saving Black folks. But we don't have Black folks saving Black folks. That's a problem. We need to save our own people from hunger,' and he was trying to get us, the younger group, the younger generations, involved in what was happening in Africa. It's not that I didn't have enough to do. I mean, I was hosting the American Music Awards. Had just been offered that invitation. I'm about to go on my big solo tour. The one thing I knew for sure, is that I wanted Quincy Jones involved because he's the master orchestrator. But he's better known as a producer and composer who's worked with everyone from Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra to Little Richard and Paul Simon to Diana Ross and Michael Jackson," he said passionately, gesturing to Michael, "At that particular time, you could not be a producer and be any hotter. He had the respect of every musician on the planet."
"And that's when Michael got involved?" one of the camera crew asked.
"Michael and I go back to the early Stone Age days. We were brought up in Motown, and, as lead singer of the Commodores and lead singer of the Jacksons, we bonded right away," Lionel explained, "When he first learned how to drive, the first place he drove was over to my house. But he couldn't drive on the freeway because he was scared to death, so he knew every backstreet in the world to get to my house. But Stevie wouldn't call me back, so Michael and I needed to start writing without Stevie. I said to Michael, 'I can write the song by myself. You can write the song by yourself. But if we're gonna do this together with Quincy Jones, it has to be huge.' This is my first time in the Jackson household. I realized then that we'd never written anything together, and we've never spent time together. I realize he can't play, so he hums every part, tapes and tapes of 'dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum'. I mean, it's just layers and layers of him humming. It was pretty.....amazing. We had to identify right away....what kind of song do we want?" he added as he started making a beat they were fiddling around with at the time, "'Do you want one of those? Or do you want an anthem?' No. That's not what we were looking for," he said before humming and using his foot to make another beat, "There it is. There's your template. And once you have that, now what are we gonna put on top of it? We went through various songs we thought were just......you know, sausage. His line was, 'Where's the jelly?' He called me 'Lion-el'" he laughed before impersonating Michael, who was sitting next to him with Athena, "'Lion-el, I want you to check out Bubbles the Chimp.' But I didn't wanna hold the chimp. Meanwhile, there's a full-on fight going on downstairs. 'Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! Shut up!' so of course I said 'What's happening in the kitchen, Michael?' He says, 'Ah, yeah, Ricky the Mynah Bird is having a fight with the dog.'Because the bird can talk, and the dog is mad at the bird. Meanwhile, I've got someone calling on the phone. 'Lionel, they're sending a script over for the American Music Awards,' meanwhile Michael's, of course, working on his songs, and we're really not taking it that serious, because we're thinking, 'You know, we'll get to it.'"
