Lionel Richie on Reliving Recording ‘We Are the World’ for ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ Doc: ‘Every Segment of This Journey, I Cry’

variety.com:

Angelique Jackson Lionel Richie has been very emotional lately, but he wants to reassure everyone that he’s okay. According to Richie, it’s just been a heady experience to look back nearly 40 years and relive all the wondrous and chaotic memories of writing and recording “We Are the World” for the new Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop.” “Every segment of this journey, I cry,” Richie said at the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance Film Festival, where the film made its world premiere. “It just brings tears to my eyes because some of us are not here anymore.

Also it was our innocence. We actually were making a difference, so to see the naive version of ourselves, when we actually had an aha moment that we might take all this celebrity and change the world … I’m just emotional about it because I get to watch my kid being born again.” It’s especially bittersweet because “Michael’s not here,” Richie added, referring to “We Are the World” co-writer Michael Jackson, who died in 2009. “There should be another guy sitting here going, ‘Lionel, what do you think we’re going to do?'” he said, affecting Jackson’s high-pitched frequency. “I need him here to tell you the funny parts about it because in all of this, we were just two creatives having the best time of our lives pulling from the universe.” Those intimate memories were precisely what director Bao Nguyen and producer Julia Nottingham aimed to capture in the documentary, which chronicles the incredible story of how the track got made.

On Jan. 25, 1985, 46 music icons — led by Richie, Jackson and Quincy Jones — came together for a marathon eight-hour recording session of “We Are the World” after the American Music Awards.