Paul David Hewson

Artists United Against Apartheid was a 1985 protest group founded by activist and performer Steven Van Zandt and record producer Arthur Baker to... protest apartheid in South Africa. The group produced the song "Sun City" and the album Sun City that year. Van Zandt, who had parted with Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band at the height of their success to go out on his own, traveled to South Africa to research his next record. He was interested in South Africa because he had read that the apartheid system was actually modeled after America's system of Indian reservations, an issue that was his major passion. While in South Africa, he was distressed by a place called Sun City, an interracial gambling resort located in a bantustan, a nominally independent area supposedly ruled by black Africans, in the middle of an impoverished rural homeland. Van Zandt became interested in writing a song about Sun City to make parallels with the plight of native Americans. Danny Schechter, a journalist who was then working with ABC News' 20/20, suggested turning the song into a different kind of "We Are the World", or as Schechter explains, "a song about change not charity, freedom not famine.
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Band Aid 20 was the 2004 incarnation of the charity group Band Aid. The group, which included Chris Martin of Coldplay and Bono of U2, re-recorded... the 1984 song "Do They Know It's Christmas?", written by Band Aid organizers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. The song was recorded on 14 November 2004, to benefit Sudan's troubled Darfur region, and was released that same month. The single became the UK's biggest seller of 2004 as well as the Christmas Number 1. Bono, Paul McCartney and George Michael were the only artists from the original Band Aid who had been asked back to lend their voices to Band Aid 20. There was a reported dispute over the line 'Tonight thank God it's them, instead of you', which Bono sang on the original version. Justin Hawkins, of The Darkness, laid down a version of the line, but Bono insisted on re-recording his version, which was eventually used on the record. A special documentary titled Band Aid 20: Justice, Not Charity which went behind-the-scenes of the new recording was broadcast by BBC One on 6 December 2004.
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