HELP - The Story of the War Child Album

Marking the 25th anniversary of its original release, this is the remarkable story of the landmark War Child 1995 charity album HELP – told with contributions from members of Radiohead, The Manic Street Preachers, Salad, The Charlatans, Portishead, Blur and Paul Weller.

Where do we start? What were the events that inspired, "The greatest charity album ever"? What was the humanitarian crisis behind the music? What was the concept that attracted Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Paul Weller, Massive Attack, Oasis, Blur and some of the biggest acts of the time to work together? This is where we begin...

So we have a plan; this involves getting some of the biggest acts in the UK to record a whole album on one day and releasing it into shops – physically – a few days later. In this episode we find out who signed up and how they felt about the project. And more to the point, what exactly is War Child? Where did it come from? What do they do? And why are we making a podcast about them?

It’s one minute past midnight on Monday September 4th 1995. All around the world recording studios are humming into life and some of the best bands of the era have just 24 hours to record a song intended for an album that could save lives. In this episode some those groups remember that day - including Portishead, The Charlatans, The Boo Radleys and Radiohead - and we hear some of their amazing music.

As we continue our journey through the tracklisting of the HELP album we meet Neneh Cherry, James Dean Bradfield from Manic Street Preachers, Blur, Paul Weller, Terrorvision and Salad. Plus we hear some rather fine music and we find out how War Child got The KLF and Sir Paul McCartney on their record.  

So all the songs have been recorded, and that's job done, right? Most definitely not right. Brian Eno has to bring the whole project together, tapes need to be flown across the world, CDs need to be manufactured and rushed into shops and then there's an all-star launch. This week we see how that (just about) happened, and look at the impact of the album on the 90s music scene and discover how it helped the lives of thousands of children.