Thats What Friends Are For

The charitable spirit that followed Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas," and all of the musical efforts to give relief to famine victims in Africa, culminating in the mamoth Live Aid concerts, continued onto other causes.  In September of 1985, right after Live Aid, a group of American musicians put together the very first Farm Aid concert to aid American farmers. The event featured Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, the Beach Boys, John Denver, Loretta Lynn, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, and many others. It would later go on to being a yearly event.

Then in late 1985, a small group of musicians got together to reord a record to help fund AIDS research. The one-off group was called Dionne Warwick and Friends, and included Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight. The song they released was penned by the classic songrwriting duo of Burt Bacharach and Carol Bayer Sager, and was called "Thats What Friends Are For."  It became Billboard magazine's number one sing of 1986. The video is above.