Biography | Lionel Richie — The Chaplin Lot Where We Are the World Was Cut After Midnight

People remember the video and the chorus.

The work happened in this courtyard after an awards show.

On 28 January 1985, Lionel Richie left the American Music Awards at the Shrine Auditorium, where he had hosted the broadcast, and came here to 1416 North La Brea Avenue.

The lot was still A&M Recording Studios, inside the English-village facades Charlie Chaplin built in 1917 and 1918.

Richie and Michael Jackson had written the famine-relief anthem in the weeks before.

Quincy Jones produced. Ken Kragen, who managed Richie, had used the awards night to get more than forty American stars into one room.

Studio A took the choir first. Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Billy Joel, and Bob Dylan were among the voices that night.

Jones posted a sign telling arrivals to leave their egos at the door.

The session ran from about nine in the evening into the morning of the 29th.

Columbia issued the single on 7 March 1985 under the name USA for Africa.

The song later took the Grammy for Song of the Year. Richie shared the writing credit with Jackson.

The facades on La Brea still stand. After A&M left in 1999 the lot housed the Jim Henson Company. In late 2024 it was sold, and the Chaplin name went back on the gate.

The recording rooms are not a walk-in museum. The street front is the public face of that night.

Los Angeles listed the site as Historic-Cultural Monument No. 58 in 1969.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Charlie Chaplin Studios facade on La Brea, CC BY 3.0 and public-domain views of the lot