Who cries for the children? In 1985, Ronnie James Dio did. It was the Band Aid and USA for Africa era, and for those too young to remember, more specifically those were the times of We Are the World and of the hunger awareness all over the world through the release of music singles to raise money. They were mostly pop projects and it all changed when a supergroup of heavy metal artists was put together by Dio with the help of his band members. We’re talking all stars in the 80s metal scene: Dubrow, Dio, Tate, Halford and others on vocals and guitar gods like Campbell (Whitesnake and others), Malmsteen, Schon (Journey), Murray and Smith (Iron Maiden). The group/project was called Hear ‘n Aid and they produced Stars, an 8 minute guitar shredding bonanza. I strongly encourage you to look up this project because it really was a thing of beauty, on YouTube you can find the full documentary split in parts.

Anyway, this is one of those things that won’t ever make it to the Rock Band platform and that deserve a nice treatment. So, here it is, a real gem that we tried to polish as much as possible for you to enjoy. The “normal” version has harmonies, guitar, bass and drums. Drums is pretty straightforward but keep in mind that there were two drummers in the original, so in a couple of spots you will actually hear two different drum lines, although you will obviously play only one. Bass is nothing to write home about but still a solid track. Guitar is basically for skilled players. It contains a 4 minute solo recorded by incredible guitar players, so it’s gonna be tough…

Harmonies deserve a chapter apart. Now, the song was sung by 8 different singers, alternating phrases. To reproduce the experience what we did was having each harmony line assigned to a group of singers. That way, with three microphones you can have 3 singers alternating. Here is the breakdown:

Harmony 1 – Ronnie James Dio (Dio), Geoff Tate (Queensryche)

Harmony 2 – Dave Meniketti (Y&T), Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Paul Shortino (Rought Cutt, Quiet Riot)

Harmony 3 – Kevin DuBrow (Quiet Riot), Eric Bloom (Blue Oyster Cult), Don Dokken (Dokken)

During choruses, Harmony 1 is the lead voice and 2 and 3 are backing vocals.

Dueling Solos version: Now, the main solo for the song is a series of 6 solos played by different artists. To replicate the structure here is an alternate version of the song. Outside of the main solo section, bass will be bass. During the main solo section, bass will become guitar and guitar 1 and 2 will alternate: while one plays solo 1, 3 and 5, the other plays rhythm. And you can guess what happens with solo 2, 4 and 6. This also gives the player a nice rest after each solo.

Production value – As said, this is a very special project and I really lured TrojanNemo into doing A LOT of work, and boy did he ever. Besides the usual excellent work on animations he also did a spectacular job on the practice sessions. Each and every phrase for the singers has a practice sessions, appropriately named with the singer’s name. And all the sub-solos have practice sessions, again with the guitarist’s name. So, a huge public thank to Nemo for the incredible work he did and, well, enjoy!