The Paul McCartney-United Nations Concerts for the People of Kampuchea: Closing Rock & Roll Diplomacy’s First Decade
In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono initiated Rock & Roll Diplomacy which, as with most things John and Yoko, was avant-garde: Bed-Ins, Bagism and the Live Peace in Toronto 1969. As a premiere, they involved a politician, the then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In 1971, George Harrison pursued that path, in his own way too: the New York Concert for Bangladesh was specifically linked to the Indian sub-continent. In what would become the first humanitarian Rock concert, Harrison involved UNICEF, a host of Rock stars, such as Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr, as well as Ravi Shankar and his Indian musicians. In 1979, Paul McCartney took Rock & Roll Diplomacy to its height. As with everything McCartney, the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea were a super-production, involving the United Nations Secretary General, UNHCR, UNICEF and a most diverse set of three generations of Rock musicians, in London.
1979 was an arguably eventful year. Each month sequenced political developments and cultural rainbows. In January, the United States established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Vietnamese troops seized Phnom Penh, ending the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea. Two days later, the Music for UNICEF Concert, featuring, among others, ABBA, the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Rod Stewart, was held at the United Nations against hunger and to mark the beginning of the International Year of the Child. In February, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols died of overdose, and the world’s geostrategic landscape was durably altered in Iran, with the fall of the Imperial Government and the advent of the Islamic Republic, later in April. In March, at the wedding of Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd, Clapton’s best friend and Boyd’s former husband, George Harrison, was best man: Flower Power was singing its swan song. In May, Margaret Thatcher became the United Kingdom’s first female Prime Minister, while Apocalypse Now received the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. June was specifically eventful.
By: Hirad Abtahi
Source: Huffington Post
