Shapiro said that he is an adrenaline junkie, living on the edge of producing live television. “I think [that’s] the whole reality of working in live television,” he said. “We’re adrenaline junkies, we love living on the edge. We love having one chance to do it right. We have one chance to perfect it,” Shapiro said. “We’ve rehearsed and performed it correctly. It’s like an artist on stage in some regards. You have that one chance to do what you do. For me, it’s always been a thrill doing live television and you adjust as quickly as you can to what happens. But it says the thrill, thrill seekers, kind of fun but yeah, I love what I do in that regard.”
Both Shapiro and Holdridge shared their disdain for “We Are the World,” which was performed on March 7, 1985, and featured a choir of 46 of the biggest names in music across other genres, all united to sing one song to help support those suffering from poverty and hunger in Africa. Denver was not asked to participate. “I know John was very hurt when he wasn’t included in ‘We Are the World,’” Holdridge stated. “I was so irritated and angry at the producers for not including John. Of all people in the world. I never quite forgave them for that because I thought that was an absolute insult. They had a few people, but they didn’t have John Denver. Come on. Let’s get real here,” Holdridge said.
After Denver’s death, Holdridge found out that all his arrangements were thrown away by Denver’s manager. All that was left were Holdridge’s hand-written Xerox copies and notes. Holdridge and Jim Curry, who is a tribute performer of Denver’s songs, helped recreate the orchestrations. “We had a library. We had everything in there, all the paper — everything printed up. And when John died, his manager decided that the $300 a month that it was costing to keep the music library was too much so he threw everything out,” Holdridge said. Curry and a friend were able to reconstruct everything digitally on the computer.
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