HELP Album 1995-2025

 

I am preparing the manuscript of my music and memory book (My World Music) for my publishers (Riversmeet) , and am adding a chapter on the War Child HELP album which was released 30 years ago. As I do so I am struck by how powerful it was; the quality of the music, the dedication of its artists and the strength of its message - that the war was being challenged by musicians while the politicians and corporate media looked the other way.

Decades later we have a much larger genocide taking place in Palestine and, although there are musicians actively working to expose current war crimes, (step forward Brian Eno and Roger Waters) where is the 2025 HELP album?

In August 1995 I was asked to speak at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square in support of the victims of the Bosnian war. Other speakers included Michael Foot and Brian Eno. I said: “I would like to speak on behalf of the young people of Bosnia. They are like young people everywhere. They take pleasure in music …They have the anger of youth and they can love like only youth can love. The young die when they are the ones who should live …In this war, it is the child who is killed because it is the child who plays in the street when the shell explodes.”

Tony Crean of Go Discs!, the record company that represented Paul Weller, happened to be walking through Trafalgar square and heard me. He later recalled. ‘Shit, I’ve spent the last couple of years of my life thinking about pop music and not realising what was going on under my nose’.

Andy Macdonald, the head of Go Discs! recalls that Tony ‘came into the office like a man possessed. He said, “Boss, I’ve been watching what’s happening in Bosnia. It’s fucking outrageous. We’ve got to do something.” '

And they did. A few days later my War Child co-founder, Bill Leeson, and I were invited to meet Tony and Andy in a Notting Hill restaurant. They told us of their plan to release the HELP album. It was to be recorded in studios on Monday, September 4th, 1995 and be in the shops five days later.

HELP sold over 70,000 copies on the day of its release, becoming the fastest-selling album in British music history. The artists waived royalties and it raised more than £1.5 million. Brian Eno produced the album and was responsible for making sure the recordings were ready for pressing in time for the Saturday release. Racing against the clock, he said of the experience, ‘Tapes were appearing from everywhere, me trying to keep some mental track of it… Enjoyable panic, but I went into Hitler mode in the last few minutes.’

The tracks included Oasis and friends with ‘Fade Away’, The Boo Radleys and ‘Oh Brother’, The Stone Roses (Love Spreads), Radiohead (Lucky), Orbital (Adnan), Portishead (Morning Air), Massive Attack (Fake the Aroma), Suede (Shipbuilding), The Charlatans vs The Chemical Brothers (Time for Living), Stereo MCs (Sweetest Truth), Sinéad O’Connor (Ode to Billy Joe), The Levellers (Searchlight), Manic Street Preachers, (Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head), Terrorvision (Tom Petty Loves Veruca Salt), The One World Orchestra (The Magnificent), Planet 4 Folk Quartet (Message for Crommie), Terry Hall and Salad (Dream a Little Dream of Me), Neneh Cherry and Trout (1,2,2,3,4,5), Blur (Eine Kleine Lift Music), The Smoking Mojo Filters with Paul Weller, Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher, Steve Craddock , Damon Minchella. Steve White and Carleen Anderson with ‘Come Together’.

Paul Weller recalls that ‘I had to self-medicate because I was so nervous, so I was a fucking mess by the end of it. But Macca was great, man. He was really fucking cool.’Noel Gallagher remembers that, ‘As the tape started, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d never played 'Come Together' before. “What key’s it in?’ I asked. ‘I was fucking winging it.’

Listening to HELP 30 years later I am astounded with the entire album and don’t want to place one track above another. But if pushed it has to be Terry Hall and Salad ( Merijene van der Vlugt) with ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’. Terry Hall referred to his love of the Mamas and the Papas recording and deciding that ‘this is the one’. Of the studio recording session carried out over eight hours he says ‘There was a string section, two dogs roaming around, babies, press and a video crew. It seemed like the whole world was listening to me improvising some harmonies. I always say it was the highlight of our career. It meant the world to us.’

The income from the album was used to provide artificial limbs for wounded children, food and clothing to orphanages, the purchase of a refrigerated truck to supply insulin, funding for school meals in central Bosnia, support for a mobile medical clinic, the supply of premature baby units , as well as baby milk, contraceptives and even funding for mine clearance programmes. Linda McCartney supplied 22 tonnes of her veggie burgers which were delivered to three Bosnian cities. Help monies were also used towards the running of the War Child bakery and to expand the charity’s music programmes.

Tony Crean said, ‘we did something with real quality, it’s had an impact that’s lasted. If you chuck a big enough stone in the pond, some ripple will hit something and make a difference.’

Decades later and with another, bigger genocide taking place in Palestine, we need to chuck a fucking boulder into that pond and make a difference.

You can view the 1995 HELP album on YouTube and the Channel 4 TV documentary on the making of the album.You can then donate to Medical Aid for Palestine and if you are in the music business help lift that rock.

David Wilson, co-founder War Child

Left Field - Postcript

 

My memoir Left Field was published in 2016 by Unbound and distributed by Penquin. I have been informed that is no longer available in shops and difficult to buy online. Unbound declared itself bankrupt in  2025.  Although its founding personnel seem to have had no trouble setting up a new company with the name 'Boundless', their authors have been left driftless.  But you can now read my memoir for free here and as an e-book and in Audible. 

 The intervening years have been ones of personal and political hope and of personal and political despair. In other words, nothing out of the ordinary.

Not surprisingly for someone in my eighth decade, these have been years when close friends have left this planet while I remain clinging to its edges, aware of Leonard Cohen’s words to Marianne Ihlen that, “I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”

The subdural haematoma operation I wrote about in Left Field was followed two years later by a heart valve operation, then a stroke caused by a strepsis infection of my new valve. More recently I have had epileptic seizures and now write without a glass of wine or beer as my prompt!  I used my hospital stays to campaign for an NHS that has now saved my life three times.

 

I'm proud that the unfairly much-vilified Jeremy Corbyn visited me when I was in St Barts Hospital. The worst insult he has had to endure has been ‘anti-semitism’ accusations when he has been at the forefront of anti-racism struggles all his life. I last saw him three years ago when I joined him in Cable Street at a demonstration to mark the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street,

With that in mind, I helped organise a letter in his support signed by Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Nigel Kennedy, Alexei Sayle and thousands of others, I consider Corbyn to be our El Pepe. 

His visit to my bedside was organised by Alice Kilroy whose death has left my grip on the planet edges more enfeebled. She was a wonderful friend and visited me in hospital more times  than anyone outside my immediate family. I miss her. Here she is with the banner she made for my 70th birthday. It says: "70 years young/ The cops have not caught me yet/ No point  braking now"

 

Before she died in February 2020, Alice asked me to take over her work as one of the contributors to People's Campaign for Corbyn Facebook.  You can view all these blogs on my website at www.davidwilson.org.uk

Thanks to my friend Jan Woolf I have got to know Ken Livingstone, the other politician accused of anti-semitism because of his defence of Palestine. On 20th April Jan organised a 'Thanks Ken Livingstone' celebration. Family and friends gathered to honour his life and legacy as Mayor of London. We were treated to poetry, a piano recital from his granddaughter, Sky Hutchinson, and contributions acknowledging his many achievements as a good and effective politician. On sale was a pamphlet which included my conversation with him over a takeaway curry.

As I write this postscript genocide continues to smash its way through Palestine, confirming the continuing importance of all that Jeremy and Ken say and do. Aided and abetted by our political leaders and the 'liberal media' it seems that all we are left with is Gramsci's - 'pessimism of the heart, optimism of the will.'  These two, along with many of my friends  help me with that optimism.

Plenty to keep me busy and angry, but I am also finding time to write new books.  My World Café  was published by Riversmeet in November 2023. It is a collaboration with the wonderfully gifted artist Laura Davis I am now writing My World Music which will be published by Riversmeet in 2026.

  
These years have been ones when my eldest son lost and won back his disability benefits. Many haven’t and many have lost their lives in the process.

These have also been years of loss for me, not just of the dead, but of a living son who has ghosted me. I wrote about this under a pseudonym for Stand Alone, a charity set up for people estranged from their families. 

 My past as co-founder of War Child still haunts me and hope it haunts those I write critically about here. I recently learned that the present War Child CEO receives an annual salary of £118,000.

My critique of aid charities continued after two visits to the Calais ‘jungle’ refugee ‘camps’. 

Perhaps we have to become more French because La Lutte must continue against a system that rewards rogues, steals votes.

I regularly travel to Mostar to stay with my Bosnian family who I wrote about in Left Field. 

and here is my Mostar son, Oha Maslo, with his wife, Masa. They have taught me that 'family' is not just biological.

Here in London I have been trying to play guitar again. My left hand was weakened by the stroke. My London music friends are at Camden Guitars and the owner, Deicola Neves, tells me off when I complain. "Didn't you know that Django Reinhardt only had three fingers? 

Deicola and his shop have become my London Pavarotti Centre. Here he is playing great jazz on bass guitar. He performed at my birthday celebration, as he did twelve years ago at my father's funeral. 

And here is a Dubioza Kolektiv track about borders that kill. I dedicate this entry to Oha and family, to Deicola and all those who have kept me connected to music and therefore to a life. without borders.

Finally  I am honoured that the following messages were sent me to mark my 80th year.

BEN WILSON: ‘Hey David and all of you that have turned up to celebrate this milestone birthday. I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. So bloody hell David you’ve done it! 80! I say this because, as you all know my dad had a lot of health issues, but has luckily got though them, Raise your glasses as I will tonight, but sadly David can’t, except with a soft drink’

OHA MASLO: ‘Dear father, Well, you are turning 80 now. I do not have any doubt that, at the moment, you are surrounded by people who are important to you and who love you. I'm not sure how you're going to get through such a beautiful day without having a drink, good luck with that, hahaha. You were 52 when we met, which means I have to run through 5 more years to reach that age :) And I have known you for 28 years now :) We, Maša, Zoe, Luna, Lejla, and I, your southern family, are very happy for all these years that we are sharing together with you. Knowing your father's case, there are going to be at least 20 more :) We will have a time to celebrate this round number with you in Mostar in about a month's time. I would like to ask everyone in the room now to help us from down south to deliver our celebrating energy to David. - Take the glass, make sure there is drink in there :) - Look at David's eyes - And repeat after me - Živio sto godina - U zdravlje - Have a drink, and enjoy the party :) Thank you everyone. Love from Mostar. Happy birthday Father xxx’

IRIAL & DARLA ENO: ‘Wishing you a very happy birthday. You have always been, and cntinue to be, such an inspiration to us both. Thank you for always speaking truth to power, and never giving up the fight for what is right. With love, admiration. Solidarity, and hopes for a brighter future’ Irial & Darla xxx

HENRIETTA SEEBOHM: ‘Happy Birthday! You are an inspiration, a legend and a community builder. Thank you for your welcome to the Pavarotti Centre in Mostar in the 90’s. Congratulations on your 80th birthday – you rock!’ Henri 

HAIFA ZANGANA: ‘My dearest friend. On your birthday let's celebrate friendship and solidarity. I and Mundher, will be with you though we are both in Tunis, and I will borrow a few lines from our friend Saadi Yousif, the iraqi poet who calls himself ‘The last communist’. To you " You are free. You pick a sky and name it, a sky to live in, a sky to refuse. A sky as vast as your heart. Your friendship’

CECILY BOMBERG:  ‘In all the many years I’ve known David, he has not just spoken or written about his anger and despair for the world’s injustices, but has put his all actively and daily into attempting to defeat them, never counting the cost or seeking fame or reward, and I love and bless him for it. Happy birthday David, may you live another 80 years. This old world needs you’

HIDETO AND CHAKO WATANABE: ‘Very happy 80th birthday, David! We wish we were there to celebrate this with you all. The time we were together doing Future Trust and Eclipse were one of the most exciting times of our life and remembered fondly always. Big thanks for the friendship!!!!’ Hideto and Chako.

And at the end of the 80th year celebration this poem was read by the person who is the reason why I am still here, Anne Aylor.

WILD GEESE by Mary Oliver 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

You can read All of Left Field here.

 

Ukraine meatgrinder

 

Ukraine - The meat-grinder war

Here’s the history that the politicians and media will never tell you about Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have been closely connected for over 1,000 years. Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, was once the capital of Kievan Rus and laid the foundations for Russia itself. During the Soviet era, Ukraine was central to the USSR. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was Ukrainian.

That was a long time ago. When the USSR collapsed, Washington stepped in, not to help Ukraine, but to weaponise it against Russia and leave the country defenceless against its bloody fate. Since then, the power brokers are not in Kiev, but in Washington, Moscow, Brussels & London.

The U.S. & NATO promised Mikhael Gorbachev they wouldn’t expand “one inch eastward", but the West poured billions into Ukraine—funding pro-NATO political groups, NGOs & media to manufacture an anti-Russian state.

In 2004, the CIA backed the "Orange Revolution," to overturn an election that favoured a pro-Russian candidate. Ten years later Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected an EU trade deal that would have destroyed Ukraine’s economy. So the US removed him with the "Maidan Revolution"- a CIA-backed coup—orchestrated by Victoria Nuland. If you have never heard of her you know very little about the region’s recent history. Let’s just say she handpicked Ukraine’s next leader, allowing Kiev to be taken over by neo-Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion, who celebrate their Nazi history and wear SS insignia.

The post-coup regime then banned the Russian language and attacked millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east. That’s when Donbass and Crimea said enough. Crimea held a referendum with over 90% voting to return to Russia and Donbass followed. Kiev then launched a brutal war, shelling civilians for eight years. This started with a massacre of Russian-speaking protestors taking shelter in an Odessa trade union hall. When Russia intervened the media screamed “unprovoked invasion.”

So who is Zelenskyy? Before politics, he was a comedian and actor - literally playing the president on a TV show. Then, with the help of Western PR teams, fiction became reality. His campaign was funded by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned Ukraine’s largest oil company and bank. Once in power, Zelenskyy’s priority wasn’t fighting corruption—it was making sure Kolomoisky, working with BlackRock and Western banks, took over Ukraine’s economy. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy funnelled millions into offshore accounts, and is alleged to have acquired a $34m mansion in Miami as well as a luxury London apartment.

With Ukraine losing the war, Zelenskyy might soon be a resident there as he is being abandoned. Donald Trump told him: "You don’t have the cards." And he’s right. Ukraine needed Western intervention to win and that would mean WW3. Once you’ve chosen to be the puppet of the US empire don’t show disrespect if you want to keep your shirt on. Forget that suit.

This was now a historic catastrophe for Zelenskyy and his version of Ukraine. “A disaster” and “bitter chaos” (The Economist); a “meltdown” that “could not have gone worse” (Financial Times); a “historic escalation” (Der Spiegel); a “disaster for Ukraine” and a “spectacular confrontation” (Le Monde); an “upbraiding” and “debacle” for Zelensky (New York Times).

Meanwhile Ukraine is running out of soldiers, and Ukrainian men are hunted like animals to be shipped off to the frontlines and a hopeless meat-grinder war.

Putin explained to journalist Pavel Zarubin that Moscow is open to business cooperation with the US regarding rare earth deposits everywhere in Russia, including territories recently conquered from Ukraine. Both Trump an Putin, representing US and Russian oligarchic regimes, are in it for the money.

The US has an impressive record of first using and then liquidating puppets. To name only a few, Ngo Dinh Diem of former South Vietnam, Manuel Noriega of Panama, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Osama Bin Laden.

Washington’s European vassals seem to be choosing the worst possible moment to finally rebel: They have helped drive an insane proxy war forward and pushed Ukraine into an abyss with fanatic, self-destructive submissiveness to US rulers. It is the Europeans who are now trying to obstruct the search for peace.

It is as perverse as you can imagine. These European ‘elites’ still manage to surprise: whenever you think they have done their very worst, they upstage themselves.

The U.S. started this conflict, which has always been a U.S. proxy war against Russia as well as a grab for Ukraine resources. Trump? True to form, he shifts position with an ever-eager eye for his personal opportunity. He escalated the conflict by increasing the arms sent to Poroshenko 2017-2019 and to Zelensky 2019-2021. Now he dumps his erstwhile ‘ally’.

And Zelenskyy? He was elected on the promise to end the attacks against eastern (Russian) Donbas regions, and subsequently did the opposite. He shut down all 14 opposition parties, closed all major media, embezzled $400 million of U.S. aid (see Seymour Hersh), closed Russian Orthodox Churches, and jailed opposition leaders and journalists.

He preferred Antony Blinken's and Victoria Nuland's brutal strategy, with approximately a million Ukrainian men killed to date in this conflict. Millions have emigrated, with many forced into the front lines and their deaths.

The mafia third degree televised interview between the orange man and the clown prince has got everyone to a point which started with the US neo-cons and their support for Ukrainian fascists in 2014.

Nevertheless, many prefer to stand with Ukraine and fly its flag, forgetting that a flag represents a state and not its people. The people’s flag would not be yellow and blue but red. Sadly not representative of a socialist present and future, but dipped in the meat-grinder blood that has become the fate of the Ukrainian people.

Meanwhile in Gaza?

Careful where you place your flowers

I was at the Gaza/Palestine rally in Whitehall yesterday (18 Jan 2024) which was to have concluded with a march to the BBC and I witnessed all that happened. 

The police banned the rally from being held, as originally planned, outside the BBC because they said it would offend the kahal kodesh (congregation) at a neighbouring synagogue during their time of service. The pro-Palestine movement have never threatened synagogues and, in any case there would be more Jews on the march than several synagogue congregations. These photos show orthodox Jews at the rally, descendants of holocaust survivors and the Jewish Bloc.

When the march organisers said they would rally in Westminster, place the Jewish Bloc at the front of the march, and arrive at the BBC long after any religious service, the police then changed the reason for the ban.It would be a nuisance to traffic. All marches are a nuisance to traffic. Their reasoning was obvious. The state broadcaster and its propaganda needs to be shielded from the opponents of the genocide they support.

After the Whitehall rally ended the organisers announced that they and some ‘celebrities’ present would now walk to the BBC and, if prevented from doing so, would lay flowers in front of police lines. To my way of thinking that is positively Gandhian. Later in the day The Guardian reported that  "More than 70 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested in central London on Saturday on suspicion of breaching protest conditions after some allegedly broke through a police line as they marched from a rally in Whitehall."

No one 'broke through’ a police line. Two lines of police stood aside and even drove their vehicles away from blocking the road. I walked through the first line and exchanged smiles with the cop I walked past. They clearly wanted the marchers to proceed. After Trafalgar Square a third line of police and their vehicles did not move aside and Chris Nineham, chief steward, then attempted to effect the laying of flowers in front of the police by Juliet Stevenson, an 87-year old holocaust survivor  and others. No attempt was made to continue on to the BBC. Chris was violently arrested, held in custody for 19 hours and charged under the Public Order Act for 'organising an illegal demonstration'. Terms of his bail mean he is not allowed to organise or take part in any demonstration. This is a threat to all our civil liberties.

The truth is that the police wanted the marchers to go through their first two lines so that they could represent them as an unruly rabble set upon breaking through their lines. They successfully fooled The Guardian, but none of us who were there. 

Michael Rosen puts it well...

“Arresting demonstrators who are posing no threat to public order, and posing no threat to individuals or groups, is an expression of state power ...It's hard to gauge, but it seems as if the mainstream media are finding it hard to sustain the idea that what Israel has been doing in Gaza is legitimate. But in essence, the view that Israel's acts are legitimate, is the government view and is part of its alliance with the US. It's just possible that some people on high made calculations that arresting people will discourage some from attending demonstrations ... It looks as if the Met has boobed. We can see film of the police letting the leaders of the march through (thereby collaborating with them in 'breaking the law'!) ”.

Chris Nineham was held for19 hours, charged under the Public Order Act and then  released on bail. More than 40 others are still in custody as I write this. Release them all without charge Meanwhile we must charge the police and their State masters with using the laying of flowers in front of the police to move this country uncomfortably nearer a police state.

While writing this I received an email from a friend of mine .... 

“Nothing about this (the events as described above) on the News.  When I walked up Whitehall after my meet with friends at Tate Modern - I wandered into Trafalgar Square. I was wearing my Palestine scarf and a policewoman told me if I didn’t move in 30 seconds I would be arrested. I asked why. She said the square was a ‘non designated area’ and started counting . I said this was nuts and went off to see Francis Bacon. Earlier I had a Palestininan flag on my bag - a doorman at the Tate said I had to remove it. Why said I? Because the Tate is neutral. FFS

We can see what Gaza looks like. Are we really being told that we shouldn't have the right protest about this - Michael Rosen