In 1984, after watching a BBC television news report by Michael Buerk from famine stricken Ethiopia, Bob Geldof was so moved by the plight of starving children that he decided to try and raise money using his contacts in pop music.

Geldof enlisted the help of Midge Ure, from the group Ultravox, to help produce a charity record. Ure took Geldof's lyrics (Feed the World), and created the melody and backing track for the record. Geldof called many of the most popular British and Irish performers of the time persuading them to give their time free. His one criterion for selection was how famous they were, in order to maximise sales of the record. He then kept an appointment to appear on a show on BBC Radio 1, but instead of promoting his own material as planned, he announced the plan for Band Aid.

The recording studio gave Band Aid no more than 24 free hours to record and mix the record on 25th November 1984. The recording took place between 11am and 7pm at the Sarm West Studio in London, and was filmed by director Nigel Dick to be released as a pop video. The early footage was rushed to newsrooms where it aired while the remainder of the recording process continued.
The original single was produced by Midge Ure, with the 12" version being mixed and produced by Trevor Horn.

Watch the documentary about the making of Band Aid on YouTube
Part 1 Part 2

The idea behind the new music for Oseh Shalom was, in the words of its composer Stephen Levey, “to write a piece which would appeal to all, with words that are well known and with a tune that could be sung easily”.  The song was written as a prayer for peace for Israel’s 60th anniversary and was featured as a new composition on the Chief Rabbi’s “Home of Hope” CD.
 
The Chief Rabbi wanted images to accompany some of the songs on the CD. Whilst on the recent “Solidarity through Song” mission to Israel (where The Shabbaton Choir sang to people in the cities of Sderot and Ashkelon) the Chief Rabbi asked Stephen to consider how he would visualise Oseh Shalom as a film.
 
On seeing & hearing the positive response to the song both in Israel and in the UK, Stephen felt it could be filmed as an anthem in the style of the “Band Aid” video.
This was fortuitous, as the musical director for Band Aid, Trevor Horn, had been instrumental (literally) in arranging some of the music on the CD.  Once again he offered, very generously, to produce the track at his studio– the same studio in which Band Aid was recorded twenty four years earlier.  The recording took place on 30th April 2008 with soloists Jonny Turgel, Shimon Craimer and Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld, The Shabbaton Choir, children from London’s Moriah Jewish Day School and The Chief Rabbi himself. The film was produced and directed by Adam Cohen.