The war in Bosnia had been raging on for four years when news of the Srebrenica massacre broke in July 1995. By then, 250,000 people had lost their lives and two million more had been displaced. But the long drawn out conflict had rendered most desensitized or apathetic. The systematic planning, scale, and sheer brutality at the heart of the Srebrenica massacre however, was a shock to the system for many. More than 7,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys were taken from a designated United Nations safe zone guarded by a Dutch peacekeeping force. They were separated from their families and told that they were safe by Serbian soldiers as they were herded onto buses and taken to a site where they were executed en masse. Their bodies were then dumped into mass graves and bulldozed over so as not to leave any evidence.
These reports would spur Tony Crean to create The HELP Album (mainly simply known as HELP), a charity compilation that would be released barely three months later. It featured 20 songs recorded in the same 24 hour period by some of the biggest ‘90s British bands such as Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Manic Streets Preachers, and more. HELP exceeded everyone’s expectations, raising £1.25 million for the then new charity War Child.
A respected music executive and head of International at London record label, Go! Discs (Billy Bragg, Portishead, and Paul Weller), Crean was struck by a severe flu that summer and found himself holed up in bed with nothing to do but watch the television.
The reports of ethnic cleansing and violent images of the Srebrenica massacre, which the International Criminal Tribune a podcast that War Child commissioned in 2020 to commemorate the album’s 25th anniversary and reissue.
