With a little help from my friends

The Concert for Bangladesh happened because of my relationship with Ravi. He is such a humble person. He said, "I am going to do this show. Maybe, if you or Peter Sellers or both of you can come on and do something or announce something, maybe we can make $25,000 and do something about this terrible war."
I said: "If you want me to be involved, I think I'd better be really involved," so I started recruiting all these people. It was difficult at first, but once it got closer to the show I had commitments from so many people that some had to be turned down. Everybody wanted to be in it.
Mainly the concert was to attract attention to the situation that was happening at one time. The money we raised was secondary, and although we had some problems because Allen Klein had not been handling it right, they still got plenty of money, even though it was a drop in the ocean. The main thing was, we spread the word and helped get the war ended. Little Bengali waiters in Indian restaurants still come up to me and say, "When we were fighting in the jungle, it was so great to know there was someone out there supporting us."
The Concert for Bangladesh was just a moral stance. These kinds of things have grown over the years, but what we did shows the musicians and people are more humane than politicians. Today people accept the commitment rock 'n' roll musicians have when they perform for a charity. When I did it, they said things like, "He's only doing this to be nice."

Source: www.superseventies.com