Elton John and Celebrities in AIDS Awareness: The 1992 Radio PSAs

In 1992, in the United States, a promotional cassette titled *Various – The Elton John Music Special Superstar PSA’s For AIDS* was distributed to radio stations nationwide. The material was conceived exclusively as a Public Service Announcement (PSA), with the dual purpose of promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and publicizing the radio program *The Elton John Music Special*, scheduled to air throughout the month of October of that year.

The release appeared in the format **Cassette, Single Sided, Promo, Transcription**, issued by **MCA Records** without a commercial catalog number. It was not a retail product intended for public sale, but rather an institutional item sent directly to radio broadcasters. Marketing and distribution were handled by **Entertainment Radio Networks**, a company specialized in promotional content for radio airplay.

Classified under the genres **Non-Music** and **Public Service Announcement**, the cassette brings together a series of short public-awareness messages narrated by widely recognized figures from American entertainment. All recordings use background music derived from Elton John’s song **“The One”**, released in 1992 as both a single and the title track of the album *The One*. The song appears solely as an instrumental backing to the spoken messages, not in its complete recorded form.

The content is concentrated on a single side of the tape and consists of ten distinct segments, organized as follows:

Introduction – institutional opening narration
Billy Crystal – AIDS PSA
Sting – AIDS PSA
Whoopi Goldberg – AIDS PSA
Roseanne Arnold – AIDS PSA
Arsenio Hall – AIDS PSA
Bonnie Raitt – AIDS PSA
Richard Gere – AIDS PSA
Leeza Gibbons – *The Elton John Music Special* Promo 1
Leeza Gibbons and Luke Perry – *The Elton John Music Special* Promo 2

The awareness messages address the subject of AIDS in a direct and accessible manner, leveraging the credibility and public reach of the participating celebrities to broaden the impact of information and prevention campaigns. The final two segments function specifically as promotional announcements for *The Elton John Music Special*, produced for radio broadcast.

From a technical standpoint, this is an analog **single-sided cassette**, typical of radio transcription materials in the early 1990s. A known digitization of this tape was made from a physical copy using an **AIWA XK-S9000** cassette deck, with **Dolby Noise Reduction disengaged**, and a **Marantz PMD570 Solid State Recorder**, captured in **Stereo PCM**, **WAV format**, at a **44.1 kHz sample rate**, with a recording level of **–4 dB**. The tape itself is **IEC Type II (Cobalt)** with **120 μs equalization**, and the original audio source is presumed to have been **DAT**, a common practice for promotional radio duplication during that period.

*The Elton John Music Special Superstar PSA’s For AIDS* does not form part of Elton John’s standard commercial discography. Instead, it stands as an institutional and historical document, now considered rare and of particular interest to researchers, collectors, and scholars examining the intersection of music, media, and social activism in the early 1990s.

Based on this historical material, I edited a video that brings together several of these celebrity contributions. The decision was motivated by the fact that the audio tracks from the cassette correspond to individual video records for each segment, allowing the preservation and contextualization of this sound document within an audiovisual narrative that highlights the significance of these HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns.

The technical, artistic, and commercial information presented here is primarily based on the official release record available at:

https://www.discogs.com/release/31700267-Various-The-Elton-John-Music-Special-Superstar-PSAs-For-AIDS?srsltid=AfmBOooimk4JdKI1RStm_sDZGdz0_V5sKZC9BcBkMrB1OVkRhDfTw-BH

Elton John, AIDS, HIV, PSA, radio, promotional cassette, 1992, *The One*, awareness, public health campaigns, sound archive, music research

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