‘WORLD’ SETS DIZZY SALES PACE

Key retail outlets in Southern California report the “We Are the World” charity single is selling at a faster pace than any other record in memory.

Each of a dozen stores contacted by The Times on Monday said that initial orders of the record sold out over the weekend and that the single was selling at five to 10 times what the normal No. 1 single registers in a week.

Richard Petitpas, singles buyer for the huge Tower Records store in West Hollywood, said that 1,000 copies of the record were received Thursday afternoon and all were gone by Saturday. “It was phenomenal. . .unbelievable,” he said. “I’ve been here four years and I’ve never seen anything like it.

“People were picking up two or three copies to give as gifts or to hold onto as collectors’ items. One woman bought 25 copies for her friends. We could have sold 2,000 to 3,000 copies over the weekend.”

Petitpas said the average No. 1 single in the store sells about 100 to 200 copies per week. The Band Aid charity single, a British recording last year that also raised funds for African famine victims, sold 1,000 copies its first weekend at the store, but even it didn’t move as fast as “We Are the World,” he added.

The new single, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, was recorded Jan. 28 at A & M Studios in Hollywood and features what is believed to be the most celebrated list of pop performers ever gathered in a single studio. Besides Jackson and Richie, the singers included Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers and Bette Midler.

The project, which adopted the name USA for Africa, was organized by Ken Kragen (manager of Richie and Rogers) and Harry Belafonte and is patterned loosely after the Band Aid recording of “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” That record, featuring an all-star British lineup, is the biggest-selling single ever in England, but it only sold about 1.8 million copies in the United States, according to a CBS Records spokesman.

Harriet Sternberg, spokeswoman for Ken Kragen and Associates, said CBS Records, which is distributing of the single, shipped 800,000 copies of “We Are the World” Thursday and already has orders for another 500,000.

Paul Grein, an editor for Billboard magazine, said Monday that he expects the record to be the first single to debut in the national Top 10 since the Beatles’ “Let It Be” in 1970. “Based on the initial sales response and airplay, I can’t see how the record can fail to break into the Top 10,” he said. No other record since “Let It Be” debuted higher than No. 20, he said. The Band Aid record peaked at No. 13 in this country.

“We Are the World” has wider sales appeal in the United States than the Band Aid record because it’s not a seasonal song and the talent lineup includes stars from rock, country and soul music, whereas the Band Aid project was targeted primarily to a rock audience.

In The Times’ check of other outlets, Ron Deutsch, singles buyer at the Tower store in Sherman Oaks, said 400 copies of “We Are the World” were received Thursday and all were gone by Saturday. “We could have sold twice as many as we had,” he said. The store’s previous high seller for a week: Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” which sold 126 copies. At the Westwood Tower, singles buyer Kent Weber reported a 50% greater response than Band Aid.

At all the stores, the buyers were eager for new shipments of the records. The second step in the USA for Africa marketing campaign was the release Monday of an extended 12-inch version of the single. A video of the single was also due to debut Monday night on MTV, the 24-hour cable music channel.