Bob Geldof on turning 70, and the upcoming Boomtown Rats live shows

Virgin Radio

11 Oct 2021, 12:10

The singer-songwriter and political activist joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about reaching 70, the band’s upcoming shows in London Palladium and Crawley, the past, and the future.

Sir Bob celebrated his 70th birthday last week. He told Chris: “I looked at a picture of my dad the other day, it just fell out of an album or something, and he was 68 I think when the picture was taken. And I remember being with him, and we went for a walk up some hills, and I said, ‘Are you okay dad, going for the walk?’ And, of course, that was two years younger than me now! And he said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Of course!’” 

The musician added: “I’m probably so old to my kids, and the reality is, I am that age. But I’m in a game, I’m in pop music, and we bring out a record, we do The Palladium on Thursday, and that’s what I’ve been doing for so long. It’s just like a continuation of when I was 20.”

Whilst Bob was ostensibly in the studio to promote the new Boomtown Rats EP, Out The Back Of Boomtown, and this week's live gigs, he and Chris talked in depth about a number of other subjects. Bob spoke about feelings of panic and desperation that stem from his childhood in Dun Laoghaire, a suburb of Dublin, and how he found an escape through rock ‘n’ roll. He explained: “Still to this very second, I have to check that I have got any cash. Still always, it’s like that. It’s a product of being a kid in Ireland. My mum dies when I’m seven, or six or something. My dad, the only job he could ever get was being a commercial salesman. So he’d go away on Monday and come back on Friday, selling towels or something around the countryside of rural Ireland in the early 60’s. No money. So any money he had, he spent on my sisters’ and my education, which I just flung back in his face disgracefully, because we brought ourselves up, myself and my two sisters, there was no parents at home, so I had no instinct about authority.” 

He continued: “When I encountered authority in the shape of a Priest, or a policeman, in the Priest’s case, I’d just get beaten in school, and later when I encountered the police, I just never understood why somebody would tell me what to do. So when rock music enters my life very early on, through the improbable microstate of Radio Luxembourg, there were these young boys and girls, Mick and Keith, John and Paul, Bob, Pete, lowering down this golden thread of rock ‘n’ roll through the purple etha, which I clung on to, because they offered other universes, other possibilities that I couldn’t possibly imagine, and that really… it’s terribly corny… but that golden rope I’ve clung onto all of my life, and my dad had no money, I didn’t know him very well. I’d only see him at the weekends. Our relationship was awful, and so rock ‘n’ roll became the out.” 

Recalling his experience of seeing bands as a kid in Ireland, Bob said: “My sister had to take me to see The Beatles and The Stones and Bob Dylan in a cinema in Dublin. I saw The Beatles, and they were a girl band back in those days, just a band and femininity howling, you know, which scared the 11-year-old boy, and the aisles of the cinema ran with female urine.

“Dylan was a student-type outfit. And The Rolling Stones came on and that was it. They were my gang. Not Mick, not Keith, but their insolence, their contemptuous insolence. I just went, ‘Whatever, sign me up!’”

The musician spoke about moving to London, initially living on the streets and then in a squat, and how he eventually got out by hitch-hiking to Spain, where he taught English in the desert. He said: “You’re very young, you’re 19, there’s nothing going for you, you don’t think anything is going to happen. I just had to keep moving. Just keep moving. Something will happen to you. It’s going to be okay. Something, something one day will happen. And it did.”

Bob reflected on his negative drug experiences, both in the squat and with The Boomtown Rats when they were trying to make it in America, and he also spoke about his different indulgences now. “I’m very lucky. Really lucky. I don’t have the addictive thing," he said. "So I smoked a bit when I was a kid, knocked it on the head, just said ‘I’m not doing this anymore’, and I stopped. I love red wine. I’ve got more books at home than I’ll be able to read in the rest of my life. I’ve got more bottles of wine at home than I’ll be able to drink in the rest of my life. I’ll do a half bottle a night, probably, but not that often. 

“I like Guinness, but to a point. I don’t go to bed early or anything, because as you know, Chris, I’m a global international mega rock star, so morning is simply a construct to me!

“It’s weird. I've been around people who are addicts, and people in rock ‘n’ roll, and stuff like that. There was a time when I was the arch ligger. I mean, the papers would just say, ‘There’s Geldof again at yet another party.’ But I just like hanging!”

The Boomtown Rats are playing an intimate show at The London Palladium this Thursday (October 14th), as well as a special rehearsal gig at The Hawth in Crawley, Sussex tomorrow night (12th October). Bob said: “This is the first theatre we’ve played in in two years.” Regarding the Crawley show, he added: “It’s in Crawley. Our tour manager is a fanatic Crawley FC fan! 

“It’s a great theatre. We want to put on the production that we’re doing at The Palladium. We need to check out everything on that. So they came to us and said, ‘Will you do it for our new clubhouse?’”

When Chris asked the 70-year-old what the plan is for the next ten or twenty years, he responded: “What's the future hold for Bob Geldof besides decrepitude, senility and impotence? I’ve got enough cash to see me through. See, there’s the panic from the little boy. I’m very much in love with my wife. The kids are great, touching wood here. The Rats, it turns out that they were and are a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll band. Buy our new record, that’s noisy as anything, which I really like.”

Bob continued: “I’ll probably do a solo thing next, that’s where I’m in the headspace for, which is very different to Bobby Boomtown, and I don’t want to be silly about that, but the guy who goes on stage with The Rats… he’s very much part of me, he’s the grumpy sort of Bob thing, and then there’s the other part. So there’s stuff to do.” 

Speaking more about everything that is currently going on in his world, Bob said: “The Band Aid YouTube channel will achieve its billionth view, coming up, and things are very bad in Africa again, so we’re feeding somewhere in the region of 200,000 people every single day still which is extraordinary. 

“I’d like to get some DJ’s, like Guetta and someone like that, to remix the Christmas song, give it new life, but the YouTube channel still provides cash.

“So all those things continue, all those things occupy my day. I would want them to continue, and I’m lucky I have a job that doesn’t seem to have a terminal point, if you can keep going. And tunes occur in my head. I can’t see that stopping.” 

Summing up the future, the legend concluded: “It will continue until it stops. Do I mind about that? Do I fear it? No. And sometimes I think, you know, it’s okay. Just stop now, you know, that’s alright. And then that passes. It’s coming soon enough, is the end thing. But do I fear it? No, I don’t fear it. It’s just the end of the self, and that doesn’t scare me, because myself annoys me so much, so much of the time!"

EP Out of the Back of Boomtown and single And I Do are out now. For Palladium tickets, visit theboomtownratsofficial.com.

For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.