November 7, 2024 • 12 mins
Punk turned humanitarian icon Bob Geldof called up to chat about his upcoming shows in NZ next year. He raconteurs about Live Aid turning 40, the Boomtown Rats turning 50 and why he wants to punch the world in the face. He's a great storyteller, the troubadour is coming here for two shows in March next year.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Radio Hodakis Off the Record Podcast with Angelina Gray.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Angelina, Hello, Bob, Hi, are you all right?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Little thanks brilliant, Thank you so much for joining us today.
Of course we're discussing the fact that you're making your
way down Under, coming to New Zealand to play and
evening with Bob Geldoff songs and stories from an extraordinary life.
It's incredible that you transitioned from punk rocker to global
humanitarian icon. Tell us first off, what we can expect
(00:31):
from the evening itself?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
What you mean transitioned do this for forty bloody years,
you know, a long time, so it's part of a life, Angelina,
and it's a sort of offshoot of what I actually do,
which is rock and roll. You know, the rat fifty
next year we're doing all the big fest and that's
what freaks me out more than anything else, you know.
But this is we're actually celebrating our actual fiftieth gig
(00:58):
at the Hammersmith Odeon and London, because that's a sort
of legendary rock gig and we sold out a week there.
I can't remember back the day, but our first gig
was on Halloween night nineteen seventy five in a tech
school in Dublin and time telescopes. It loops back on
(01:19):
itself and I can remember it absolutely vividly. And you know,
you sound like an old geezer going, ah, sure, it's
like yesterday this happened. Well, you know it is like that.
I also remember live like was yesterday. But that's because
I have to live it every day. I wake up
to ten or eleven emails about the latest awfulness in
(01:44):
the part of the world we work in, and we
work there still, so what I understand that, you know,
people's lives were affected hugely, obviously in the areas we're working,
but around the world by it. It's something that I
live with every day, you know. But as I said,
it's part of a life. I mean, the promoters of
(02:06):
the One Man Show called a store Music and Stories
from an Extraordinary Life. I'm changing that to life WTF,
because that's exactly what it feels like.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Oh that's genius. So you're kind of like a I guess,
a troubadour or an orator of a time.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I like the idea of the trupidour thing because my
actual favorite type of gig, I've got the rats on
a solo band, and I've made records with both, and
they're both very different. The Rats has got a guy
in the front sort of who does Who's like Bobby
Boomtown who when that band cranks up, goes nuts And
it's not thought, I don't think about it, it's what
(02:45):
I want to do when I hear that racket. The
solo band is much more internalized and sing songs about
stuff that really couldn't work with that noise that excites
me so much in the Rats. But this other band
(03:06):
I love playing with as well, and that's maybe the
one you sometimes see with the fiddle and accordion and
electric guitars that But my favorite thing to do Troupe
dour like is to go through the summer in Europe
and play in the small villages with their little fairs.
So that is kind of truep door is because you
show up in a part of the words you would
(03:28):
never I've probably seen more of Australia that are importing
more of New Zealand or you know, either Australia then
most people. I've certainly seen more of Britain than most Brits.
I've certainly seen more of Germany and you pitch up
in a small town and they're all there, and you're
there and you chat with people, and it's it's so
(03:49):
nice just to play music and to go out and
have a meal and stuff like that. I've been very
lucky in that regard.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And so you'll be fin the show doing some songs,
some stories.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, well, I mean I'll be doing like obviously the
hits and stuff like that because of show business. But
I'd also want to do a couple of tunes that
somehow illustrate the stuff I'm telling people. And you know,
I don't mind people shouting out tell us the story
of this or do that song. If I don't want to,
we'll go shut up. I'm not doing that tonight, but
(04:23):
hey come tomorrow. And you know that sort of thing.
So you know, part of this job is storytelling anyway,
Like with you, you know, I've just done some TV
and you do it so you get used to plus
a marish so the rack unteur storytelling thing comes easy
(04:44):
to us. I don't know if you've seen Springsteen's One
Man Show or Bono's One Man's Show, both Irish guys. Yeah,
you know, so we tell stories. I mean that's basically it.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
You know, well, I love listening to your talks on
actors of them in the state of the world, your
thoughts on you know, a miracle or what have you.
I find it really fascinating. But I know you can
be maligned sometimes for getting too political. But how much
of that will be on your show when you come
to New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I don't know. It depends on where I go with it.
To be honest with you, I don't want to be
heavily scripted. Yeah, I am political, you know, if you're
dealing like don't forget the rats came about at the
punk period. The first the first line you ever heard
Bob Geldof say was the world owes me are living.
(05:32):
My father, you say you think the world owes you
were living yet you know, And the first line you're
Johnny Rotten saying was you know, I am the Antichrist.
I'm an anarchist. There is no future in England's dreaming
or the class. Joe Strubber, I want to riot of
my own. You know, we came at a time of change,
and we were articulating that change and we were demanding it.
(05:57):
And that's all I ever knew from rock and roll
from when I was a kid and my mom had
died very young, and my dad had to leave every week,
so me and my sisters were left to our own devices,
and so rock and roll became the mechanism for understanding
my situation without knowing that was happening, and articulating it.
And these young boys and girls called Paul and John
(06:20):
and Mick and Keith and Bob and Pete and those
sort of people were young, not much older than me,
maybe eight years, but there's a huge gap between being
eleven and nineteen, you know, demanding saying things had changed
and if you hadn't realized that, get out of the way.
So this was what I was moving towards. I didn't
understand that at the time, but I understand it in
(06:41):
retrospect definitely. And I had it not been I never
thought I'd end up in a band. I was taking photographs,
I was writing about it for papers, but I was
heading really towards the dead center. And all those people who,
without any question are heroes to me that I've just said,
(07:02):
it's funny I know them now. You know, that's weird,
And it's also weird that I have a fan filter
still the eleven year old. It's still meeting, still saying
hi to the eighty one year old Paul McCartney, but
it's the eleven year old. It's kind of going, oh
my god, you knows of people you know? Oh Bob, yeah,
(07:23):
great Nat Towns going.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, dear storytelling though it makes sense now for the
evening that you're holding, because I guess I did read that.
You know, when you were young and you had rock
and roll to disappear into end books. You're an avid reader,
don't have a choice.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I mean, Ireland in the nineteen fifties sixties was this
small old island off the western shores of Europe, but
was very isolated, almost on purpose. The church was oppressive,
state was oppressive. Your mother dies and you're young boy.
(08:01):
Your father, through no fault of his own, because he
can get no other job, buggers off on Monday and
comes back on you know, Friday. He's not making much
money selling towels, right. I think washing was invented sometime
in the nineteen seventies in Ireland, so he wasn't making
much money selling towels. And rural Ireland so there wasn't Telly,
(08:23):
there wasn't a phone. There wasn't a fridge, there wasn't
any of that stuff. I just read. I came out.
There was no one to make me do homework. Most importantly,
I certainly wasn't going to do anything, my sister said.
So I just took books from the library and read
them and listened to the one rock and roll station
(08:45):
available in Britain and Ireland at that time, Radio Luxembourg.
And that was it. I read and I listened to music.
And so it's not an accident that ultimately politics and
music come to a head in one individual. And then
when you understand what rock and roll can do, when
it becomes the common language, the lingua franca of the planet,
(09:07):
which is in English it's actually pop music, then it's
sort of not the greatest stroke of intuition to think
I can join all that together through these new things
called satellite. So to me it all makes a lot
of sense. I think to other people it seems random.
And when people say it get too political, what do
you think people die of hunger in the world of surpluses.
(09:30):
You don't die of lack of food. You die of poverty.
If in New Zealand there's no food, the government will
import it and you can go to the supermarket and
get it. But if you're poor, you die. So that's economics.
And when you're dealing with economics, then you must deal
with the agents of change and the agents of change
in our world, whether we like it or not other politicians.
(09:53):
So that's it. It's really straightforward.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I did see an interview with yourself and Bono sometime back,
because obviously you both do charit will work together.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We don't do charity, we do politics.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Well, exactly with campaigning, and an interview you said that
Bono is enamored with the world. You're enraged by the world. Yeah,
it feels like that's still there though you've carried it
with you. It's not just being young and punk.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yes, that's right. I mean, you know, rage is the
animus and it comes from there's nothing I can do
about it. I mean, you know, it comes from being
that little boy. You know, there's really nothing I can't do.
But and you know, you're right what I said. He's
enamored with the world, you know, I'm enraged by it.
(10:38):
He put it another way, he wants to give the
world a hug. I want to punch its light that.
So it's and I can't book that. It's interesting you
hit on that because it annoys me that that sort
of will not die down and be that anger just
(10:58):
will not go away of what I do. And so
when I'm with the Rats and I'm out front there,
you know, I get lost in this Catharsis. That's what
it actually is, you know. So but when I'm sober
Bob talking to Angelina, great, then it kind of makes
it logic. But actually, if I'm in a room with
(11:19):
big politicians and that, and I am sober and I've
got my notes and I want something and we're talking, discussing,
and they're doing their political thing, and then you know,
suddenly this thing rises up on me because I've walked
amongst it. You know, I've smelt it, I've heard the agony,
(11:42):
and it can be fixed. These things actually can be fixed,
and it's not They're not done, and it's the work
of moments. And so yes, if I get political, why
wouldn't I? And you know, frankly, I think more people
should be, and then we wouldn't have vulgar fools going
(12:04):
to be elected president of the United States in the
next twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Sir Bob. Thank God for you is all I can say.
For fighting the good fight. If I'm really looking forward
to hearing more of what you're going to be talking
about and all the stories and the songs hopefully coming
out when we see you next year. It's been what
twenty nineteen? You were here last, was it? Yes? So
thanks so Actually I did bump into you. We got
to have a photo together you probably won't recall, but
(12:29):
hopefully I get to do it again this time.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I'd love to. Okay, and thanks a million next.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Year, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Bob Radio hod aches Off the Record podcast. Why not
subscribe so they download automatically and don't forget to rate
us five stars?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Thanks mate.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Find out more about this podcast and the people who
make it at hodache dot co dot mz
Welcome to Radio Hodakis Off the Record Podcast with Angelina Gray.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Angelina, Hello, Bob, Hi, are you all right?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Little thanks brilliant, Thank you so much for joining us today.
Of course we're discussing the fact that you're making your
way down Under, coming to New Zealand to play and
evening with Bob Geldoff songs and stories from an extraordinary life.
It's incredible that you transitioned from punk rocker to global
humanitarian icon. Tell us first off, what we can expect
(00:31):
from the evening itself?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
What you mean transitioned do this for forty bloody years,
you know, a long time, so it's part of a life, Angelina,
and it's a sort of offshoot of what I actually do,
which is rock and roll. You know, the rat fifty
next year we're doing all the big fest and that's
what freaks me out more than anything else, you know.
But this is we're actually celebrating our actual fiftieth gig
(00:58):
at the Hammersmith Odeon and London, because that's a sort
of legendary rock gig and we sold out a week there.
I can't remember back the day, but our first gig
was on Halloween night nineteen seventy five in a tech
school in Dublin and time telescopes. It loops back on
(01:19):
itself and I can remember it absolutely vividly. And you know,
you sound like an old geezer going, ah, sure, it's
like yesterday this happened. Well, you know it is like that.
I also remember live like was yesterday. But that's because
I have to live it every day. I wake up
to ten or eleven emails about the latest awfulness in
(01:44):
the part of the world we work in, and we
work there still, so what I understand that, you know,
people's lives were affected hugely, obviously in the areas we're working,
but around the world by it. It's something that I
live with every day, you know. But as I said,
it's part of a life. I mean, the promoters of
(02:06):
the One Man Show called a store Music and Stories
from an Extraordinary Life. I'm changing that to life WTF,
because that's exactly what it feels like.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Oh that's genius. So you're kind of like a I guess,
a troubadour or an orator of a time.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I like the idea of the trupidour thing because my
actual favorite type of gig, I've got the rats on
a solo band, and I've made records with both, and
they're both very different. The Rats has got a guy
in the front sort of who does Who's like Bobby
Boomtown who when that band cranks up, goes nuts And
it's not thought, I don't think about it, it's what
(02:45):
I want to do when I hear that racket. The
solo band is much more internalized and sing songs about
stuff that really couldn't work with that noise that excites
me so much in the Rats. But this other band
(03:06):
I love playing with as well, and that's maybe the
one you sometimes see with the fiddle and accordion and
electric guitars that But my favorite thing to do Troupe
dour like is to go through the summer in Europe
and play in the small villages with their little fairs.
So that is kind of truep door is because you
show up in a part of the words you would
(03:28):
never I've probably seen more of Australia that are importing
more of New Zealand or you know, either Australia then
most people. I've certainly seen more of Britain than most Brits.
I've certainly seen more of Germany and you pitch up
in a small town and they're all there, and you're
there and you chat with people, and it's it's so
(03:49):
nice just to play music and to go out and
have a meal and stuff like that. I've been very
lucky in that regard.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And so you'll be fin the show doing some songs,
some stories.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, well, I mean I'll be doing like obviously the
hits and stuff like that because of show business. But
I'd also want to do a couple of tunes that
somehow illustrate the stuff I'm telling people. And you know,
I don't mind people shouting out tell us the story
of this or do that song. If I don't want to,
we'll go shut up. I'm not doing that tonight, but
(04:23):
hey come tomorrow. And you know that sort of thing.
So you know, part of this job is storytelling anyway,
Like with you, you know, I've just done some TV
and you do it so you get used to plus
a marish so the rack unteur storytelling thing comes easy
(04:44):
to us. I don't know if you've seen Springsteen's One
Man Show or Bono's One Man's Show, both Irish guys. Yeah,
you know, so we tell stories. I mean that's basically it.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
You know, well, I love listening to your talks on
actors of them in the state of the world, your
thoughts on you know, a miracle or what have you.
I find it really fascinating. But I know you can
be maligned sometimes for getting too political. But how much
of that will be on your show when you come
to New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I don't know. It depends on where I go with it.
To be honest with you, I don't want to be
heavily scripted. Yeah, I am political, you know, if you're
dealing like don't forget the rats came about at the
punk period. The first the first line you ever heard
Bob Geldof say was the world owes me are living.
(05:32):
My father, you say you think the world owes you
were living yet you know, And the first line you're
Johnny Rotten saying was you know, I am the Antichrist.
I'm an anarchist. There is no future in England's dreaming
or the class. Joe Strubber, I want to riot of
my own. You know, we came at a time of change,
and we were articulating that change and we were demanding it.
(05:57):
And that's all I ever knew from rock and roll
from when I was a kid and my mom had
died very young, and my dad had to leave every week,
so me and my sisters were left to our own devices,
and so rock and roll became the mechanism for understanding
my situation without knowing that was happening, and articulating it.
And these young boys and girls called Paul and John
(06:20):
and Mick and Keith and Bob and Pete and those
sort of people were young, not much older than me,
maybe eight years, but there's a huge gap between being
eleven and nineteen, you know, demanding saying things had changed
and if you hadn't realized that, get out of the way.
So this was what I was moving towards. I didn't
understand that at the time, but I understand it in
(06:41):
retrospect definitely. And I had it not been I never
thought I'd end up in a band. I was taking photographs,
I was writing about it for papers, but I was
heading really towards the dead center. And all those people who,
without any question are heroes to me that I've just said,
(07:02):
it's funny I know them now. You know, that's weird,
And it's also weird that I have a fan filter
still the eleven year old. It's still meeting, still saying
hi to the eighty one year old Paul McCartney, but
it's the eleven year old. It's kind of going, oh
my god, you knows of people you know? Oh Bob, yeah,
(07:23):
great Nat Towns going.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, dear storytelling though it makes sense now for the
evening that you're holding, because I guess I did read that.
You know, when you were young and you had rock
and roll to disappear into end books. You're an avid reader,
don't have a choice.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I mean, Ireland in the nineteen fifties sixties was this
small old island off the western shores of Europe, but
was very isolated, almost on purpose. The church was oppressive,
state was oppressive. Your mother dies and you're young boy.
(08:01):
Your father, through no fault of his own, because he
can get no other job, buggers off on Monday and
comes back on you know, Friday. He's not making much
money selling towels, right. I think washing was invented sometime
in the nineteen seventies in Ireland, so he wasn't making
much money selling towels. And rural Ireland so there wasn't Telly,
(08:23):
there wasn't a phone. There wasn't a fridge, there wasn't
any of that stuff. I just read. I came out.
There was no one to make me do homework. Most importantly,
I certainly wasn't going to do anything, my sister said.
So I just took books from the library and read
them and listened to the one rock and roll station
(08:45):
available in Britain and Ireland at that time, Radio Luxembourg.
And that was it. I read and I listened to music.
And so it's not an accident that ultimately politics and
music come to a head in one individual. And then
when you understand what rock and roll can do, when
it becomes the common language, the lingua franca of the planet,
(09:07):
which is in English it's actually pop music, then it's
sort of not the greatest stroke of intuition to think
I can join all that together through these new things
called satellite. So to me it all makes a lot
of sense. I think to other people it seems random.
And when people say it get too political, what do
you think people die of hunger in the world of surpluses.
(09:30):
You don't die of lack of food. You die of poverty.
If in New Zealand there's no food, the government will
import it and you can go to the supermarket and
get it. But if you're poor, you die. So that's economics.
And when you're dealing with economics, then you must deal
with the agents of change and the agents of change
in our world, whether we like it or not other politicians.
(09:53):
So that's it. It's really straightforward.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I did see an interview with yourself and Bono sometime back,
because obviously you both do charit will work together.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We don't do charity, we do politics.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Well, exactly with campaigning, and an interview you said that
Bono is enamored with the world. You're enraged by the world. Yeah,
it feels like that's still there though you've carried it
with you. It's not just being young and punk.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yes, that's right. I mean, you know, rage is the
animus and it comes from there's nothing I can do
about it. I mean, you know, it comes from being
that little boy. You know, there's really nothing I can't do.
But and you know, you're right what I said. He's
enamored with the world, you know, I'm enraged by it.
(10:38):
He put it another way, he wants to give the
world a hug. I want to punch its light that.
So it's and I can't book that. It's interesting you
hit on that because it annoys me that that sort
of will not die down and be that anger just
(10:58):
will not go away of what I do. And so
when I'm with the Rats and I'm out front there,
you know, I get lost in this Catharsis. That's what
it actually is, you know. So but when I'm sober
Bob talking to Angelina, great, then it kind of makes
it logic. But actually, if I'm in a room with
(11:19):
big politicians and that, and I am sober and I've
got my notes and I want something and we're talking, discussing,
and they're doing their political thing, and then you know,
suddenly this thing rises up on me because I've walked
amongst it. You know, I've smelt it, I've heard the agony,
(11:42):
and it can be fixed. These things actually can be fixed,
and it's not They're not done, and it's the work
of moments. And so yes, if I get political, why
wouldn't I? And you know, frankly, I think more people
should be, and then we wouldn't have vulgar fools going
(12:04):
to be elected president of the United States in the
next twenty four hours.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Sir Bob. Thank God for you is all I can say.
For fighting the good fight. If I'm really looking forward
to hearing more of what you're going to be talking
about and all the stories and the songs hopefully coming
out when we see you next year. It's been what
twenty nineteen? You were here last, was it? Yes? So
thanks so Actually I did bump into you. We got
to have a photo together you probably won't recall, but
(12:29):
hopefully I get to do it again this time.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I'd love to. Okay, and thanks a million next.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Year, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Bob Radio hod aches Off the Record podcast. Why not
subscribe so they download automatically and don't forget to rate
us five stars?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Thanks mate.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Find out more about this podcast and the people who
make it at hodache dot co dot mz
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