Despite his status as one of the most recognisable humans on Earth, it’s a strange curiosity that Bob Geldof’s musical output remains remarkably little-known.
Though the Boomtown Rats’ records outsold the likes of The Clash by a massive margin, they’ve always tended to be overlooked or dismissed in rock histories. As for Geldof’s solo work, it’s barely registered on the critical Richter in this part of the world. No-one is more attuned to this state of affairs than the knight of the realm himself. “People think it’s weird when they see me on TV, punting a record,” Geldof freely admits. “Live Aid made me globally notorious, so, by definition, whatever I did musically was going to be swamped. It’s of comparatively minor interest to people. The general attitude seems to be ‘oh yeah, he makes music as well, that’s his sideline, sure fair play to him, let him do it'.”
With any luck, this state of affairs may soon be rectified with the release of a four-CD Geldof boxed set entitled Great Songs of Indifference: The Anthology, which reissues Bob’s four solo records to date: Deep in the Heart of Nowhere (1986), Vegetarians of Love (1990), The Happy Club (1993) and Sex Age And Death (2001). There are also nine extra tracks from the Sex Age And Death sessions, comprising an extra entity named ‘Sad Too’.
Shooting the breeze with hotpress, Geldof is audibly happier and healthier than the Bob who, shattered by events in his personal life, described himself in 2001 as having become an ‘ugly, deformed, crippled soul’.
How does Deep in the Heart of Nowhere sound to you now?
Strange. The title seems really apposite because that’s precisely were I was at the time. I wanted to go back to making pop music, and people literally thought this was so trite. What they wanted me to do was save the entire fucking universe. They really didn’t give a shite about whatever I was going to do musically. But I did. I knew making music was the only thing that gave me any sense of self or satisfaction. Plus, I’d just spent a year and a half witnessing things that no human being should ever have to see. So, it was a mass of confusion and anxiety. The Rats could have played quite a few of those tracks, so I hadn’t found a voice that I could use for myself, and I wasn’t sure where to go next.
So you went vegatarian!
A few years later, I decided I’d throw the lot up in the air. I’d make it my business not to know any of the musicians, and I’d only meet them on the first day. Out of that came Vegetarians of Love. It’s very much of its time. Don’t forget, you had the Waterboys, you had the Wonder Stuff, the Pogues – the raggle-taggle stuff was all happening, and, through that, I was able to hear the stuff that you and I would have grown up with but previously dismissed out of hand.
What about The Happy Club?
It’s possibly my favourite of those three. It’s the most overtly rock-and-roll, an absolute document of the moment. We were trawling through Europe as this vast empire collapsed. The Rats had done Eastern Europe, which was always fucking horrible. It was a gigantic prison state. We’d see children beaten up in front of our eyes by the secret police, just for talking to you. It was worse than grim, and then suddenly we were thrown into this exuberant party as all these states collapsed. But also in the political void, dangerous nationalism was on the rise, and, being a Paddy, I’m alert to it. So you’d songs like ‘Song Of The Emergent Nationalist’.
There was an eight-year gap, then, until Sex Age And Death.
My life was fucking ruined. I’m sure you don’t need a recap of the events [Geldof’s wife, Paula Yates left him for the INXS singer Michael Hutchence, who died in what is widely believed to been a suicide. Yates subsequently died following a drug overdose]. It took me a long, long time to feel able to breathe. Pete, my lifelong mate, would come around every day and set up his bits and pieces. I barely acknowledged his presence. I’d grunt occasionally. Eventually, without really thinking there was any musical plan or even any coherent thought, I’d just bang away on the guitar and gradually, over the course of 18 months, stuff came together, I was quite literally unmanned. Every single sense had gone.
Was it that bad?
I’m not trying to dramatise this. There was no function within me whatsoever. I was an amoeba, an amorphous, unidentifiable mass of loss and grief and emptiness and pain. Any sense of being hungry, or needing exercise, had vanished. Any sensibility had gone completely, like humour, or listening to people. I certainly couldn’t listen to music, I couldn’t stand it. Everything was lost. Then weirdly, I’d have a musical idea, to fly directly in the face of what I’ve just said, and gradually these things struggled to the surface, including this need to put a frame around this vast emptiness. I couldn’t get out from under it, I couldn’t get around it because I didn’t know where the edges were. I couldn’t climb over it because I couldn’t see how high it was. I always think of it as a rectangle, and this record contained all these sensations.
But the work got done.
For me, it would work best when I couldn’t sleep. I’d be intensely fatigued but force myself to keep going. I don’t take speed, but I’d take coffee, and around three or four in the morning, when the conscious bangs up against the subconscious, where they compete for space, one is saying ‘you need sleep’ and the other’s saying ‘but I’m wired!’. When they collide, you get this odd force, a power of its own, and if you can grab those thoughts and jot them down, they seem to speak a truth that otherwise couldn’t be arrived at. So, out of it came Sex Age and Death, which I think is a really fucking good record. It’s almost like it’s not my record. I can be objective about the others, but not this one. It’s divorce porn, really. The problem with anyone who does this stuff is that you only seem to be able to get a grip on what’s happened to you through the mechanism of writing songs. The songs themselves seem to explain what’s happened, though you’re not aware of it at the time. You, I hope, will never have to go through the same extremities.
I hate to report that I have done, quite recently. It’s a long, very unpleasant story.
It seems to produce writing of another order, stuff that you wouldn’t normally do. It’s true that, for me, Blood On The Tracks is by far Dylan’s greatest album, and it came from the kind of process we’ve just spoken of. The songs are so startlingly true, it’s unnerving. The proximity of the voice and the psychology and it articulates that great sense of loss beautifully. Of course, Sex Age and Death doesn’t even begin to come to the bottom base-camp of that kind of genius. But you can’t pretend it’s worth the trade-off, can you? I don’t think anyone should have to go through that, ever. If I had the chance to rewind, and undo the catastrophe and sacrifice the record, of course I wouldn’t hesitate to. But I can’t.
You said at the time that you ‘wanted to disappear to the furthest corner of the grey world, but you can’t, especially when you have children’. When did this feeling subside?
Very slowly, very gradually. In a sense, I did that. I disappeared, howling, into a grey void. But I wasn’t at the furthest corner of the world, I was in Chelsea. You also need to bear in mind that time doesn’t heal it – it accommodates it. That’s the only way to put any sense to what happened. Not that it makes any fucking sense to me, even now. It never will. It’s impossible to look at without thinking ‘what the fuck was that?’ – but the children, and Jeanne (Marine, Geldof's partner), did give me a sense of coherence, of light.
Would you have been able to keep breathing, to overcome it all, without your kids?
I would have been utterly incomplete. I’d have kept going in the physical sense, but not to be with them when they were growing up would have destroyed the man, that’s for sure. I would have been unable to get around it – it just wouldn’t have been bearable.
In the context of current legislation, what advice would you give fathers whose access is denied or threatened?
Well, it’s changing for the better, as a result, I suspect, of all the attention that’s been drawn to it. The situation was clearly out of kilter. There’s now legislation being discussed about whether fathers have automatic right of access to their children. It’s wild, when you think about it. It’s framed in completely the wrong way. Why do the fathers need to access their children? Why aren’t the children with them? Does anyone seriously suggest for a minute that they’re less skilful at raising kids? There is no logic, no coherent psychological or developmental logic, in forcing fathers from their children and vice versa. Just none. It heaps cruelty upon cruelty.