The emergence of The Boomtown Rats inspired a new generation of in-your-face Irish bands who re-energised an Irish music scene that has become moribund and predictable.
The Boomtown Rats are undoubtedly the most important band ever to emerge from - or get out of - Ireland. They've had more front covers, appeared on more radio and TV shows and most importantly sold more records than any Irish group or artist has ever done.
Bob Geldof recently received the freedom of the city of Dublin. But three decades ago, when Geldof first crashed the Irish entertainment scene, with his band, The Boomtown Rats, he was a thorn in the side of both politicians and priests in a notoriously conservative country.
The Boomtown Rats came burning out of Dublin in the late ‘70s, railing against the Irish establishment to the audible gasps of the nation’s more conservative elements. With their remastered back catalogue having been recently reissued, Bob Geldof here looks back on a period of notoriety, controversy and personal angst, and also reflects on his ongoing efforts to highlight the issue of Fathers’ Rights. Interview by Peter Murphy. Photography by Mark Harrison.
Recipient of the IRMA Honours Awars of 2006, celebrating 30 years of music.
Here we document the stories, sounds, politics and philosophies that have developed with Bob Geldof, from his Boomtown Rats days to his most famous status as a devoted humanitarian.
Hot Press celebrates two decades of The Baggot Inn, still Dublin s premier pub venue and home, at various times, to the likes of U2, Thin Lizzy and Something Happens! Here, manager Charlie McGettigan flips through his scrapbook of memories in the company of Conor O Mahony and reveals how the recent appearance of a donkey at a Joshua Trio gig brought things full circle at The Baggot. (Not to mention, Full Circle.)
Premier County natives the Corrigan Brothers are currently the darlings of YouTube with their single There’s No-One As Irish As Barack Obama. Edwin McFee catches up with singer Ger to talk about dodgy rock bands, Roy Keane and, um, ladyboys.
Long before boomtime Ireland there was boomtown Ireland, a country where the national symbol was not a tiger but a rat. to coincide with the release of the best of the boomtown rats, Bob Geldof looks back to the tepid Irish scene of the mid-’70s from which the rats emerged, biting, snarling and laughing, to take on the establishment, Britain and, almost, the world.
With his upcoming concert in Poulaphouca marking his solo Irish debut, it's been all too easy in the recent past to overlook Bob Geldof's standing as a musical and lyrical artist. The lines connecting the youthful Dun Laoghaire blues and Dylan aficionado with the creator of The Vegetarians Of Love are rarely traced in media-bytes that prefer to concentrate on Modest Bob, Live Aid Bob and Saint Bob. Here, Bill Graham, who knew the schoolboy, takes musician Bob on a freewheeling trip from then to now.
With his upcoming concert in Poulaphouca marking his solo Irish debut, it's been all too easy in the recent past to overlook Bob Geldof's standing as a musical and lyrical artist. The lines connecting the youthful Dun Laoghaire blues and Dylan aficionado with the creator of The Vegetarians Of Love are rarely traced in media-bytes that prefer to concentrate on Modest Bob, Live Aid Bob and Saint Bob. Here, Bill Graham, who knew the schoolboy, takes musician Bob on a freewheeling trip from then to now.
With his upcoming concert in Poulaphouca marking his solo Irish debut, it s been all too easy in the recent past to overlook Bob Geldof s standing as a musical and lyrical artist. The lines connecting the youthful Dun Laoghaire blues and Dylan aficionado with the creator of The Vegetarians Of Love are rarely traced in media-bytes that prefer to concentrate on Modest Bob, Live Aid Bob and Saint Bob. Here, Bill Graham, who knew the schoolboy, takes musician Bob on a freewheeling trip from then to now.
Dave McSavage is one of Ireland's newest, funniest and most challenging comedians to emerge on the circuit in recent months, combining improvised guitar musings with audience laceration. "But i just want them to like me," says Dublin's most dangerous stand-up
With his new album sex, age and death in the shops, BOB GELDOF, songwriter and performer, is back in our midst. but after the traumatic personal events of the last five years - events which inform the songs on the new record - the private man is arguably under scrutiny as never before. In this heartfelt, eloquent and, at times, angry interview with JOE JACKSON, Geldof talks about the loss of Paula Yates, the death of Michael Hutchence and his own painful journey back to happiness
Despite their meteorological moniker, The Blizzards are no musical flakes. Ultimately, The Domino Effect should see plenty more fans falling at their feet.
‘Looking after number one’ was the record that kick started Ireland’s passage toward punk, and the man who penned it is still vitriolic about the time and place that inspired the song.
It was lost in the heart of a crowd, where recollections grow wild with fancy. Caught in a ... a ... landslide, a light show, a movement, a positive noise, ayee-haw, a whoopee cushion of gigantic proportions, and ...
DAVID HEFFERNAN pays tribute to the producer/director whose many and varied professional credits included some defining images of Irish and international music
The college circuit is an important stepping stone in rock music around the world. While the potential remains unfulfilled in Ireland, there’s a new breed of Ents Officer who are aiming higher.
On the eve of Kraftwerk’s headlining appearance at the Electric Picnic, mainman Ralf Hütter talks with rare candour about David Bowie, U2, hip-hop, cycling and why sometimes even man-machines have to smile.
DO YOU WANT NAILS OF FEEDBACK DRIVEN THROUGH YOUR BRAIN? DO YOU WANT YOUR EARS TO BLEED? THIS IS HARDCORE AND IT'S THE MOST VITAL ATTITUDE IN ROCK'N'ROLL, FROM LOU REED TO THERAPY? VIA NICK CAVE, FUGAZI AND... CHRISTY MOORE. OR SO SAYS GERRY McGOVERN, WHO ALSO ADVANCES THE THEORY THAT 'HARDCORE IS GENERALLY FOR HARD WHITE MEN'. SHOOTING GALLERY AWAITS YOUR RESPONSE!
The High Court had decided that the U2 gigs at Lansdowne Road could not go ahead. But after a tense week in the Supreme Court, that decision was comprehensively overturned. Reporters: PETER MURPHY, ADRIENNE MURPPHY and BARRY GLENDENNING.
Before he was the face of televised pop Jools Holland played empty pubs alongside U2, mentored a skinny kid called Mark Knopfler and rode to school in Daniel Day-Lewis's dad's Mercedes.
To mark the occasion of the release of a near definitive punk compilation, GEORGE BYRNE fondly recalls the days when pogo was go-go and gabba gabba was hey.
Veteran 2FM DJ Larry Gogan was honoured by IRMA earlier this month, in recognition of the forty years he has spent at the top of his profession. To mark the occasion, Hot Press catches up with the presenter to discuss the beginnings of his career during the showband era, how Irish music has changed down through the years – and the time he earned Larry Mullen's thanks for playing U2 records despite the protestations of station chiefs.
In a presidential nomination field virtually devoid of candidates of real calibre and charisma, the name of ex-Boomtown Rat and Live Aid hero BOB GELDOF has cropped up again and again. Despite his outright denial that he will run for office, the rumour refuses to die away. Here, in an interview with LIAM FAY, he gives his assessment of Mary Robinson s seven years in the job, and his hopes for the future occupants of Aras an Uachtarain.
Fifteen years since they first topped the Irish charts, The Saw Doctors remain one of this country’s most successful bands. So why do so many people still consider them a novelty act?
It was a Jubilee ago that The Sex Pistols exploded onto the world stage and changed music forever. Except little has changed, according to John Lydon and that's why he's back
Dublin is a shithole basically! that's the opinion of Kevin Shields, one of the two Irish members of My Bloody Valentine, who quit the fair city six years ago because of what they saw as the stifling atmosphere of the place. Since then they've lived and gigged all over Europe and their 1988 album Isn't Anything has put them on top of the critical approval lists and independent charts. Here, taking a break from their US tour, the band reflect on their art, their careers and what they see as the general awfulness of the Irish music scene. Interview: Helena Mulkearns
In 1991, five years after the death of Phil Lynott, the late Bill Graham wrote in Hot Press of Philo's enduring legacy. Over ten years later his words are as relevant as ever
With the return of Sean's Show to Channel 4, Ireland's most successful funny man (he'll love that - Ed) is back in the spotlight. But behind the obsessive, neurotic, insecure, angst-ridden exterior of the show's central character, is there an obsessive, neurotic, insecure, angst-ridden individual? Here Sean Hughes worries over religion, dreams, sex, drugs, family and ... Christmas (aaah!). Interview: Joe Jackson.
Edwyn Collins, late of Orange Juice and whose third solo album was recently released, gets all acidic about the state of the music business. Interview: Patrick Brennan.
And that s just the band! Galway s finest, The Stunning, take time out from sticking pins in themselves as their debut album Paradise In The Picturehouse finds itself perched atop the Irish charts to explain the secret of their success to an attentive Michael O Hara, who undergoes a road to Damascus experience en route.
They re calling it Little Africa, this area close to Dublin s city centre where the country s first real ethnic quarter is slowly taking shape. Peter Murphy reports on the birth pangs of a new kind of Irish nation. Photography: Peter Mathews
Jackie hayden meetsjournalist turned PR guru, Tony O Brien and speaks to him about his rock n roll adventures with the likes of U2, Michael Stipe and Bruce Springsteen.
With Cameron Crowe s Almost Famous putting rock hackery on the silver screen, no less, Peter Murphy wonders if Seventies rock journalism is the new rock n roll. Helping him with his enquiries: PAUL MORLEY and GREIL MARCUS
Opening our U2 special, DERMOD MOORE catches up with ADAM CLAYTON during the UK leg of the Elevation tour, and delves deep into the physics of music celebrity, politics and, er, penises
When Rory Gallagher hits the stage at this year's Macroom festival gig, it'll be his last appearance in Ireland, a year that has seen him forgo some of the spotlight he's enjoyed over the previous ten years in Britain and Ireland in particular.
Tori Amos' sixth album and her first since 1999's To Venus And Back, marks a major departure for her in that it consists entirely of cover versions – written exclusively by men!
With their biggest dates ever in Ireland looming, LIAM MACKEY dips into voluminous hotpress archives and selects a small sample of what the paper said about U2 over the years
With his work on the soundtrack to In The Name Of The Father bringing him into the full glare of media attention Gavin Friday takes this opportunity to put to rest any accusations of riding on U2’s coat-tails. Confident and brimming with ideas for his solo career, The Spotlight Kid gives the lowdown to an eager BILL GRAHAM.
ENTERTAINMENT OFFICERS FROM UCC, UCD, UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER, UCG, DCU AND THE UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK GIVE AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF LIFE ON THEIR PARTICULAR CAMPUSES.
Bono, Adam and Larry. Not to mention the self-styled King Boogaloo himself, Mr B. P. Fallon, whose new book U2: Faraway So Close offers an intimate visual and verbal diary of the band’s world-record shattering ZOO TV tour. For good measure the, um, also self-styled Mr Ramalama talks about Jimi Hendrix and the Mafia connection, toting guns with Tone Loc, giving Little Richard a hard-on, and other little, um, side voyages into other territories, man. Er, tape recorder thingy: Joe Jackson.
Saturday, July 13th, 1985 will go down in history as Live Aid Day, the extraordinary culmination of Bob Geldof's attempts to mobilise the international music industry behind urgently-needed famine relief in Africa. Among the stellar cast performing for 72,000 people at Wembley Stadium, London are U2, a band determined to rise to the occasion. Report: Neil McCormick
It’s a different world than it used to be! In this special extended birthday column, The Hog takes a necessarily selective – and typically colourful – look at the 30 most important influences on the process of change that has brought this country all the way from there to… well, where else but here?
After a career barely spanning five years, there is a definite feeling amongst those who know about such things that POLLY
JEAN HARVEY is destined to be one of the true rock music greats. Her darkly visceral, sexual and lacerating work has struck a
raw chord, and made her the object of passionate adoration. But it has also cast her in the eyes of some as an
"axe-wielding bitch cow from Hell."
LIAM FAY travels to meet ze monsta, but instead finds a home-loving Yeovil lass who likes nothing better than gardening and whipping
up pots of rhubarb marmalade.
He began working in music as a drummer, but Dave Pennefather's greatest success has been as MD of Universal Music. Hot Press looks back over the life and times of a man with a larger than life reputation.
U2 are about to unleash their new album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. The world’s media are descending on Dublin. And Bono is back at the punch-bag, getting into fighting shape before the shit storm really explodes. The gloves are off. He’s got work to do. And he’s going to do it. Words Stuart Clark, additional reporting by Niall Stokes.
IN THE cold light of 1999, it's easy to forget that reggae was once the hip-hop of its time, a well of indigenous black music used by every other mainstream act as a source of rejuvenation and inspiration.
STEPHEN ROBINSON hears RTE’s Commissioning Editor for Entertainment BILLY McGRATH’s plans to bring more home-grown comedy talent to our screens this autumn
On 25 August 2001 - twenty years after first appearing there in support to Thin Lizzy - U2 play Slane Castle. NIALL STOKES reflects on the extraordinary journey that has led up to this historic, and beautiful, day
IT’S BEEN a strange month. Hot Press has been at the centre of controversies before – but never quite like this! Elsewhere in this issue, we cross swords with Eoghan Harris and the Sunday Times regarding an issue of defamation.
From U2 to The Frames and Sinead O’Connor to Damien Rice, music has helped put this country on the map. So why is the government so slow to back the music industry?
Well, reader, we ve finally reached the end of our journey, after navigating our way across the length and breadth of the 32 counties (and detouring briefly to New York for a tincture of the tastiest in that honorary 33rd county).
Volume three of our Hot Press covers collection features classic images of Bowie, Rory Gallagher, the Boomtown Rats, Stiff Little Fingers, Thin Lizzy, the Undertones and much, much more...
Freddie Middleton, the General Manager of BMG Records in Ireland has been twenty years in the music business. Here Hot Press, and his many friends in the industry, pay him a special tribute.
