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Bob Geldof - The Years Of The Rat

In the first part of a major interview conducted at last year’s Music Show in the RDS, BOB GELDOF talks candidly about life as an illegal immigrant in Canada, how the Boomtown Rats took on official Ireland and then went on to duke it out with the Pistols and The Clash, and what triggered his involvement in Live Aid. Plus, a look back at Bob and the Rats on the cover of Hot Press.

Niall Stokes, 09 Feb 2011

There was a bit of a bidding war to sign the Rats. And eventually you did a fantastic deal with Ensign Records.

That wasn’t what it was about. The main thing was there were no rock ’n’ roll posters, no rock ‘n’ roll radio, there was no rock ‘n’ roll television, there was shite names – and so we started making posters. Ciaran Fitzpatrick who was a graphic guy who was a hippy with me in Dun Laoghaire, we used to have love-ins on Dun Laoghaire pier at the bandstand with his record player, that was the love-in. And I clipped out comic book frames and I asked him to make that into a poster, one was a severed head with blood dripping out into a sewer. Everything had to have a reaction, and I was really interested in that. And I did a poster of these beautiful legs with rubber stockings and slight S&M heels and put a very stylish Boomtown Rats across it and feminism was just becoming a huge thing in Trinity and these women went out and scrawled across it in purple felt marker ‘SEXIST’. I then said they were my legs, which they were, but I just put on rubber stockings. So there was all that…

Tell us about doing the deal…

Remember ‘Clapton is God’ (graffiti that appeared around London painted by fans)? Well, I saw that so I painted a t-shirt with ‘Geldof is God’ and wore it myself which really drove everyone nuts, including you. And so this was fun. And then suddenly we do four tracks and Fachtna and I went to England and John Peel said he’d put them out as an EP on his label. Dave Robinson had started a record label called Stiff, he said he’d put it out and on the way down the stairs I met his new signing Declan McManus, and he said (adopts cheesy accent) “Uhh, we’re thinking about calling him Elvis”. Elvis McManus… great! And Richard Branson (Virgin Records) came over with Nick Draper and Robert Everett, and after Moran’s Hotel, the basement there, which was our regular gig we’d go up to Stephen’s Green to a pool hall there, just to chill out afterwards and Richard came up and said “Gosh, we really would like to sign you.” And this is absolutely true: this is the end of 1975, 1976, he slid across a cheque with a million quid on it, which is still a shitload of money, my god. And there were three of us in school, three of us not doing anything and I really had to think. I sat down with the lads and I wrote out, I still have it, wrote out, a million quid, 10 years, an album a year, all our publishing money, everything we had to pay for and I wrote out, and at the end of it we’d get 2,000 quid a year… between us. So we said no. Never believe those Virgin deals I tell ya!



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