While Bob Geldof is undoubtedly being ironic and self-deprecating with the title How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell, it’s not as if the fellow doesn’t have pedigree. As the fiery frontman with The Boomtown Rats, he composed some of the most memorable Irish rock songs of the last century: what’s more, ‘Rat Trap’, ‘Banana Republic’ and ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ to name just three of that band’s finest moments, all became huge hits.
Of course, that was about thirty-odd years ago, and a lot of high profile stuff has happened in his life in the meantime, much of it little to do with music – at least not in an obvious way. Post-Live Aid, most people saw Bob Geldof primarily as a foul-mouthed celebrity campaigner for Africa, irritating and inspiring in unequal measure depending on your perspective. Then there was the excruciating personal turmoil that rained down on him, as his marriage to Paula Yates fell apart, followed by the bizarre death of Yates’ new partner, the INXS singer Michael Hutchence, and subsequently by the death of Paula Yates herself as a result of a drugs overdose. The erstwhile rock ‘n’ roll star in Geldof was buried under a veritable rainforest’s worth of ghastly headlines not of his own making.
Not that Geldof ever gave up on the rock ‘n’ roll version of himself. For all of his commendable extracurricular activities and energy-sapping personal problems, he has still continued to write songs, banging out the occasional album into the bargain. The Vegetarians Of Love project in the early 1990s yielded two releases and some fascinating moments, while his last solo record, 2001’s anguished and introspective Sex, Age and Death (which produces the appropriate acronym SAD), was almost too heartfelt to bear. It didn’t sell in significant volume in the UK or Ireland, but the songs were evidence of the enduring alertness of his lyrical and musical touch.
Now nearing 60 – as he reminds us here on the sexually charged ‘Systematic 6-Pack’ (“Still I wanna shag, get hard, too hard/ You’re 58 and a half/ Oh man!”) – Geldof certainly isn’t short of life experiences, both positive and negative, to draw on in his songwriting. Thankfully, on this new album, produced by old Rats’ bassist and long term musical stalwart Pete Briquette, he sounds like he’s finally starting to leave his myriad problems behind, and is happily in love, both with life and his long-term girlfriend, the French actress Jeanne Marine.
On the edgy album opener ‘How I Roll’, he declares, “I feel good, yeah, I’m feeling fine/ I feel better than I have for the longest time.” Despite the world-weary delivery, he sounds better too, better indeed than he has for the longest time. But the old Geldof anger is never far beneath the surface. On the distorted ‘Blowfish’, he rails against the world like a battered old bluesman.
Overall, there are far more hits than (near) misses on HTCPSTWS. Musically, it’s a genre-hopper and not easy to pigeonhole – he skips from the rocky distortion of ‘Blowfish’ to the joyous and unashamedly poppy ‘Silly Little Thing’ and on through to ‘Dazzled By You’ (which sounds like his cover of a Rattle & Hum moment). He even tries his hand at French chanson. Undoubtedly a tribute to Marine, the melancholic ‘To Live In Love’ reveals a softer side to the curmudgeonly Dubliner as he croons, “To live in love/ Is all there is.”
The ghost of Paula Yates perhaps flashes through ‘She’s A Lover’: “She’s a lover and she fits inside my head/ She’s a lover but there’s nothing happening in my bed/ She’s a lover and she won’t be back/ She’s a lover and I got the sack.” Or maybe there’s another spectre that’s haunting him. But there’s no bitterness in the cool delivery, just a wise resignation.
There’s humour here, too. He completely takes the piss on the hidden track ‘Young And Sober’, imitating a redneck Irish dancehall promoter at the beginning and the end, even calling out the registration number of a car blocking the entrance to the toilet – a timeless ritual in rural Irish ballrooms. And thus endeth How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell.
In recent interviews, Geldof has made it clear that he really couldn’t give a boomtown rat’s ass about record sales. Even if he’s just being defensive, at this stage he probably is secure and wealthy enough not to have to worry about charting. But for the most part this album does exactly what it says on the tin. At the ripe young age of 58-and-a-half, Bob Geldof has certainly managed to compose some popular songs that deserve to sell. The only question is: how many?