Bob Geldof: 'I really didn't like The Clash'

Reunited with his Boomtown Rats and ready to rock Electric Picnic next month, Bob Geldof gets nostalgic in the new issue of Hot Press
Reliving his band's early days in the '70s, he tells Stuart Clark about his relationships with punk's most iconic bands.
"I’m good friends now with Mick Jones and Paul Simonon," Geldof says, "because we went through that whole thing together, but in ‘76 I really didn’t like The Clash. To me, they were talking old hat, absolutely standard left-wing politics. The Clash for me were just a set-up. They were set up by Bernie, who was Malcolm McLaren’s assistant, who thought, ‘I can do this better'. Their first gig was in front of journalists with Bernie telling them what to write. As I said at the time, which got me into terrible trouble, they were like a new wave Bay City-fucking-Rollers."
Instead, he had a much better relationship at the time with Johnny Lydon (then Rotten) and co.
“The band we got on best with were the Pistols – I guess maybe because John was essentially Irish and they didn’t give a fuck,” he ventures. “They’d been banned from appearing live on Top Of The Pops, so we tried to pass Paul Cook off as one of the Rats when we went on to do ‘She’s So Modern’.
"They twigged it just after rehearsals. They said, ‘He’s from the Sex Pistols, he’s not going on’, so we went, ‘Fuck off then, neither are we!’ Johnny was instinctively a brilliant speaker. He was just so clever and coruscating with what he said. Entirely natural. We were in Macroom together. A lot of his family come from there, and it was so interesting to see him in that context, with his Uncle Joe.”
Unlike Strummer who desperately tried to hide the fact that he was the son of a wealthy Somerset diplomat, Johnny Rotten was the real working-class London deal.
"The Lydons were Dickensian poor," Bob continues. "Their flat in
Finchley was un-fucking-real. I worked with the Simon Community in Dublin when I was 15, 16, 17, but this was another level. Here was this kid with rickets, who looked like something out of Oliver Twist. From this came the invented, emblematic character that shook the British establishment to its fucking foundations."
Ireland in the bad old days, The Troubles, the Rats' chart success, why U2 succeeded in the US where they did not, and Geldof's joy at the Same Sex Marriage 'Yes' vote are also all on the agenda in a revealing, typically entertaining chat with the artist and activist.
To purchase your copy of Hot Press 39.14 (Electric Picnic special), order online direct from hotpress.com.

Or download the iOS app for iPad/iPhone
Or download the Android App