On this day in 1979: The Boomtown Rats released The Fine Art of Surfacing

Bob Geldof

Speaking to Hot Press's Peter Murphy in 2005:

"By The Fine Art Of Surfacing it was very heady heights. We were a massive fucking band; I mean people kind of forget that. There were hits fucking everywhere save America, big gigs, big records and it’s getting to me a bit. And the template really is that song ‘Wind Chill Factor’. 'It’s one of those days where I don’t like myself/But I get along with me okay/I’ll slip beneath these sheets and I’ll shiver here a while/I find that happening more frequently these days.'

"Really I’m very upfront about things throughout this. That was what was going on, and it was a feeling of isolation within the band because I was writing all the songs and I’d no fuckin’ wish to, because the strain was becoming really intense. I was keeping a big organisation going, I was keeping the guys and their dependents, the crew, their dependents, the office, big staff. But financially of course, you’re better off, because you’re writing the songs, so that does become an issue, even if it’s not articulated. And also I kept thinking, “Where do we go from here?” Every step, the next step is failure, and I was freaking out.

"So ‘Someone’s Looking At You’, I was really doubting myself, the press were all saying, “He’s a cunt, the songs are cuntish,” and yet we were all selling fucking millions of records. I’m really doubting anything I think or believe in, and that record is fucking full of that.

"This art of surfacing – we’re up there but how do you stay afloat?"

Geldof on 'I Don't Like Mondays' – in conversation with Hot Press editor Niall Stokes in 2010:

"I thought ['I Don't Like Mondays'] was a B-side. I was just talking to Ossie Kilkenny there about why I wrote it. I wrote it ‘cause Dave Robinson had just given me Elvis Costello’s new album Armed Forces and I thought, this is great – if we’re to survive we’ve got to move away from two-guitar classic rock and start really being serious songwriters. My favourite track was ‘Oliver’s Army’.

"I had just bought a guitar in New York on a promotional trip and I was learning ‘Oliver’s Army’ – and I was just trying to work it out myself and the band called and made me just do any song at all on three chords..."

(plays rough version of first verse of ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’)

"…but then I thought, 'That sounds too much like ‘Oliver’s Army',' so I made it reggae…"

(plays same but in a cod-reggae version)

"…and I thought it was a B-side cos I thought that sounded shite, and then the record guys heard it and they said, “That’s your next No. 1, but not in that crap reggae thing."

"But I absolutely thought it was a B-side, really thought it was, and then it just went straight in. And I was a bit frightened by that to be honest with you, it got out of control. It was just huge and I remember going onstage at the Liverpool Empire, which is about 5,000 people, just screaming. And I thought, “Here I am, where The Beatles were, literally on that stage with just screaming.

"And I got fed up and about halfway through the song I said, 'Shut the fuck up!'

"I mean, I looked like crap, so what are they screaming at anyway? Then I thought it was [Johnnie] Fingers but he looked like shite as well... so it couldn’t be anyone in the band. So it was just stupid."

In the new issue of Hot Press, cover star Bob Geldof reflects on 50 years of The Boomtown Rats – discussing their rock ‘n’ roll awakening, parachuting into London’s riotous punk scene and causing riots of their own; his friendship with Sinéad O’Connor; and why he feels a kinship with KNEECAP and Fontaines D.C.

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