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March 23, 2025 15 mins

Bob Geldof is a musician, an activist, a charity man, and a Knight of the British Empire... despite being an Irishman.

He rose to fame as a member of The Boomtown Rats, but in 1984 an item on the 6 o’clock news sparked him to create one of the world’s most memorable charity drives; Band Aid and then eventually Live Aid, raising money to end famine in Ethiopia.

Geldof is in Wellington this week to share stories of his life and joined Nick Mills to discuss his legacy and what audiences can expect at Saturday's show at the St James Theatre.

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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talks at b Tell You Do.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Laghoe the Day Down, joining us now, is a musician,
an activist, a charity man, and most importantly, an Irishman.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
He rose to fame as a member of the Boomtown Rats,
but in nineteen eighty four an item on the six
o'clock News sparked him in to create one of the
world's most memorable charity drives, band Aid, then eventually Live Aid,
raising money to end the famine in Uthopia. Subob Geldoff

(01:01):
is in Wellington this week to share a story of
his life and joins us now on the show. Good Morning, Bob,
Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Where did you actually come up with such an incredible idea?

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Well, I don't think it's very flattering of you, but
I don't think it's really that original. And what I
did was, you know, write songs and make music. And
what we saw in the news were just Most people
could just put a book into the charity box or something,

(01:37):
but I could write tunes. And the tragedy was to
such an extent that it demanded something of the self.
If you could do something of the self. In my case,
I could. My game is pop music. The Rats had
had ten years of hit after hit after hit, but
now there we're a lot of new kids on the

(01:58):
blocked around Duran Boy, George, George, Michael, that sort of thing.
So it seemed obvious to me that you should get
all of these guys. They've grown up with the Boomtown Rats.
My missus was the host of the sort of go
to rock and roll show in Britain of the eighties
called The Tube, so I was able to call them

(02:21):
and write the song with midsure from Ultra Box and
record it. So that was all pretty second nature to me.
And you know, I was a pop singer. Like you know,
if you were the plumber, it would be a lot
more difficult. If you were a plumber, you could get
all your plumbing mates to do something, but nobody the

(02:41):
rest of the world wouldn't hear about it, simply because
I was in music, I was on TV, I could
talk about it on the radio. We had a record,
everybody could contribute, so that's why it worked. But you know,
it was just because of my job and that I
could do it. And then you follow the logic of that.
The Americans copied the idea, and I just thought, if

(03:05):
you put those two records together, one was the biggest
selling record of all time in the UK, the O
the biggest selling record in the world. So if you
put them together in a concert. Because once I got
involved and saw the scale of the tragedy, it demanded more.
And there were two objects in the concert. One was
to get as much money as you could, so in

(03:26):
today's terms that was four hundred and eighty million dollars US.
That was the result of the concert. But the other
one was to alert everyone to this, literally everyone in
the world to what was happening, and that forces political change.
So even though the people contributed four hundred and eighty

(03:47):
million dollars worth at the time, nearly every country had
to come to the party because their entire populations. You know,
there's a bit of film where Billy Connolly announces on
the state at ninety five percent of all television sets
on Earth or watching this thing. It wasn't what I planned,

(04:08):
but it was very cool, and so politicians had to
come to the party, and at that point the game changed.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
How does it.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Feel to change the world with one idea.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Honestly, it's not false modesty, you know, I don't, it's
you know, obviously it's a deeply flattering question. And I
don't think that's what happened. I mean, I think it
took a long while to follow this, this idea to
to the end of its logic. So we knew we
could immediately implement change. We knew all charities. You know

(04:50):
that suddenly everyone's contributed to every charity. We knew that
the lobby created by the concert would alter the politics.
But if you really want to deal with like, remember
that these were people dying of want in a world
of surplus surplus food. That's intellectually absurd. It's morally repulsive,

(05:13):
of course, but it's economically illiterate. And of course, subsequently,
forty years and forty years since Live eight, twenty years
since Live eight, it's all reversed and got back to
a situation today in the world where where the world
has never ever in my long life, been as dangerous
as it currently is.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
I was going to ask you that because I want
to get your opinion of the world. I'm confused and
I'm scared. Even though I live in New Zealand, Wellington,
New Zealand, and I'm older. I'm scared and confused where
the world's going. And I don't think I've ever felt
like that before.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Well, I think you're right. I'm with you now. It
reminds me. I've got an image of my dad in
nineteen sixty three with his ear press to the radio
October nineteen sixty three, and I was at twelve and
I said, what's up? And he said sh So he
was intently listening, and then he turned around. He said,

(06:09):
there may be a world more than half an hour.
So we had half an hour to midnight. And I
knew perfectly well that this was existential, that it was
game up. So if there were enough nuclear bombs in
the Cuban missile crisis of nineteen sixty three, there are
tens of thousands of these things, So it doesn't matter
about New Zealand. You're in the rifle sights and you're

(06:34):
not going to escape. You're not going to dodge this bullet.
If you have, if you have, in my view, political
criminals like musk, Vans and Trump, and you're on the
other side, you've got gig Ping, who is territorially aggressive
and expansive. You guys sit in the middle, and though

(06:55):
New Zealand is small and benign, you know you have
value in these stakes, just like Australia has great value.
So you know if it off, it'll kick off, and
it'll be everywhere and everyone and there won't be escaping
this one. And when you have a reventious thug like

(07:16):
Putin and a bloated orange moron like Trump, you know
enthrall to these supposedly strong men. By definition, calling yourself
a strong man implies a great weakness, and autocracy will
never succeed. That's the only thing, the only hope I

(07:36):
can give you. Inherent in autocracy is the weakness that
you must be a strong man. You must suppress every opposition,
but the opposition will out. The only legitimate power comes
through the will of the people. That's it. Nothing else
works and it will fail.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
So people coming to your show on Saturday the twenty
ninth and match in Wellington, will we hear you get political?
Will we hear the true stories?

Speaker 4 (08:00):
No? No, really, I mean it's politically in that. You
know the image I just gave you my dad listening
to the thing because of what happened when I was
very small and very young. I grew up. I read
and grew up listening to the bands that you know
of the nineteen sixties who were all about change. You

(08:24):
know Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beeples were all about change.
They may not have understood they were, but you know,
when you know four young hooligans from Liverpool start making records,
it's really all about the lack of deference, the lack
of respect for things. They were very witty and you
know their their music and bodied optimism for a new

(08:46):
cohort of people, the post war baby boom. They were
now coming of age. So here were these bands who
emblemized that need for change. The Rolling Stones were just
contemptuously insolent. They had no respect for authority. Bob Dylan
literally articulated the times they're changing. If you don't want
to go with the pro get out of the way.

(09:08):
So change was the object, uninevitable. And if you have changed,
you have the stubborn authority resisting that. And so you
get the sixties riots, the Vietnam Rights, the Paris Riots,
the Grosvenor Square riots. With Jagger, you get the Vietnam Rights,
get Martin Luther King on the March. Eventually they give way.

(09:29):
So it was all politically, it was all about change.
My band, The boomtown Rats came in nineteen seventy six
when inflation in the UK was twenty seven percent, So
of course you get Johnny Rodden and the sex Pistol
saying there is no future in England, dreaming there was
no future for anyone. You get bands like the boomtown

(09:49):
Rats from Ireland with the zero economy. When a country
cannot give its young the future, of course they're going
to react. So it's not that you're going to get
you know, politics or you know from me. It's just
that I lived in that time and that's what informed me.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
You other day on an Australian TV show which I watched,
about always having something on always all your life, you've
had a next project, the next project. Could we possibly
see you do something like band aid again? Could we
see you try and change the world one more time?

Speaker 4 (10:26):
No, because the only thing I understand is music, really,
and that is a vehicle for change, and that's the
lesson I imbibed from being a child in the sixties.
So I think that's gone. Social media has usurped the
function of rock and roll as the sort of spinal
cultural imperative. So back in the day, as I've described,

(10:48):
everything I understood to happen, politics, theology, philosophy, economics was
filtered through pop. That doesn't work anymore rock and roll.
Now there's great writers, fantastic artists, but music has gone
back to what it was in the nineteen twenties, thirties, forties, fifties.
It's the background noise to your life. You'll always remember

(11:10):
that song you heard when you met that birler, that boy.
But it doesn't have it doesn't have the social resonance.
Social media does that now. So if I was fifteen sixty,
I don't do social media. It annoys me. If I
was fifteen or sixteen now, what I would do would
be I'd try and get some boycott, say against all

(11:33):
things Elon Musk. I would not use starlink, I would
not get into a Tesla car. I would not use
X or Twitter. And it would be easy to do
because a sixteen year old doesn't have Starling, doesn't drive
the Tesla, and doesn't use X or Twitter. They use
other social media. So I'd organize that and I think

(11:56):
would be fun. It would be love and I think
then the young could force their parents to their way
of thinking, exactly like what we did with CND or
anti apartheid. And I think that be fun to do
or be disruptive. It would be energetic and it would
help to Elon Musk and I'd be very happy with that.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
Tell me, what's your memory of New Zealand. If I
said to you, give me one memory of New.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
Zealand, it would be getting the freedom of the town
of White Matta. And it was this mad guy who
was the mayor, and they were always trying to stop
him doing mad stuff. And I don't know where the
town is, but I went there and he had a
tiny little festival and I think I did something there

(12:42):
and it was great fun.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Was it was it Me and Tom? Was that Me
and Tim Tom Shebo? Can you remember that with Aim?

Speaker 4 (12:50):
I can't remember. I mean, I've been, I've been. I've
been there so many times. It's it's it's it's you know,
famously beautiful. We've had great times there. The Rats. I
love playing in duneed and I remember Duneedue was nutsweet.
I can't remember why, that's just in my mind. I
went there with my as recently. I was back there
with Mick Fleetwood as well recently, but I went with

(13:13):
my missus and she'd never been. She's French. No, it's
great and you know, I've got friends there, so I
can't wait.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
You know what, I'm sort of the same as you,
and I've been in entertainment all my life as well.
And you know what, I have never ever met an
irishman I haven't liked. That's a pretty high Echola, didn't
that I have?

Speaker 4 (13:36):
I have believe, Well.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
In New Zealand, we just have all the best Irish
people there are you must have.

Speaker 4 (13:42):
Yeah, all the good ones left. They couldn't stand it
back home, they said them out of here, and so
they recreated the ideal country down in your way.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
So so, Bob, is the world a better place today
than in the eighties?

Speaker 4 (13:57):
No?

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Simple as that?

Speaker 1 (14:01):
No?

Speaker 4 (14:03):
Yeah, no scary?

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Are you still joined being on stage?

Speaker 4 (14:09):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean that's what I do. That's what
a parent of my life turned out to be. Bizarrely enough,
and this is very different to what I normally do. Normally,
I'm in front of a band, you know, and it
kicks off and I get excited by the music, and
this is very very different. For me, it's not a

(14:32):
guy sitting there and interviewing another guy. That for me,
is not entertainment. That's just another interview. So it's it's more,
it's more theatrical. There's a lot of audio visuals. There's
I do a bunch of songs, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
So, Bob, thank you for taking time to speak to us,
our humble old Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. We're
really looking forward to having you. You're here on Saturday,
the twenty ninth of March at the Saint James Theater
and if you haven't bought a ticket, you've been a
damn well get out and buy a damn ticket. It's
could be a sell out. First, thank you for everything
you've done. I know you've had an incredible life with

(15:10):
incredible highs and incredible lows, but by god, you're a
good guy.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
Thanks man, Thanks love, take care, bye byes.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills, listen live
to news Talks It'd Be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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