The Boomtown Rats

A TONIC FOR THE TROOPS
by Allan Jones

The Boomtown Rats release A Tonic For The Troops in June 1978, when I review it at some length for what used to be Melody Maker, I think at the time it’s the year’s best rock album along with Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model.

What a gas, then, to report that listening to the album again for the first time in 26 years, I am much less embarrassed by the record than I am by the review of it that appeared in MM all those years ago, which seems to have been written by someone for whom English is, at best, a second language.

Of course, being a fan of The Boomtown Rats back then is not in everyone’s opinion a terribly cool thing to be. At the time of which I’m writing, in fact, the Rats are much frowned upon by punk hardliners and the critical Taliban who support them, according to whom Geldof and the Rats are shallow, self-serving, opportunistic, cynical manipulators, new wave lightweights with no genuine punk credentials though Geldof never claimed any – in fact the opposite. Still – Looking After Number One, the band’s first hit single is, predictably and mistakenly wheeled out as evidence for the prosecution’s allegations of preening self-regard, which their critics evidently think compares poorly with the rebel affectations of The Clash or the ranting nihilism of The Sex Pistols.

The Rats were a great band and at their best – which is where A Tonic For The Troops surely finds them – had a rare talent for clever modern pop (here exemplified by Like Clockwork and She’s So Modern, both hit singles), bolstered by an enduring affection for the swashbuckling guitar-driven rock’n’roll of the Stones (Blind Date) that even at its most brazenly commercial boasted a large measure of intelligence, wit and stylistic panache.

There is, however, a certain kind of rock critic for whom sonic abrasion will always be mystifyingly preferable to great tunes, adhesive choruses and lyrics that aspire to a kind of significance. Which means these people will have found little of merit on tracks like the Bowiesque (I Never Loved) Eva Braun – Geldof’s opening yelp a fair facsimile of Bowie’s feral Ziggy Stardust yowl or the Graham Parkerish Me And Howard Hughes. Inevitably, there are cuts – Don’t Believe What You Read and (Watch Out For) The Normal People, that have not altogether successfully weathered the years, and there are times when you wish the whole thing rocked a bit harder and sounded a lot bigger.

Perhaps this was because the Rats brazenly wanted hits “What’s the point otherwise?” Geldof unapologetically commented, which endeared them even less to those who believed that talent was evident in direct proportion to the least number of records sold.

As a result their records were mixed for transistors not clubbing, and in those days radio and audio systems were one degree superior to a tin can at the end of a piece of string. Whatever, the country takes to the album with massive enthusiasm.

She’s So Modern is a Top12 hit, Like Clockwork is what they used to call a Top 10 smash, while the cinematic Rat Trap – a successor to the first album’s Joey, set in Dublin’s Five Lamps district and the abattoir in which Geldof had worked, sounds more than ever like something by Bruce Springsteen re-written by Ian Hunter – goes to Number 1 and stays there for what seems like most of the winter of ’78 becoming the first ever Irish Number 1 and annoyingly for the critical zealots, the first “official” new wave Number 1.

The album, meanwhile, spends an amazing 47 weeks on the UK charts, a genuinely triumphant performance from a band who have been preposterously underestimated, and whose career has been unintentionally overshadowed by Geldof’s subsequent achievements as the author of Band Aid, the architect of Live Aid.

Famously, Troops was also the album that was going to launch the Rats in America. To which end, Bob and keyboard player Johnnie Fingers are dispatched in January 1979 to the US for a gruelling month-long promotional tour – a bleary bonanza of backslapping bonhomie, fatuous pleasantries, endless butterings-up and relentless arse-licking. But during which, on yet another radio interview with Geldof automatically answering the local DJ’s inanities reads a telexed news report of a shooting nearby in San Diego. In the taxi back to the hotel he begins to write the absolute classic “I Don’t Like Mondays”.

I get a taste of what Geldof and Fingers have been going through when I arrive in Los Angeles for the last week of their tour and find myself the next day being taken with them by limo to KWEST radio for a round of interviews. “The object of this exercise,” Geldof sighs as we pull up outside, “is to storm in and make as much noise as possible.”

A couple of minutes later, Geldof is getting into it with a fat, pony-tailed DJ he’s apparently taken exception to.
“I suppose you’re one of the guys who plays all the crap on the radio,” he says, ever the diplomat. “Styx. Foreigner. Shit like that.”

“Who. . .uh. . . who are you?” the DJ, baffled, wants to know.

“We’re the most exciting rock’n’roll band in Britain,” Geldof says unblushingly. “But you’ll find that out for yourself when we come back and play.”

“Will your album be out then?”

“The album,” Geldof announces with a flourish, “will be Number Fucking One by then.”

Next stop is KLOS, where the programme director Cody tells Bob how much he likes A Tonic For The Troops.

“If you like it so much, start fuckin’ playing it,” Geldof says.

“Bob,” says Cody soothingly. “There’s a lotta competition, baby.”

“No there fuckin’ isn’t,” Geldof insists. “And when we come back, you’ll be playing us four times a fuckin’ hour.”

TV time! Geldof and Fingers are led into a small, garish studio to be interviewed by Ms Terri Tingle, a former topless dancer and big-haired host of an afternoon show called Entertainment Page. The final chorus of “Me And Howard Hughes” fades quickly and Terri’s suddenly chattering to Atlanta.

“Hi!” she beams, with a truly terrifying smile, more teeth than a horse. “You’ve just been listening to The Boomer-town Rats – and I have in the studio two members of the band, Johnnie Fingers and Bob Goodolf!”
“Geldof,” says Geldof.

“Ah lurve yoah album,” Terri tells Bob. “How do you write yoah songs?”
“With a pencil and paper, usually,” Bob says with a smile he’s trying to stop turning into a smirk.

“And where. . .where are the rest of the band? Why aren’t they with you?”
“Because they’re boring,” Geldof tells her. “I’m here cos I talk a lot and he’s here,” he goes on, jerking a thumb at Fingers, “cos he wears pyjamas.”

The next day we’re in Dallas where Geldof causes a bit of a fuss during a radio interview when the DJ asks him where in the city the Rats will be playing when they return to the US later in the year for a tour, Geldof telling her the band will be appearing at the Texas Book repository on Dealey Plaza. This is the building, of course, from whose windows Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy. Geldof’s remark effectively brings the interview to a premature conclusion.

“There are some things we just don’t joke about, sir,” Geldof is told as we’re shown the door. “Yeah, that’s part of the problem”, he sighs.

That night, Geldof and Fingers are obliged to put in an appearance at the annual CBS National Convention. This is being held at the Fairmont Hotel, which is awash with satin tour jackets and the raucous laughter of people trying too hard to have a good time.

As we go in for dinner, we’re given fancy little name tags.
“Jaysus!” says Geldof. “Will youse look at this?” He holds out his name tag, which reads BRAD GANDALF, making us all laugh, though Geldof’s not too amused.

CBS president Bruce Lundvall is making a speech, reminding everyone in the room that they’re here because they’re swell people, doing swell jobs, shifting units for the company. “And I want to tell you,” he tells them, “CBS is more than a company – it’s a family.”

Then CBS MD Jack Craigo is introducing Geldof, lead singer with the label’s hot new signings, The Boomtown Rats. Geldof goes nervously to the speaker’s podium.

“You’ve been told over the last few days that CBS is a real family,” he begins, a couple of weeks of growing resentment coming to a head, “full of warm and wonderful human beings. Frankly,” he goes on, “I didn’t know there were that many warm and wonderful human beings in the entire world. Let alone one record company. I think,” he continues, “you all know that really you’re just a bunch of fuckin’ bastards.”

This gets a few cheers from people who don’t know Geldof’s entirely serious.
Geldof returns to our table, bizarrely exchanging handshakes with the CBS top-brass and their armies of underlings.

“What a bunch of fuckin’ morons,” Geldof hisses in my ear, giving a big friendly wave to a couple of passing vice presidents. “Absolute fuckin’ morons.”

It’s the moment, I think, that Bob realises America may already be slipping away from him, which it does when Tonic For The Troops finally comes out over there to raves like the one I wrote all those years ago, but no one save the critics seems to notice. Still, back here, 1978 was unquestionably the year of the Rat. Outselling, outgunning all comers. A Tonic For the Troops defined its moment and confirmed the Rats as one of the biggest bands of our time.

They had with this record scrambled to the very top and they had unlike many others practised this fine art of surfacing without suffering the creative bends along the way.

Which is, of course, another story.