Bob Geldof - In the News

'I Had to Kick My Mate Bono Out of Recording Studio
When He Tried to Hijack My First Solo Album'

Sunday People, December 08, 2002

by Eamonn O'Hanlon

Bob Geldof has told how he was forced to kick Bono out of a recording studio after the U2 frontman tried to muscle in on his first SOLO album. The Live Aid hero had invited U2 to watch him lay down tracks for the album in Los Angeles, expecting them to sit quietly as he strutted his stuff.

But he says he was appalled when Bono marched in and tried to hijack the session.

"They come in and they take over and I was like, 'Go away!'" Bob said. "I was doing a track which actually never ended up on the record, and so in came Bono and he was saying, 'You know, man, really what you should be doing...Edge, don't you think so?'

"Edge would say, 'Yes, Bono, I think so.'

The next minute it was U2 everywhere. "I was going, 'OK, that's not bad,' but it ends up sounding like a U2 track and you don't necessarily want that.

"I was saying, 'I don't really want it to sound like that' and they were going, 'You really should have it like that.' "I just had to get them to leave in the end."

Dublin-born Bob, who played his first London solo gig for more than 10 years this week, made the revelation in an interview with BBC local radio. He first met Bono on the Dublin music scene, but it was not until he browbeat U2 into appearing at 1985's mammoth Live Aid extravaganza at London's Wembley Stadium that the pair became firm friends.

Bob said he had good reason to remember their early bust-up, which occurred shortly after Live Aid, as it coincided with an unexpected visit to the studio by the British Consul in LA.

At the time, the former Boomtown Rat's music career was in the doldrums, with his album -- Deep in the Heart of Nowhere -- destined to make little impact on the charts.

But Live Aid made Bob a household name worldwide and, unknown to him, the Queen had decided to give him an honorary knighthood.

"In the middle of all this with Bono a secretary came in and said the British Consul is here to see you," Bob said.

"He walked in and everyone just stopped and stared at him. It was very rock 'n' roll. "We went to speak in private and he told me that Her Majesty had felt it fitting that she bestow upon me the knighthood of the British Empire.

"I said, 'Oh God, I don't know about that. I'm Irish so the British Empire thing might be a bit much.'

"He was a bit taken aback. He said it was a very high honour. I said, 'Can't you come up with something else.'

He said, 'What?' I said, 'I don't know, what else is there?' because I didn't understand the honours system thing."

"He said, 'This is very high, it's a knighthood.'

"I said, 'Oh, oh, I didn't get that. I thought you said something else.' He said, 'Of course you will have to get permission from the Irish government.'

"I said, 'What do they say?' and he said they would be very pleased.

"Garrett Fitzgerald, who was the Irish Prime Minister at the time, called about an hour later and I said, 'What do you think?'

"He just said go for it...I'm mad for it. Well done, dude.' So that was it."

Bob said he never doubted the Boomtown Rats were on course for stardom when they first moved to London at the beginning of the punk rock era in 1976.

"We were viewed with some suspicion because we arrived from Dublin fully formed because we could actually play," he said.

"People in London were surprised because they hadn't paid any attention to Ireland -- nobody had at that point. I went to see some of the bands around at the time. The music press were raving about them, but actually they were crap.

"I remember going back to Ireland and saying, 'We are just so much better than these guys.' I went to see Eddie and the Hotrods when they played in Ireland. I was with Johnny Fingers, the guy who wore the pyjamas in the Boomtown Rats.

"We were both completely p***** and just stood at the front, chanting 'We're better, we're better than you.'

"It irritated the hell out of them, but punk rock was very elitist and a very London thing and I felt it was right to challenge that.

"I thought 'we are never going to break into this,' so we went off around the provinces in England.

"When we finally rolled into London our gigs were packed. Six months ago we were these Paddies with our arses hanging out of the window and suddenly it all went off in London and it was amazing."

But Bob, whose hits with the Boomtown Rats included such classics as "Looking After Number One," "Tonic for the Troops" and "I Don't Like Mondays," said he thought he was convinced his career was over following his separation from Paula Yates and her subsequent death.

"For years after Paula buggered off I was not capable of doing anything at all," he said.

"Certainly the last thing I thought about was music.

"It wasn't as if I was saying, 'Oh my God, I can't do it.' I just didn't care.

"During that whole period I did not want to hear any music. The guitar was just an object in the corner."

He said it was years before he started writing the songs, which were eventually to end up on his latest solo album Sex, Age and Death.

"Music was the last of the faculties that came back to me," he said.

"But if you write songs as I have for 27 years there is always the autobiographical element. Without really thinking about it songs just assembled themselves and it became a record.

"I never really gave a toss whether it was a record or not, but I had 10 songs and that was that."