'It's Not in My Nature to Shut Up'; From the Angry Punk Snarl of the Boomtown Rats to Tracks About Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence, Bob Geldof has Always Articulated His Feelings Through Music. Here, Ahead of Two Scottish Concerts, He Opens Up About a Life Lived in Song

Sunday Herald › January 20, 2004

Linked as:

Summary

AFEW years ago, Bob Geldof organised a poll to find the best- loved word in the English language. It turned out to be serendipity, which the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines as "the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident." This strikes me as apt, serendipitous even, given that Geldof's life has been characterised by his peerless ability to be in the right place at the right time and then to capitalise hugely on his lucky breaks; indeed, even his unlucky breaks, which have not been in short supply, seem to turn out well, eventually.

"Sometimes you just become part of the zeitgeist by accident," he tells me over a late lunch in London's Soho House, "whether it's Africa, whether it's the punk thing, or whether it's family law. Sometimes you just are and there's nothing you can do about it."

See the full content of this document

Extract

'It's Not in My Nature to Shut Up'; From the Angry Punk Snarl of the Boomtown Rats to Tracks About Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence, Bob Geldof has Always Articulated His Feelings Through Music. Here, Ahead of Two Scottish Concerts, He Opens Up About a Life Lived in Song

Geldof has had an incident-prone 52 years. When he was seven, his mother died of a brain haemorrhage, an event which shaped the rest of his life. As an adult, he has been a pop star, the folk hero behind Band Aid and Live Aid, a dotcom millionaire, a fixture in the tabloids thanks to the Bob-Paula-Michael triangle of love and death, an outspoken campaigner for fathers' rights, and a non-stop gigging machine, giving hundreds of concerts over the last two years, fitting the performances around bringing up four children and lobbying world leaders for political change. I think it's safe to say that he has had the most interesting life of any public figure of the last three decades.

That being the case, what do you ask him? How do you approach an interview with a man who has spent 30 years being analy...

See the full content of this document