SXSWORLD

Geldof omnipresent when he and the Rats were taking on the world: "The Rats were a big band, but it was always 'Are we selling shows. "I do play songs I did with the Rats, but they have to have some meaning to me. I won't do pantomime. I still like 'Rat Trap' and I could do 'Mary of the 4th Form' because it's a song about being horny. I couldn't do 'She's So Modern' or 'Like Clockwork.' " Nearly 26 years on, Geldof is still best remembered as the master- mind behind the Live Aid concerts. He remembers a lot about July 13, 1985. "I remember that I had a sore back! I was very, very worried that it wouldn't work, that we'd have some disaster, that we wouldn't get any money, that the bands wouldn't show up, that people would be disinterested. more tickets than The Clash?' or 'Are our tickets more expen- sive than the Jam?' or 'Are we selling more records than Talking Heads or The Ramones?' You were never allowed to disappear into the music. That became too much and by the third album, it was clear that I was getting pissed off with all that stuff." Now, Geldof talks about the joy of being "unencumbered" by those concerns: "You care even less than you've ever done about perceptions at my ripe old age. In fact, they don't even impinge on your consciousness. That reflects on when you write songs because you're much looser. "Without question, my fifties were the best part of my life because a lot of things had resolved themselves. If you want to make things happen, access is easier because your generation are in positions of power. Whatever anxieties you have had regarding your love life or your family are moving into a different context." But still, he dismisses any notion of a Boomtown Rats' reunion. "Why would you? You'd have these six late middle-aged fat, bald men playing songs they did when they were 21. It's OK if you're the Rolling Stones because they never stopped being the Rolling Stones and they always did their canon. But we stopped, so to come back and do 'Lookin' After No. 1' would be frankly pathetic." If you want to hear Geldof do Rats' songs, go to one of his solo "I was in this organisational bubble and it was only when I went out on stage with the Rats that it hit me. When I walked out on stage, that palpable noise hit me and I realized the romance of it, that there were people all over the fucking world watching this thing. That's why I paused, to take it all in. Because I knew I'd never experience it again." by the power of music. by jim carroll Still inspired " When the Rats started, I had an overwhelming sense that I was in the right place for the first time in my life right from our first gig." a different generation," believes Geldof. "Woodstock took place in the middle of growing violence around civil rights and Vietnam and you had this bunch of people saying 'peace and love.' Live Aid took place in the middle of this massive economic de-industrialization. You had the 'greed is good' Wall Street mantra being taken as an actual affirmatory dictum. "In the middle of all this money, this spaceship called Live Aid sud- denly appeared and people saw that there were other values rather than being mercenary and merciless. There was this romanticism of doing things together, especially things that worked. That's why it has resonated down through the generations." Improbably, Live Aid and this scruffy, impatient, argumentative Irishman probably did change the world a little. "Post Live Aid, the issue of poverty has Live Aid was an event that had a seismic impact on so many different levels. "For this part of the world, Live Aid has the same resonance that Woodstock did for another part of the world, but for as Live Aid babies. There's no question that the issues which Live Aid raised became part of the common political discourse." For Geldof, though, it goes to prove the enduring spirit of the beat that turned him on all those years ago as a young lad in Dublin. "My plan was to attract the world's population around the televi- sion to raise a political lobby for change, and the magnets to do that were these bands that people loved. It wasn't English that was the lingua franca of the planet; it was rock & roll. When I was a rudderless 11-year-old, my oxygen tank was pop music. Here were these boys and girls not only articulating change, but articulating the desirability and necessity of change. "Rather pathetically, I've always viewed the world through the prism never left the agenda," Geldof points out. "It was wildly influential on forming the political views of that generation, people like (Tony) Blair and (Gordon) Brown and (Bill) Clinton and (Gerhard) Schroeder, they all claim to have watched Live Aid. (George W.) Bush claims to have seen three hours of it. When they came to power, someone described them of rock & roll. It's through its rhetoric that I explain things to myself and to others, which is why I still do records to articulate the unsayable. But you can still use rock & roll to talk about specific things, demand that change and not only make it possible, but make it plausible." n Bob Geldof will deliver the SXSW Music Keynote address on Thursday, March 17 at 11am in Room 18ABC at the Austin Convention Center. SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2011 49

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