SXSWORLD

Geldof is on the phone because of his forth- coming appearance as a keynote speaker at SXSW 2011. It will be his first time at SXSW, but he knows what it's about: "Nigel Grainge and Chris Hill, who were the guys who came to Ireland to sign the Boomtown Rats, go every year. I'm still really friendly with them and they're always going on about South By Southwest." When Geldof discovered that Neil Young, Lou ven when he's eating, bob geldof doesn't stop. At lunch in a London café with the phone glued to his ear, the Irishman expansively rewinds and fast forwards through ideas and topics. It is what he has done all his life as a musician, activist and businessman. Juggling is a must when there is so much to be packed into 24 hours. 48 SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2011 he can't express elsewhere. "The rest of what I do is easy," he says. "I can do all that politics and business and all that stuff, I can write for Time or the Financial Times, I can argue; I can do that stuff. "But what's hard is being able to articulate the unsayable. That Music gives Geldof a channel to verbalize those thoughts and ideas Reed, Quincy Jones and Smokey Robinson had pre- viously done keynotes, he was flattered: "I thought 'fuck me, that's good company to be in.' " Though Geldof is best known as the instigator behind such game-changing endeavors as Live Aid and Live8, and as an activist who has put global poverty on many agendas, making music remains his calling of choice. From those chaotic early days in the '70s as the leader of the Boomtown Rats to a solo career that continues to bloom (his new album How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell will be released in the U.K. on February 11 and in the U.S. later this spring), the muse has sustained Geldof through many bouts of trouble and strife. "It's the one place, and I don't want to sound wanky here, when I disappear into the music," he says about live peformance. "It becomes this catharsis where you suspend your rational thought process and just get lost. My life is filled with all kinds of things, so to have your brain entirely focused on the act of performing is exciting. 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." BobG involves putting yourself in a different place. The lyrics may not be spe- cific, but it's academic, because beyond the skittish surface of lyrics, the psychological undertones of music, like melody, tune and rhyme, put across the sense of what you're saying so you don¹t have to be literal. All that stuff is intuitive. It's a completely natural thing compared to finding the words to convey an argument. It's liberating." As Geldof has gotten older, he has grown more comfortable in his skin as a performer. There are no longer the same hang-ups that were COURTESY UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP

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