SIR BOB

Rip It Up, Issue 165, 1 April 1991, Page 20

SIR 808

What becomes a legend most? If it’s Bob Geldof, it’s a slightly foppish costume of black ruffled shirt under black tail coat over black jeans. That's how he was dressed when he swept into the Hyattlobby, Polygram person in tow, having just done yet another radio interview. Apparently he was getting slightly pissed off at being asked questions about Live Aid all the time instead of his album, which is understandable, given that the guy was here to promote his latest effort, Vegetarians of Love, not reminisce about an event he engineered six years ago which made him one of the most famous people on the planet. :

Still, no denying the fascination of meeting a contemporary icon in the flesh. Bob sprawls on the sofa in the executive suite (having turned the air conditioning off and picked himself a bunch of grapes from the courtesy bowl on the table)..

Positioned opposite a floor length mirror, he brushes his hair back from his face while denying that the

international promo visit lark is in any way like a holiday. To get off on the right footing, | ask a music question first: How did one-fime punk rocker come up with the Irish/folk/Zydeco hybrid on Vegetarians of Love? “Well, | always liked the blues, that was the only ethnic music | ever liked, mainly because | was exposed

to it through the Beatles and the Stones, like everybody, and Irish music was infolerable to me. Cajun is a part of blues. The Irish thing was kept in the cultural ghetto, you were meant fo appreciate this arf, which was complete nonsense. If’s like suggesting that an Englishman’s roots are in Morris dancing or that Bavarians go hopping over the Alps slapping each other’s faces with

sausages. They don't. So that, plus | was sick to death of what | was

hearing on radio, same as 1975, when | started my own band. So | started my own band this time.”

Here Bob launches info a tirade against contemporary music as we know and love it, from thrash funk grunge to hip hop, trashing today’s

pop aesthetic as “over played guitar and overawed singing and cathedral echo which passes for passion.” He wanted to hear humans again, he says, something with “spontaneity and spirit”. The result is an album on which Bob comes on like a cross between Bob Dylan, Shane McGowan and Leonard Cohen, playing folk melodies with electric guitar and pairing accordion, fiddles and penny whistles with his frademark barbed Iryics. Folk rock of the 90s. Isn't your jaded palate just a result of getting older? Do you think it unseemly for someone over thirty to rock? “No, | don't think it's unseemly,” rejoins Bob with an uncompromising gleam in his eye, “It could be to do with age. It could also be the fact that rock n'roll is old and needs to be revitalised just like 1975. Whatever it is; | know for one thing nothing new is being said or done differently. | can't hear anything important being said in pop music. At the age of eleven it struck me as being one of the most passionate things imaginable, it was never unintelligent. Now it is. : “There are some things | think useful like the Manchester thing and | don't mind the fact that | know all the references because fourteen year olds don’t and | think it’s quite nice to have that Soul Il Soul beat mixed with the psychedelic aesthetic. It critically important to pop that youth culture has its own thing all the time but it's complacent and itisn't in any way questioning. | like the fact that they have this drug based ideology and stuff like that but its part of that selfishness which | could never stand, even when | was akid, the drop out, tune in thing, which was bollocks.”

Of course this raises the hoary old question of whether rock music should aspire o change the world (a question that obsesses English popsters with their oppressed

working class backgrounds far more than Americans) or whether it should even make people think about anything more “important” than

where their next lay is coming from. In a perplexed world, rock music

provides an excuse to play dumb, to switch off and turn on, to smell the roses and watch the colours and not worry about crappy things like the national debt. That's what TV is for.

~ Perhaps if's a positive thing that no Next Big Thing dominates right now, that individuality rules and there’sa . myriad of musical styles to choose from, from rap, and indeed folk, to »

> the grunge metal merchants. “That thrash metal vibe,” says Bob, “ifs been done endlessly. The Velvets did it, the Ramones did it, all you've got now is Richard Hell's Blank Generation lyrics or English ~6os pop lyrics over grunge. Rapcat in Sydney are doing the same sort of thing and | think if's good that they're doing it but | don't think if's in any way wild or exciting. | just go, ‘that sounds fucking contrived’. Next. | was in New York and | met all those guys from Seattle, we were at a thing and | listened fo all their records — Sonic Youth, are they’ from there? The Pixies | like —" And Dinosaur Junior, | suggest, alternative grunge rock, weird - tunings and all that. “But they’re not alternative!” froths Bob, “they're just the obverse side of Bon Jovil” “ —they're ground breaking —" |

persist. “Butit's not ground breaking. If's been done endlessly and what's worse, it doesn’t even have the

virtue of selling a ot of records in which case it would be great

because that would then mean we'd get rid of all the crap we hear endlessly, the classic hits and all that shit”

Butit's too much to expect any one form of music to break new ground. Its more like if you buy an album

there might be just one lyric, one riff, one track, that breaks new ground in you. Besides, if's ironic you arguing that there's nothing new when you've chosen one of the most

traditional forms of music — ie folkie — in which to express yourself. “Look, | agree with practically everything you're saying. | listen to all these people and it does refresh me but it would be frankly ludicrous for me suddenly to pop out as Bob Geldof, fifteen years, one hundred recorded songs and all the other baggage that comes with me, and suddenly have a grunge album. It would be equally ludicrous for me to come out with a hip hop album or a Manchester album or a fucking Bon

Jovialbum —" But if you really wanted to you would — surely you of all people wouldn't be constrained by other people’s preconceptions? “l wouldn't be at all, but it would still be ludicrous. | could sit down and write a Phil Collins song or a Pixies song or ‘I Don't Like Mondays' ninety times if | was interested in the money but I'm not, I'm interested in doing what | think my response is to the moment. This record is the best way - now of me using music to talk about either myself or the things that bother me and then you just hope that other people dig it. A song like - ‘No Small Wonder’ is about a smalll moment in a small life, which is the thing that really interests me.”

Isn’t it hard to evoke “smaill moments” when you lead such a big and glamorous life? “I don't lead either a big or a glamorous life.” : - Butyou know lots of glamorous people. I've seen your photograph in Tatler. -

“Yeah, but | didn't ask for it to be there. | know people who are glamorous but most of my friends are people you've never heard of. | can move in those glamorous circles, | can move in political circles and | can move in music circles. It doesn't mean per se that my life is extremely glamorous. And if you see something in Tatler like me going to one of

those chi-chi dos, they're a pain in the ass. You go because there'll be interesting people and I'm just as - interested in meeting X as you are. And you get invited o premiers which sometimes | go to if it's a good movie and if's free. But your average life is going home like everybody else, turning on the box, if’s the normal fucking repeats, lets go and see what's on the movies, and getting a takeaway Chinese or an Indian. That's it. I'm very famous but that’s lack of anonymity, not glamour,” =

~ How do you find that lack of anonymity? “|like it. | wanted it. Fifteen years

ago, it was a part of what | wanted.” After all you've seen and done, do you feel significantly wiser now than you did at twenty? “Not at all. | was wise then, was doing practically the same thing at eighteen that I'm doing now. If’s like that old thing that travel broadens the mind, it doesn't, it only confirms your prejudices and it's the same with experiences of human nature.” Because you achieved so much, and experienced a moment of glory that most people will never come near, isn't there a sense of anti-climax in your life2 o

“Not at all. It wasn't a moment of glory for me. It wasn't glorious. | had a sore back and | was fucking exhausted.”

But didn't you get an incredible feeling of being so powerful for a moment, and so famous?

| 7, ~ But you weren't aware of being so powerful or so famousand -

anyway, that never inferested me, I'm not interested in power. It like getting married, you're planning

your marriage and on the day you're on this organisational continuum... | was onan organisation continuum and there wasn't a moment where | was being reflective. | was working with two hours sleep on average so the day of the concert was simply the end of that part but the next day | had to make fucking sure the last phone call I made on Saturday was to some obscure country about post office boxes, the next day | had to ensure all the banks were working effectively, within two days | had to begin logistically putting all this stuff in place and then bingo, | was able finally to get back to what | did and that was the climax, that was great. “Ifs not an easy thing to decide every day whether a thousand people here will live or a thousand there won't. Call that glorious2 Call that power2 | don't.”

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