Telegraph article (excerpt) - The Boomtown Rats

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TOPIC: Telegraph article (excerpt)

Joe

Like Clockwork

Status: Offline

Posts: 24

Date: Mon Mar 9 8:07 AM, 2020

Telegraph article (excerpt)	Permalink

'Bono wants to hug the world - I want to punch it' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/interviews/bob-geldof-interview-bono-wants-hug-world-want-punch/amp/ I need to be constantly frantic and I keep going until my brain says, Stop, please! And then I sleep. On the table between us at his busy management offices in Chelsea Harbour, west London, stands a stack of shiny new albums from his original band The Boomtown Rats, and piles of a handsome hardback of his complete lyrics with essays, Tales of Boomtown Glory. He expresses disdain for social media (I dont care if Im liked or not, so the tick of approval doesnt bother me. Its pernicious, its addictive, its awful), declares that rock is dead (It was the spine of the culture for 50 years but its over. To be replaced by false caterwauling over-emotionalism, that fake break in the voice you get in all teenage music now) and offers up a digressive analysis of the entrepreneurial type person, with which he evidently identifies. The new Boomtown Rats album, Citizens of Boomtown, is their first in 36 years, a raw, punky celebration of garage rock, accompanied by a punchy documentary of the same name. It provides fascinating historical context for the origins of this spiky band in Seventies Ireland, when the country was referred to as the sick man of Europe, divided by terrorism and struggling with rampant unemployment, a falling population due to incessant emigration and a poisonous complicity between church and state. So one way or the other, youre going to get a group of malcontents making a noise, Geldof says. Between 1977 and 1980, the Rats had nine consecutive top 20 singles in the UK, including two No1s Rat Trap and I Dont Like Mondays but found themselves banned from playing in their own country. Anger wasnt permitted in Ireland in those days. Bono wants to give the world a great big hug. And I want to punch its f------ lights out. But we arrive at the same point, ultimately. For a man of such warmth and humour, it seems that ever-present anger is a fuel that has to be burned, less it immolate him. It is that anger that has inspired the return of the Rats. The aggressive, propellant power of that band was so immense, I thrilled to it. I wasnt singing Rat Trap about an abattoir in Ballsbridge, I was raging at the slaughterhouse of dreams that it is to be young now. I Dont Like Mondays wasnt about a school massacre in 1979, it was about the massacres that take place every two weeks. Even something as dogmatic and gauntlet-throwing as Looking After Number One makes every bit as much sense as it did in 1977. This is the blues of the now. If youre not angry about the state of the world, youre not paying f------ attention! __________________