Bob Geldof

View Bob Geldof Profile on All Music Guide

Launched solo career in 1986 after the Boomtown Rats split

About Bob Geldof

Geldof was born Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin, to parents of Irish and Belgian extraction. He attended Blackrock College, near Dublin, a school whose staunch Catholic nationalist ethos he disliked. After work as a slaughterman, road navvy and pea canner, he started as a music journalist in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for the weekly publication Georgia Straight. Upon returning to Ireland in 1975, he became the lead singer of the The Boomtown Rats.

He had limited success as an actor, his most notable role being the lead in the 1982 film Pink Floyd The Wall, based on Pink Floyd's album The Wall.

By 1984, the Boomtown Rats' commercial career had declined sharply. In November, Geldof saw a BBC news report by Michael Buerk on the famine in Ethiopia, and vowed to use the situation to do something. He called on Midge Ure, from Ultravox, and together they co-wrote the song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?". Geldof put Band Aid together and the single was released just before Christmas 1984. The song raised many millions of pounds, and became the biggest-selling single in UK chart history (until 1997).

- Wikipedia.org

Geldof continued as a solo artist after the Boomtown Rats split up in 1986 releasing a number of solo albums including Deep In The Heart Of Nowhere (1986), Vegetarians Of Love (1990), The Happy Club (1993), Sex, Age & Death (2002). But he is most well known as the organizer of the high profile anti-poverty fund raising and awareness events Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005.

Comments

Kathy in Laurel, MD wrote on 2012-03-17 00:00:00:
I STILL think he should have at least been nominated for Nobel for Band Aid &/or Live Aid.

Mairtin wrote on 2008-07-17 00:00:00:
BOBS a true rocker in more ways than one, his constant and informed laser guided truth seeking cut right through the international apathy often disguised in red tape - always one step ahead of the beurocrats...Hurrah for Geldoff!!!

Sean Hennessy wrote on 2007-11-15 00:00:00:
And as a side note he featured in Nickelbacks recent video "if everyone cared" featuring one of my pictures of him when he was with the Rats... hennessyphotography.co.uk

Paddy Mc Demon wrote on 2006-05-30 00:00:00:
The MASTER!

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