The rocker still railing against injustice

Don’t expect Bob Geldof to mellow with age anytime soon. The man who heads a band once described as “leprous anti-establishment scumbags” still has the power to shock and disturb. It’s the nature of the beast.

Back in the day, he set out to “disrupt, disturb and question what it meant to be young in the Ireland of the mid-70s”.

The hair may be greyer now but the grey matter is not diminished. Nor is Geldof’s passion. And he isn’t easily impressed. Of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, he thunders: “These people have presided over the ruin of tens of millions of people. For them, austerity is simply a technical term. They have never had to live it. Yet 48% of 24-year-olds in Spain who don’t have jobs have to live it every day. This is a grotesque failure of leadership.”

He sees the same story in Ireland. “During the Celtic Tiger years the eye was off the ball in terms of risk management and in the meantime we became money junkies being pimped by the banks.

“If you fancied buying a flat in Bulgaria, no problem. Here you go, and there’s 100% of the money. This was a fraud. I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man but I suppose I haven’t changed that much.”

The songs the Boomtown Rats played still ring true. ‘Banana Republic’ — a savage critique of the Ireland of the 1970s — is a case in point. “It took time for the bitterness of that song to filter through,” he says. “The same with ‘Looking After No 1’. It resonates inside you and I find that I can sing it today with even more intensity.”

He still takes great pride in those songs of protest. “I have always been politically literate and that came through in those songs. They galvanised people into an articulate form to demand change, but the sad thing is that things haven’t really changed. You still have huge inequities in Ireland.”

Geldof has lived in Britain longer than Ireland and, while he still considers himself very much Irish, he sees this country as a place where little has changed economically or socially since the 1970s. “The sad thing is you still have huge disparities. If I had to look for songs to express what is happening in Ireland today I would look no further than ‘Rat Trap’ and ‘Banana Republic’ and ‘Looking After No 1’.”

Would he rather that they were no longer relevant, that the Rats and their songs of protest were now redundant? “The answer is yes. It is, I suppose, rewarding to find they still have relevance today, but sad too because very little has changed since then.”

Geldof’s decision to have another go on the merry-go-round is no misty-eyed longing for the 1980s. “I am curious to rediscover why it was that this band was so successful and I wondered whether the whole thing would work again. Apart from the Isle of Wight, we have played a two-day festival in Germany and we also played in Russia. It’s like living life as an American tourist.

“I say I am doing it for the money and everyone laughs. I am OK money-wise, thank God, but I know some of the Rats did not do as well as they could have so the money is important to them. Actually, the truth is, I am doing it for the craic.”

* The Boomtown Rats play Live at the Marquee in Cork on Friday, 28 years after their last gig in the city. For ticket info, see aikenpromotions.com