Bob Geldof assembled the punk outfit Boomtown Rats in 1975. Over the course of the group’s run, its sound shifted from the raw urgency of singles such as “Looking After No. 1” toward the more refined yet pointed “I Don’t Like Mondays,” whose title came from a San Diego schoolgirl’s explanation for shooting her classmates. The Rats achieved modest popularity throughout the United Kingdom yet failed to establish a foothold in the United States.
Watching a BBC report on Ethiopian hardship in autumn 1984 prompted Geldof to collaborate with Ultravox frontman Midge Ure on the benefit single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Released under the Band Aid banner and featuring numerous British pop acts, the track became the biggest-selling single in U.K. history. Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie replicated the achievement stateside the next year with “We Are the World.” Geldof soon turned his attention to organizing an enormous charity event that materialized as Live Aid: twin day-long concerts staged on 13 July 1985 at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, drawing an all-star roster of pop and rock performers. Proceeds reached millions and were funneled to aid African communities in need. The effort earned Geldof a Nobel Prize nomination and a knighthood, while his memoir Is That All? topped U.K. bestseller lists.
Following the Rats’ 1986 breakup, Geldof embarked on a solo path that mirrored his earlier pattern of stronger reception at home than abroad. Deep in the Heart of Nowhere arrived the same year, though its lyrics lacked the sharp insight of his prior work. The Vegetarians of Love, issued in 1990, showed modest improvement. Departing from the star-studded approach of his first two solo releases, Geldof assembled a regular band for the sturdy 1993 album Happy Club. Throughout the remainder of the decade he sustained his campaign against global hunger, with particular focus on African famine. In October 1999 he joined Wyclef Jean, Bono, Bryan Ferry, Jimmy Page, Stereophonics, and Sean “Puffy” Combs for NetAid, whose three stadium concerts in New York, London, and Geneva were broadcast simultaneously across the internet, radio, and television in a multimedia push to combat worldwide poverty.
With the arrival of the new century, Geldof resumed recording for 2002’s Sex, Age & Death. In 2004 DMC Records invited him to curate an installment of its Under the Influence series, which gathers tracks that shaped a given artist’s trajectory and includes the curator’s own extensive annotations. During the mid-2000s he concentrated once more on philanthropy, notably reuniting with Midge Ure for the 2005 Live 8 concerts intended to spotlight Africa’s ongoing social challenges. Geldof stayed away from pop music until February 2011, when he issued the album How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell.
