The apocalypse Bob Geldof's been broiled in, you'd expect he'd taste a little bitter, be a bit sour. He's not. It's much worse than that.
Geldof is at war with the world. Known at the starting gates for his snappy, dead-on songs for the Boomtown Rats, the 48-year-old is now as famous for his Shakespeare-level real-life tragedy.
His TV-star wife's final departure to INXS singer Michael Hutchence is his burden as much as igniting Live Aid in 1984 is his legacy, earning him a knighthood. (Never mind his playing Pink in The Wall.)
The love triangle was as doomed as they get - both Hutchence and Paula Yates are dead. The Australian singer was found hanging in his hotel room, and Yates left us forever with a heroin OD in late 2000. Ugly business.
But Sir Bob, dazed, crawled back, found his haggard muse and crafted new music. Live at Rehearsal Hall: Bob Geldof on Bravo tonight at 6 just might be proof he's recovered some.
Even if you talk to him.
FISH: Where are you right now?
BOB: I'm on tour in the U.K. right now. Tonight I do a George Harrison thing with Tom Petty and Ravi Shankar and Ringo (Starr) and Paul (McCartney), so I'm excited about that. Plus the usual music and touring and politics and business that keeps going on forever. I'm tired and overworked, so you're not going to get a very happy interview, I'm afraid.
FISH: That's OK, it's not a very happy world. One of your angry new songs, Mudslide, blew me away. Is it any consolation that out of all the mayhem you went through, something beautiful came?
BOB: It doesn't help, is the truth. There was no intention to make an album, no, no, no. If you're asking would I go through anything like that to make some art, I wouldn't survive it again. I couldn't do it again. I do understand that millions of men have their wives leave them and millions of men lose love. But I've learned that a life without love is absolutely meaningless. You move past the moment eventually, but it took years for me. The situation was absolutely mad in the extreme and ended in high tragedy. When hubris enters, can nemesis be far behind? Of course not. The last thing I was thinking about was music. But gradually the urge came to me, like vomit in the gorge, and I began writing songs again. The end result put a shape to an otherwise shapeless horror, I couldn't find the edges of this thing, and I finally externalized it in a way.
FISH: Well, your return is hopeful. It's good to see you live. Taped, that is.
BOB: The Bravo thing? I've never seen it. I don't know if the idea of the band came across properly or not. I never look at anything taped or written about me or I just get mortified and humiliated. But one of the nice things about making music for the past 27 years is an awful lot of songs get embedded in the culture. I was waiting to get on stage in Boston and The West Wing was on and there was a school massacre and someone said, 'Tell me why I don't like Mondays.' Then they segued into the song. Of course, it was by f---ing Tori Amos, which I suppose I get paid for.
FISH: The Georgia Strait (in Vancouver, B.C.) where you once worked is now big and glossy and full of ads. Does success always have to result in stagnation, or at least the rumour of it?
BOB: I'm not familiar with the Strait now. I'm aware that Dan (McLeod, the founder) made some money. What he set out to do was brave. He produced a generation of people in Vancouver that embraced an absolutely unlikely ethic. If it's become dull and boring, it's par for the course.
Rolling Stone is completely hopeless. If it hasn't got a pair of (breasts) on the cover it won't sell, it seems. I told (senior editor) David Fricke to abandon it all and go back to the writing. Even if we loved the Rolling Stones, we were well prepared to hear Lester Bangs dissing them because the writing was so incredibly well-crafted and phenomenal. That's gone now.
FISH: Have you ever become too bitter to continue activism, or does that fuel it?
BOB: Oh, I get right f---ed off. That's my constant stance. The point is I can't be gainsaid, because after 18 years I know what I'm bloody talking about. Bono and I are the Statler and Waldorf of pop-star activism. He's sort of enamoured of the world and wants to give it a great big hug, whereas I want to punch its lights out and kick it in the nuts.
FISH: Do you like Garfield? You guys have that "not liking Mondays" connection.
BOB: What?
FISH: Never mind.
