Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, actor and political activist.

On Band Aid and Live Aid

• No, Prime Minister, nothing is as simple as dying
  • To Margaret Thatcher on the possibility of using surplus butter to help sufferers of the famine.

• People are dying NOW. Give us the money NOW. Give me the money now.

• Fuck the address, just give the phone, here's the number...
  • The quote many people remember incorrectly as "give us your fuckin' money"

• I've just realized that today is the best day of my life. Now I'm going home to sleep.

• People will always reach over the impenetrable roar of political discourse to help a human on the other side.

• It was quite possible that even 17 hours of the Boomtown Rats might have been a little too much for me.

• I actually didn't want him on the stage, 'cause his haircut at the time was so appalling.
  • On Bono's appearance at Live Aid.

• 98 per cent of the available television sets in the world were on this thing. I'd just been told that, so I did walk out with that sense that there's someone in Vladivostok, there's someone in Tierra del Fuego, there's someone in Shanghai or whatever watching this now. Here. Now. This moment. And everyone I'd probably ever said hello to as a kid was probably watching.

• Not to be immodest, but the first one was perfect in almost every sense, ... Artistically, people seemed to up the ante, and the performances were pretty great across the board. Huge amounts of money were raised, not a penny lost, and politically it elevated the issue onto the global table. The whole thing just worked, unbelievably.

On Live 8

• Don't let them tell us it doesn't work.
  • On group pressure

• The boys and girls with guitars will finally get to turn the world on its axis.

• Some people may, perhaps correctly, view Live 8 as the blink of an eye. Five days later, the horrific, devastating London bombs dissipated the goodwill of the Olympic bid and Live 8.

• It is filthy money made on the back of the poorest people on the planet. Stick it where it belongs,
  • On people selling Live 8 tickets on eBay

On Africa

• It is quite simply the most beautiful place in our world.

• If you ever get the chance, go there. It feels like...going home.

• The first thing you notice is the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere.

• No, not the Dark Continent. This is the Luminous Continent.

• The entire continent is gripped by this Blond Beauty. He is all over the place. He is without doubt the biggest brand in Africa.
  • On David Beckham in Africa

• You have a daily tsunami in Africa.
  • On the amount of aid the tsunami brought in.

• Africa must be allowed to trade itself out of poverty.

On The Boomtown Rats

• Most people get into bands for three very simple rock and roll reasons: to get laid, to get fame, and to get rich.
  • Melody Maker

• Most people thought it was about waking up with a hangover, going into the office and saying despairingly, 'Oh god, I don't like Mondays'.

• This is a Led Zeppelin song, it's called 'Rat Trap'.
  • At an unsuccessful concert in Naggs Head, North California

On Politicians

• You can't trust politicians. It doesn't matter who makes a political speech. It's all lies... and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.

• It's really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you're going to get it to these people.

On Himself

• I'm sure I'm very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

• I'm fairly lucky in that I've always looked like shite. If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.
  • On growing older, from an interview with Saga Magazine March 2005

• Music is the only thing that engages me totally: emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, spiritually, physically.

• Music is something I must do, business is something I need to do, and Africa is something I have to do. That’s the way it breaks down in my life.

• I think pop music is unimportant in the scheme of things, but to me it's critically central.

• I'm someone who's quite verbal, but some things are literally unsayable and remain so. Why music becomes important is that you can articulate the unsayable through a heightened language.

• The song $6,000,000 Loser was about getting my dick back.

• It's the ugliness that marks you.

• He just said, "Jeez, Bob, you've got Tourette's Syndrome of the soul, you know?"
  • Bob speaking of Bono after one of their joint meeting with Tony Blair.

• My medals! I love wearing them to Elton John's annual bash because mine are nicer than his. I'm a Chevalier, a knight, a sheikh and a Prince Tuareg in Western Sudan. I look like Idi Amin when I've got them all on

• I've got all these baubles and things hurled at me for a long time now and, frankly, of course it's nice, but measure them against something for music, and I could put them all in a drawer and never look at them again.
  • On his Life Time Achievement Award, that he received at the Brit Awards.

• Gentle as my GP is, a chubby finger up the arse isn't fun, despite lashings of KY jelly on the rubber glove.
  • When asked about his health after turning 50.

• The truth is I do have 14 sheep, down in Kent in my house there, and I'll actually ship them over now to Stephen's Green and you can all bugger off. That's where they are going to live.

• God bless the National Geographic. How else do you explain what happened to me?
  • On looking at photographs of scantily dressed African women as a child.

On His Late Wife, Paula Yates

• She was a woman of such grace and style and even when she was being ridiculous, there was always this vivid intelligence behind it.

• I was so struck by the fact that your heart does break.
  • On the period after Paula left him and the issues covered in his album Age, Sex and Death.

Miscellaneous

• The lingua franca of the planet is not English, it's pop music.

• Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

• Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

• You can try to bury your pain. But time doesn't heal. It only accommodates.

• The reality is we can control nothing.
  • On the subject of natural disasters.

• E-mails get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do.

• The word is, 'Paddy don't ski!' I cant stand. It hurts. Its cold. The clothes are fucking ridiculous. I'm sweating inside and I'm freezing outside. My legs are breaking. I'm halfway up a mountain. What the fuck am I doing?

• I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I’ve several friends just haven’t made it by taking Prozac. I genuinely believe that it was ’cos of the Prozac that they went over the top.

• They’re drowning, not waving. That’s what they’re doing when they’re climbing those cranes and dressing up because they are literally being rendered voiceless, so they’re going to be noticed. And so long as they stay funny and legal, I’m supporting them.
  • On Fathers For Justice

• Salamander are weird. And chameleon. And general lizard in fact. People are always going round worshipping them. What's that about? Jim Morrison - the Lizard King? Who wants to be king of the fucking lizards?