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Bob Geldof didn't see the point of a Live Aid musical. He changed his mind.

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TORONTO — Bob Geldof wasn't sold on the idea of a Live Aid stage musical, at least not at first.

To paraphrase his colourful words, he thought it was a crappy idea. 

Producers had approached him with an early draft of "Just For One Day," their pop-infused stage show about the making of the legendary 1985 benefit concert he helped organize. When he flipped through it, he was unamused.

"I didn't think it was interesting at all," he explained of the musical, which hits Toronto next year.

"The first script was terrible, really terrible. And I just said, there's no way."

For one, he said their book didn't shed light on why the concert took place at all. The effort to raise funds and fight famine in Ethiopia was a multi-venue effort that eclipsed anything like it before.

But the 72-year-old Irish singer-songwriter didn't quash the idea of a Live Aid musical. As the producers persisted, he warmed to the concept, helped by script revisions which found the story's "sense of adventure."

Ahead of Live Aid's 40th anniversary next year, "Just For One Day" rolls into Toronto for its North American premiere, after a sellout run at London's Old Vic.

The show plays at the Ed Mirvish Theatre from Jan. 28 to March 16, 2025.

"Just For One Day," named after a lyric in David Bowie's "Heroes," recounts the ambitious making-of story behind Live Aid, drawing on interviews with the people who were there to create a semi-fictionalized tale. 

It centres on Geldof and his charitable aspirations, adding a fabricated romantic subplot and giving him a few musical numbers. Other characters orbit him with their own dramatic stories drawn from real life. Mirvish says the cast will be announced at a later date.

Thirty-seven songs are featured from the likes of Live Aid superstars Bob Dylan, Elton John, U2, Diana Ross, Queen and Madonna, though none appear as characters in the musical.

The show is directed by Luke Sheppard, who brought pop odyssey "& Juliet" to life, and written by John O’Farrell, once the lead writer on the 1980s British satirical puppet series "Spitting Image," which repeatedly skewered Geldof's involvement in charity singles.

Geldof eventually signed off on the project. And he believes in the musical enough to pause gardening at his home in the south of France to explain why he was eventually won over.

"Look, I wouldn't do this if I thought it was (crap), I'd be embarrassed," he added after he dusted off his muddied hands in a video call Monday.

"I thought it was great."

Geldof said it came down to lead producer Jamie Wilson, who was involved in the project from its inception. He begged Geldof to attend an early workshop and witness why he was so excited about the concept.

Eventually, Geldof agreed, and with the Who's Pete Townshend in tow, descended on a giant empty studio space to observe a rough draft performed by a small cast of experienced actors who'd only read the script the night before. 

He remembers being ushered to a set of bleachers placed before a group of chairs for the actors, and a four-piece band who performed a setlist narrowed down from hundreds of songs played at Live Aid.

"I was blown away," Geldof said.

"I know this sounds wanky if you're into music but ... the music was insanely good."

He walked out of that preview convinced the Live Aid musical had some hope. Many script revisions followed, leading to its premiere at the Old Vic in February.

"I'm not a big theatre freak, but I've never seen a standing ovation before the intermission," Geldof said.

"So great, I was wrong criticizing it the way I did. It's not my sphere of understanding. But I get it now."

Producers say 10 per cent of all ticket sales from the Toronto performances will be donated to the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports organizations fighting poverty and famine.

Geldof admits he finds it jarring to balance conversations about a flashy musical with the realities of ongoing famine in Africa. 

Each day, he said, his email box is filled with messages from people tied to the charity which serve as a reminder this crisis has worsened, even if other world events suck up much of the public's attention.

"(The emails) will sound benign and they look neutral, but what they're describing in amongst those words is another horror," he added.

He dismisses critics who suggest that Live Aid failed at its purpose simply because famine has worsened in the region.

"Because of what everyone did," he said, "there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, alive to determine their own life."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 29, 2024.

David Friend, The Canadian Press

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Sir Bob Geldof takes inspiration from Live Aid to host star-studded and emotional fundraising concert for Ukraine

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Sir Bob Geldof fronted a star-studded fundraising concert for Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian invasion , repeating his mantra of ‘what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding’ throughout the emotional evening.

The Night for Ukraine was held at North London’s Roundhouse on Wednesday, March 9, with the funds raised donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal to raise money and aid for those fleeing Ukraine.

The fundraiser is reminiscent of the famous Live Aid benefit concert that the Boomtown Rats singer organised in 1985 in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

At the time he was joined by a host of stars, including Wham!’s George Michael , U2’s Bono , and Freddie Mercury .

This time, Sir Bob was joined by fellow Irish singer Imelda May, along with a host of other artists including Pretenders star Chrissie Hynde, Eckoes, Peter Xan, Joseph Toonga, Nadeem Din-Gabisi, Joseph Lawrence, Collette Cooper, Archive and Tom Baxter – who sang a song he had previously written about the Iraq war.

The project was organised by the founder of Secret Cinema, Fabien Riggall, in collaboration with the Ukrainian pop duo Bloom Twins.

Opening the show, Riggall said he pulled the event together because he ‘felt powerless’ watching the news and that ‘artists should lead the way’.

Before the music kicked off, the venue was plunged into darkness marking one minute of silence for the people of Ukraine.

The Bloom Twins, made up of twin sisters Anna and Sonia Kuprienko, performed an a capella set and a new song they wrote ‘on the first day of the war’, telling the audience ‘we should be making songs not bombs’.

The pop stars dedicated their last performance to their friends and family ‘who are still in Ukraine’, before thanking the audience for ‘making a difference’.

The Pretenders star Hynde became emotional as she said she has ‘no words for this situation but I have a couple of songs’, before performing a poignant rendition of I’ll Stand By You.

Irish singer May took to the stage saying ‘Slava Ukraini’ meaning ‘Glory to Ukraine’, while her Ukrainian backing singer from The London Community Gospel Choir was wrapped in the country’s flag.

Musician and activist Sir Bob performed his rendition of Nick Lowe’s What’s So Funny Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding, a song that ‘sums up the values I have believed in most of my life.’

The evening also featured the resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Wayne McGregor, Jack Garratt on the piano and a performance from rock band Franz Ferdinand.

The Ukrainian baritone and principal artist for the Royal Opera House Yuriy Yurchuk, born in Kyiv, appeared alongside Russian pianist Konstantin Lapshin who received a round of applause from the audience.

Sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine, adorned the venue and ticket holders were seen sporting yellow ribbons in their hair and waving the flowers during performances.

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Similarly, the colours of blue and yellow, from the Ukrainian flag, decorated the London venue.

DEC chief executive Saleh Saeed told the PA news agency he was ‘absolutely delighted that Irish singer Sir Bob was ‘onboard’ for the appeal, which has raised £132 million in six days.

He said: ‘There is obviously so much talent, so many artists have shown up tonight to show their support for the people of Ukraine which demonstrates that the wonderful support from the UK public, it is just absolutely phenomenal.’

The evening also featured an address from the DEC chief executive Mr Saeed, who said artists coming together is ‘incredibly powerful’ and ‘people will listen’.

Speaking to PA, he said: ‘The charities on the ground are all working to upscale their efforts inside Ukraine as well as you can imagine it is going to be a mammoth task to be able to scale up the response and that is one of the challenges that we all face.

‘Clearly we have to be there not just today and tomorrow but for the weeks and months and years ahead because it looks as though it is going to be sadly a protracted crisis.

‘The UN estimates that 1.4 billion dollars is required for the humanitarian response, the concern and the fear is that this is going to be the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, the need is going to be here for a long time.

‘We welcome the support, the need is absolutely huge.’

The chief executive added to ‘watch this space’ as plans come together for a ‘large concert some time at the end of the month’ in aid of the appeal.

Russia has admitted to using ‘devastating’ thermobaric vacuum bombs in Ukraine .

The TOS-1A weapon system sucks in oxygen from the surrounding air to create a powerful, high-temperature blast capable of destroying buildings and vaporising human bodies.

Three people were left dead and 17 were wounded this morning after Russia bombed a children’s maternity hospital in Ukraine.

President Putin has been accused of war crimes after striking the medical facility in the southern port city of Mariupol when a ceasefire was in place.

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Bob Geldof says 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' supercut planned for 40th anniversary

The Canadian Press Staff

Bob Geldof speaks at the One Young World 2022 Manchester Summit at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, England, Monday Sept. 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

TORONTO -- Bob Geldof is diving into the archives to create a new version of “Do They Know It's Christmas?” for its 40th anniversary this year.

The Irish musician told The Canadian Press he's involved in a hoped-for supercut of the charity single that would blend vocals of pop stars from separate recordings of the song made over the decades.

“Maybe put Harry Styles beside a young Bono,” he mused in a recent phone call from France.

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“Just sonically, you mess up these generations all in one take.”

The original 1984 “Do They Know It's Christmas?” was written by Geldof and Midge Ure and featured a who's who of British music stars of the era, including Paul Young, Sting and the late George Michael, collectively known as Band Aid. Record sales raised funds to fight the famine in Ethiopia.

Other versions of the song were recorded in later years, including ones in 2004 and 2014 that featured vocals from Chris Martin of Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and the late Sinead O'Connor.

Geldof said he approached Trevor Horn to produce the new megamix. The Englishman was intended to handle the 1984 original, but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts. He oversaw an extended remix of the track for a reissue the following year.

This time around, he was top of mind for Geldof.

“I said, 'Could you make one single? The longest single ever, maybe?” he remembered.

It began a process that's been underway for some time. How it all shakes out remains to be seen.

There are some hurdles aside from just blending the generations of singers. For instance, the 2014 version featured new lyrics written to reflect the Ebola crisis, an addition that complicated matters during the recording sessions for singers deeply familiar with the original.

“I remember Sam Smith was closing (their) eyes, singing the lyrics, and I said, 'Dude, they're not the words anymore,”' Geldof said.

“(Smith) said, 'Sorry, I've had to sing this every year in school since the day I went to school.”'

Other changes for the 2024 edition will likely include a fresh backing track to accompany the singers. Geldof said these tweaks have given Horn some anxiety over how it comes together. Geldof said he told him: “You've got time, you'll get over it.”

“If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But it's fascinating unto itself, from our perspective,” said Geldof.

With the 40th anniversary of Band Aid on the horizon, Geldof is busy with many projects to mark the monumental charity events that defined an era.

His name is attached to “Just For One Day,” a stage musical about the birth of Live Aid, the epic 1985 fundraiser concert he helped organize in the wake of “Do They Know It's Christmas.”

The show rolls into Toronto for its North American premiere in January.

There's also a four-part Live Aid documentary in the works about how they pulled off the whole thing. The rock concert led several acts - including Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills and Nash - to put aside their grudges to reunite in the name of charity.

Geldof hopes the series goes beyond what happened on the concert stages in London and Philadelphia, and explores how pop musicians pushed for significant political change. He also thinks there's room to look at the ways new technology helped connect viewers with the concerts.

In 2004, a series of benefit concerts known as Live 8 harnessed the internet and other new communication tools to organize an even bigger event.

“It sort of bridges the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century,” he said of his events.

“I want that to be the story - with all the greatest live performances.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 30, 2024.

Correction:

This is a corrected story. A previous version listed Paul McCartney as a vocalist on "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

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Still the advocate and voice of the fight against poverty and impoverishment. And I enjoyed the music with those messages imbeded. Throw in the anecdotes he shared, some intimate, the performance was great for the ears and the heart. It was an honor for me to watch the legendary man.

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‘That’s it? It’s over? I was 30. What a brutal business’: pop stars on life after the spotlight moves on

Musicians from Bob Geldof to Robbie Williams and Lisa Maffia reveal what they did – and how they felt – after the hits dried up and the crowds vanished

I n her classic memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys , Viv Albertine recounts not only the time she spent as a punk during the 1970s in her pioneering band the Slits , but also documents her life after the band had ended. This is unusual. Most music books don’t venture into this territory, tending to stop when the hits stop, thereby drawing a veil over what happens next. The unspoken suggestion seems to be that, were it to continue, the story would descend helplessly into misery memoir.

“The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend,” Albertine wrote, “This feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone … I’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I’m cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind.”

I loved Albertine’s book, and it was this one paragraph in particular, I think, that propelled me into writing my own book on this very subject: the curious afterlife of pop stars. I wanted to know what it’s like when that awkward next chapter begins, where anonymity replaces infamy, and the ordinary reasserts itself over the extraordinary. The life Albertine forged for herself after punk was complicated, as life tends to be. She returned to education, studying film; underwent IVF; and endured both illness and divorce. But she never fully let the music go, because musicians mostly don’t; they can’t . I finished her book convinced she was a hero.

But then perhaps all pop stars are? They’re fascinating individuals, compelling and gifted, not short of self-confidence and, yes, occasionally a little odd, too. Artists may not always be the best people to operate the heavy machinery of adulthood, but they remain tenacious, driven and inspirational. They dared to dream, and then went out and made that dream come true.

But falling back down to earth, in this business, is an inescapable certainty. Like sportsmen and women, they peak early. A songwriter once told me, citing Bob Dylan, that “artists tend to write their best songs between the ages of 23 and 27”. Despite his enduring success, Dylan has suggested he couldn’t write the songs he wrote in his 20s in his later years, at least not in the same way or with the same instinct, largely because, after that early momentum has fizzled out, things settle down into simply the thing that you do , with all the humdrum ennui associated with that. So what’s it like, I wondered, to still be doing this “job” at 35, and 52, and beyond? What’s it like to have released your debut album to a global roar, and your 12th to barely a whisper? Why the continued compulsion to create at all, to demand yet more adulation? Frankly, what’s the point?

And so, armed with a batch of potentially indelicate questions – because who likes to discuss failure? – I began to reach out to musicians from various genres and eras, those who hadn’t died young, but were still here, still working, to ask them what it was like in the margins.

A great many never bothered to respond. Others enthusiastically agreed, only to later bail out. The guitarist from one of America’s most stylish modern rock acts, someone whose skinny jeans no longer fit quite as well as they used to, was initially keen, but cancelled at the last minute because, his manager informed me, “his head just isn’t in the right place to discuss this right now. It’s a difficult subject.” Those who did speak, however – 50 in total, from Joan Armatrading to S Club 7 ; Franz Ferdinand to Shirley Collins – were endlessly revealing and candid in a way they would never have been at the peak of their fame. I sensed they enjoyed the opportunity to talk again, to be heard above the din of Ed Sheeran and Adele and Stormzy. All were humble, replete with wisdom, resolute . (Many were divorced, too; at least one was high.)

They’re the true Stoics, I realised. We could learn a lot from them.

E ach individual story in popular music has a common beginning. Because in the beginning, all is gravy. In 1987, seemingly overnight, Terence Trent D’Arby became the most arresting new pop star of his generation. To hear him sing songs such as If You Let Me Stay and Sign Your Name was to bear witness to the art of aural seduction; the knees buckled. He became terribly famous, terribly quickly. He was 25.

“I wanted adulation and got it,” D’Arby tells me almost 35 years later, by now working under the name Sananda Maitreya, “but I had to die to survive it.”

If his ascendancy had the stuff of legend about it, then so did his demise. Like Prince before him, he began to feel himself capable of anything, each new song he composed a masterpiece. His record company felt differently – it wanted hits, not ornate rock operas – but D’Arby was not someone easily restrained. And so, in pursuit of his muse, he spent the early 90s reportedly living the life of a tormented recluse in a Los Angeles mansion. When I speak to him – which takes six months to arrange – he suggests he was grateful to move on “from such excess and artifice. I didn’t give a fuck about it then, and even less about it now that memory has been kind enough to allow me to forget most of it.”

Prince had died, Michael Jackson, too. D’Arby was still here, albeit with a name change – prompted by a dream he had in 1995 – to help him better bury the past. Today, Maitreya lives in Milan, is happily married with young children, and writes, records and produces his own music, which he releases on his own label, behaving as he damn well pleases. In 2017, this meant issuing a 53-track album with at least one song dedicated to a first-hand experience of impotence. “I’m a fellow who likes to drink and smoke/It used to once hang down to the tops of my shoes/Now all I’ve got is these limp dick blues.”

The question of whether anyone is listening any more doesn’t seem to trouble him unduly. When I ask what, if anything, he misses from the old days, he replies: “I miss the unbridled, bold, naked stupidity of youth’s vibrant electric hubris.”

During the same era, Kevin Rowland found himself in a comparable position. “I’d been too confident, too arrogant,” the Dexys Midnight Runners singer says. “I thought everyone would hear our new music and go: ‘Wow.’”

The fact that they didn’t, not any more, left him bewildered. Dexys were one of the more brilliant bands of the 80s, with a slew of hits, several No 1s and an eternal classic in Come On Eileen, a song legally required to be played at every wedding disco on mainland Britain ever since. But by the end of that decade, Rowland wanted to develop his craft, and leave boisterous singalongs behind. His label, and quite possibly some members of his own band, simply wanted more of the same. It wasn’t broke, so why fix it?

But, Rowland tells me, “I just knew that I couldn’t write the same songs again, and so I never even tried.” Their new music took on an increasingly introspective tone, mournful and ruminative; not ideal for radio, in other words. The band were dropped, they split up, and the singer found solace in drugs. Whatever money he’d made was soon lost, and before a stint in rehab came the need to sign on: a profound humbling. At the dole office, his fellow unemployed recognised him and broke into a rendition of Come On Eileen, half hoping he’d join in. “I could have done without that,” he notes.

The passing of fad and fashion is rarely the artist’s fault. In a 1997 piece for the New Yorker , the American essayist Louis Menand suggested that stardom cannot last longer than three years. “It is the intersection of personality with history, a perfect congruence of the way the world happens to be and the way the star is. The world, however, moves on.”

To her credit, Suzanne Vega tried to move with it. It was 1990, and by this stage she’d enjoyed huge success for three years. This was no mean feat, because her unadorned acoustic songs stood in direct contrast to the more brash preoccupations of pop in the 80s, a time when Madonna ruled. “But by 1987,” Vega recalls, “every door was open to me, every gig I did sold out.”

And so, in 1990, she announced her most ambitious tour yet. Rather than her usual requirements of an acoustic guitar and a single spotlight, she now had “a set designer, trucks and buses, a crew, a backing band; catering, a backup singer, a woman to do the clothing. This was a big deal for me.”

On the tour’s opening night in New York, the venue was just a third full. “I thought: ‘Where’s the rest of the audience? Maybe they’re still out in the lobby?’”

There was no rest of the audience; they’d already moved on. Vega herself had done nothing wrong here, but rather done things a little too right. The industry had taken note of her earlier success, reminding them of the marketable power of a singer in touch with her emotions, and so had invested in a new batch: Sinéad O’Connor , Tanita Tikaram , Tracy Chapman . These artists rendered the scene’s godmother abruptly superfluous.

Vega’s tour, haemorrhaging money, was cut short. When she arrived back at JFK, she looked out for the car her record label would always send to collect her. But there was no car. Not any more.

“I took a taxi,” she says.

But Vega, like Maitreya and Rowland, didn’t throw in the towel simply because others had come along to steal her thunder. She simply, and by necessity, pivoted towards cult status, which at least came with the safety belt of a loyal fanbase that still sustains her today. There are benefits to staying in your lane. “Would I like another hit?” Vega wonders. “I wouldn’t say no, but I’m not going to chase it.”

T he writing on the wall is only easy to read in hindsight. At the time, it’s all a blur. I approach the wiliest of pop provocateurs, Bill Drummond of the KLF , an act that, at the height of their success in 1992, disbanded and then deleted their entire back catalogue with the sole intent of swiftly disappearing up their own fundament. When I ask him what an artist should do once the spotlight swings elsewhere, he writes me a play – or rather, two, “in case the first one’s shite”, he helpfully explains. The plays reference Prince and 80s hitmaker Nik Kershaw , and the way both leaned on the public’s endless appetite for nostalgia in order to stretch out their careers. Drummond prefers a more flamboyant gesture: the very moment any singer fails to crack the Top 40, they should offer themselves up for sacrifice. “The failed pop singer will be given the choice of a noose hanging from a gallows or a razor-sharp guillotine,” he writes.

This may well suit self-sabotaging provocateurs, but other artists have less appetite for creative suicide. It is true, though, that a future of looking back, of existing solely on nostalgia, is a creative cul-de-sac, an eternal Groundhog Day where China in Your Hand is No 1 for ever . Steps should be taken to avoid such a fate.

When Mancunian stalwarts James, for example, split in 2001, frontman Tim Booth moved to northern California, where he became a shaman and studied the practice of “consciousness expansion”. He only rejoined the group on the condition that they wouldn’t become a heritage act, “which for me is the kiss of death”. After singer Róisín Murphy had navigated the end of her pop duo, Moloko, and then attempted to steer an idiosyncratic solo career with a determination Orson Welles might have admired, she moved to Ibiza to focus on two things: motherhood and the Mediterranean. “Sometimes it’s nice to just relax, you know,” she says.

Billy Bragg realised he needed to take a pause from his career in 1990, once Margaret Thatcher had been toppled. Bragg’s antagonism towards the former prime minister had been his whole raison d’être, after all. With her gone, what then? “It was time for a rethink,” he tells me. He got married and had a child, and later eased himself back into music, by then sporting a beard and plying the kind of alt-folk that would allow him to both age gracefully and bring his fans – who were also ageing – along for the ride. Occasionally, he writes comment pieces for the Guardian, largely to keep the spark alive. He still pops up on picket lines, too. Why? “Because I’m Billy Bragg, that’s what I do.”

I f all bands crave headlines in their early days, then So Solid Crew achieved all the wrong ones. It became increasingly easy to overlook the musical achievements of the first UK garage act to break through into the mainstream back in the early 2000s because what happened off stage became far more compelling. Several live shows were blighted by violence , while members G-Man and Asher D – the latter to find fame later as the Top Boy actor Ashley Walters – were arrested for possessing handguns . Once So Solid imploded, its sole female member, Lisa Maffia , a single mother, needed to start earning again, as she’d spent everything she’d accrued. “Three cars in the driveway, so much jewellery, clothes in abundance! Limousines!” she recalls. She launched a short-lived solo career, record label and clothing line, but her “brand” appeared in terminal decline. So she started her own booking agency, with herself as the sole employee, calling up clubs across the country masquerading as the personal assistant to one Lisa Maffia, formerly of So Solid Crew, now an international solo star and occasional fashion designer. Her PA, “Celine”, was tasked with asking clubs’ management if they’d be interested in a personal appearance.

“The bookings came in almost immediately,” Maffia beams. “I hustle. Never been afraid to hustle.” She now runs a beauty salon in Margate.

Maffia has achieved what many former pop stars don’t, and what Albertine for a long time couldn’t: replacing one satisfying career with another. The majority find themselves instead with an embarrassment of yawning time on their hands: how to fill it?

Some I speak to use that time as an opportunity for personal growth. David Gray and the Darkness’s Justin Hawkins discuss the growing conviction that they might have autism and ADHD, respectively, both convinced this played a key part in the art they made. “I love upheaval, I love emotional disasters, and mismanaging every relationship I’ve ever had,” Hawkins suggests, which sounds less like introspection than a robust embracing of who he is, sod the consequences.

When the Boomtown Rats abruptly reached their dead end in 1985, singer Bob Geldof wasn’t happy. He felt they still had so much more to offer, but it was Duran Duran’s turn now. Geldof slunk home, drew the curtains, “and I thought: ‘That’s it ? It’s over ? Had the best years of my life already passed? I was 30. What a brutal business pop music is.”

It was during a quiet night in – when, by rights, he should have been straddling a microphone stand on a stage somewhere glamorous and, crucially, far away – that he happened on Michael Buerk’s report from a famine-ravaged Ethiopia on the news. This gave him an unexpected new focus, but here’s the thing: even after feeding the world, and, later, a hugely successful career in business (launching the TV production company Planet 24; investing in tech), all Geldof wanted to do was to go back to music. In 2020, the Boomtown Rats, average age then 66, released a new album.

“In my passport, my profession is listed as musician,” says Geldof, “not saint.”

The Boomtown Rats reformed because bands do. It’s practically mandatory. When Tanya Donelly , of 90s US indie darlings Belly, quit after winning a Grammy (and promptly suffering burnout), she craved normal work and became a doula. When 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant grew tired of being a marketable commodity, she quit for the quieter life of a solo artist, and was then duly horrified when her debut album, 1995’s Tigerlily, sold 5m copies, because “then came the treadmill again”. The next time she tried to retire, she did so more forcefully, and now teaches arts and crafts to underprivileged children in New York state. “I look at people like Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney,” she says, referring to the way both legends continue to tour, “and I think to myself: ‘If I were you, I’d just go home and enjoy my garden.’ It’s a question of temperament, clearly.”

And yet, just as Donelly would ultimately return to her old band, Merchant is also entertaining the idea of new music. “Maybe,” she says. “My daughter is off at college now, so I do have more time to myself … ”

But why? Why do they all come back? Perhaps because nothing else compares. It must be nice to be quite so loudly loved.

Even those who were scarred by their experiences still curiously hanker after it. Child reggae stars Musical Youth were a ray of early-80s sunshine when their single Pass the Dutchie sold 5m copies around the world. Once their fame elapsed, and it did so with breathtaking speed, one member, Patrick Waite, developed drug problems, turned to crime, and died of heart failure at 24. Another, Kelvin Grant, became a recluse; singer Dennis Seaton a born-again Christian. “It saved me,” he tells me. Now in his mid-50s and a father of four, Seaton is the chairman of the Ladder Association training committee, alerting builders to the dangers of working at altitude without sufficient protection. “Which is funny, I know,” he shrugs, as if the idea of a former pop star now doing an ordinary job boggles the mind. At weekends he still tours nightclubs to sing his famous song to crowds of people who want nothing else from him and are simply grateful to be in his orbit. “To have touched so many people, let me tell you, is humbling,” he says.

Robbie Williams sums it up well. “I felt very driven in the early days, in competition with the world and with myself.” He remains a big draw, of course, but 30 years in, he’s no longer guaranteed hits and is now more likely to be playlisted on Smooth Radio than BBC Radio 1. But that sense of competitiveness never fully recedes. He tells me the new songs he is writing are sounding like David Bowie and Lou Reed, experimental and avant garde, “But do I unashamedly want to still be one of the biggest artists in the world? Yeah, I do.”

And so he, and so many like him, linger in those margins, watchful for other opportunities, biding their time. They judge TV singing competitions and appear on reality shows, and wait for the world to turn slowly on its axis to bring them back into fashion. Eventually, everything comes back into fashion.

The midlife pop star’s best virtue, then, is patience, and the conviction that the best might be yet to come. “I’ve had an interesting first half of my life,” Williams notes. “I’d like an interesting second half, too.”

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Sir bob geldof: the keats-shelley house virtual tour guide sir bob will also narrate 'the death of john keats'.

Sir Bob Geldof has narrated a new, immersive virtual tour of the Keats-Shelley House. The legendary singer with the Boomtown Rats and inspiration for Live Aid has now turned online Keats-Shelley tour guide, accompanying the viewer around the museum as they inspect our collection. Watch the video below.

This is the first of two collaborations between Keats-Shelley House and Sir Bob launched this month. On 23rd February, we will premiere ‘ The Death of John Keats ’, a second immersive online story that can be experienced with a Virtual Reality headset or in old-school two dimensions. Drawing on letters and other documents, Sir Bob will narrate Keats’ final months in England Italy.

You can also retrace follow in the poet’s dying footsteps in our interactive Google Earth map-story, John Keats’ Final Voyage .

For more information visit the Keats-Shelley House Bicentenary events page .

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Bob Geldof didn’t see the point of a Live Aid musical. He changed his mind.

By David Friend, The Canadian Press

Posted Apr 29, 2024 02:13:30 PM.

Last Updated Apr 29, 2024 04:56:35 PM.

TORONTO — Bob Geldof wasn’t sold on the idea of a Live Aid stage musical, at least not at first.

To paraphrase his colourful words, he thought it was a crappy idea. 

Producers had approached him with an early draft of “Just For One Day,” their pop-infused stage show about the making of the legendary 1985 benefit concert he helped organize. When he flipped through it, he was unamused.

“I didn’t think it was interesting at all,” he explained of the musical, which hits Toronto next year.

“The first script was terrible, really terrible. And I just said, there’s no way.”

For one, he said their book didn’t shed light on why the concert took place at all. The effort to raise funds and fight famine in Ethiopia was a multi-venue effort that eclipsed anything like it before.

But the 72-year-old Irish singer-songwriter didn’t quash the idea of a Live Aid musical. As the producers persisted, he warmed to the concept, helped by script revisions which found the story’s “sense of adventure.”

Ahead of Live Aid’s 40th anniversary next year, “Just For One Day” rolls into Toronto for its North American premiere, after a sellout run at London’s Old Vic.

The show plays at the Ed Mirvish Theatre from Jan. 28 to March 16, 2025.

“Just For One Day,” named after a lyric in David Bowie’s “Heroes,” recounts the ambitious making-of story behind Live Aid, drawing on interviews with the people who were there to create a semi-fictionalized tale. 

It centres on Geldof and his charitable aspirations, adding a fabricated romantic subplot and giving him a few musical numbers. Other characters orbit him with their own dramatic stories drawn from real life. Mirvish says the cast will be announced at a later date.

Thirty-seven songs are featured from the likes of Live Aid superstars Bob Dylan, Elton John, U2, Diana Ross, Queen and Madonna, though none appear as characters in the musical.

The show is directed by Luke Sheppard, who brought pop odyssey “& Juliet” to life, and written by John O’Farrell, once the lead writer on the 1980s British satirical puppet series “Spitting Image,” which repeatedly skewered Geldof’s involvement in charity singles.

Geldof eventually signed off on the project. And he believes in the musical enough to pause gardening at his home in the south of France to explain why he was eventually won over.

“Look, I wouldn’t do this if I thought it was (crap), I’d be embarrassed,” he added after he dusted off his muddied hands in a video call Monday.

“I thought it was great.”

Geldof said it came down to lead producer Jamie Wilson, who was involved in the project from its inception. He begged Geldof to attend an early workshop and witness why he was so excited about the concept.

Eventually, Geldof agreed, and with the Who’s Pete Townshend in tow, descended on a giant empty studio space to observe a rough draft performed by a small cast of experienced actors who’d only read the script the night before. 

He remembers being ushered to a set of bleachers placed before a group of chairs for the actors, and a four-piece band who performed a setlist narrowed down from hundreds of songs played at Live Aid.

“I was blown away,” Geldof said.

“I know this sounds wanky if you’re into music but … the music was insanely good.”

He walked out of that preview convinced the Live Aid musical had some hope. Many script revisions followed, leading to its premiere at the Old Vic in February.

“I’m not a big theatre freak, but I’ve never seen a standing ovation before the intermission,” Geldof said.

“So great, I was wrong criticizing it the way I did. It’s not my sphere of understanding. But I get it now.”

Producers say 10 per cent of all ticket sales from the Toronto performances will be donated to the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports organizations fighting poverty and famine.

Geldof admits he finds it jarring to balance conversations about a flashy musical with the realities of ongoing famine in Africa. 

Each day, he said, his email box is filled with messages from people tied to the charity which serve as a reminder this crisis has worsened, even if other world events suck up much of the public’s attention.

“(The emails) will sound benign and they look neutral, but what they’re describing in amongst those words is another horror,” he added.

He dismisses critics who suggest that Live Aid failed at its purpose simply because famine has worsened in the region.

“Because of what everyone did,” he said, “there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, alive to determine their own life.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 29, 2024.

David Friend, The Canadian Press

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Bob Geldof: Going Back to Boomtown

Mark Crowne*

2020 was set to be a huge year for Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats with their first album in 36 years, a new book, and a documentary. However, with a year put on hold, it'll be a while before he can properly go back to Boomtown.

In January of 2020, Irish rockers The Boomtown Rats returned with their first new single since 1985. The song was called “Trash Glam Baby” , and it marked the first taste of new material from the group since their somewhat unexpected reunion seven years earlier. But the news didn’t stop there, in fact, while the group’s iconic frontman Bob Geldof had hinted at a new record in the preceding years, the new song brought with it the news that the influential outfit would also be releasing a new album – their first in 36 years.

The stage was set for a big year for the group. Their new album – titled Citizens of Boomtown – would be released on March 13th, Geldof’s Tales of Boomtown Glory – a book featuring his complete lyrics, stories, and scans of his notebook – would arrive the same day, and a new documentary film named for their latest album would arrive a few months down the line. Things were looking good for the band, and 2020 was set to be one of the biggest celebrations of their career to date. Then, the annus horribilis began to truly show its teeth.

The record itself was released on what would become a dark day for Australians, with Friday, March 13th serving as the day in which Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled restrictions on gatherings of more than 500 people, effectively shuttering concert venues for the foreseeable future, and ensuring that the year would be one to remember for all the wrong reasons.

Despite everything going on – that is, a year put on hold due to a global pandemic – Geldof himself seems rather upbeat about the situation at large. Speaking from his home in Kent, the silver-haired musician admits he’s been getting through the perils of 2020 relatively unscathed.

“You sort of feel guilty that you’ve enjoyed all this,” he begins. “Beside from shouting at the murderous incompetence of the British government […] it’s been the most beautiful spring and now summer.”

Though he confesses there’s a little bit of panic and guilt at play due to his inability to do something worthwhile, or go out and earn a living, the year has seen him focus his efforts on things around the house, while focusing on writing new music when time permits.

“I can do my gig from here, really. If I write a tune, I can send the stuff up to the other guys,” he notes. “We shot two videos in lockdown, we’re shooting one today. So for what we kind of do, this isn’t difficult.”

Like any artist caught up in the mixture of mundanity and despondency of 2020, Geldof points out that what has affected him the most is the inability to get out and tour in promotion of the band’s new record. In fact, the United Kingdom was unfortunate enough to be placed into lockdown just a mere two hours after The Boomtown Rats not only launched their new album, but a run of tour dates.

“That really screwed us, [it was] very frustrating,” he recalls. “The tour was cancelled immediately – it had practically sold out, […] so that’s a pisser.

“Like many other businesses I don’t think there’s a regrouping of that because even if we rescheduled, we’re now not in the spring, we’re in the beginning of our winter. Will people be willing to come and stand and, you know, stand cheek by jowl; thousands of people together? I don’t think so.

“The people who have already bought tickets, well, can they come because [the concert] dates have changed now – can they come; would they come? If you hadn’t bought a ticket… Would you be prepared to take a risk, will the band be prepared to travel together, crew, same motel, at the soundcheck, physical labour, the gig, the after show? It’s iffy!”

In fact, while some folks take comfort in knowing they’re not alone in this situation, Geldof admits that The Boomtown Rats are some of the lucky ones. While their eight festival appearances they had scheduled for the middle of 2020 have now been pushed back one year, he concedes that a lot of bands in the “middle level” might in fact be decimated by the state of affairs.

“You can’t just sustain a [band] going for a year without income,” he states. “The individual guys in the band, the musicians, the mates, the crew or the office or something like that – how do you absorb those costs? Especially now when record sales – unless you’re in the top six best-selling artists – are shit. You know, so, it’s difficult.”

During this tumultuous time for the music industry, many artists have found themselves feeling somewhat pleased to have released an album during this time – if not only for the fact that their listeners have something to occupy their time spent at home. While a number of records were initially pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Boomtown Rats weren’t awarded such a luxury, with the impact of what was set to be a massive comeback for the group minimised somewhat.

“There was a film made about the band, which sort of summed up the [formative] period which went out on the BBC,” Geldof begins of the recent months experienced by he and the band. “I wrote a book. Faber [& Faber, publisher] had done a book on the lyrics of Radiohead and Kate Bush and the third person they asked was me which was very flattering. That’s basically why I did it, because I was flattered.

“I wrote essays for that book and that got great reviews, and the film got great reviews, and [then] the album comes out, and it got great reviews. But the totality of the sum, which would have made people very aware of the Boomtown Rats back in town, that was all lost. I mean that was really, frustrating is one thing, but disappointing is another.”

“It would have been – the film, the book, the album, the singles, the video, and the tour sold out – perfect, but no.”

The scale of both the film’s premiere and the group’s comeback was not lost on Geldof either. In fact, the former’s premiere took place at the Dublin Film Festival, attracting music greats such as U2, Sinéad O’Connor, The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, and newcomers Fontaines D.C., while even Irish President Michael D. Higgins showed up to view the film.

From there, it was shown in major cities such as Berlin, Paris, New York, and Toronto, with Geldof admitting that while the band’s story was the forefront of everyone’s minds, it was time for them to start showcasing the new material.

“In theory, you know, we would be cracking on with doing new stuff,” he explains. “I’ve noodled around with one or two [songs]. Not out of boredom, but they just occur to you, really.

“I just want to focus on these tunes and these tracks. I want to go out and play live; they’re meant for that, the Rats are a great live band. I mean, it would have been – the film, the book, the album, the singles, the video, and the tour sold out – perfect, but no.”

Needless to say, while 2020 is itself an unexpected year, the fact that The Boomtown Rats are at the forefront of people’s minds might have been as unexpected. While the group first formed back in the mid Seventies, their short, yet prolific career came as a surprise to many. Releasing their self-titled debut in 1977, the group quickly shot into the mainstream thanks to the success of their first single, “Lookin’ After No. 1”. Reaching #2 on the Irish charts, this kicked off a run of successful tracks for the group, including 1979’s “I Don’t Like Mondays”, which remains their biggest international hit to date.

Following six studio albums, the band’s profile had waned somewhat by the middle of the Eighties, with Geldof’s charitable efforts taking precedence over his time in the group. By 1986, The Boomtown Rats had played their last show, and Geldof released his solo debut later that same year.

In early 2013, Geldof announced that it was time “to go back to Boomtown for a visit”, with The Boomtown Rats joining the lineup for the 2013 Isle of Wight Festival. As with most reunions of this nature, many fans of the band would’ve been forgiven for assuming this was to be a one-off appearance, with few able to predict a new record would emerge years down the line.

“The impetus came from an offer from the Isle of Wight but retrospectively, I think there was something else at play,” Geldof says of the band’s decision to reform. “I think what was in play was that The Boomtown Rats actually only make sense in periods of chaos and instability.

“We came out of that period and it was a ten-year dynamic arc of quite radical change in the political world and, you know, our time was up really. A new crowd had come along with different things to say, a new generation, and new bands to say it.”

“The Boomtown Rats actually only make sense in periods of chaos and instability.”

Coming together in 1975, The Boomtown Rats were borne from a period of instability in Ireland. Although Geldof decries the fact that the band were frequently lumped alongside English punk outfits such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols, he notes that the band were just as furious as their counterparts due to the national and political climate from which they emerged.

While thousands lay dead due to The Troubles in Northern Ireland, economic downturns saw countless out of work, and served up a doomed future for young people entering the workforce. For Geldof and his bandmates – all young men who came from fractured families – the result was to combine this righteous anger into something which would help them achieve their dream of escaping the situation they found themselves in.

“In [the Citizens of Boomtown documentary], you’ll see everyone say ‘I had to get the fuck out of Ireland’,” Geldof notes. “Garry [Roberts, guitar], when he’s asked, ‘Well what do you want to do?’, ‘Well, I want to play my guitar, drive my motorbike both loud and fast and get the fuck out of Ireland.’ But by ourselves, we couldn’t do it.

“So, when we got together, there was an animus in the band – which retrospectively was the propellant – and that animus was rage. But we didn’t seem to find a form until I found the name in Woody Guthrie’s book Bound for Glory . You know, the great poet of the dispossessed and the impoverished and the depressed; [Bob] Dylan’s master. He was in a gang of kids when he was 11 called the Boomtown Rats and I thought, ‘That’s fucking it!’

“What happened with The Rats was in order to change our own lives we had to start a band, and that band – in order to get out – needed to make a noise. The glorious racket of the Boomtown Rats, that noise had to change the country by just breaking the bubble of silence. I know that sounds grand, it wasn’t the intent, but it’s what happened.”

The group’s impact was immediate within Ireland, and songs such as “Lookin’ After No. 1” – which Geldof had written while in the dole queue – clearly resonated with fans enough to hit number two on the local charts. Though trips to the United States (which saw them play their first American shows alongside the Ramones and Talking Heads) didn’t result in the long-lasting wider fame they would have liked, the group’s legacy was assured.

By the middle of the Eighties, it felt clear to Geldof and his bandmates that “it was right” for The Boomtown Rats to wind things up, having achieved what they had set out to do. Almost 30 years later though, things felt as though they had come full circle, and that it was once again time for The Boomtown Rats to emerge in order to live out their destiny.

“The second that group of individual made that glorious racket, it was fucking electrifying. […] It sounded precisely like the noise I wanted to hear in 2013.”

“In 2013, when Garry and Simon [Crowe, drums] came around to say, ‘Will you do it?’, something made me receptive to the idea,” he recalled. “I didn’t need to, I could tour endlessly with the solo band. But something made me think, ‘Let me think about it.’

“I didn’t think about it long, and the initial spur was playing to 120,000 people again and, you know, vanishing. Fuck off playing in opera houses initially to 2,000 people, you know? It’s very nice, but you know, let’s go! So that was the first curiosity: Were The Rats as good as I would say they were?”

Initially, Geldof admits he was apprehensive about the idea of The Boomtown Rats falling into the category that many other reunited bands have fallen into, with their reformation either being seen as – or feeling like – a return to what once was rather than a new and exciting addition an already-established legacy.

“The second that group of individual made that glorious racket, it was fucking electrifying. I mean seriously exciting,” he recalls of their first rehearsal together. “And I think it was exciting because I really hadn’t expected it, I hadn’t remembered, and it sounded precisely like the noise I wanted to hear in 2013.”

As Geldof explains, it was the state of the world and the relevance of the band’s music that not only necessitated their comeback, but provided them with a reason to hang around. With the Global Financial Crisis still a fresh memory in 2013, terror attacks occurring like clockwork, and now in 2020, the presence of a global pandemic, the need for The Boomtown Rats was more relevant than ever.

It was this desire to not be viewed as simply a nostalgia act on stage that drove Geldof to ensure their relevance was kept front and centre, with songs such as “I Don’t Like Mondays”, “Banana Republic”, and “Lookin’ After No. 1” finding a new meaning thanks to topics such as gun control, Donald Trump’s America, and widespread unemployment.

“The minute I’m on the stage, the sober, temperate, Bob Geldof you’re talking to now disappears, and this other thing happens,” he explains. “I now call that thing Bobby Boomtown, because clearly he exists in me, and he erupts sometimes. You’ll see me on telly going nuts. But with this band, that’s who’s at the front.

“Bobby Boomtown doesn’t give a fuck, what he says, what he does on the stage or the consequences thereof and I just get lost into the atmosphere that that band compels, and it’s wonderful! It’s fantastic, that’s the drug – it’s the getting lost, the disappearing into this otherness. It sounds hippie, but that’s what’s going on.”

“Bobby Boomtown doesn’t give a fuck, what he says, what he does on the stage or the consequences thereof.”

While many fans would have felt surprised to see that The Boomtown Rats were once again taking to the live stage, they would have just unexpectedly learnt back in 2017 that the group were working towards a new record. Having recorded 26 tracks at the time, Geldof revealed at the time the plan was to release a series of EPs in the lead-up to one larger record that collects all the songs under the title of Mega .

Although this changed along the way, fans found themselves questioning two simple things. Firstly, the question of why The Boomtown Rats were recording a new record was simply answered by Geldof alongside the album’s announcement when he eloquently summed it up by stating, “That’s what bands do, they make records. Songwriters write songs.”

However, the second question – that of, how exactly do The Boomtown Rats make new music that continues their legacy – was one that Geldof found himself asking as well. However, he admits that he was initially somewhat apprehensive towards the idea of making new music at all.

“I played with Alice Cooper in Perth a couple years ago, and of course we did ‘School’s Out’ and that’s what the crowd wants to hear,” he recalls. “If I go and see The Rolling Stones and Mick says, ‘Here’s four new tracks from our new album’… Fuck off! Where’s ‘Gimme Shelter’, where’s ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, you know? The classics, they stand alone, nostalgia, they’re wonderful rock’n’roll songs, emblematic of one of the greatest bands ever, so that’s what I want to hear!

“The Rats aren’t The Rolling Stones, but those songs still work for me and I want to do ‘em, because they sound, to me, like now!

“Okay, so how do I write for The Boomtown Rats now? How do I lose the internality? How do I lose that for the solo stuff? And how do I find Bobby Boomtown? How do I access him when he’s not on stage? I wrote myself back to him.”

The way in which Geldof wrote himself back to the onstage persona of Bobby Boomtown was thanks to the song simply titled “The Boomtown Rats”. A staple of their live shows these days, and serving as the closing track on their latest record, the lyrics serve as something of a mission statement to their new era, with the opening line simply stating, “ I’m going back to Boomtown ” as a stadium-ready instrumental chugs along, while gang vocals state the band’s name like a football chant.

“The visual image that accompanies that mass advertisement is Muhammad Ali looming over the pruning body of Sonny Liston with his fist clenched, and he’s shouting at Liston, ‘What’s my name? What’s my name?’ because Liston refused to call him Muhammad Ali to provoke.

“So, he floors Liston and he screams ‘What’s my name?’ and his face starts going red and I just thought, ‘Yeah, what’s your name? What’s our name? Where’s back? What’s our name? The Boomtown Rats!”

No matter how one looks at it, both Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats have left an indelible mark on the face of music and pop culture in general. Whether it’s the way that music can hold up a mirror to society and speak out against global injustices, or how it can help to create much-needed change, it’s obvious that the world of music would not be what it was without the influence of Geldof.

However, while questions remain about whether music still has the power to change the world, Geldof points out that music was never something that brought about change, but rather a tool used for global understanding and unity.

“I don’t think it’s the music that’s changed, I believe it’s the hearth, the global hearth around which we can gather and understand,” he explains. “Beyond Mandarin or Spanish or English, pop music is the lingua franca of the planet.

“There’s no doubt that Live Aid and Live 8 gave a truth to that, and you know, it’s often said that a perfect rock’n’roll pop lyric is a [Little Richard’s] “ A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom ” and I would agree with that, because you can be in Vladivostok in the depths of the coldest winter or you could be in the Sahara and you hear “ A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom ” and you go ‘Fuck yeah!’

“I’ve said it before that rock’n’roll is an articulate form of inarticulacy. It doesn’t need to have intellectual sense. It needs to have an emotional sense for it to be understood, so it reduces language to an almost non-language, to a pithiness! It can be highly articulate – we know that, but it can also be seemingly nonsensical, but you are moving to an understanding, you’re moving to a beat and an understanding that is way above language.”

Though it remains to be seen whether or not The Boomtown Rats’ new record will indeed be able to change the world by the time they get a chance to finally take it on the road, it’s clear that after 36 years between albums, the Irish outfit haven’t lost sight of what inspired them to get together all those years ago.

The Boomtown Rats’ Citizens of Boomtown is available now, as is Geldof’s Tales of Boomtown Glory. The documentary of the group, also titled Citizens of Boomtown, will be available for Australians to view at some point in 2020 .

In This Article: Bob Geldof , Boomtown Rats

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Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE (born 5 October 1951), is an Irish singer-songwriter, author, political activist and occasional actor. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s, alongside the punk rock movement. The band had Number One hits with his compositions "Rat Trap" and "I Don't Like Mondays". He co-wrote "Do They Know It's Christmas?", one of the best-selling singles of all time, and starred in Pink Floyd's 1982 film Pink Floyd – The Wall as "Pink." Geldof is widely recognised for his activism, especially anti-poverty efforts concerning Africa. In 1984 he and Midge Ure founded the charity supergroup Band Aid to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. They went on to organise the charity super-concert Live Aid the following year and the Live 8 concerts in 2005. Geldof currently serves as an adviser to the ONE Campaign, founded by fellow Irishman Bono, and is a member of the Africa Progress Panel (APP), a group of ten distinguished individuals who advocate at the highest levels for equitable and sustainable development in Africa. A single father, Geldof has also been outspoken for the fathers' rights movement. Geldof was appointed an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, and is a recipient of the Man of Peace title which recognises individuals who have made "an outstanding contribution to international social justice and peace", among numerous other awards and nominations. In 2005 he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.

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Parties and punch-ups: behind the scenes at the 1989 Moscow Peace Festival

Just your everyday tale of the first (and probably last) anti-drug festival behind the Iron Curtain, with Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderalla and Skid Row

If the original 1969 Woodstock festival, with its gruesomely naked bodies, uninhibited drug-taking and unprecedented approach to crowd control – come on down, brothers and sisters, it’s all free! – had been emblematic of the countercultural ‘revolution’ of the late 1960s, then there can have been no better symbol of the money-grabbin’, drug-hypocritical, so-called safe-sex 1980s than the Moscow Music Peace Festival, held exactly 20 years – and what seemed like several lifetimes – later. 

Never mind Live Aid . More people may remember that but Live Aid, with its ultra-focused fundraising and dizzying global clout, was more of a handholding 60s throwback than it was a genuine expression of the age; a cultural aberration that deliberately traded on me-first 80s guilt to ram home its almost anachronistic message: feed the children, help the poor, pretend Thatcher and Reagan never existed (and while you’re at it, help revive my career). 

The Moscow Music Peace Festival, however, was a genuinely self-absorbed, glossed-over, height-of-the-80s, multimedia event; inspired by the deeply held desire of a convicted international drug-trafficker to avoid going to jail, and the fervent wishes of the famous bands whose careers he then guided not to be robbed of their Svengali, their bad daddy, their real money maker. 

In short, the only interests the Moscow Music Peace Festival really served were of the people on the stage, not the ones off it. 

Even the location for the event seemed bizarrely at odds with prevailing rock culture, certainly as it had existed up until 1989: since when had the Lenin Stadium in Moscow become a venue of choice for high-profile rock bands? 

Since Doc McGhee said so, that’s when. McGhee, lest we forget, was then manager of five of the seven big-name bands that would appear on the Moscow bill: Bon Jovi , The Scorpions , Mötley Crüe , Skid Row and local Russian outfit Gorky Park. 

While the only other big name acts appearing at the festival not connected to McGhee – Ozzy Osbourne and Cinderella – were both managed by people he’d worked with many times over the years (notably, Sharon Osbourne, on the Crüe’s breakthrough US tour opening for Ozzy six years before, and when Doc returned the favour by letting Lita Ford , then managed by Sharon, open for Bon Jovi on his 1988 world tour). McGhee was also a convicted felon.

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Or as drummer Tommy Lee put it in the 2001 official Mötley Crüe biography, The Dirt : ‘Before [McGhee] met us, he was living a secret life that blew up on him when he got busted for helping smuggle 40,000 fucking pounds of pot from Colombia into North Carolina.

It wasn’t his only bust, because he was also being accused of associating with some well-connected madmen who had conspired to bring over a half a million pounds of blow [cocaine] and weed into the United States in the early 80s.’ The result, after he had pleaded guilty at the trial in North Carolina, was a relatively modest $15,000 fine, plus a five-year suspended prison sentence.

The reason he was able to get off with such a light sentence was his additional offer to put together an anti-drugs organisation, the Make A Difference Foundation, for which he would raise money the only legal way he knew how: via his music biz connections.

As Tommy said: ‘Doc knew that anyone else probably would have been in jail for at least 10 years for that shit, so he had to do something high-profile to show the court he was doing the world some good as a free man. And his brainstorm was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Woodstock with the Moscow Music Peace Festival.’

But as Tommy ruefully concluded: "It was all bad from the moment we stepped on the plane… There was a so-called doctor on board, who was plying the bands who weren’t sober with whatever medicine they needed. It was clear that this was going to be a monumental festival of hypocrisy."

Not that I was yet aware of any of that as I stood there, sweaty and starving, at Cheremetyov airport in August 1989, waiting for the plane to land. I was still too flummoxed by Moscow itself to worry about what any of the bands might be thinking. I had arrived 48 hours before to find a city gripped by such a fearful heat that all the sensible (read: rich) people had fled the city for their summer dachas. Not that there was much to keep them there during the cooler months either.

Back then, before the Berlin Wall had fallen, the image Moscow conjured up in one’s mind was of a large, grey, unhappy citadel full of long faces and even longer food queues. The reality, however, was much worse than that. Rule number one, I discovered on my first night there, was There Is No Food. That is, nothing edible.

There were restaurants, of course, but mostly they were all closed. Usually for ‘cleaning’ which seemed to take place approximately six nights out of seven. Even when you did find a restaurant open it invariably wasn’t worth eating in. Learning to survive on the road means learning to eat anything. Fussy eaters are the first to throw in the towel.

As a result, over the years I had, at various trying moments, found myself eating smoked reindeer and bear-steaks in Helsinki; drinking the foul tap water of Rio de Janeiro; quaffing chilli-dogs and fries at fast-food counters all over America; and gorging myself on raw fish and cold rice in Tokyo.

But never in all my travels had I come across anything so frankly – or ironically – vomit-inducing as the Chicken Kiev in Russia. “Why do you think there are no dogs on the streets of Moscow?” whispered Dimitri, conspiratorially – one of the many official KGB-approved festival ‘guides’ and ‘interpreters’ – as I pushed away my plate again one night.

Rule number two: There Is No Such Thing As Russian Money. Well, actually, there was – it was called ‘the rouble’, but no self-respecting Russian trader would accept them as currency. Officially, a rouble was the equivalent of £1 sterling. But on the black market you could get up to 10 roubles for your pound.

Even then, however, they simply weren’t worth having. The only thing a stack of Roubles could buy you was a wooden doll and a big furry hat. The only real consumer goods available were on sale in the tourist-only stores, which took all major credit cards including American Express. In fact, the main currency in Moscow back then, spookily, was US dollars. And if you didn’t have the exact amount you could throw in a pack of Marlboros. For change, you might receive an assortment of dollar bills, 10- franc pieces and the occasional silver Deutsche Mark. For small change you might get handed a packet of orange-flavoured Tic-Tacs. No joke.

As for music… well, these days, no doubt, it’s as easy in Moscow to download your favourite emo codswallop from the internet as it is anywhere else. Back then, however, records and tapes were purchased almost exclusively on the black market. There was only one official record store in the whole of Moscow and when I visited it they were selling the sort of junk you might find at a car-boot sale – dusty Frank Ifield LPs and third-generation home-made cassettes of The Beatles.

Everything else was either banned or simply not available in the Russian market. The reason for this, as Jon Bon Jovi later told me, was that “they don’t pay royalties”. He said they’d actually let them release the Slippery When Wet album in the USSR, “but we did it knowing we’d never see any money for it”. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the album had already made $100 million throughout the rest of the world they’d never have been so generous. Along with most of the Western bands flying in for the festival, I was staying at a ‘five star’, £125 night shit-hole in the heart of Moscow, one block from Red Square and the imposing shadow of the Kremlin.

Sex workers lined the entrance to the hotel, and dark-suited security guards with the thick necks and thicker accents of Bond villains checked the ID of everyone wishing to enter. Enormous black cockroaches clung lazily to the walls and ceiling of the lobby. In my room on the 16th floor I was advised by one of the advance crew to check for bedbugs before turning in for the night.

In my bathroom the water running from the taps was the rich brown colour of yesterday’s piss; in the soap dish there sat a decomposing apple-core. The only towel provided was hanky-thin and crisp as an old rag. Two cigarette stubs floated lifelessly in the toilet pan. I was truly baffled. What the fuck had happened back there when they’d had the Great Revolution? Hadn’t anybody come out on top at the end of it? And if they had, where did those guys go to eat – and sleep?

I had only been in bed 10 minutes when there was a knock at my door. I thought it might be the KGB. But when I opened the door a crack there was only one of the sex workers from the lobby, asking if I’d like to buy champagne (“Only ten dollars, US,” she grinned uninvitingly) or perhaps more (“I keep you company, yes?” Er, no… thanks).

This happened every single night I was there. On the third night, already drunk and feeling emboldened after another day of dog-burgers and Tic-Tacs, I invited her in. She asked if she could bring a friend and out of nowhere another woman appeared. I gave them $20 and we opened a couple of bottles of champagne. It was so sickly sweet it made Asti Spumanti taste like Dom Perignon.

I sat there on the bed morosely, drinking it and asking them about Russia. They agreed that Russian life was “verrry bad”. Never mind, I said, Gorbachev was working on it, right?

“No!” they cried in unison. Gorbachev was “verrry, verry, verry bad!”

They said they’d preferred life under the old regime. At least then, they said, you could get meat and bread and didn’t have to queue for everything. I gave them another $20 when they left and went to sleep feeling worse than ever. Gorby may have been a huge hero to the West back then but apparently he didn’t mean shit to the ordinary whores and champagne guzzlers of Moscow.

I went to sleep thinking I understood but of course I didn’t. It goes without saying that the bands were even more nonplussed when they arrived. Walking through Red Square in the rain with Ozzy the day after he landed, he looked around glumly and summed up the general feeling surrounding the build-up to the festival when he said: “If I was living here full-time, I’d probably be dead of alcoholism, or sniffing car tyres – anything to get out of it. I can understand why there’s such an alcohol problem here. There’s nothing else to do.”

Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx from the Crüe were similarly downbeat when I ran into them backstage at the Lenin Stadium the day before the first of two shows.

“It might be an anti-drugs concert for some people,” said Nikki with a shrug, “but it’s not for us. It’s anti-abuse we’re talking about. That’s our belief. We’re not here to preach. If you tell a young kid not to do drugs, he’s gonna do it anyway. I know I did. We just say – if you cross the line between use and abuse, then that’s really tragic. I’ve crossed that line, many times. And I know from experience that it’s bad, and I try to tell kids not to cross the line. The rest is up to them.”

But then Ozzy and the Crüe were the only bands on the bill still struggling with ‘substance abuse’ issues of their own. Indeed, Ozzy would be arrested for attempting to strangle Sharon within weeks of returning home from Moscow, after drinking the case of Russian vodka miniatures he’d been presented with by the promoter. While Nikki, Vince and the guys were then famously fresh out of an enforced spell in rehab, riding a wagon they were still barely clinging to.

The Scorpions, the only band from the West on the bill to have played there before – 10 sold-out nights in Leningrad in March ’88 – were predictably more upbeat about the festival’s prospects for doing good, hamming it up during their soundcheck at the Lenin Stadium with an over-the-top version of Back In The USSR.

As vocalist Klaus Meine told me afterwards: “There’s everywhere a drug problem, all over the world. So I think it’s good that the bands stand together on one stage and give a message to the kids in the world: forget about the drugs. The best drug is music.”

In the end, it was left to the ever-more earnest Jon Bon Jovi to talk up the festival and put it into some kind of historical perspective. Driving around town with Jon one afternoon in the back of a Russian-made Zil limousine, I listened patiently as he waxed lyrical about Nelson Mandela, Bob Geldof and the impossibility of obtaining a cold beer in Moscow. The two major issues, said Jon, were “money and awareness”.

After the “production costs” all proceeds from the two concerts were clearly earmarked for various drug and alcohol ‘rehabilitation centres’ and ‘substance abuse awareness’ programmes, specifically in the Soviet Union, where until the onset of Gorby’s perestroika it was not officially admitted that a drug or alcohol problem even existed.

The extra “icing on the cake” was being able “to do something no other rock band has yet done”. Live Aid had been about helping the famine-victims of Africa; Moscow was about helping the kids closer to home.

“You know, at this stage of the game, it’s like you ask yourself, ‘What can we do that Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones or the Beatles didn’t already do?’ And being here is it. Not only do we get to come over in a good cause, we also get to put on the kind of rock show never before seen in the Soviet Union.” Meine peered out the window through his shades at the rain sleeting down then added: “People are always ready to question the motives behind why a bunch of rock stars would want to get together and do something like this. And, sure, inevitably you get a clash of egos occasionally. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to organise in the world, we sure found that out! But at the end of the day, I look at it like this.

"I wouldn’t have known about Nelson Mandela’s situation like I do now had I not been drawn to it because of the artists on Amnesty. Or I don’t think that I would’ve ever known about Ethiopia the way I do now if it wasn’t for Bob Geldof. So there is a wonderful icing on the cake. You get to see all these big performers that I enjoy too, but there’s ultimately a cause behind it. And that’s what raises your awareness.”

All of which was true. And yet behind the scenes several spectres still loomed. Not least that of Aerosmith , who not only pulled out of the event at the eleventh hour but also insisted their contribution to the official Make A Difference album (a version of The Doors ’ Love Me Two Times) be lifted from the final pressing, after privately expressing concern over where exactly all the money was actually going.

Then Ozzy threatened to pull out of the event the night before the first show when McGhee suddenly changed his placing on the bill from third to fourth, upgrading Mötley Crüe to the slot above Ozzy. McGhee took the threat seriously enough to return Ozzy to his original placing on the bill, just below the Scorpions and Bon Jovi, and Ozzy kept his promise and did the show.

What Mötley Crüe thought of this was only made clear 12 years later when The Dirt came out. According to Tommy, "Doc had told each band something different in order to get them to do the show. Jon Bon Jovi thought it was just another stop on his world headlining tour, while we thought it was supposed to be a small-scale, reduced set. Then the production manager broke the news to us that we’d been demoted. We were on before Ozzy and The Scorpions, I was fucking livid.

Doc was supposed to be our manager, looking out for our best interests, and he was favouring one of his newer clients, Bon Jovi, over us and the Scorpions, who, in Russia, were massive. 'Fuck you, Doc,' Nikki said to him. 'We didn’t fly all the way to Russia to be an opening act while Bon-fucking-Jovi gets to headline for an hour and a half. What’s up with that?'"

After the show was over, Tommy says, he ‘hunted Doc down and found him backstage. I walked right up to him and pushed him in his fat little chest, knocking him over onto the ground like a broken Weeble. As he lay there, Nikki broke the news: “Doc, you lied to us again. This time you’re fucking fired!”’

The last time I saw Jon Bon Jovi on that trip he was in Red Square, still looking for a cold beer.

“Have you discovered any of the night life here yet?” he asked me hopefully.

I shook my head. We stood there on the steps of St. Asille’s Cathedral in Red Square, along with all the other out-of-towners and tourists, waiting to watch the changing of the guard at the gates of the Kremlin. I don’t think either of us knew what difference any of it really made…

It’ll be alright on the night…

Amid all the backstage chaos, just how did the Moscow shows go down?  

Despite the behind-the-scenes bickering – Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee even punched out promoter Doc McGhee when he realised headliners Bon Jovi were to use pyrotechnics, something all the bands had been told was strictly off limits – music-wise the Moscow Music Peace Festival was a triumph. 

Against all the egotistical odds, each band finally took to the stage and played six songs. Skid Row stormed through a set that featured The Sex Pistols’ Holidays In The Sun , Ozzy Osbourne mixed his own solo material ( Shot In The Dark and Suicide Solution ) with a couple of Black Sabbath classics ( Sweet Leaf, Paranoid ) to a huge response. 

Cinderella were at the height of their powers – turning in a set that included high-voltage versions of Falling Apart At The Seams and Coming Home , while Mötley Crüe channelled their anger into a ball of punkish energy with a ferocious set that featured Girls Girls Girls and Wild Side . 

The Scorpions were given a huge reception – they were arguably the most popular band on the bill back then – and Gorky Park held their own. 

Topping it off, Jon Bon Jovi showed his prowess for courting popularity with the locals by wearing a Russian army coat and hat as the band tore through a show that included Blood On Blood, Wanted Dead Or Alive and Lay Your Hands On Me . Both nights finished in a memorable jam session; members of all the bands joined by drummer Jason Bonham took on Elvis’s Hound Dog (first night), Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally (second night) and Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll (both nights).

Mick Wall is the UK's best-known rock writer, author and TV and radio programme maker, and is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books, including definitive, bestselling titles on Led Zeppelin ( When Giants Walked the Earth ), Metallica ( Enter Night ), AC/DC ( Hell Ain't a Bad Place To Be ), Black Sabbath ( Symptom of the Universe ), Lou Reed, The Doors ( Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre ), Guns N' Roses and Lemmy. He lives in England.

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Take this opportunity to learn more about the Russian writer Lev Tolstoy. During the visit to the museum you will see part of a vast collection of exhibits connected to Tolstoy and his family including books and personal...

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This apartment museum located close to Patriarch Ponds became the prototype of the "bad apartment" described in the novel "The Master and Margarita." Currently the museum's collection includes more than three thousand...

• Schedule Monday not available Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12:00 - 19:00 Thursday 14:00 - 21:00

Express to Russia specializes in Moscow city excursions, an essential part of your Moscow travel itinerary. We offer a large variety of day excursions throughout Moscow and its suburbs. From  Red Square  and the  Kremlin  to a city tour of Moscow’s  Old Arbat Street  or the  Moscow metro , an excursion specializing in Stalin and the KGB and much more. No travel to Moscow is complete without taking a few of our day tours that most meet your interest in Russia.

Moscow City Tours

Our Moscow day excursions can be organized on foot or with transport. All of our excursions are led by an experienced guide, specializing in the subject matter of the tour. Excursions are privately run and can be booked for 1 traveler all the way up to large groups of travelers. We run our Moscow city tours in every season. This is because travel to Moscow is excellent in any season. In the summer take a stroll through  Gorky Park  or take a riverboat tour along the Moskva River. In the winter, see Moscow’s winter wonderland of ice and snow and then settle in for a cozy lunch or dinner with a hot bowl of borsht. In winter, spring and fall, you can beat the crowds at all of Moscow’s main attractions and museums. Regardless of when you come, Express to Russia will make sure that your trip is one of your best vacations ever.

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Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker

• Date Dec. 04 , 2018
• Event Starts 7:00 PM
• Venue Fine Arts Theatre
• Doors Open 1 Hour Prior To Performance
• Ticket Prices $30.50-$177.50
• Availability On Sale Now
• Seating Chart View Seating Chart

Event Details

Christmas is coming and so is the one and only Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker. Presenting world class Russian artists, hand-painted sets, Russian Snow Maidens, and jubilant Nesting Dolls – Great Russian Nutcracker brings the Christmas spirit to life for all ages. “Kids wide-eyed with delight!” says the New York Times. Experience the Dove of Peace Tour, spreading goodwill in over 100 cities across North America. Get seats now for the whole family and make memories for a lifetime at Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker!

Additional Ticket Information

Ticket Prices

$177.50 - platinum.

• Floor: Row F, Seats 22-36
• Meet-n-Greet and Photo Opportunity with the world-renowned Moscow Ballet Ballerinas and Danseurs
• Take Home Gifts including one-of-a-kind, Moscow Ballet branded memorabilia! *Please note! Platinum Experience patrons meet the Moscow Ballet Tour Manager in venue lobby 45 minutes prior to opening curtain in order to guarantee the personal Meet-n-Greet. Moscow Ballet cannot guarantee a Meet-n-Greet if patrons are not in the venue lobby 45 minutes prior to curtain.

$104.50 - Gold Circle

• Floor: Row B, Seats 9-33
• Floor: Row C, Seats 10-34
• Floor: Row D, SEats 13-37
• Includes Moscow Ballet Gift Package including:
• Moscow Ballet hand-crafted, wooden Nutcracker Doll
• Limited Edition Moscow Ballet Souvenir Program book filled with over 50 pages of stunning images.  Please note - Gold Circle patrons redeem Gift Packages at Moscow Ballet merchandise table prior to the performance.
• Floor: Row(s) A & E and G-N
• Floor: Row B, Seats 1-8 & 34-39
• Floor: Row C, Seats 1-9 & 35-42
• Floor: Row D, Seats 1-12 & 38-47
• Floor: Row F, Seats 1-21 & 37-55
• Floor: Rows O-V
• Balcony: Rows AA-EE
• Floor: Rows W-ZZ
• Balcony: Rows FF-LL