The remarkable Sir Bob Geldof
On Friday night in Takapuna, I had the opportunity to sit and have a, nearly four-hour, conversation with Sir Bob Geldof. He also sang a few tunes for me. I didn’t have much to say back – except much clapping, a little singing along, and standing to applaud for a long time when the conversation was over.
The lights went on and I suddenly remembered there were hundreds of others there too. Such was the quality of his story telling, the drama of his presentation and the skills of his music and voice that I had been in that wonderful zone of being focused to the exclusion of all else.
Born in 1951 Geldof, as he rightly recounts, is a phenomenon. As a viewer I was all the better able to engage as I knew something of the man and what he has gone about. The Boomtown Rats are way more than I Don’t Like Mondays and I have listened to them for many years. At 18, in 1985, I was madly in love with music and LIVE AID was a huge cultural moment. The purpose of it and the power of one man was also something of an awakening of compassion in me to do my best in life for those I could help … and to be prepared to challenge those who keep others downtrodden. I have read his 1986 biography Is that it? I vaguely followed the appalling mess of his marriage destruction and subsequent deaths of his former wife and Michael Hutchence (and in 2014, his 25 year old daughter Peaches). His global re-emergence in 2005 for LIVE 8 and the subsequent influence with world leaders (the then G7 plus one) to improve policy for African nations and get crippling debt cancelled. By then I had an economics degree and had been teaching the subject for 20 years so can claim a reasonable understanding of what was going on. Plus, I loved the music of LIVE 8 and much as I had LIVE AID and the concerts in 8 countries on that day are still a go-to for great entertainment.
But, of course, there was so much more to learn and take in and to try and bring great detail here would be to minimize the incredible performance. Geldof strode the stage recounting key stories, people and passages in his life. He seldom looked directly as us – but when he did it was for impact, and he achieved it. He juxtaposed humour, meaning and tragedy as so few could. His songs were poignant and powerful and yet he finished with the wonderful humour of The Great Song of Indifference with its twisted optimism in the face of all that he has struggled with and overcome.
In one sense it is terrible to be so brief but here is my take after two days reflection.
- A boy growing up in significant poverty in a small country who lost his mother, suddenly, at 6 years old and had a distant, desperate and disillusioned father who Geldof loathed until his late teens … can change the world for great good.
- A man who understands that the powerful have no more human value than the tiniest starving child (for example Margeret Thatcher vs Birhan Woldu). A man who understands how to truly and with great effect – speak the truth to power, unrelentingly, and who can gather people to himself and his cause … can effect great change.
- A man does not need to be anywhere near personally perfect to do great good.
New Zealanders are, by and large, timid people. We have also become accustomed to living in a nation that has, what Tom Scott called in Drawn Out; “a tall lichen syndrome” where people who do speak out, protest and demand better for others risk being called a “river of filth” or worse.
Geldof reminded me, and I would think many others there, that to live at all is a wonderful privilege and that to live with great purpose is the best way to acknowledge that. Near the end of Schindler’s List Itzhak Stern quotes the Talmud to Oskar Schindler, saying: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” It is a thought worth waking up to each day.
Thanks Sir Bob – for the conversation and everything you have done so far! It is still far from “It”.
Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
alwynpoole.substack.com
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