Following the euphoria of the Band Aid single and the Live Aid concerts, there was speculation as to whether Bob might turn his back on music completely, to pursue other humanitarian causes. But such thoughts were dispelled by his first solo album, Deep in the Heart of Nowhere, in 1986.
As Bob himself told Hot Press, “The title seems really apposite because that’s precisely where I was at the time. I wanted to go back to making pop music, and people literally thought this was so trite. What they wanted me to do was save the entire fucking universe. They really didn’t give a shite about whatever I was going to do musically. But I did. I knew making music was the only thing that gave me any sense of self or satisfaction. Plus, I’d just spent a year and a half witnessing things that no human being should ever have to see. The Rats could have played quite a few of those tracks, so I hadn’t found a voice that I could use for myself, and I wasn’t sure where to go next.”
Where he went next was to record his second solo effort – but in doing so, to everything more or less to chance.
“I’d make it my business not to know any of the musicians, and I’d only meet them on the first day,” he recounted later. “Out of that came Vegetarians of Love. It’s very much of its time. Don’t forget, you had The Waterboys, you had The Wonder Stuff, The Pogues – the raggle-taggle stuff was all happening, and, through that, I was able to hear the stuff that I would have grown up with but previously dismissed out of hand,” he recalled.
1993’s The Happy Club was probably his own personal favourite of the three solo albums to date.
As he elaborated, “It’s the most overtly rock-and-roll, an absolute document of the moment. We were trawling through Europe as this vast empire collapsed. The Rats had done Eastern Europe, which was always fucking horrible. It was a gigantic prison state. It was worse than grim, and then suddenly we were thrown into this exuberant party as all these states collapsed. But also in the political void, dangerous nationalism was on the rise, and, being a Paddy, I’m alert to it.”
Sex, Age And Death came next, in 2001. By that stage his personal life was in turmoil. The man acclaimed by many for saving countless lives had been through the wringer in his own.
His wife Paula had left him for INXS singer Michael Hutchence – and, in a tragedy that would haunt him, and in different ways shape his life and his thinking, had committed suicide. He later admitted, “My life was fucking ruined. It took me a long, long time to feel able to breathe. Pete, my lifelong mate, would come around every day and set up his bits and pieces. I barely acknowledged his presence. I’d grunt occasionally. Eventually, without really thinking there was any musical plan or even any coherent thought, I’d just bang away on the guitar and gradually, over the course of 18 months, stuff came together, I was quite literally unmanned. Every single sense had gone.
“So, out of it came Sex Age and Death, which I think is a really fucking good record. It’s almost like it’s not my record. I can be objective about the others, but not this one. It’s divorce porn, really. The problem with anyone who does this stuff is that you only seem to be able to get a grip on what’s happened to you through the mechanism of writing songs. The songs themselves seem to explain what’s happened, though you’re not aware of it at the time.”
It took the unveiling of Great Songs Of Indifference – The Bob Geldof Anthology 1986-2000, which was released in 2005, to enable us to put some perspective on his solo input while we parked his humanitarian work temporarily out of sight.
The anthology repackaged the four solo albums plus two dozen new tracks, and emphasized that while Geldof has a Ray Davies-like eye for the details of everyday life and the hint of Dylanesque way with language and melody, he can also give his work a truly contemporary edge. Indeed, sometimes you get the lot within the same song.
As a Hot Press review at the time argued, the main solo hits ‘Love Or Something’, ‘This Is The World Calling’ and ‘The Great Song Of Indifference’ would be enough to guarantee Geldof a place in rock’s Hall of Fame. But they merely represent the surface of what Geldof was at, and the tracks omitted from official releases underpin the quality of the released material.
‘Sighs And Whispers’ is a delicious blend of doo-wop and Dylan. ‘Two Dogs’ gets quite industrial and ‘The Original Miss Jesus’ is truly mesmerising, while the country-lite ‘Harvest Moon’ would fit neatly into John Prine’s catalogue.
Through his solo work, Bob Geldof emerges as an astute, witty and literate writer and composer, a man who wears his heart and influences on his sleeve and who is not afraid to take risks, even if it means tripping over now and then.
Same as he ever was.b