Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof (born October 5, 1951, Dún Laoghaire, Ireland) is an Irish rock musician and philanthropic activist who formed the Boomtown Rats in the 1970s. He founded the charitable supergroup Band Aid in 1984 and organized the Live Aid concert in 1985 for the relief of famine in Ethiopia.

Early life

Geldof was born the grandson of Belgian immigrants in Dún Laoghaire, a town outside Dublin. He struggled to meet expectations in school and later claimed that he even drafted falsified reports on his performance to show his parents. Geldof attended Blackrock College in Dublin and worked several jobs before finding his way to the music scene, landing a job in Canada as a journalist with The Georgia Straight, an underground rock publication.

The Boomtown Rats

After returning to Ireland in 1975, Geldof formed the new-wave group the Boomtown Rats, adopting the name from a gang in folk singer Woody Guthrie’s autobiographical novel, Bound for Glory (1943). The band’s debut album, The Boomtown Rats, was released in the United Kingdom in 1977. Their second album, A Tonic for the Troops, was released the following year in the U.K. (1979 in the United States) and features the successful “Like Clockwork.” The Fine Art of Surfacing (1979) includes the international hit “I Don’t Like Mondays,” in which upbeat melodies juxtapose a somber lyrical inspiration: a shooting at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego in 1979. The band’s other albums include Mondo Bongo (1981), V Deep (1982), and In the Long Grass (1985).

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Solo career

Geldof occasionally acted in films and television, notably playing “Pink” in Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982). He launched a solo career following the dissolution of the Boomtown Rats in 1986 and released Deep in the Heart of Nowhere the same year. The Vegetarians of Love (1990), The Happy Club (1993), and How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell (2011) are his other solo albums.

Band Aid

Feeling compelled to act after watching a 1984 BBC documentary centering on famine in Ethiopia, Geldof wrote the track “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with his writing partner Midge Ure, front man of the band Ultravox. Geldof then recruited some of the biggest names in the British pop scene—Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, George Michael, Sting, Bono of U2, Phil Collins, Boy George, Bananarama, and others—to contribute to the recording, which was marketed under the name Band Aid. It was the number-one Christmas hit that year and the best-selling British pop single for nearly 15 years. More than three million copies were sold, with £0.96 (just over $1 in 2023) from each being donated to charity and all royalties going to the Band Aid Charitable Trust.

This success inspired similar all-star benefit projects, notably Quincy Jones’s United Support for Artists (USA) for Africa, which spawned the 1985 Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson composition “We Are the World.” Geldof was not involved in USA for Africa, but he was present at the recording of “We Are the World” in Los Angeles.

Live Aid

Encouraged by the support generated from Band Aid and USA for Africa, Geldof organized a fundraising event described as a “global jukebox”: Live Aid, a marathon 16-hour live music event. Two charity concerts took place on July 13, 1985, at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, featuring more than 70 performing acts, including Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Madonna. The artists played for free, generating more than $100 million, and garnered some 1.5 billion viewers over satellite broadcast and 170,000 live audience members between the two venues. Geldof also performed at Wembley, singing “I Don’t Like Mondays” with the Boomtown Rats and later joining in on “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” during the London finale.

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Geldof received an honorary knighthood in 1986, and his autobiography Is That It?, written with Paul Vallely and released that year, became a U.K. bestseller. He would go on to receive three Nobel Peace Prize nominations and the 2005 Man of Peace award. On the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, he collaborated with Ure once more to organize the Live 8 benefit concerts. His reflections on the efforts it took to organize Live Aid and its impact are captured in the documentary Live Aid: When Rock ‘n’ Roll Took on the World, released in 2025 to mark the event’s 40th anniversary.

Personal life

Geldof married British TV presenter Paula Yates in 1986. The couple had three daughters: Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches, and Pixie Geldof.

Geldof’s divorce from Yates in 1996 received much attention in the tabloids. That same year, Yates gave birth to a daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, fathered by singer Michael Hutchence of the Australian rock band INXS. Hutchence died by suicide the following year, and Yates died in 2000 from an accidental drug overdose. Geldof ensuingly adopted their daughter. In 2014 Peaches Geldof, who had worked as a TV presenter and a newspaper and magazine columnist, died at age 25 from a heroin overdose.

In 2015 Geldof married French actress Jeanne Marine.