No Such Thing as Society
by Andy McSmith · 19 Nov 2010 · 613pp · 151,140 words
United Kingdom. First on was Paula Yates, in a jeans suit with close-cropped dyed white hair, carrying her bewildered infant daughter, Fifi Trixibelle. Next, Bob Geldof, scruffy in sweatshirt and jeans jacket. He was hardly still all day, running on adrenaline, rushing from his seat on to the stage to perform
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, the government announced that in future no one under the age of twenty-one would be protected by wages councils. Teenagers who had responded to Bob Geldof’s call to give to the needy would be repaid with lower-paid jobs. The government believed that lower pay would lead to more jobs
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Shirebrook, on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, former strikers and strike-breakers still drank in separate pubs, twenty years later.38 CHAPTER 9 FEED THE WORLD Bob Geldof had been through the roller-coaster of show-business since moving to London from his native Ireland. His band, The Boomtown Rats, turned down a
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its pictures of ‘people who were so shrunken by starvation that they looked like beings from another planet’, which had a life-changing effect on Bob Geldof. In his words: ‘The freefall I slipped into upon leaving school in an endless round of useless jobs and self-abuse finally closed.’5 In
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, the charity had dispersed £174m in grants among forty-three African countries and in every county of the UK. After the triumph of Band Aid, Bob Geldof was talking about following up the record with a live concert, without being entirely sure that it was achievable. The breakthrough came when he received
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in Africa, because it is not a problem that can be solved by charitable donations, even on the scale generated by the Live Aid concert. Bob Geldof realized very early in his campaign that it was never going to be enough. By his figures, the £8m generated by the initial Band Aid
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was invited to give a video address to the Live Aid concert, but decided not to, though she wrote a supporting letter. When she met Bob Geldof at an awards ceremony a few days later, Thatcher told him: ‘We all, you know, have our own charities.’30 It says something for Thatcher
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department headed by a cabinet minister, but not under Thatcher. Her lengthy memoirs have nothing to say on Africa, Third World aid, Live Aid or Bob Geldof, subjects that just did not interest her. CHAPTER 10 LOADSAMONEY The act that defined the second half of the 1980s was Harry Enfield’s routine
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and £91 a week’. Hansard, 17 July 1985, col. 330. 2. People, 14 July 1985. 3. Bob Geldof, with Paul Vallely, Is That It?, Macmillan, 1986, p. 301. 4. Brenda Polan, Guardian, 3 October 1985. 5. Bob Geldof, Is That It?, p. 300. 6. David Pallister, ‘The arms deal they called the dove: how
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and UDM are from the Certification Officer. 38. Barrie Clement and Ian Herbert, ‘Still Fighting, 20 Years On’, Independent, 5 March 2004. CHAPTER 9 1. Bob Geldof (with Paul Vallely), Is That It?, Guild Publishing, 1986, pp. 213–4, 215. 2. BBC News, 15 November 1984. 3. This information comes from an
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1984, now in the Cabinet Office archives. 4. Note by Charles Powell, private secretary to the prime minister, 29 October 1984; Cabinet Office archives. 5. Bob Geldof, Is That It?, p. 10. 6. Midge Ure, If I Was . . ., the Autobiography, Virgin, 2004, p. 132. 7. Boy George with Spencer Bright, Take It
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–4. 8. Martin Kemp, True – The Autobiography of Martin Kemp, Orion, London, 2000, pp. 113–4. 9. Midge Ure, If I Was . . ., p. 145. 10. Bob Geldof, Is That It?, p. 218. 11. Daily Mirror, 7 June 1983. 12. John Wilson, ‘Chasing the Blues Away’, New Statesman, 15 May 2008. 13. The
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. 22. Liverpool Echo, 7 January 1985. 23. Joe Haines, Maxwell, Guild Publishing, London, 1988, p. 399. 24. Midge Ure, If I Was . . ., p. 151. 25. Bob Geldof, Is That It?, p. 257. 26. Ibid., p. 258. 27. Ibid., p. 261. 28. Laura Jackson, Bono, The Biography, Piatkus, London, 2001, p. 70. 29
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, 16 January 1983. The full text is on the website of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation at www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105087. 30. Bob Geldof, Is That It?, p. 314. CHAPTER 10 1. Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie, Stick it up Your Punter – The rise and fall of the Sun
I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum · 19 Sep 2011 · 821pp · 227,742 words
our record?” Chapter 20 “DON’T BE A WANKER ALL YOUR LIFE” “DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS?,” “WE ARE THE WORLD,” AND LIVE AID BOB GELDOF LEARNED ABOUT THE DISASTROUS famine in Ethiopia while watching TV, and he resolved to raise money to feed starving Africans. Geldof was not a music
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for the Boomtown Rats, when their career was on the way out and the band had no money. One day my boss, Tony Powell, said, “Bob Geldof’s gonna make this charity record over the weekend. You need to shoot a video and figure out how to do it for free. And
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complain. Everybody was really, really friendly—I think Simon Le Bon came up and gave me a hug. In front of the press, of course. BOB GELDOF, artist: The ’80s were characterized by greed, in effect. But you must understand, I missed that. To me, the ’80s were characterized by overwhelming generosity
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company. CURT SMITH: We’d been touring for a year, really hard work. We had five days off and planned a holiday in Hawaii. Then Bob Geldof announced that we were playing Live Aid. He never asked us. Geldof thought he was so powerful that if he announced it, we’d have
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’t going to make a difference to the amount of money raised. So we went on holiday, because that was the only break we had. BOB GELDOF: I didn’t lie or blackmail very much. I had to announce the gig, and I realized that talking on the phone to a band
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cat was out of the bag, the show spiraled from there. It was the year after Live Aid, and we gave a special award to Bob Geldof. They introduce him, he gets a standing ovation, and the first words out of Geldof’s mouth were “I find it amazing in these times
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and record executive, was the executive vice president of programming for MTV from 1982 to 1987. He currently owns a media consultancy firm, AfterPlay Entertainment. BOB GELDOF fronted the Boomtown Rats, starred in The Wall, and was the impetus behind “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and Live Aid. BETSY LYNN GEORGE
Philanthrocapitalism
by Matthew Bishop, Michael Green and Bill Clinton · 29 Sep 2008 · 401pp · 115,959 words
formation of One. Its roots extend back to the Band Aid record of 1984 and Live Aid concert of 1985, organized by Irish rock musician Bob Geldof and featuring Bono. As well as raising lots of money, these had generated massive publicity about the problems of developing countries and turned a generation
A History of Modern Britain
by Andrew Marr · 2 Jul 2009 · 872pp · 259,208 words
made the later movement different was the fusion of celebrity, music and television to raise unheard-of sums. It began with the Irish rock star Bob Geldof, and Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, who were shocked by news coverage of the 1984 Ethiopian famine by the BBC’s Michael Buerk. They
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
by Dambisa Moyo · 17 Mar 2009 · 225pp · 61,388 words
’s economic problems should be conducted by non-African white men. From the economists (Paul Collier, William Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs) to the rock stars (Bono, Bob Geldof), the African discussion has been colonized as surely as the African continent was a century ago. The simple fact that Dead Aid is the work
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governments for not doing enough – and governments respond in kind, fearful of losing popularity and desperate to win favour. Bono attends world summits on aid. Bob Geldof is, to use Tony Blair’s own words, ‘one of the people that I admire most’. Aid has become a cultural commodity. Millions march for
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year as the Beatle George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh) had demanded that the world respond to human catastrophe. Consciousness was raised several notches with Bob Geldof’s 13 July 1985 Live Aid Concert where, with 1.5 billion people watching, public discourse became a public disco. Live Aid had not only
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times, the Irish musician Bono has made his case directly to the US President, George Bush, in a White House visit in October 2005, and Bob Geldof was a guest at the 2005 G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, and advised the UK’s Commission to Africa. It would appear, despondent with their
Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
by David Rothkopf · 18 Mar 2008 · 535pp · 158,863 words
celebrities have transcended their pop culture status and aspired to use their unrivaled visibility to generate greater influence. Musicians like Bono or Peter Gabriel or Bob Geldof have become regulars at elite assemblies like Davos, but they can also be found behind the scenes, working with government leaders to advance causes like
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. For others, it can be the power to raise awareness of an issue, to fuel passions and initiate action and mobilize resources, as have Bono, Bob Geldof, Angelina Jolie, and Shakira, the Colombian pop star and UNICEF ambassador. When Shakira tells Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, “Education is not a luxury, it is
The Challenge for Africa
by Wangari Maathai · 6 Apr 2009 · 288pp · 90,349 words
the international media, donor agencies, or governments as Ms. Stone and others like her from the United States or Europe can. Some celebrities, such as Bob Geldof and Bono, who was also in the room that day, speak out forcefully about how current economic and political systems continue to harm Africa—views
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power, to try to help. Indeed, it was pictures of this kind beamed by the BBC from Ethiopia in 1984 that so disturbed the singers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure that they wrote the pop single “Do They Know It's Christmas?” to support Ethiopian famine relief. Their efforts grew into the
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in the developed world. To a degree, these governments may need to be shamed into taking on these problems. An example of this was when Bob Geldof visited Ethiopia in 1985 to see for himself the effects of the famine devastating these proud and confident people. It was only because a Kenyan
No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy
by Linsey McGoey · 14 Apr 2015 · 324pp · 93,606 words
, that launched them on their current mission’. They note that: ‘Among those who have reported some form of conversion experience are people as diverse as Bob Geldof, Bono, Fazle Abed of BRAC, Bunker Roy of Barefoot College, Roy Prosterman of the Rural Development Institute, and, in the corporate mainstream, Wal-Mart CEO
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Walmart stock. Why Elkington and Hartigan uphold him as a ‘social entrepreneur’ isn’t clear. Let’s look at the others mentioned above. Bono and Bob Geldof’s widely reported global aid efforts have invited praise and derision in equal measure. Geldof’s 2014 re-release of his perennial Christmas single, ‘Do
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Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 3. 8Ibid., 12. 9Barry Malone, ‘We Got This, Bob Geldof, so Back Off’, Al Jazeera, 18 November 2014, aljazeera.com. 10Jeffrey Skoll, ‘Preface’, in Alex Nicholls, ed., Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change
The Hidden History of Burma
by Thant Myint-U
Kyi herself came under blistering criticism from once staunch allies in the human rights community for not doing more for the Rohingya. Erstwhile friends, from Bob Geldof to the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, expressed disappointment at her inaction, and St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, which she’d attended, removed her
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entitled Morning Glory. A couple of months later, the cities of Oxford and Dublin stripped her of the awards they had given her in 2012. Bob Geldof, who had sung for her that year, said, “We should not have any truck with this woman . . . it’s ridiculous, but she’s sort of
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: ‘Silence is too high a price,’” Guardian, September 8, 2017. 28. “He Admits Giving It Up Is ‘a PR Stunt’, but What Happens Now to Bob Geldof’s Freedom of Dublin?,” The Journal, November 13, 2017. 29. Aye Aye Soe, author interview, August 10, 2018. 30. Joe Freeman and Annie Gowen, “Burma
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
by William Easterly · 1 Mar 2006
Tony Blair put the cause of ending poverty in Africa at the top of the agenda of the G8 Summit in Scotland in July 2005. Bob Geldof assembled well-known bands for “Live 8” concerts on July 2, 2005, to lobby the G8 leaders to “Make Poverty History” in Africa. Veterans of
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poverty. In June 2005, the New York Times ran an editorial advocating a Big Plan for Africa titled “Just Do Something.” Live 8 concert organizer Bob Geldof said, “Something must be done; anything must be done, whether it works or not.21 Something, anything, any Big Plan would take the pressure off
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