Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof and founding band member Pete Briquette were back where it all began on Thursday.
The two were at the Bolton Street campus of the now Technological University of Dublin to mark the 50th anniversary of their band’s first gig at what was then the College of Technology on Halloween night in 1975.
The pair unveiled a commemorative plaque on the front of the building.
Speaking at the event, Geldof said he “would have walked it” if he had been supported by political parties to stand in the presidential election and described the Rats as the soundtrack to a generation that rejected church abuse and corrupt government, among other ills.
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He said the band’s songs were the “first pushback against the Ireland we grew up in, you know, no more”.
“We’re just not going to have a corrupt government. We don’t want murder in the North. We don’t want the church abusing our children,” he said.
Geldof said working in an abattoir in Ballsbridge gave him the inspiration for the song Rat Trap. “You know, [we said] we’ve had enough now. And I think the Rats was the first roar of that. I honestly do think that,” he said.
“It was a generational rejection, and we just happened to be the soundtrack of that and provided the local songs for it. And I’m really proud of that.”
He said he changed the band’s name from The Nightlife Thugs to Boomtown Rats a couple of nights before their first gig.
“The names of bands were really boring in Dublin ... Just they meant nothing: Supply Demand & Curve (a 1970s Dublin band); what’s that?”
The new title was inspired by the name of a gang in folk singer Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound for Glory. “I thought that’s great. And the others really didn’t care,” he said.
However, Briquette interrupted to say: “I liked it immediately.”
Geldof said he had a difficult time before the band formed. “I was desperate in my personal life, I was desperate. I had nowhere to go, nowhere left to go.”
He said the secret source of “rock ‘n’ roll” is “attitude and tunes”.
The Boomtown Rats 50th-anniversary tour is running in the UK until mid-November. In March and April Geldof completed his ‘An Evening with Bob Geldof’ tour across Australia and New Zealand. The event included storytelling, acoustic performances and multimedia presentations.
[ Bob Geldof reveals how chat with Taoiseach ended thoughts of Áras bidOpens in new window ]
