Bob Geldof would happily swap the 'St Bob, Martyr Bob stuff' for a bit of interest in his latest musical venture, a four-CD box-set of 15 years of solo work, he tells Brian Boyd
'I hate being Mr F**kin' Save The Universe" says Bob Geldof. "This stupid St Bob, Martyr Bob stuff I read about myself - it's embarrassing and it's also very limiting."
He can't put a figure on the number of awards he has received since he started being "Mr Save the Universe" back in 1984, but he does know which was the most important one he received: a lifetime achievement award from the British music industry earlier this year at the annual Brit Awards. It had nothing to do with Michael Buerk, Ethiopia, Live Aid or Live 8; it was awarded solely for his songwriting contribution over the last 25 years.
This purely musical award has prompted a rash of activity. Last year, the entire Boomtown Rats back catalogue was released on CD format; and this week Geldof's entire solo work (underestimated, as it happens) is released in a four-album box-set format called Great Songs of Indifference: the Anthology 1986-2001.
Sitting in a private members' club in Soho (so snotty they won't allow you to use your mobile phone on the premises), he looks quite the dandy in a grey moleskin suit that looks like it costs a year's wages. A casual remark that he seems to have finally got his hair under some form of control is met with "thanks a f**kin' lot".
The story of his solo career began as he stood on the stage of Wembley Stadium in July 1985 with his band The Boomtown Rats. They were playing Live Aid, their biggest-ever audience. What only Geldof knew was that a week previously, The Boomtown Rats were dropped by their record company - after years of hit records, they were perceived to be a busted flush.
"I don't know if anybody knows this, but I was offered solo recording deals from Tonic for the Troops [the second Rats album] onwards," he says. "I remember being at some music industry thing not long after the Rats had broke through and Paul McCartney came over to me and told me how much he loved a song on Tonic for the Troops called Me and Howard Hughes. He knew the lyrics and everything. To give you some indication of what that meant to me, I still have the menu from that day."
It might have seemed a strange decision to drop The Boomtown Rats just before Live Aid, given that, in record company speak, the lead singer's profile was "global".
"We were supposed to keep going," he says. "We shopped around for a new deal, but all I kept hearing from people was that "you can have a deal, the rest of them can't; you write all the songs anyway and you're the face of the moment.
"Eventually, we did secure a new Boomtown Rats deal, but there was also a solo deal for me. I told the band: 'We'll do the band album during the day and I'll do the solo album by night. You have first pick of any of the songs I have, and if one album does well, it will boost the sales of the other, sort of like what happened with Rod Stewart and The Faces.' "
For a variety of reasons - mainly that the drummer and the keyboard player in the Rats were forming their own band - there never was another band album and Geldof didn't know who to get to play with him on his solo debut. "The guys in the band were the only ones I knew - and I was way too scared to use session musicians," he explains. "Eventually, Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics offered to help me out and then all these musicians - who had heard I was floundering - came to my rescue. Eric Clapton came in to do a guitar solo and U2 showed up as well."
The resulting album, Deep ithe Heart of Nowhere (1986), was released to a hugely expectant audience. He says, "BBC news had a story about it on the day it was released and I knew instantly I was f**ked" because of the sheer weight of expectation.
"In the previous year and a half, I had seen things that no one should ever have to see, and a lot of those experiences went on to the album."
He is a lot more sanguine about the follow-up album, The Vegetarians of Love: "That was late 1980s - everything was still good on the home front. It was the time of raggle-taggle and people such as Karl Wallinger, The Waterboys and The Pogues, and I'm really happy with that album".
It contains arguably Geldof's best song (either band or solo) in Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things (see panel, right). But by the time of the next one, The Happy Club, the world was a very different place.
"That was just after the fall of the Soviet empire and it was all about how when there is no external identifiable enemy out there, people turn in on themselves," Geldof says. "It was also about the rise of political correctness and designer labels and all of that. And after that album, my whole life fell apart."
It was, he says, a "Shakespearean tragedy", a story which has been well-documented. "There were three people involved, and sadly two are dead," he says.
The final album on the box-set, Sex, Age and Death, details a bleak time for him and still sounds like a weeping wound, even though it contains some of his most mature work to date. A deeply affecting song such as Pale White Girls is a million lifetimes away from numbers along the lines of She's So Modern, an early Rats hit.
"There's almost another album worth of songs from the Sex, Age and Death sessions and I've put these on the box-set," he says. "Two of them, Sighs and Whispers and Cool Blue Easy have Jeanne [Marine, his partner] and Fifi [his daughter] doing backing vocals. Jeanne's just been amazing, she had all this endless press to put with it - the "new girl", "the French girl" and all of that. Those were recorded when we were living with Fifi in this strange little house. They didn't go on the album because the 10 songs already on it were enough."
"That album sold enough for me to get a new recording deal. Now I know there's no huge demand whatsoever for another Bob Geldof album, but the desire to do one rises like vomit. I drive Jeanne mad by constantly picking up the guitar and jotting things down. Is my new stuff any good? I've no idea. Is anyone interested? Not really. Does that annoy me? No, it doesn't.
"I think what I do is good, and I don't mean that in a vain way. What I mean is, I don't think the songs are bad."
While he sets off on tour and wonders about another solo album, he jokingly, or so it seems, dismisses reports that he has been approached to become the next Irish president (see panel, far left).
As well as being a musician and activist/lobbyist, Geldof is also a sought-after speaker at business and corporate gatherings. Being Bob, he does tend to go off-message a lot and, in a speech to delegates at a business conference last week in London, he revealed his contempt for e-mails, saying they accomplished next to nothing and actually got in the way of real action.
"E-mails give a feeling of action, which is a mistake," he said. "The amount of work you can achieve each day can be directly linked to the number of e-mails you ignore. E-mails get in the way of serious consideration of what you want to do. I dread seeing lots of e-mails in my inbox - they impose an agenda on me and disrupt my plans for the day. Also, so many of them are badly phrased. The tone can be wrong. An ill-considered e-mail can destroy a deal. My advice is don't do e-mail."
Anyway, he's got his music head on him now and is glad to be at the post-Live 8 stage, where he can record and tour again.
"I'm a singer-songwriter, I'm not anything else" he says. "These songs put a reference around my life. They make what happens to me understandable to me ."
The four-CD box-set, Great Songs of Indifference (the Anthology 1986-2001), is out now. Bob Geldof plays Dublin's Vicar Street on Dec 6
