By Ted Hayes, Bristol Phoenix

October 26, 2006

Bob Geldof, who grew up poor in Dublin, Ireland, found fame as a rock star in the early 1980s and parlayed his success into a 20-year effort to eradicate hunger in Africa, told Roger Williams University students Tuesday night that real change is possible, as long as people focus on their strengths.
Sir Geldof—who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his efforts to defeat hunger—came to Roger Williams as part of the school's Civil Discourse speakers series. It was ironic, Geldof told the crowd of about 600, as he's not often been known for that trait.

"People in Britain know me particularly well for the incivility of my discourse," he joked.

Still, Geldof has been a powerful force over the past two decades, and world leaders are listening. After his band, the Boomtown Rats, rose to fame in the early 1980s and then declined, he turned his attention to a cause that wasn't as far afield as one might think—the plight of Africa. Using his influences in the music business, he founded BandAid, Live Aid and, last July, Live 8, a worldwide series of simultaneous concerts designed to put pressure on world leaders to eliminate Third World debt.

Live 8, which drew millions of kids across the globe, was a success, and played a significant political role in the United States' recent decision to cancel the debt of many of the world's poorest countries.

"You should be very, very proud of yourselves," he told the audience. "But there's still more to do."
Such has been the theme of Geldof's life.

His mother died when he was six or seven and his father, a traveling towel salesman, was seldom home. Growing up without supervision, he said, gave him a unique bent that would eventually steer him toward Africa.

"I was left to my own devices," he said, and as a result became opinionated and self-assured. At age 13, he heard about Apartheid, the state-sponsored discrimination system in South Africa, and it seemed abhorrent.

"The idea that a person could be less than another just because of the color of their hair or skin seemed so implausibly laughable that I started the anti-Apartheid movement in Dublin."

That might seem revolutionary, he joked, but the reality was "I just wanted to shag girls."

Though he was mostly unsuccessful on that front, social activism at an early age appealed to him, and he soon fell in with a group of Dublin activists who roamed the then-poor city at night to feed the dregs of society—drunks, whores, the homeless. He was attracted to the group because there was no preaching, no missionary work and no judging:
"They simply wanted to help," he said. "They just struck me as far more interesting than anything I was learning in school."

Soon, school fell by the wayside and Geldof hit the road. He worked his way up to Vancouver, Canada to work in the gold mines, and soon went to work for an alternative newspaper. Returning home to Ireland several years later, he began efforts to start his own paper and started playing with what would become the Boomtown Rats.

The band's first gig, he said, was a revelation.
Over the first 90 minutes, he turned his back on the audience, petrified of what they might be doing. But after turning around, he said, he was shocked to see 30 people dancing. After the band came back out following a short break, a woman in the audience propositioned him, and he knew he'd found his calling.

"We never looked back," he said.

Boomtown Rats found moderate success in the United States and Europe, and most people know the band best for "I don't like Mondays," a song Geldof wrote that takes its title from the explanation a California girl gave police when they asked her why she'd brought a gun to school on a Monday morning and shot down her classmates. The song was banned by many radio stations in the U.S., but ended up being their biggest hit.

Still, by 1984, the Rats' heyday had passed. Their newest record wasn't selling, and Geldof was starting to worry about the future. He had a wife and baby to support, and he feared his best days were past him.

One night in 1984, though, it all changed. He and his wife were flipping through the channels when he came across a report on the Ethiopian famine on the BBC, or British Broadcasting Channel.

"It put my pathetic problems into a terrible perspective," he said. "Once knowing about it and doing nothing, you become complicit."

Throughout his speech, Geldof told students to "create your own reality," using your unique gifts and resources to affect the change you want to see. What could he do?

"Only write tunes," he said, so he decided to put that talent to work. Dropping a five-pound note into a donation jar didn't seem like enough.

So he sat down and wrote "Do They Know It's Christmas," a song that spoke of starvation in Africa in the face of incredible abundance in Europe and the rest of the developed world.

Shopping the song around to friends—Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, Bono of U2, and others in the music business—he got a good response and the resulting group, BandAid, recorded the song.

He'd hoped to raise about 72,000 pounds through record sales, but the record became a worldwide phenomenon, eventually earning 8 million.

The Boomtown Rats a distant memory, he was off and running. His next project, the 1985 Live Aid concert in London and Philadelphia, raised $200 million, and the efforts continue.

His July 2005 Live 8 concerts grew out of meetings he had with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the subsequent formation of the Commission on Africa. The goal of the concerts was to pressure world leaders to drop the debt of the world's poorest nations, increase and improve aid, and negotiate fairer trade rules in the interest of poorer countries. When the concerts were held in July 2005, millions of kids showed up. Though the concerts were free and didn't raise a penny, they were overwhelmingly successful. The sheer numbers of kids who showed up had the desired effect—they put pressure on world leaders, including the United States—to adopt fairer policies toward the Third World and forgive much of their debt.

"Two days before Live 8, Bush came out and announced he would cancel unpayable debt to the world's poorest countries."

Today, Geldof continues his efforts. Still angry at the injustices he sees everyday, he nevertheless believes that real change is possible, if people think about the problems, not just the symptoms, and apply their talents to them. Money isn't always the answer, he said, nor is good will.

"You have to create your own reality," he said.
"Do what you can do, whatever that is.”