Bob Geldof Does Not Sell Out

“WE want Bob!” “We want the Rats!” “Bring on the Boomtown Rats.”

Sadly, history notes that the many Bob Geldof fans at Live Aid had their demands drowned out by Freddie Mercury singing scales and Paul McCartney’s piano.

Happily, at the end of that memorable show, Bob did get to perform before 100,000 of his fans.

And now many more have been offered the chance to hear Bob play music at his concerts in Milan, Sicily and Rome.

But with no world to heel and, it not being Christmas time, only 45 fans bought tickets for Bob’s Milan gig.

Were Bob performing in a small family trattoria this would be rightly hailed as a success. But Bob was scheduled to play in Milan’s Civic Arena and it holds 12,000 people.

And though the collection of fans would have cheered his music with wild enthusiasm, the fear was that in saying “Thank you, Milan! You’ve been a wonderful crowd”, Bob may have looked less than magnificent.

The Times reports that Bob cancelled his tour. The paper hears a few fans – perhaps all of them – tell Bob that they had “come a long way to hear you”. “I’ve come a long way, too” he replied. “I’ve just come from South Africa — it took me 48 hours to get here.” And the Guardian hears him tell the fans, “There aren’t the right conditions for a concert, it’s not our fault."

So whose fault is it? Bob’s promoter in Italy, Francesco Iacovone, is bemused. “I don’t understand how an artist who has fans all over the world has failed to raise the interest of people in Rome and Milan," he tells the Guardian.

Iacovone then suspects foul play. “We have been boycotted,” he says, though, as the Times observes, he does not say by whom.

So Bob pulled out. And the thing is that while many of us know his spoken words, fewer care for his music.

Now, if Bob could just set such lines as “I think the impetus is still there. This continent cannot be allowed to die nightly in the pornography of poverty that is our news screens” to a broken back beat, he may yet pull a bigger crowd…

Posted: 24th, July 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink