Off The Record

Rip It Up, Issue 111, 1 October 1986, Page 34

Off The Record

Is That It? by Bob Geldof (Viking, $32.99) James Joyce wrote that to survive as an Irishman the only answers were Silence, Exile and Cunning. Well, Bob Geldof doesn’t live in Irleland anymore, his achievements show a wealth of cunning, and he’s never been silent. Condemned in his own country for being in the “Irish Sex Pistols,” darling and then whipping-boy of the music press, he is now one of the most respected human beings of all time.

Geldof had a tough childhood in Dublin; his mother died when he was very young and he only saw his salesman father at weekends. A misfit at school, he has suffered throughout his life from a directionlessness. Only when he finds a purpose, as in social work during his teens, music journalism in Canada, the rise of the Boomtown Rats, and the Ethiopian famine, does he really reach his potential. That’s also when this rollicking, dictated autobiography gets going. When he’s up and going for it, the hits are happening or Band Aid is snowballing, the pages fly by. In between are valuable passages of self-doubt, the most perceptive inside story on the rise and decline of a minor-league rock band since lan Hunter’s Diary of a Rock and Roll Star, behind-the-scenes accounts of the politics of Live Aid, and a lengthy account of the problems of Africa. From this account, one senses that the reason the music press turned on Geldof in the fading days of the Boomtown Rats was that he threatened them. He knew how to play their game, and it didn’t suit them to have someone else calling the shots. So “Modest Bob” he became, a perennial runningjoke, sometimes justifiably. It is undeniable however that the hits of the Boomtown Rats, ‘Looking After Number One,’ ‘Rat Trap,’ and ‘I Don’t Like Mondays,’ deserved to be hits.

Geldof is typically Irish. He displays the traits which are the most endearing — but also damaging — of the Irish character. His gift of the blarney and flaunting of conventions gets the job done, but also gets him into deep water. One thing this entertaining, thoughtful book does is put the

importance of the pop music world in perspective. Bob Geldof gets up the noses of a lot of people, but one has to admire him. As the Irish statesman Edmund Burke said, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” I only hope Geldof now finds something the equal of Band Aid to occupy his talents. Chris Bourke More Dark Than Shark by Eno & Mills, with commentaries by Rick Poynor (Faber & Faber, $63.49) More Dark Than Shark is essentially a collection of interpretations by illustrator Russell Mills of the songs of his friend Brian Eno. These are supplemented by statements, quotes and commentaries on their working methods and motives by both Eno and Mills, and a handful of longer pieces by Eno’s biographer Rick Poynor. At first I suspected something slightly askew at the very heart of this intriguing and unusual work. I doubted its premise that Eno’s entirely novel and, at its best, quite magical alloy of intellect and pop could be crystallised graphically to produce results as similarly affecting as the music itself. Eno’s first few post-Roxy albums were a revelation to me personally (the later and ambient music I respect but feel little compulsion towards), and I was half expecting this lavish book to be an opportunistic and unconvincing conceit, but not so. More Dark Than Shark is a fascinating exercise, imaginatively carried out. Mills’s contention that his illustration for ‘Tzima N’arki’ is “probably the least reverential to the song of the whole set but, partly for this reason one of the most successful," points to the impetus his work has to work at a tangent to the music rather than lean on it.

And so a growing sense of this book’s own validity has largely dispelled my misgivings. If it sounds at all interesting to you, the chances are that you will find it a real treat. The accompanying text is enlightening, the design by Malcolm Garrett appropriately eccentric, and the printing superb. Terence Hogan

Elvis Costello by Mick St Michael (Omnibus) A fairly perfunctory run through the career of Declan Patrick McManus. The back cover claims, with some justification, that Elvis is the most talented British songwriter of the last decade, and, as such, you’d be right to expect a little more depth. This however is little more than a compendium of

facts from back issues of the NME. Neither Elvis, or anyone close to him, have been interviewed, unacceptable considering the enigmatic nature of the subject, and few opinions are expressed save the bizarre one that Goodbye Cruel World is a much better album than Imperial Bedroom, a violent reversal of my view. Pass. Simon Grigg