Live Aid hero to play Royal Hall

Sir Bob Geldof in Leeds. Picture Jim Moran.

Published on 21/04/2012 08:00

BOB Geldof is, arguably, better known for his political activism and attempts to end world poverty than for his tunes.

That’s not to say Geldof hasn’t produced some memorable songs; quite the opposite is true, and he’ll be proving as much when he visits Harrogate’s Royal Hall on Friday, May 25 as part of his current UK tour.

Not many musicians can accurately claim to have changed the world – Geldof can. Band Aid’s 1984 poverty anthem (co-written with Midge Ure) Do They Know It’s Christmas? topped the UK chart for five weeks and brought the plight of Ethiopia to national then global awareness.

It remains the second biggest-selling single in UK singles chart history.

The single’s success spawned the immense Live Aid, a rock-concert titan of 16 hours broadcast live on UK TV and radio that raised more than £150million for famine relief and earned Geldof an honorary knighthood at 34.

Amazing charity work aside, there is of course also his work with The Boomtown Rats, the 1970s/80s rock and punk-led group that had two number ones, including Rat Trap and controversial 1979 number one smash I Don’t Like Mondays, penned in response to the California school shooting carried out by Brenda Ann Spencer. Geldof left the group in 1986 to work on his autobiography, Is That It?, and forge a solo career, as well as keeping up hiswell-earned reputation as rock music’s potty-mouthed philanthropist.

Geldof’s latest LP, How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell, was released on Mercury Records last year to strong reviews.

His first album since 2001’s Sex, Age & Death and his fifth as a solo artist (it’s his eleventh if you include The Boomtown Rats’ back catalogue), the album featured 14 new compositions recorded with long-time collaborator Pete Briquette.

l For tickets, telephone the box office on 01423 502116 or book online at www.harrogatetheatre.co.uk

Lifestyle

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Live Aid hero to play Royal Hall

Top stories

Lifestyle