BOB GELDOF

From his work with The Boomtown Rats to bringing us Band Aid with its enduring legacy, and the unforgettable Live Aid gigs, the outspoken music-maker has made an outstanding contribution to UK pop culture

- By NICK REILLY

Ask Bob Geldof any question on any given day, and you'll likely get an answer which boomerangs to one corner of his life where there's a cracking story at hand, before it whizzes backs to the original point. In this instance, Rolling Stone UK has just asked the venerable rock legend and revered humanitarian how he feels about accepting The Lifetime Achievement Award, supported by Defender, at the ZYN Rolling Stone UK Awards 2025.

The typically Geldof answer which emerges sees him immediately regale us with stories of his days spent as an illegal immigrant in 1970s Canada, where he dug for gold in the Yukon. While there, he spent time in Vancouver after telling local paper The Georgia Straight a little white lie that he was a visiting journalist, allowing him to blag a role as the paper's music editor.

“They were looking at everything, politics included, through the lens of rock 'n' roll, and found people like Hunter Thompson were rock 'n' roll people, and there was a fizziness to the writing,” he recalls of the paper. “I ended up getting 50 per cent of the paper and we used pretty good writers, but then I got popped out of the country because the Mounties found out I was there illegally. So, yeah, getting this award really wraps together a lot of things that have happened in my life. So, I'm thrilled."

Although, with a note of caution, he adds: "The problem is with this is that these are the rock 'n' roll equivalent of gold watches. It's like to say, 'There you go, mate. Now will you please fuck off?' For the record, Bob, we'd tell you to do no such thing.

But the fact remains, however, that the man from Dún Laoghaire has lived a life so wide-ranging and eclectic that anything less than answers like these simply wouldn't suffice. Or, as he puts it himself: "If someone's trying to put a nice little fucking ribbon around my life, I just don't go like that."