Rats heading for Tyneside as they mark anniversary

FIVE decades ago a young man named Patrick Cusack was desperate to get away from his Irish homeland - fearing his future was nothing but grim if he stayed.

- MARTIN NEAL

From left, Garry Roberts, Gerry Cott, Bob Geldof, Simon Crowe, Pete Briquette and Johnnie Fingers, April 1978

The only way to cross the Irish Sea to England for good was if you were a footballer or a pop star, he reckoned.

His football skills were never going to earn him a contract with Manchester United - but the young band he was in were true groundbreakers and attracting stacks of attention. And it was part of a massive musical and cultural explosion taking Britain by a storm.

That band was the Boomtown Rats - fronted by future Live Aid and Band Aid hero Bob Geldof - who went on to enjoy a string of big hits including the timeless chart topper I Don't Like Mondays and Rat Trap, the first New Wave No 1.

Now Patrick Cusack - more commonly known as Rats bass player Pete Briquette - is getting ready for a special tour to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary. And it includes a show at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead on Saturday, November 8. Fifty years ago music gave Pete and his bandmates the outlet and escape they so desperately craved.

“We all desperately wanted to get out of Ireland and that was one of the ways of escaping,” he explained.

“Back in the 60s and 70s you had two ways to do that - being a pop star or a footballer. There was no other avenue of escape.

“Also we were at the centre of the Punk cultural explosion at the time - we had the first New Wave hit record.

“So when we started in Ireland, there were no rock and roll venues or anything like that, so we were really starting from ground zero in Ireland as far as music of that sort was concerned.

“We played Ireland for about a year, creating venues, playing our own venues, by the end of that there were queues around the corner for all our gigs. So we were in a microcosm when we broke in Ireland.