`I love being Astala`s grandpa — but I have no

22
Monday 28 May 2012 evening standard
Feature
Like us on Facebook
facebook.com/eveningstandard
As Sir Bob Geldof sets up an African investment fund he tells Nick Curtis that he is proud of
‘I love being Astala’s grandpa
— but I have no intention of
changing nappies. F*** that’
H
getty
ere are some things that
Bob Geldof likes: the
Queen, The X Factor and
The Voice, skyscrapers “in
context” and his first
grandchild Astala. And here are some
things that Bob Geldof does not like:
loneliness, poverty, the Olympics, and
changing Astala’s nappy.
The famously grumpy 61-year-old
singer, activist for — and now investor in
— Africa and TV mogul, who brought up
his three daughters and their stepsister
on his own after the deaths of his ex-wife
Paula Yates and her lover Michael Hutchence, is initially adamant he will only talk
about music. Specifically his new tour,
which visits the Islington Assembly Hall
this Friday.
But Astala, the month-old son of his
formerly racey 23-year-old daughter
Peaches and her American fiancé, musician Thomas Cohen, seems to have softened Bob the Gob. As I discover when I
ask him if becoming a granddad will
influence his songwriting.
“Nope. No!” he says pugnaciously, and
improvises a syrupy ditty. “Gra-a-andad!
Grandaddly-deedly!” Then he smiles.
“It’s a happy thing. He’s a very cute little
fella. They’re really good with him,
they’re in love and they are really happy.
The best thing is Tom sent me a picture
when [Astala] was two hours old. His one
eye is vaguely coming open but his hands
are going like this” — Geldof flicks a v-sign
— “and it wasn’t Photoshopped. I sent it
to my mates saying, ‘Look, it’s genetic’.
He’s like, f***, put me back!”
Will it be nice finally to have a boy in
the family? “I had very solicitous advice
from my women friends,” Geldof says.
“They all said, you know, Bob, when you
change his nappy, remember to point
his willy down. Because you’ve only had
girls you might not know this.” He points
dramatically at his crotch. “Hello? What
d’you think I’ve had for 60 years? But I
point out I have no intention of changing
nappies. I’ve done that, f*** that.” Has
he offered parenting advice? “Yeah. They
better watch out and look after my grand-
son. I stick my oar in with all of [the girls].
I’m their dad. That’s the job, isn’t it?”
Geldof claims he was never sentimental about children, though. “I never had
the whole ‘miracle of life’ b******s going
on. They are born and you freak out. You
think, how am I going to get the money
for this? Jesus, years of school pantomimes! The weird thing is you like them
instantly: there isn’t a period when they
grow on you. The male perspective I
guess from my point of view was this
overwhelming sense of instant protectiveness, for the mum and the kid.
But since they kept coming out on the
factory production line, I sort of got used
to it, y’know. Which is why the third one
is always the pushy one.”
Which brings us neatly to his youngest
daughter, Pixie. The 21-year-old has
swapped modelling for music with her
new band Violet. “I’m really surprised
how stunning her voice is, but we know
where that comes from, right?” He
points at himself again. “And she is so
composed onstage. I sneaked into her
first gig, a try-out in a pub, and filmed
Pixie Geldof performs: Sir Bob
proudly calls her voice “stunning”
evening standard Monday 28 May 2012
23
Feature
Follow us on Twitter
@esfeatures
his daughters, loves his girlfriend and admires the Queen. Has the old punk finally grown up?
MATT WRITTLE
it. She didn’t know I was there. Your first
gig is terrifying, but if I showed you the
film you wouldn’t know it.” Only when
I ask if Pixie got her confidence from
Yates — a notoriously ballsy chick — does
Geldof get tongue-tied.
Fifi Trixibelle, the eldest Geldof girl,
has opted for a low-profile career in PR,
and Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily, Hutchence and Yates’s daughter, turns 16 in
July. But there is a sort of inevitability to
Pixie going into music, and to Peaches’s
accelerated career as a writer, presenter,
model and sometime tabloid wild child.
“Their parents were in the media,” Geldof shrugs. “It was kind of the family
game. They grew up, for good or ill, with
paparazzi everywhere. They view it all
with the correct jaundiced scepticism.
My grandfather had a bakery and so
inevitably my dad became a chef. It’s the
same deal. So Peaches writes for New
York magazine. Fifi works in another
area of media. Pixie has been writing
tunes since she was 14.”
I tell him how genuinely impressed I
was with Pixie’s music and he glows. “I’m
not just being a proud dad. Her band is
really good. And Tom’s [Cohen’s] band
is a fantastic band. They are doing stuff
that sounds like now. But where do those
people get played? It won’t happen on X
Factor and The Voice. That’s entertainment, fantastic TV, and will give a shot
to people who have great voices. But very
few singers are artists.” We shouldn’t be
surprised at his affection for talent
shows. Alongside his music career and
the whole 27-year saga of trying to end
famine and debt in Africa, he’s been a
major player in popular television
through his production companies.
“I was involved with The Tube, The
Word, Big Breakfast,” he says. “Noel
[Gallagher] played Wonderwall acoustically the night after he wrote it on the Big
Breakfast. We had Kurt Cobain’s first TV
appearance on The Word.” He thinks
what rock music needs is a half-hour
weekly shot on a major channel, like Top
of the Pops, but with an online component for viewer feedback: “That’s what
I’d do.” He refuses to despair of the music
industry. It is the only truly democratic
medium, he says, where it doesn’t matter
GOTCHAIMAGES.COM
Family man: Sir Bob Geldof, left, and
daughter Peaches with baby son Astala
if you are “posh boys” like Pink Floyd or
Radiohead, “a Finsbury Park council
estate lad” like John Lydon, or a “loudmouthed Paddy” like him.
W
hile we’re on the subject of class, and his
Irishness… Although
the Queen gave Geldof
an honorary knighthood for his charity work, he never
expected to join Elton John, Cliff Richard
et al for her jubilee concert next Monday.
“I am not a national treasure, and have
no desire to be,” he says. Yet he praises
the monarchy as a great, uniting institution for the UK and Commonwealth, and
the Queen as a figure of extraordinary
charisma and aplomb: “The only one
Mugabe ever shut up for.”
Geldof has “a profound immigrant’s
gratitude” to England, which “allowed
me to breathe”. He thinks London is the
best city in the world but is typically
trenchant about it. He thinks skyscrapers are all right in New York but not
here. As a fan of both Chelsea FC and
Battersea Power Station, he likes Roman
Abramovich’s plan to merge the two:
but as a Battersea resident he’s worried
about the traffic. When the Olympics
arrive, he says with a shudder, he’ll
withdraw to his other home in Kent.
Geldof regrets that people tend to think
of him more as an activist than as a musician these days. To have seen the famine
in Africa, and the punitive effects of
international debt, and not to have
organised Live Aid, Band Aid and Live 8
would have been “criminally irresponsible”. Now his position has matured; he
is chairing a fund seeking to invest
$450 million on the continent, a switch
of emphasis from “aid” to “trade”. And
he is bullish about Africa’s future: seven
of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are there. Still, activism has “completely damaged my ability to do the
thing I love. If it hadn’t happened I think
I would have been able to make the transition from the Boomtown Rats to a solo
thing more like Weller or Sting.”
If he has restlessly spread himself
across different fields, it has been to
stave off the twin fears of “loneliness
and poverty” instilled in him as a boy
in Dún Laoghaire. His mother died of a
brain haemorrhage when he was young,
and his father worked away from home
from Monday to Friday. When he got his
first girlfriend he immediately moved
in with her. “Ever since I was 19 I have
never not lived with a girl, which is kind
of neurotic, isn’t it?” he says. Even now,
if Geldof doesn’t have people and new
projects to fill his day, he panics.
But the songs he will mostly play in
Islington, alongside old favourites, come
from last year’s album How to Write
Popular Songs Which Sell, a markedly
upbeat successor to 2001’s Sex, Age and
Death. That album was written in the
aftermath of divorce and the deaths of
Hutchence and Yates, while the new one
reflects the relative stability of life now
with French actress Jeanne Marine.
“You look around amongst the carnage and you are still standing,” he says.
“And there is this exceptional and beautiful woman there — and I don’t just
mean physically, though she’s stunning.
And the kids are here, they got through
it as best they could.” Geldof says now
he has always known affection — “I loved
my first girlfriend, I loved Paula, I adore
Jeanne” — but it took him longer than
most of us to accept it.
Today, he admits that he’s happy, but
sneers at the idea he might be content.
Grandpa Bob ain’t reaching for the pipe
and slippers just yet. “I do fancy taking
up the pipe just to annoy people,
although you’d look like a complete
c***,” he says. “It’s that disruptive gene.
I am really at my most comfortable,
within myself, when I am most disappointing to others.”
■ Bob Geldof plays Islington Assembly
Hall on Friday.