35 years after Live Aid, Geldof assesses personal toll

irish rock Star Bob Geldof may have earned awards and cheers for pulling off 1985’s transcontinental music event, Live Aid, but it took a toll on his personal life and career.

Monday, July 13, marks the 35th anniversary of Live Aid that changed Geldof from frontman of the Boomtown Rats to something more divine. “I became Saint Bob,” Geldof said in an interview earlier this year.

“I didn’t have much money at the time. It impinged entirely on my private life. It probably ended up costing me my marriage.”

It began with Band Aid, an all-star UK group organized by Geldof and recording artist Midge Ure that included Bono and numerous others on the 1984 single, Do They Know It’s Christmas? with proceeds going to Ethiopian famine relief.

In the summer of 1985, he helped organize Live Aid. The Live Aid concerts held in London and Philadelphia raised over $100 million.

Twenty years later, he hosted the Live 8 concerts and got the industrialized nations to pledge an increase in aid to Africa by $25 billion.

“I wasn’t allowed go back to my job,” he said. “Saint Bob, which I was called, wasn’t allowed to do this anymore because it’s petty and meaningless. So, I was lost.”

Earlier this year, he got back to music and released a new album with the Boomtown Rats, Citizens of Boomtown. AP