Sir Bob Geldof has dismissed ideas that he has a ‘white saviour complicated’ due to his charity work.
The 73-year-old musician was the driving pressure behind each the Reside Assist single Do They Know It’s Christmas? and the Band Assist charity live performance which raised consciousness of famine in Ethiopia through the Nineteen Eighties.
After elevating thousands and thousands of kilos for vital causes over his life, he has scoffed at those that are disparaging of his efforts.
In a brand new interview with the i Paper, Sir Bob mentioned of the ‘white saviour’ time period: ‘That doesn’t exist. That’s only a phrase, a concept like Authentic Sin.’
U2 rocker Bono – who labored intently with Geldof in elevating cash for Africa – confessed in his 2022 memoir Give up: 40 Songs, One Story that he thought of a few of Band Assist’s work to be tone deaf.
However the Boomtown Rats frontman has dismissed ‘woke’ criticism of his charity work.
Quizzed on Bono’s feedback, he mentioned: ‘Effectively yeah, he in all probability believes it. However there isn’t such a factor. I’m not all for political correctness, this sure woke stuff.
‘It’ll move and also you’ll nonetheless have hungry folks. I’m solely all for stopping human beings dying of hunger. I’m not all for boosting somebody’s thought of their dad and mom’ nation.’
Sir Bob’s ongoing work with the Band Assist Charitable Belief has raised virtually £150 million, whereas Reside Assist raised a exceptional $125m (£92.7m) for famine reduction, however he accepts that it has come at a private value, ‘undoubtedly’ contributing to the top of his marriage to the late TV presenter Paula Yates.
She left him for INXS frontman Michael Hutchence in 1995 earlier than passing away from a heroin overdose in 2000 on the age of 41.
He additionally acknowledged the toll his fundraising took on the Boomtown Rats, who initially broke up in 1986 earlier than reforming in 2013. They’re now celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with a tour.
His headline-grabbing charity campaigns at all times overshadowed the band’s musical output, which included hits I Don’t Like Mondays and Rat Entice.
‘The results had been: you at all times fearful that you simply had been letting folks down, that you simply had been failing. I didn’t doubt I had the power to do these items. It sounds glib, but it surely’s simpler than getting folks to listen to your music. It’s simply there’s by no means an finish,’ he added.
This isn’t the primary time Sir Bob has spoken in regards to the criticism he’s obtained for his method to charity work.
The Irish star confronted backlash final 12 months when the brand new Band Assist 40 remix was launched after Ed Sheeran launched an announcement saying his ‘understanding of the narrative’ had modified since 2014 when he appeared on a model of the music.
However after fiercely defending Band Assist, Sir Bob claimed that he was truly ‘energised’ by the controversy.
‘The controversy rages round it. That’s unbelievable, as a result of then you may entry the politics with the tradition debate as sensitivities and sensibilities and opinions change and simply take up all of it,’ he instructed Billboard on the time.
The chart-topper additionally admitted to the i Paper that there have been instances when he has thought of what issues would have been like if he hadn’t turn into an activist, however insisted he was ‘glad about all the things that’s occurred’.
‘However would you may have chosen a unique life in the event you had been given the choice? If I’d been instructed 40 years later, “You’re going to get up to eight, 10, 12 emails of horror each morning?” Yeah,’ he revealed.
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