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The Boomtown Rats live in Pordenone, Italy (2025)

(via @/boomtownratsofficial on instagram)

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Cooked

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(via instagram)

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Brian May with Bob Geldof and Emily at Live Aid Musical: Just For One Day 40th Anniversary Gala.

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Bob Geldof attends the "Live Aid" 40th Anniversary Gala at "Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical" at the Shaftesbury Theatre on July 13, 2025 in London, England.

(Photos by John Phillips/WireImage)

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Bob Geldof, Paula Yates, and Fifi Geldof at Live Aid

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Bob Geldof swearing during the Live Aid broadcast

Wembley Stadium - 13 July 1985

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Thank you very much.

I just realized, today is the best day of my life.

Bob Geldof looking like a snacc at Live Aid

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Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats at Live Aid

Wembley Stadium 13 July 1985

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As I began to sing, the preoccupations of the day disappeared. Everything else fell away, everything except the song, which, like so many others that day, revealed new layers of meaning. ‘Mondays’ had always been important to me, though there had been a time when I grew to despise the song because we had to sing it so often that it began to feel cheapened by the repetition. It was like an albatross around our necks and the more audiences wanted it the more heavy that weight became. But today there was none of that. It seemed absolutely correct. I sang it with renewed conviction and when I got to that line there was no doubting the power that it carried.

And the lesson today is how to die.

The song was brought to a halt by the massive roar of the crowd. I let them shout and then lifted my hand aloft with my fist clenched, and the audience fell into a massive breathing quietness. ‘Please understand,’ I willed that giant throng. I pushed my will through those wires. ‘Please understand,’ up to the satellites and down to the aerials and into the living rooms of the world. Quiet. I could hear the rustle of the quiet summer breeze. Quiet as I looked right to left, down the long stadium, trying to see every face. And above me the sky was a clear cloudless blue.

The concentration of the moment was broken by the sudden banal, but very real, fear that the audience might begin to sing before me. If they did it might well be in the wrong key. And if so, I would probably pick up theirs rather than the one Fingers was playing.

Then the bullhorn crackles.

–Bob Geldof, “Is That It?”

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Bob Geldof onstage at Live Aid

–Introducing JFK Stadium –Performing with The Boomtown Rats –Performing “Let It Be” with Paul McCartney –Performing “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with Band Aid

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@/boomtownratsofficial: #onthisday in 1985, #LiveAid at Wembley Stadium. Poster from the day signed by Bob, Freddie Mercury, Paul McCartney, Bono, Graham Nash, and Eric Clapton.

Were you at the London or Philadelphia shows?

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i used to have a poster of this but my cat chewed it up

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The Boomtown Rats performing at Live Aid on July 13, 1985

(Photo by Kent Gavin/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

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Bob Geldof, 1982

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Singer-songwriter and political activist Bob Geldof is photographed for the Times on June 26, 2025 in London, England

(Photos by Neale Haynes/Contour by Getty Images)

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