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BOB GELDOF
@ Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide,
25th March 2025
(Live Review)

Review by Julie Reid

Photos by Deb Kloeden (@debkloedenphotography)

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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Bob Geldof’s “Life…WTF” Australian tour promised audiences an intimate and candid exploration of his multi-faceted life journey as a musician, activist, husband, father and entrepreneur and it didn’t disappoint.

I arrived at the venue early to witness 30 or so dedicated fans queueing for the premium VIP package.  The dedicated fans were armed with a selection of books and records for Bob to sign.  They had paid for the privilege to meet Bob, get a handshake and take a selfie.  The highs and lows of Bob Geldof’s incredible life inspire a certain devotion in his fan base, myself included and it is deservedly so.

When the venue opens its doors to regular punters at 7 pm it quickly fills with an audience of mainly 50 and 60 somethings.  Norwood Concert Hall is a relatively small and intimate venue although is perhaps somewhat lacking in atmosphere.  The tiny bar, whilst well stocked struggles with the high demand.

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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Taking the stage with a strident energy about him Bob opens up the evening with a song “One Man Show” playing both harmonica and guitar.  He then launches into story telling mode, beginning with one about how his father had wooed his mother against the odds as his mother was already engaged to be married to another man his dad had to fistfight for the right to date her!  His dad won and hence Bob exists…. Life? WTF!  This story sets the theme and delivers the energy for the show that we are to be treated to tonight; the random twists and turns that life takes us all on but has taken Bob on more than most.  Bob paces the floor as he tells his stories and audio visuals play on the screen behind him, enhancing all of his tales and the interspersed songs.

Bob pulls up his family tree to explain that many of his family were in the restaurant trade. There are names of menus and yes, some surnames in the family line belong to relatives with the unfortunate name of Kunt.  This, he explains that while he is often described as a cunt he is in fact a real Kunt!  All of Bob’s humour hits the mark with the audience. He is aware of his criticisers and detractors in this world and deals with it with wit and his dry self-depreciating brand of humour.

Bob becomes very vulnerable at some points of the evening.  He uses such rich, illustrative language when he recounts stories of his early childhood and how, as a 7 year old, he found out about his mother’s death . There was a real feeling of the vastness and desolation of loss and of the deep loneliness and also the rage he experienced throughout his childhood, looking after himself in an empty cold house while his father took to the road as a salesman and his sisters also struggled to cope.

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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More stories included one about a plan to stop himself getting beaten by the schoolmasters on the weekdays and his dad on the weekends by faking his school reports with a new green school marking book, how ingenious!

Bob describes his late teen and early adult life. There are tales of living in squats in London, of labouring on building sites, of his first love Daphne and his trip to Vancouver where eventually he was turned around and sent home by the Canadian Mounties for not having the right visa.

Bob provides a few musical interludes including the big hits ‘Rat Trap’ and ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ and I must say that his voice has really held up. This leads him into stories of the Punk movement and it’s raw, angry energy.  How it was a music to match the economic hardships and boredom of late 70s UK.  Around this time Bob describes enjoying “getting laid a lot”, girls were asking him to sleep with them and how he was more than excited to partake in this life of new rockstar decadence and debauchery! “The world opened its mind and its legs to me” he quipped.  However, things were to change all due to the woman that he was about to meet…. Life WTF?!! as it was around this time he described meeting Paula Yates, the most beautiful blue-eyed girl and how he fell deeply in love very rapidly. “Suddenly all I wanted to do was to go home to be with Paula and our young daughter”. The audio visuals playing on the screen of how they looked at each other are really emotive; this was a love match.  “It was a great adventure those 19 years together” says Bob.  He goes onto describe the desolation and loss over his marriage breakup with Paula, when she began a passionate and very public affair with Micheal Hutchence the lead singer of INXS. “That I didn’t see coming at all.  Perhaps she thought the grass was greener over there” he said “but really there’s just more grass.”

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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Bob takes us through his activism and the creation of first Band Aid and then Live Aid. This was a collective of musicians, songs and concerts that raised hundreds of millions of dollars of famine relief in Africa. Band Aid’s organic emergence and how he really didn’t even know who would exactly turn up on the day of the concert, how there was “no contract, no payment and nothing in writing for the bands”.  More activism followed, verbal stoushes with politicians and visits to Africa of which the public are familiar with. Listening to Bob, one can’t help but feel inspired to own your rage at current politics and injustices and to try and do more in your own patch.

All of his stories have a degree of wry humour.   Bob doesn’t want a brag fest, he simply has done all these incredible humanitarian things and throws self-deprecating humour into the mix left, right and centre to perhaps mask the incredulity of what he achieved.  The audience goes quiet and tears are shed in the room when he recounts a dying child in Africa.  His description of the filth, flies and stench in the tent as she voided her stomach contents into his hands effects everybody.  Bob goes on to describe “hospitals” that were nothing more than a place to die and how he knew it was his duty to continue to visit Africa as he had unwittingly become the face of the effort to bring the attention to the world to this famine and where he went television would follow.

He has found love again with new wife Jean Marine with whom he recently celebrated ten-years of marriage. He described the circumstances of their meeting before he sang ‘Dazzled by You’ dedicated to her.

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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His energy was incredible as he spoke and occasionally sang non-stop for 2 hours and then only took a 15 min intermission before he came back and continued for another hour.  His physical stamina and mental recall defy his age of 73; he is a bright intellect and a force to be seen.  He was raw, open, funny as well as vulnerable as he dealt with his life story especially in regard to his grieving over the losses of both Paula and of the friend that he had regarded as a brother Micheal Hutchence.  However, he did not touch on the impact of the loss of his daughter Peaches, like her mother dying  from a heroin overdose.  Perhaps somethings are too painful to be shared in a public forum.

He closed the show with ‘The Great Song of Indifference’ and the crowd joined him in singing the refrain “I don’t Care At All”.  It was rousing and the love and goodwill from the audience was palpable, leaving me feeling almost overwhelmed and oh so grateful to of had this evening with Bob Geldof.

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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Check out Deb Kloeden’s (@debkloedenphotography) full gallery of this event HERE

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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Saturday, 15 March 2025 – SYDNEY – ICC Darling Harbour Theatre
Sunday, 16 March 2025 – NEWCASTLE – Newcastle Civic Theatre
Wednesday, 19 March 2025 – MELBOURNE – Hamer Hall
Thursday, 20 March 2025 – HOBART – Odeon Theatre
Saturday, 22 March 2025 – CANBERRA – Royal Theatre
Tuesday, 25 March 2025 – ADELAIDE – Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Tuesday, 1 April 2025 – BRISBANE – QPAC Concert Hall
Thursday, 3 April 2025 – GOLD COAST – Tweed Heads Twin Towns
Saturday, 5 April 2025 – PERTH – Riverside Theatre

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Photo – @debkloedenphotography

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Press Release 3rd November 2024 (below) HERE

An Evening with
BOB GELDOF

Songs and Stories from
an Extraordinary Life

Tickets go on sale from 1pm on Thursday 7th November 2024. 

Head to tegdainty.com for all ticketing and tour information.

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AMNPLIFY – DB