A tonic for Geldofs troops

THE Boomtown Rats release A Tonic for the Troops in June 1978, when I review it at some length for what used to be Melody Maker. I think at the time it's the year's best rock album along with Elvis Costello's This Year's Model.

What a gas, then, to report that listening to the album again for the first time in 26 years, I am much less embarrassed by the record than I am by the review of it that appeared in MM all those years ago, which seems to have been written by someone for whom English is, at best, a second language.

Of course, being a fan of The Boomtown Rats, back then, is not in everyone's opinion a terribly cool thing to be. At the time of which I'm writing, in fact, the Rats are much frowned upon by punk hardliners and the critical Taliban, according to whom Geldof and the Rats are shallow, self-serving, opportunistic, cynical manipulators, new wave lightweights with no genuine punk credentials, though Geldof never claimed any - in fact the opposite.

Still, Looking After Number One, the band's first hit single is, predictably and mistakenly, wheeled out as evidence of preening self- regard, which compares poorly with the rebel affectations of the Clash or the ranting nihilism of the Sex Pistols.

The Rats were a great band and at their best - which is where A Tonic for the Troops surely finds them - had a rare talent for clever modern pop (exemplified on that album by Like Clockwork and She's So Modern, both hit singles), bolstered by an enduring affection for the swashbuckling, guitar-driven rock'n'roll of the Stones (Blind Date) that even at its most brazenly commercial boasted a large measure of intelligence, wit and stylistic panache.

There is, however, a certain kind of rock critic for whom sonic abrasion will always be mystifyingly preferable to great tunes, adhesive choruses and lyrics that aspire to a kind of significance. These people will have found little of merit on tracks like the Bowiesque (I Never Loved) Eva Braun - Geldof 's opening yelp a fair facsimile of Bowie's feral Ziggy Stardust yowl - or the Graham Parkerish Me and Howard Hughes.

Inevitably, there are cuts on A Tonic for the Troops that have not altogether successfully weathered the years, and there are times when you wish the whole thing rocked a bit harder and sounded a lot bigger.

Perhaps this was because the Rats brazenly wanted hits, "What's the point otherwise?"

Geldof unapologetically commented, which endeared them even less to those who believed that talent was evident in direct proportion to the least number of records sold.

As a result, their records were mixed for transistors not clubbing, and in those days radio and audio systems were one degree superior to a tin can at the end of a piece of string.

Whatever, the country takes to A Tonic for the Troops with massive enthusiasm. She's So Modern is a Top 12 hit, Like Clockwork is what they used to call a Top 10 smash, while the cinematic Rat Trap - a successor to the first album's Joey, set in Dublin's Five Lamps district and the abattoir in which Geldof had worked, sounds more than ever like something by Bruce Springsteen rewritten by Ian Hunter - goes to Number One and stays there for what seems like most of the winter of 1978. It then becomes the first ever Irish Number One and, annoyingly for the critical zealots, the first " official" new wave Number One.

The album spends 47 weeks in the UK charts, a genuinely triumphant performance from a band who have been preposterously underestimated, and whose career has been unintentionally overshadowed by Geldof 's subsequent achievements as the author of Band Aid, the architect of Live Aid.

Troops was also the album that was going to launch the Rats in America. To which end, Bob and keyboard player Johnnie Fingers are dispatched in January 1979 to the US for a month-long promotional tour - a bleary bonanza of backslapping bonhomie, fatuous pleasantries, endless butteringsup and relentless arse-licking. But during which, on yet another radio interview with Geldof automatically answering the local DJ's inanities a telexed news report appears of a shooting nearby in San Diego. In the taxi back to the hotel he begins to write the absolute classic, I Don't Like Mondays.

I get a taste of what Geldof and Fingers have been going through when I arrive in Los Angeles for the last week of their tour and find myself being taken with them by limo to KWEST radio for a round of interviews. "The object of this exercise," Geldof sighs as we pull up outside, "is to storm in and make as much noise as possible."

A couple of minutes later, he is getting into it with a fat, pony- tailed DJ.

"I suppose you're one of the guys who plays all the crap on the radio," he says, ever the diplomat. "Styx.

Foreigner. Shit like that."

"Who uh who are you?" the baffled DJ wants to know.

"We're the most exciting rock 'n' roll band in Britain," Geldof says unblushingly. "But you'll find that out for yourself when we come back and play."

"Will your album be out then?"

"The album," Geldof announces with a flourish, "will be Number f***ing One by then."

The next day we're in Dallas, where Geldof causes a bit of a fuss during a radio interview when the DJ asks him where in the city the Rats will be playing when they return for a US tour, and Geldof tells her the band will be appearing at the Texas book depository on Dealey Plaza. This is the building, of course, from whose windows Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy.

Geldof 's remark brings the interview to a premature conclusion.

"There are some things we just don't joke about, sir," Geldof is told as we're shown the door. "Yeah, that's part of the problem," he sighs.

That night, Geldof and Fingers are obliged to put in an appearance at the annual CBS National Convention. The Fairmont Hotel is awash with satin tour jackets and the raucous laughter of people trying too hard to have a good time.

As we go in for dinner, we're given fancy little name tags.

"Jaysus!" says Geldof. "Will youse look at this?" He holds out his name tag, which reads BRAD GANDALF, making us all laugh, though Geldof 's not too amused.

CBS president Bruce Lundvall is making a speech, reminding everyone that they're here because they're swell people, doing swell jobs, shifting units for the company.

"And I want to tell you," he tells them, "CBS is more than a company - it's a family."

Then CBS MD Jack Craigo is introducing Geldof, lead singer with the label's hot new signings, the Boomtown Rats. Geldof goes nervously to the speaker's podium.

"You've been told over the last few days that CBS is a real family," he begins, "full of warm and wonderful human beings. Frankly," he goes on, "I didn't know there were that many warm and wonderful human beings in the entire world.

Let alone one record company. I think," he continues, "you all know that really you're just a bunch of f***in' bastards."

This gets a few cheers from people who don't know that Geldof 's entirely serious.

It's the moment, I think, when Bob realises America may be slipping away from him. Which it does, when Tonic for the troops is finally released in the US to raves like the one I wrote all those years ago, but no one, save the critics, seems to notice.

Still, back here, 1978 was unquestionably the year of the Rat.

Outselling, outgunning all comers. A Tonic for the Troops defined its moment and confirmed the Rats as one of the biggest bands of our time.

They had with this record scrambled to the very top and they had unlike many others practised the fine art of surfacing without suffering the creative bends along the way.

Which is, of course, another story.

. Allan Jones is editor of Uncut magazine. Universal releases Tonic for the Troops and five other Boomtown Rats albums on CD on 7 February, with the DVD of Someone's Looking at You: The Boomtown Rats on Film 1976-1986.

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