CHARLES HUTCHINSON finds out how Bob Geldof, former Boomtown Rat and Ethiopia famine-aid star, regained his drive to do what he does best... make music

BOB Geldof must be weary of talking about Paula's death and the starving millions in Ethiopia. So weary that the tour publicist for his Grand Opera House concert in York this Sunday requested, politely and apologetically, that no questions should be asked about Bob's late wife and the worsening food crisis in Ethiopia, the land that Live Aid strove to feed in the 1980s.

So, neither Paula nor Ethiopia was mentioned by name but like Banquo's ghost, they were always there.

The focus was Bob's first album in five years, Sex, Age & Death, the one Geldof nugget where he could control the release of information for public consumption. in his "tabloid soap opera life." Ironically it is his most private record, a diary of "some things that are unsayable but maybe you try to articulate the unspeakable in music".

This phone interview - 15 quick-fire minutes from London shortly after Bob touched down from a plane journey - had begun with Bob being reminded of his thoughts on making music at the time of the release of Sex, Age & Death.

"In my head, music is what I do. I'm sure millions of people will be surprised by that.

"In fact certain generations will probably be shocked that I make music at all. But music is central to who I am. I physically need to do it," he said.

He picks up the theme anew: "Everything people know me for stems from my celebrity through music, so you can use music or your knowledge of the music business or the technology that you're wholly familiar with. All those things that people associate me with come out of that.

"So when I fill out my job description, that's what I put - musician - though not for the last six years for other reasons. But I've done 140 gigs this year and here I am, able to tootle around the world to incredible acclamation, and I think that's amazing, and I love it, after 27 years of it!

"A lot of my songs have embedded themselves in the mind, and you think to yourself 'Not bad'."

The term that had struck most was Geldof's "physical need" to do music. "I have the ability to distil experiences into songs and that becomes useful physically and psychologically, so when you come to a point where some things are unsayable you write a song," he explains.

"When a song happens, and I'm sorry about this image, but it rises like vomit: you can't predict it or stop it."

Bob develops the theme of the physical element of music still further. "Songwriting is cathartic but performing is the purge: it's physically exhausting, mentally challenging, financially rewarding, and I've got more enthusiastic about it, the more I've gone on," he says.

"As things become pared to the core, apart from family, music is what defines my life."

Sex, Age & Death is one of those all embracing yet clearly defined titles such as War And Peace, and some have seen a further significance in it.

"People have pointed out that the title's acronym is SAD but that was coincidental. To me, Sex, Age & Death just implied a life lived, and as one wag shouted out, 'At least you got the order right'.

"It might sound like horsesh**, but after the five years I'd had, I didn't care about music; I didn't want to listen to music, and the guitars were simply objects in the corner and not standing in mute remonstration.

"I was ignoring them and it didn't bother me.

"I was at this flat point and I didn't ask for feelings to come, but sometimes they came in a rush, sometimes in dribs and drabs, and it didn't really occur that I was writing songs until I had all these songs. I really hadn't prepared them as a record; I didn't encourage it as a record and to this day I can't listen to it."

Yet he does perform three songs from the album in his long live set. "I do them in a block, where I have to explain them, and they're so acrid that I've no wish to re-live them," Bob says. "But there's that paradox of them not living as songs until you play them live, and that's where the purge is."

He says the passing of time has not made the events of recent years - the Michael Hutchence, Paula Yates years - any more comprehensible. "Daily I think 'why did such a high degree of tragedy happen?', but there's an acceptance that they did, and an acceptance that things will never be the same."

Right now, he is "feeling ******* fantastic playing in the greatest band in the world". "I'm 51, sexy, thin and rich," he jokes, and even if the famous swearing is less prolific, the rock'n'roll rebel lives on. In 1986, he had encouraged the audience to dance at a Boomtown Rats show at Central Hall, University of York, despite a no-dancing rule in the contract.

"Since that day, only students have been allowed to attend York university gigs.

"I only invited them to dance! We were a ******* dance band, for Christ's sake," he recalls. "The student union sued us, but it was sorted out."

How?

"We ignored it! But I better not remind them - though they would have to sue the Rats, not me!"

Fact file:

Name: Bob Geldof

Occupation: Veteran pop star of punk origins, poet, author, politician, radio presenter, famine crusader, former husband of Paula Yates, dot.com entrepreneur, Irish knight in scruffy armour, living saint, devil's advocate, expletive express

Born: Dublin, Eire, October 5, 1951

Age: 51

Rock beginnings: Managing The Nightlife Thugs, quintet of Irish students; became their singer. Re-named Boomtown Rats in 1975

Boomtown biggest hits, 1977-1980: Looking After No. 1, Mary Of The 4th Form, She's So Modern, Like Clockwork, Rat Trap, I Don't Like Mondays, Diamond Smiles, Someone's Looking At You, Banana Republic

Boomtown bust: Band split in 1986 after Self Aid show, Dublin

Geldof Aid: Motivating force and co-songwriter with Midge Ure of Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, 1984. Organised Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, summer 1985, for famine relief in Ethiopia. Knighted for charity endeavours

Solo Geldof hits: This Is The World Calling, 1986; The Great Song Of Indifference, 1990

Latest album: Sex, Age & Death, on Eagle Records, released September 2001

Film: Pink Floyd's The Wall, lead role of disenchanted rock star, 1982

Autobiography: Is That It?, 1986

Last time in York: Barbican Centre, October 1992

Where and when in York in 2002: Grand Opera House, Sunday, 8pm

Tickets: £17.50, £15.50; ring 01904 671818.

Updated: 11:15 Thursday, November 21, 2002