It’s quitting time in Sydney, and the city’s latest high-rise hotspot, Work Club Chifley Square, is buzzing with anticipation.

At the edge of Club Lounge, the heartbeat of the Nordic-inspired space, the Harbour Bridge stands as a steady backdrop while an eager, yet intimate, crowd of entrepreneurs, philanthropists and industry leaders wait for a man who’s spent his life pushing boundaries – Sir Bob Geldof.

Moments later, entering the room with Florence Guild Founder and CEO Soren Trampedach, Geldof looks every bit as untamed as his The Boomtown Rats days.

The 73-year-old rock legend with a heart for change coolly lets his presence fill the space, with the quiet gravitas of someone who has never needed pretense to hold an audience.

Trampedach opens with a lighthearted yet sincere introduction.

“It’s my great honor to introduce our guest. A true humanitarian and visionary – is that good enough?” he quips, setting the tone for the evening and throwing a glance at Geldof, whose grin seemed to say, ‘That’ll do.’

“From Live Aid to his ongoing work, he’s proven that one voice really can make a difference,” Trampedach concludes, as a roar of applause fills the space.

Then, the invitation to look into the mind of a man who, four decades ago, had the audacity to ask the world to do better – and who still hasn’t stopped – begins.

From modest means

Geldof begins, opening up about his childhood, sharing that his path has been anything but easy. He was raised in a rainy South Dublin suburb under challenging conditions, both economically and personally.

“When I was growing up, the only job my dad could get was selling towels around the countryside of rural Ireland in the 50s, where the idea of washing was novel,” he explains, with a certain lightness. “Selling towels was not a great plan, really dad.”

“My mother died when I was very small,” Geldof continues, candidly weaving painful memories into his otherwise lighthearted and entertaining rhetoric. “So we grew up, my two sisters and I, left to our own devices. Our dad would leave Monday, come back Friday. So that wasn’t great.”

Navigating this life of modest means alone with his siblings, Geldof reflects that there was little to guide him besides his own curiosity and determination.

“Given that I didn’t really understand authority because it wasn’t around me growing up, I got into trouble at school and with the police. There was no-one at home to make me do homework,” he says. “There wasn’t money, and there wasn’t a future.”

So he spent his time with books and a single radio station, Radio Luxembourg, which blasted out rock and roll to a generation craving change.

“Given my circumstances, the endless rain and gloom of the economy, this golden beam blasting out of our radio was offering another whole universe of possibilities,” he recalls.

“They were talking endlessly of change, its desirability, its inevitability and that they themselves seemed to be the avatar of that change. And using the very rhetoric of change itself, which was rock and roll.”

More than a rock star

This sense of rebellion against settling for a life much less than he was deserving of became his fuel. By the time Geldof rose to prominence with the iconic The Boomtown Rats, famous for songs like I Don’t Like Mondays and Rat Trap, he had crafted a voice and purpose that transcended his rock star status.

Trampedach asks him, “Fame versus stardom, what did you want?”

Geldof, taking a moment to digest his question, replies, “There’s another calibration there. It’s fame versus stardom versus celebrity. And celebrity is entirely hollow and embarrassing.

“Stardom is something that is given to you when you are of an excellence. Fame, I wanted. In the first interview I ever did in 1976, the whole notion of rock stars and rock and roll had really gone right into a brick wall.

“It had become about the length of the limousine, the size of your house, the height of your platform boots. But that stuff didn’t really interest me. And it still doesn’t interest me. They said, ‘Well what do you want out of it?’

“And I said three things: I want to get rich, get famous and get laid.”

Of course, he went on to get all three of those things in spades. But being well known and loved wasn’t the point – what he could do with it was.

“I wanted to use the platform fame gave me for the things that bothered me,” he explains.

Making an impact

At the time, the thing that kept him up at night was the devastating famine in Ethiopia. Geldof shares how he watched a special report on the BBC, outlining the horror of what’s been called the worst famine of the 20th century.

“Still now, I will cry if I actually speak to the scenes I saw that October evening on the BBC,” he admits. “I’ve been there. I’ve walked through it. I’ve picked up babies whose lives voided through my fingers.”

To him, sending money wasn’t enough. Instead, Geldof recalls dialing his friends and other music greats from his extensive contact list, persuading them to join together to help. And help they did. Working with fellow musician Midge Ure, Geldof managed to recruit top musicians like U2’s Bono, Sting and George Michael for the all-star British Band Aid.

Together, they sang the now iconic single ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas?’ In typical Geldof style, the song’s lyrics pulled no punches, including the controversial line, “Thank God, it’s them instead of you”, which Bono, Geldof’s “great friend”, initially resisted singing.

But Geldof stood by the line, explaining that sometimes uncomfortable truths are necessary to move people to action. So Bono sang the line.

“He delivered it with all the rage that he felt about having to sing it and all the passion that he thought that I felt about it,” Geldof says.

“I’ve often said, ‘Bono wants to give the world a hug. I want to punch its f***ing lights out.’”

The single went on to sell more than three million copies, with just over US$1 of each going toward aid relief in Ethiopia.

Six months after the song’s release in July 1985 came Live Aid – the live music event held in Philadelphia and London, where Geldof gathered 60 of the biggest names in music, including Queen, David Bowie, Elton John, Tina Turner and U2 to perform for free to rally global attention and funds.

And it worked – more than US$100 million came pouring in for the starving in Ethiopia.

The revolutionary Live Aid concert – and later, 2005’s concert Live 8 – dramatically altered the landscape of international aid, trade and policy, setting a precedent for celebrity-led activism.

With more than US$42 billion in aid and debt relief mobilized, and significant policy changes enacted under his watch, not only was Geldof granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, but his influence also remains a powerful force in global humanitarian efforts.

Breaking down barriers

To this day, he’s still not done fighting the good fight. Geldof says he awakens daily to a dozen emails, showcasing the “horror as to what’s happening” in the areas of operation his team moves in.

“Band Aid continues on a daily basis,” he says. “This morning, for example, there was a continuation of a thing that happened last week in the west of Sudan in Darfur. There’s an ongoing civil war. It’s brutal. That’s Band Aid to me. It goes by invisibly.”

While certain literature and films may present a more lighthearted side of poverty, Geldof bluntly tells Trampedach and the exclusive members-only audience: “There is no romance in poverty. It’s s*** no matter where you are or who you are. Poverty is so life-limiting. It denies human possibility, and it is utterly unnecessary.

“That’s not what life is supposed to be about. Life is supposed to be about exploring the possibilities of the individual. And poverty deprives you of that.”

When asked why it persists, Geldof points not to apathy but to greed, saying, “It’s not that nobody wants to do anything about poverty. It’s that people want to do everything about wealth.”

In modern society, he points out that wealth accumulation often takes precedence over the collective wellbeing. However, he sees potential in globalization.

“Globalization is something I’m really into, though it’s being dismissed everywhere at the moment,” he explains. “But it does work – 400 million people were pulled out of extreme poverty within the first 10 years of our century. That’s a big plus for me.”

Geldof goes on to say that globalization is not simply an economic or political phenomenon, it’s a technological one, too. It’s a way to break down barriers and foster innovation.

“That bashing together of culture and language and ideas, constantly putting together, produces a huge amount of ideas,” he explains.

The next chapter

It’s fitting that Geldof, who grew up questioning authority, now champions causes that challenge global systems of inequality and complacency. But when asked by an audience member how he remains ‘buoyant’, considering all the devastation he witnesses every day, he contemplates for a moment before responding, “If something comes, it’s a road less traveled.

“You do the things that interest you. That’s what keeps you going. And you see what you’re capable of doing. If it came down to it, between the money and the interesting road, it’ll always be the interesting road.”

Geldof’s next ‘interesting road’ takes him on tour through Australia, starting March 2025.

Marking 40 years since Live Aid and the 50th anniversary of The Boomtown Rats, the Bob Geldof: Songs and Stories from an Extraordinary Life tour will blend acoustic performances of his most beloved songs with compelling anecdotes, giving insights into both his personal evolution and the backstage moments that have defined a generation.

In his closing remarks at Florence Guild Presents’ event, Geldof doesn’t talk much about his tour. Instead, he responds to the question, ‘What’s keeping you up at night?’

“Jet lag,” he says with a wry smile.

But the truth is, Geldof’s sleepless nights are likely filled with thoughts of what remains to be done. After all, for a man who believes history is “too busy beginning” to ever truly end, there will always be a next chapter to write.