Episode 57
A Tonic For the Troops
by The Boomtown Rats
On 14 November 1978, the Evening Herald announced “Boomtown Rats No. 1 in Britain”.
Evening Herald - 14 November, 1978.
“Since leaving Ireland two years ago the group have enjoyed enormous success in Britain.” The article continued, “The record has already sold over half a million copies in Britain. Their LP A Tonic For the Troops has been in the Top 10 selling LPs for the last few weeks.”
A Tonic For the Troops (Mercury Records, 1978). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
A few months earlier in early June 1978, days before the release of A Tonic For the Troops, John Peel played five tracks off the album on one episode of his BBC radio programme. Peel mentioned that night that the band had had three successive UK hits, prior to the release of their fourth single, ‘Like Clockwork’.
Debut single ‘Looking After No. 1’ peaked at No. 11 in the UK chart in Aug 1977. Second single ‘Mary of the Fourth Form’ peaked at No. 15 in November 1977, and ‘She’s So Modern’, the first single taken from A Tonic for the Troops, reached No. 12 in April 1978.
‘Like Clockwork’ came next, the first single for the band to breach the UK Top 10, landing at No. 6 and then everything changed in November 1978 when ‘Rat Trap’ reached the No. 1 slot.
Record World - 02 December, 1978.
The Boomtown Rats were only the second Irish band to reach the top of the UK Singles Chart (after The Bachelors in 1964 – although keen pop quizzers would of course be right to point out The Bachelors didn’t write their hit single ‘Diane’).
“This is the second LP for The Boomtown Rats in the US”, wrote Billboard in its February 1979 review of A Tonic For the Troops.
The review continued, “The first was released during the short-lived punk invasion, and never went anywhere. This one stands head and shoulders above the previous effort. The songs are well realized, drawing from such musical antecedents as The Who, Springsteen, Kinks and Thin Lizzy. But the final result is the Rats own, with the six-man band following its own musical directions.”
The Billboard review mentions that the first Boomtown Rats album went nowhere in the US. This despite (or maybe because of) a promotional idea, cooked up by Michael Bone, the Mercury Records’ promotions man in Chicago, that involved posting the band’s first record to 300 DJs across the States accompanied by a dead rat. According to Geldof a young fellow called Bobby Prevost, working in the mail room of Mercury Records in Chicago, had the unenviable job of packaging the envelopes.
2025 is the 50th anniversary of The Boomtown Rats. In late October Geldof and Pete Briquette unveiled a plaque in TUD Bolton St to commemorate The Boomtown Rats’ first-ever gig, which took place in Bolton Street Technical College on 31 October 1975.
Pete and Bob unveil a plaque commemorating the first gig by The Boomtown Rats on 31 October, 1975. Photograph taken from TUD.
I’m too young to remember the excitement of The Boomtown Rats reaching No. 1 in the UK. My first memories of Geldof revolve around Band Aid in 1984 and Live Aid in July 1985. Indeed, the following year my class in secondary school staged a play. Our adaptation of Live Aid was performed before a packed Halla Mór of students and parents.
And who played Geldof you might ask? Well, none other than yours truly.
On the day I also delivered a pretty decent version of ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’, well I thought it was decent, although I do remember my sister sitting in the back row of the hall in absolute stitches. Let’s just say thank god no video footage exists of the day, whatever about me, I’m sure my old school mate who blacked-up to play Tina Turner would be suitably mortified.
A Tonic For the Troops press advertisement - Billboard, 10 February 1979.
I mention this only by way of explaining that it was a big deal for me to talk to Geldof. We spoke after the band had just finished a successful UK tour. I got about 45 minutes with him and I realised very quickly that irrespective of how much interview preparation and research you do when you interview Geldof, he’s in the driving seat.
And that was absolutely fine by me.
Ostensibly, we were going to talk about A Tonic For the Troops but our conversation – and to be honest a Geldof interview isn’t really a conversation – goes in many different directions: Ireland of the 1970s, signing to Ensign Records, working with producer Mutt Lange, The Boomtown Rats at 50, the Catholic Church in Ireland, ‘Rat Trap’ hitting No. 1 in the UK and more.
Oh, and Geldof also reveals what became of the young Bobby Prevost from the Mercury Records mail room.
Now that’s a story worth waiting for.