{"id":308008,"date":"2025-11-23T00:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T00:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/308008\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T00:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T00:38:11","slug":"how-bob-geldof-ended-up-in-the-the-wall-despite-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/308008\/","title":{"rendered":"How Bob Geldof ended up in the The Wall despite everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Waters always wanted Pink Floyd\u2019<\/a>s 1979 concept album The Wall<\/a> to be a film too, so he handed director Alan Parker his tortured, loosely-autobiographical screenplay as a blueprint. So began work on 1982 movie The Wall, a part-surrealist affair combining Floyd\u2019s music, Parker\u2019s live-action sequences, and outlandish, iconoclastic animations by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So far, so good, thought Waters, but who should they cast in the film\u2019s lead role? Initially, Parker auditioned various British and US actors without success. But then he recalled seeing The Boomtown Rats\u2019 Bob Geldof in the video for their 1979 UK Number 1 single, I Don\u2019t Like Mondays. Might Geldof play Pink, a rock star driven to neurosis by his past traumas and the pressures of fame? The Irishman hadn\u2019t acted in a film before, but Parker wasn\u2019t fussed about that. Indeed, he felt sure Geldof\u2019s potent mix of charisma and attitude would fly on the big screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he rings me out of the blue and says, \u2018Will you be in The Wall?\u2019\u201d Geldof told me in 2005. \u201cMy manager was saying, \u2018You should do it\u2019, but I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m not doing it \u2013 it\u2019s the fucking Pink Floyd, go and have a wank!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\n

\"Bob\n<\/p>\n

Bob Geldof in a scene from 1982 movie The Wall (Image credit: M.G.M\/UNITED ARTIST \/ Album)<\/p>\n

Geldof felt he and Pink Floyd were irreconcilable, chalk and cheese. The Boomtown Rats had been torch-bearers on the early Irish punk scene. Not quite Stiff Little Fingers perhaps, but still. Meanwhile Pink Floyd were by Geldof\u2019s estimation yesterday\u2019s men; something of a poisoned chalice for the hip young thing he considered himself to be at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m not doing it – it\u2019s the fucking Pink Floyd, go and have a wank!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Bob Geldof<\/p>\n

In truth, though, Geldof was 28 and changing. He was morphing from gobby pop star into gobby political activist. He and his fellow Rats were out in Ibiza, Spain recording the band\u2019s Mondo Bongo LP when he took Parker\u2019s initial call. The Rats\u2019 fourth album would be home to their final UK Top Ten single Banana Republic, a record that was more dub-reggae than punk.<\/p>\n

Still, thanks to countless outspoken interviews, the singer\u2019s reputation as a thorn in the establishment\u2019s side was growing, and Parker was determined to secure a slice of Geldof\u2019s front. To that end, he continued to pester him about acting in The Wall, not taking \u2018no\u2019 for an answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll through the making of Mondo Bongo he\u2019s phoning me like, \u2018Just come and do a screen test at least\u2019, so eventually I do, and it\u2019s fucking horrendous,\u201d Geldof said.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Parker recalled it differently: \u201cWe did it at Shepperton [Studios in Surrey, England]. Bob read Brad Davis\u2019s courtroom speech from Midnight Express and did it wonderfully, surprising us all with his control.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Bob\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Landmark Media\/Alamy)<\/p>\n

Naturally, the singer still had reservations about The Wall, but he was also becoming more ambivalent about the role, ready to cave and try something new.<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to what people might expect, the money wasn\u2019t great,\u201d Geldof told me, \u201cbut I was also thinking, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll never be asked to do another movie\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now it seems I\u2019m going to meet Roger Waters, and I\u2019m not remotely fussed. I hear he\u2019s a bit of a cunt, actually, but I don\u2019t care. The I get there and it turns out that I like Waters very much. I find him very embittered and interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

On set at Pinewood Studios, Geldof and Waters began to feel each other out, building a decent, if somewhat guarded working relationship. By all accounts the backdrop was a highly tense working environment as ongoing artistic tensions between Waters, Parker and Gerald Scarfe played-out.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoger and I collided one day in the dubbing theatre both vomiting venom,\u201d recalled Parker, who would also describe The Wall as \u201ca scream of pain from beginning to end\u2026 quite the most miserable time I ever had making a film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scarfe, meanwhile, would self-medicate before going on set each day, downing a large nip of Jack Daniels after he\u2019d parked the car.<\/p>\n

PINK FLOYD Comfortably Numb (The Wall movie, 1982) [HQ] – YouTube
\n\"PINK<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

In one scene which required Pink to float in a swimming pool, it transpired that Geldof couldn\u2019t swim. Elsewhere, he threw himself into his role with conviction, wholly convincing in the scene where a depressed and alienated Pink is discovered comatose in his hotel room as Comfortably Numb plays out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get there and it turns out that I like Waters very much. I find him very embittered and interesting.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Bob Geldof<\/p>\n

\u201cRoger was sort of sneering at me on set one day,\u201d Geldof told me, \u201cbut at the same time he couldn\u2019t get his head around the fact that I didn\u2019t like his music, so he began to try and sell me the genius of Pink Floyd.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told him I loved [David Gilmour vehicle] Comfortably Numb; that I thought Another Brick In The Wall was a great pop single. I said, \u2018I love [Syd Barrett-penned Floyd singles] See Emily Play and Arnold Layne, but the rest is shite.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cRoger said, \u2018So you don\u2019t like the script for the film or us, then?\u2019 Luckily, I answered, \u2018Not particularly.\u2019 But then I asked him, \u2018Wait – how come you know that? Have you been talking to Parker?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018No \u2013 remember when you were out making your latest album in Ibiza?\u2019 I said, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 He said, \u2018Well, when you were taking the piss out of my script and saying Pink Floyd are wankers in that taxi cab going to the airport, my brother was driving it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Waters\u2019 bombshell revelation certainly floored Geldof at the time \u2013 \u201cI thought, \u2018How bizarre is that? How unlikely?\u2019\u201d \u2013 but rather than ending he and the Pink Floyd man\u2019s friendship, it cemented it. For a while, at least.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom then on we got on great\u201d, Geldof told me in 2005. \u201cAnd now like the rest of the planet I realise how great and innovative The Dark Side Of The Moon was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geldof would go on to act in other films, and recently had a cameo role alongside rapper Vanilla Ice in Zombie Plane. An action comedy \/ horror flick about a flight hi-jacked by the undead, it\u2019s cheduled for release in Australian theatres in 2026 and looks likely to be a lot frothier than The Wall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Waters always wanted Pink Floyd\u2019s 1979 concept album The Wall to be a film too, so he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-308008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}