Irish singer and ‘Live Aid’ leader Bob Geldof paid loving tribute to Sinead O’Connor, whom he’d known since childhood, at a concert on Saturday.
Irish singer and legendary “Live Aid” leader Bob Geldof showed that he’s lost none of his eloquence in paying tribute to Sinead O’Connor, who died Wednesday at the age of 56, during a concert at Ireland’s Cavan Festival on Saturday.
More than just pop-star acquaintances, Geldof said he was “very good friends” with both Sinead and her brother Joseph and “grew up with the O’Connors”: They lived just 75 yards apart, and shared the same bus stop going to school.
Geldof said the two had been speaking as recently as a couple of weeks ago, and although many headlines have seized on Geldof’s comment that her recent texts were filled with “desperation and despair, while some were ecstatically happy — she was like that,” they fail to note the many other touching things he said, as noted by the Irish Examiner and in a full video at the Daily Mail.
Most of all, his comments were full of love and remembrance for a near-lifelong friend. He recalled her coming to see his long-running band, the Boomtown Rats, “many, many times” as a teen. With a giant photo of O’Connor on the video screen behind him, he dedicated the two Boomtown Rats songs he and his band played next to her: the 1984 song “Dave,” about persevering in the face of tragedy, and the 1977 track “Mary of the Fourth Form,” which he said was O’Connor’s favorite song of theirs.
