Skip to main content

Daily Inspiration Quote by Bob Geldof

"Everything that's rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching"

About this Quote

Rock n roll, in Bob Geldof's mouth, isn't a guitar style. It's a claim on history: loud, unruly culture seizing the main stage and forcing the world to look. The line vibrates with the strange vertigo of a performer realizing the old fantasy has become infrastructure. Rock once sold itself as outsider energy; Geldof is staring at the moment it turns into a global broadcast, complete with a crowd so large it stops being a crowd and becomes "thousands of millions" - a deliberately overstuffed phrase that signals he can barely metabolize the scale.

The intent is part confession, part manifesto. He's naming the psychological lag between imagining impact and actually wielding it. "I need to get over the shock" is the human sentence inside the myth: the frontman admitting he's not emotionally built for the power he's stumbled into. Subtext: rock's promise was always bigger than the clubs and the charts - it was about collective feeling, solidarity, and a kind of anti-establishment communion. Now those ideals are being tested under floodlights, where sincerity has to survive the machinery of spectacle.

Context matters because Geldof isn't just an actor or singer here; he's a reluctant impresario of a worldwide event culture (the Live Aid era), watching entertainment mutate into humanitarian theater. The quote holds that tension: awe at mass attention, dread at what it demands, and a flicker of suspicion that the "now" could be peak - the moment rebellion becomes appointment viewing.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
SourceHelp us find the source
More Quotes by Bob Add to List
Bob Geldof Live Aid quote: rock as urgent action
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof (born October 5, 1951) is a Actor from Ireland.

30 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Dee Snider, Musician