Rat Trap - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

The Boomtown Rats had been the first new wave act to score a number 1, in 1978 with Rat Trap. Far better known is the Dublin outfit’s second, this piano-led ballad about a real-life school shooting spree.

Before

16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer lived in poverty across the road from Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California with her alcoholic father. They slept together on a single mattress on the floor. At some point Spencer suffered a head injury and it’s suspected it had affected her mental health.

In 1978 Spencer, who had been skipping school, told her parents she was suicidal. Later that year she was arrested for burglary and shooting from the window of the school. Following a psychiatric evaluation in December, her probation officer recommended she be admitted to a mental hospital for depression. Her father refused and instead bought her a rifle for Christmas. As you do. Later, Spencer stated ‘I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun.’ When asked why he would do that, she replied ‘I feel like he wanted me to kill myself’.

On 29 January 1979, Spencer opened fire at staff and pupils in the playground of the school as they waited for Principal Burton Wragg to let them in. Spencer killed Wragg as he tried to help, plus a custodian who was trying to pull a student to safety. She also injured eight children and one police officer. Spencer escaped and barricaded herself in her home. While there she was interviewed over the phone by a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. When asked for a motive, Spencer’s chilling response was ‘I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day’. Eventually she surrendered after she was promised a Burger King. She remains in prison.

Boomtown Rats singer-songwriter Bob Geldof and keyboardist Johnnie Fingers were being interviewed at Georgia State University when they saw news of the shootings come through on a telex machine (hence the mention in the lyrics). The opening lines ‘The silicon chip inside her head/Gets switched to overload’ were inspired by Steve Jobs, as the Apple co-founder had contacted Geldof in the hope of The Boomtown Rats playing a gig for Apple.

Geldof had been told by a US rep of the band that if the band were to repeat their UK success in the States, they needed to write songs more relevant to American life. Which begs the question – was I Don’t Like Mondays an honest insight into Geldof’s horror at the senseless shootings, or a cynical attempt to cash in? It’s likely it was a bit of both. In later years Geldof has insisted it wasn’t written to exploit Spencer, and even that he regrets writing it as it has made the shooter infamous. However, it hasn’t stopped him or the band performing it over the years.

Deciding that this was a song that would work better shorn of the usual Boomtown Rats new wave sound, Geldof and Fingers (Geldof was solely credited upon this single’s release, but in 2019 he and Fingers reached a settlement and he is now also credited) wrote a piece that sounded more like Elton John. It’s likely Fingers came up with the piano and other than that, all you have are the vocals and strings in the background. Oh, and the handclaps. It’s at once sparse and bombastic.

Initially Geldof considered I Don’t Like Mondays would be best as a B-side but changed his tune when he saw how well-received it was on their US tour. It would be the first material released from the band’s third album, The Fine Art of Surfacing.

Review

I can find myself agreeing with critics of I Don’t Like Mondays. It is preachy and shows that self-important side of Geldof that some would find unlikeable during the Band Aid/Live Aid era. I don’t think it’s aged so well – in fact I used to prefer this to Rat Trap, but while writing my blog I’ve found myself thinking the opposite. However, cynical or not, it is an interesting subject matter for a song and personally I think Geldof’s lyrics are pretty good at asking how and why such terrible events can happen. And Fingers’ epic piano work is enjoyable. Part the problem may well be that, sadly, school shootings in the US are much more commonplace these days.

Wisely, The Boomtown Rats chose to not directly reference the Cleveland Elementary School shootings in their surreal video, directed by David Mallet. It begins with Geldof, bassist Pete Briquette, guitarists Garry Roberts and Gerry Cott and drummer Simon Crowe as a choir performing in a school in front of a creepy, monged class of kids, with Fingers on a piano. One girl leaves and enters her family home. Geldof sits there playing with his hair before somehow becoming the girl and Briquette, Roberts, Cott and Crowe demand Geldof ‘Tell me why’. Next, we’re in a stark, white background with only Geldof and Fingers present. The singer doesn’t help his defence of the song here, wearing shades and seemingly more concerned with looking cool than getting his message across. Then, it’s back to the school hall, before zooming out to the Rats, other cast and crew looking on at the school. Odd, but memorable.

After

Despite the initial promising response to I Don’t Like Mondays in the US, it was one of the few countries where the song failed to make its mark on the charts. The next two Boomtown Rats singles did well, Diamond Smiles reaching 13 and Someone’s Looking at You peaking at four. Next album Mondo Bongo spawned their final top 10 hit – Banana Republic, which reached three in 1980. Cott left the group in 1981, having distanced himself from the others in recent years. He had a short-lived solo career.

The Boomtown Rats struggled over the next few years but were given a new lease of life thanks to Band Aid. Everyone of course knows Geldof and Ultravox’s Midge Ure wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas?, but the other Rats (bar Roberts) were among the superstar line-up on the single, all providing vocals on the chorus. And the band were obvious choices to be part of Live Aid in 1985, with Geldof’s minute-long silence after singing ‘And the lesson today is how to die’ becoming one of many iconic moments. However, it kind of misses the point as the lesson that day was how not to die, surely? Also, apparently Geldof always did the long pause at live performances, but whatever I guess.

The Rats split in 1986 at another benefit concert – Self Aid, which aimed to raise awareness of unemployment in Ireland. Geldof went solo, while continuing to work with Briquette. Roberts co-wrote songs for Kirsty MacColl before quitting the music business. Fingers and Crowe formed the band Gung Ho and when they split, Fingers became a producer in Japan while Crowe joined a folk group and ran a clock-making business.

I Don’t Like Mondays was rereleased in 1994 and did respectably well, reaching 38 in the UK.

The Outro

Over the years the Rats occasionally performed together again in various incarnations. Roberts and Crowe even formed a group called The Rats in 2008, with Cott and Fingers occasionally joining them. Then in 2013 The Boomtown Rats were together once more, though Fingers opted out. After touring together they returned to the studio and released a new album, Citizens of Boomtown, in 2020.

The Info

Written by

Bob Geldof

Producer

Phil Wainman

Weeks at number 1

4 (28 July-24 August)

Trivia

Births

30 July: Golfer Graeme McDowell
5 August: Footballer David Healey
20 August: Singer Jamie Cullum
23 August: 5ive singer Ritchie Neville

Deaths

8 August: Novelist Nicholas Monsarrat – 8 August
9 August: Humanitarian Cecil Jackson-Cole
11 August: Novelist JG Farrell
5 August: Comedian ‘Mr Pastry’ Richard Hearne – 23 August

Meanwhile…

9 August: A naturist beach is established in open-minded Brighton.

10 August: The entire ITV network is shut down by a technicians’ strike, bar Channel Television. It remained off-for for over two months, meaning massive audiences for the BBC.

14 August: The Fastnet yacht race ends in tragedy, with 15 deaths after a storm hits the Irish Sea.
Also on this day, disgraced former Labour MP John Stonehouse is released from jail after serving four years of a seven-year sentence for faking his own death.

The Intro

After a total of 16 weeks at the top of the charts in 1978, suddenly John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were served notice. In a real changing of the guard moment, The Boomtown Rats became the first new wave act (and first Irish band) to have a number 1. They commemorated this on Top of the Pops (as seen below) by yawning and ripping up photos of Travolta. Enough of the 50s revival – the groundwork laid by punk finally paid off with Rat Trap.

Before

So what actually is new wave? It’s not as straightforward as explaining psychedelia or punk. It’s basically used as a loose term to describe what punk evolved into. However it dates back to before then.

Music critics like Nick Kent were using it as early as 1973 to describe acts including The Velvet Underground and New York Dolls. Other US acts that came later, including Blondie and Talking Heads, have little to do with punk but are certainly described as new wave.

To me, new wave is an effective way of describing the new underground (soon to turn mainstream) pop acts that wanted to shake up the staid pop scene of the mid- to-late-70s. Not as stylised as punk, they often came from pub-rock acts that brought some much-needed excitement to music.

It’s interesting to note that often decades are said to not ‘begin’ until several years after they have, ie, the 60s started with The Beatles in 1963, the 70s began with glam in 1973. If so, you could argue the 80s began several years early thanks to new wave. There’s certainly a very welcome injection of excitement and quality in the number 1s I’ll be reviewing from here on in for some time to come. Even as early as 1978 though, some bands didn’t like being referred to as new wave. XTC’s single This Is Pop took aim at the concept – to singer-songwriter Andy Partridge, his group were simply a new pop band.

The Boomtown Rats began as The Nightlife Thugs in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin in 1975. Guitarist Garry Roberts and keyboardist Johnnie Fingers had decided to form a band and recruited Bob Geldof, a former New Musical Express journalist, as singer, plus bassist Pete Briquette, guitarist Gerry Cott and drummer Simon Crowe. Roberts hated their name and threatened to resign unless they changed it. Geldof came up with the name that stuck – he’d been reading Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound for Glory, in which Guthrie mentioned a gang of children called The Boomtown Rats.

The Irish music scene was moribund at the time and The Boomtown Rats shook things up with exciting performances of covers by The Who, Bob Marley and The Rolling Stones. Thanks in part to Geldof’s media contacts, by the summer of 1976 the band were performing in the UK and were signed to Ensign Records soon after.

In August 1977 The Boomtown Rats released debut single Lookin’ After No. 1 and they were an instant hit. It reached two in Ireland and 11 in the UK. A month later came their eponymous debut album, which also spawned Mary of the 4th Form. It peaked at 15 here. The Rats transformed from a pub rock band to one heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen thanks to Geldof’s songwriting. And it’s worth noting that their producer was a young Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange – future husband of Shania Twain. Producing The Boomtown Rats was his first taste of success, with much more to come.

Second album A Tonic for the Troops came out in 1978 and they continued to do well, with She’s So Modern reaching 12 and Like Clockwork made it to six. Which left one more single to come.

Review

Despite the importance of Rat Trap as a sign of pop morphing once more into something new, it’s rather forgotten about. Obviously, Geldof’s later career as one of the men behind Band Aid/Live Aid has overshadowed anything The Boomtown Rats did but I Don’t Like Mondays is much better remembered than this track. And I can kind of see why.

While listening for research it occurred to me the only thing that’s ever stuck with me from this song (and I can imagine it’s the case with everyone else) is the sax refrain, played by Alan Holmes. It’s a great opening, before the song settles down and starts to sound rather similar to Squeeze’s Cool for Cats, also recorded in 1978.

Rat Trap is the tale of bored teenagers Billy and Judy and the track is clearly indebted to Bruce Springsteen both lyrically and sonically. Billy and Judy are bored of their lives and longing for escape. It’s epic in scale and you could also argue it’s progressive rock in the way it changes tack into several different sections. Yet I guess the main difference is the simplicity of the different parts and the youthful energy is more indebted to punk than prog. Scanning the lyrics, there’s some great stuff, especially in the second verse:

‘Billy don’t like it living here in this town,
He says the traps have been sprung long before he was born,
He says “Hope bites the dust behind all the closed doors,
And pus and grime ooze from its scab crusted sores”

And yet, yes I can think of a fair few new wave songs from around this time that might have been more deserved than Rat Trap. I’ve listened to it again several times and it’s one to admire and interest rather than really love. It was perhaps a case of ‘right place, right time’, with young record buyers deciding enough was enough and deciding to get behind anything that could get rid of that bloody Grease film.

The Outro

The video featured The Rats reading Rat Trap by Craig Thomas, which didn’t actually have any link to the song other than its name. It was directed by up-and-coming filmmaker David Mallett. In 1978 he made this, Bicycle Race by Queen and Blondie’s Hanging on the Telephone. Over the next few years he made some of the most imaginative videos for some of the greatest pop of the era, particularly with his work for David Bowie. We’ll be hearing more from those two.

The Info

Written by

Bob Geldof

Producer

Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange

Weeks at number 1

2 (18 November-1 December)

Meanwhile…

20 November: Buckingham Palace announces Prince Andrew is joining the Royal Navy.

23 November: Birmingham nightclub Pollyanna’s lifts its ban on black and Chinese revellers, after a one-year investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality concluded the nightclub’s entry policy was racist.

29 November: 22-year-old Nottingham Forest defender Viv Anderson becomes England’s first black international footballer, appearing in their 1–0 friendly win over Czechoslovakia at Wembley Stadium. Six months previous he had become the first black player to feature in an English league championship winning team and was also on the winning side in the Football League Cup final. And yet here I am 43 years later writing in a week in which several black England players were bombarded with racist messages after missing penalties in the Euro 2020 final.

30 November: An industrial dispute closes down The Times newspaper until 12 November 1979.