The Tragic Inspiration for the Boomtown Rats' 'I Don't Like Mondays'
'200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs Vol. 2' Book Excerpt
The Boomtown Rats came by their name in 1975 when the Irish band was known as the Nightlife Thugs. In his autobiography Bound for Glory, Woody Guthrie wrote about a gang by that name. “The whole idea of the band was that we were slightly different,” drummer Simon Crowe told Penny Black Music.
“We got our name from a book by Woody Guthrie, and we identified ourselves as doing something different. We were rebellious. When we were starting out in Dublin, there were all these muso bands that completely poo-poohed us because we just made a loud noise as far as they were concerned.”
In 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer went on a shooting rampage at a San Diego high school, killing two adults and injuring eight children. Her explanation was, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Singer Bob Geldolf was doing an interview in Atlanta when the news came over a teletype machine.
“I read it as it came out,” Geldorf said in Irish Central. “Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in is a bit strange. I was thinking about it on the way back to the hotel and I just said, ‘Silicon chip inside her head had switched to overload.’ I wrote that down. And the journalists interviewing her said, ‘Tell me why?’”
The Boomtown Rats released “I Don’t Like Mondays” later in 1979. The №1 hit in the UK only reached №73 in America.
“It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it. It wasn’t an attempt to exploit tragedy.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of the 200 Greatest Rock Songs series and Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.