The Boomtown Rats (the A-Side)

The Boomtown Rats discuss their 1978 second album 'A Tonic for the Troops'.

Series in which leading performers and songwriters talk about the album that made them or changed them.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, each edition includes two episodes - the A-side and B-side.

In the A-side, Bod Geldof and The Boomtown Rats talk to John Wilson. Named after a gang in Woody Guthrie's autobiography, the band had a series of hits between 1977 and 1985. Signed by Mercury records the same year that punk rock exploded in Britain, it was their second album 'A Tonic for the Troops', with tracks like "She's So Modern", "Like Clockwork" and "Me and Howard Hughes", that brought them their first Number 1 hit with "Rat Trap".

It's an album that treats dark themes like suicide and euthanasia in an often upbeat, pop-punk style - one critic described the track "Eva Braun" as "the happiest, cheeriest, best upbeat song about Hitler ever written." And another said "Vintage superstars who look like eyesores and sound like dinosaurs should carefully study this album."

The band broke-up in 1986, but reformed in 2013 to tour the UK. This will be a unique opportunity not only to hear them talk about their album but also to see them perform exclusive versions of key tracks. In the B-side of the programme, it's the turn of the audience to ask the questions.

Producer: Paul Kobrak

First broadcast in December 2014.