I don’t like mondays

While Bob Geldof’s philanthropic efforts remain his greatest contribution to humanity, he was also frontman for the Boomtown Rats. They had a string of hits in their native Ireland and throughout the U.K. from the mid ’70s to the early ’80s. Their biggest, “I Don’t Like Mondays,” was inspired by a school shooting that took place on Jan. 29, 1979.

The song was released in 1979 as the lead single from their third album, The Fine Art of Surfacing. The song was a number one single in the UK Singles Chart for four weeks during the summer of 1979, and ranks as the sixth biggest hit of the UK in 1979. Written by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers, the piano ballad was the band’s second single to reach number one on the UK chart.

So let’s hear the song and then i will tell you the story behind it

Monday mornings are tough for everyone, but on January 29th, 1979, a freckle-faced red-headed teen found a unique way to sing the beginning-of-the-week blues. Her name is Brenda Ann Spencer.

The first note of her displeasure — a rifle crack — came at around 8:30 a.m, just as a bell rang to signal the start of classes at Grover Cleveland Elementary in San Carlos, California, a suburb of San Diego.

Children waiting in front of the school started to fall to the ground, bleeding. The sounds of gunfire continued. It took a few shots before the pupils, parents, and teachers realised what was happening.  A sniper, somewhere in the row of houses across the street from the school, was using kids for target practice.

With children screaming and bullets flying, Cleveland elementary’s principal, Burton Wragg, 53, ran outside to help the victims and move the other children, who were paralysed with fear, out of harm’s way.

There was another pop and Wragg fell, shot in the chest. Mike Suchar, 56, the school caretaker, rushed out to help the dying principal and was also shot. Teachers and students barricaded themselves in the school, while nurses treated the wounded.

Four victims, however, were still outside. San Diego police officer Robert Robb, first to arrive at the scene, got a bullet in his neck.

The shooting continued until another officer, aided by a security guard from a neighbouring high school, commandeered a garbage truck and drove it in front of Cleveland Elementary, blocking the sniper’s sight-lines.

When it was over, eight children and the police officer were wounded. The caretaker and the principal were dead.

On a hunch, a reporter from a local paper dialled the phone number at the address police had pinpointed as the sniper’s nest.  A young girl answered. The reporter asked if she knew where the shots were coming from and when the reporter pointed out that it was her own address, she said, “Yeah, who do you think’s doing the shooting?”

The next question, the obvious one, was why?

“I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day,” she told him.

The girl with the soft voice, solid aim, and reluctance to return to school after the weekend, was not-so-sweet 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer. She was the youngest child of Wallace Spencer, an audio-visual specialist at a nearby college, and his wife, Dot. Until her parents divorced in 1972, she seemed a normal happy child, a bit of a tomboy. She was active in several sports, an animal lover, and a talented photographer.

Eight months after the shooting, Spencer pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to 25 years to life. She has been consistently denied parole since 1993, and will not be considered again until 2021.

Geldof read about the news later that day via Telex machine at the radio station of Georgia State University. The lyrics came quickly, and the song was released six months later. Within a few weeks, it was No. 1 in the U.K. It rose to only No. 73 in the U.S. – the only Boomtown Rats song to chart in America – but it’s possible that radio stations wouldn’t play the song because of its sensitive nature.

Thank you for reading my story! I hope you enjoyed it!