Irish musician Garry Roberts died on Wednesday morning. As guitarist for The Boomtown Rats, he scored a number 2 hit in the Top 40 in the summer of 1979 with I Don’t Like Mondays. Garry is 72 years old.

With great sadness the members Boomtown Mouse announced that Garry Roberts, their friend and guitarist, passed away this morning,” the group’s social media post read. “The band’s remaining members, Pete, Bob and Simon, offer their deepest condolences to their friends and family. On a beautiful spring evening in 1975, in a pub in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin, Garry became a founding member of what became a great rock ‘n’ roll band, based in large part on his voice, a storm of very wise voices gushing out. from him. overloaded amp squeezed; and who inspires not only the rest of the group, but also audiences from around the world where he plays. To fans, he is ‘The Legend’ – and rightly so. To us, he is Gazzer, the man who sums up feelings about who The Rats are. We’ve known Garry since we were kids, so tonight we felt weirdly out of control. Keep it up, Gaz. Thanks for everything, buddy. Bob GeldofPete Briquette, Simon Crowe.”

Many fans and fellow musicians have expressed their condolences. At this time, the cause of Garry Roberts’ death has not been announced.

Garry was born as Garrick Roberts on June 16, 1950 in Dublin, Ireland. He attended school in the city of Waterford, southern Ireland. There he formed his first band with drummer Simon Crowe. The Boomtown Mice then appeared in the eastern Irish port city of Dun Laoghaire. Initially the group called itself The Nightlife Thugs, but Garry threatened to leave the band if the name was not changed. ‘The Boomtown Rats’ was introduced by Bob Geldof. He had read the name somewhere in the autobiography Bound For Glory by American folk singer Woody Guthrie.

In the summer of 1976 the band made their first appearances in the United Kingdom and also in the Netherlands. In London they got their first record deal. Their first single appeared in the summer of 1977 and was called Looking After No. 1. In Ireland that almost worked. There, Looking After reached No. 1 2nd place in the hit list. They had to wait until 1978 for their first number 1 hit. In that year, Rat Trap, the third single from their second album A Tonic For The Troops, reached number one in the UK charts. It was the first No. 1 hit for the Irish group there and also the first new wave No. 1 hit. Mousetrap, however, only became a major hit in England and Ireland. Not anywhere else.

However, a major breakthrough was soon to come. In the summer of 1979, I Don’t Like Mondays, the first single from the album The Fine Art Of Surface, became a major worldwide hit. It was their first number 1 hit in Ireland and also reached number one in the UK. In the Netherlands, however, the song had to settle for second place, behind Quiereme Mucho from Julio Iglesias. The song is notable for its unnatural subject matter. It is about the true story of a 16 year old American schoolgirl, Brenda Ann Spencer, who one morning decided to shoot with a sniper rifle at people waiting in front of the gates of an elementary school. Two people died and eight people were injured. In a telephone conversation, he said of his motivation: “I do it just for fun. I don’t like Mondays. It mixes up my life.” In America, the song peaked at number 73 on the Billboard Hot 100. It remains their only hit in that country.

In the Netherlands also stick with this one stroke. The group reached the Tipparade four times between 1979 and 1981 with the single Diamond Smile, Someone Sees You, banana republic and Never In A Million Years. However, the Top 40 never existed again. In total, The Boomtown Rats released six albums before the group disbanded in 1986. Their last appearance was in May of that year at a charity concert against high unemployment in Ireland. Garry worked as a sound engineer after The Boomtown Rats disbanded. In this capacity he works with, among others Pretty Red and Orchestra Maneuver In The Dark. He later worked as a financial adviser and central heating engineer and performed with Simon Crowe, with whom he had started his first band. During the show, they played The Boomtown Rats repertoire.

When The Boomtown Rats decided to reunite after 27 years in 2013, Simon and Garry were back again. Apart from them, the line-up consisted of singer Bob Geldof and bassist Pete Briquette. Keyboardist Johnnie Fingers was no longer involved and Gerry Cott, who had left the group in 1981, was not there either. The collaboration as a quartet went so well that the group’s new studio album was released in 2020: Citizens Of Boomtown.

Garry Roberts last appeared on stage with The Boomtown Rats in early October. The group then performed in the English coastal town of Skegness.