Switched to Overload

The Boomtown Rats : I Don't Like Mondays

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On January 29, 1979 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego from her house across the street, killing two men and wounding eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg. Spencer used a rifle her father had given her as a gift. As to what impelled her into this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” 

The quote inspired Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats to write the #1 smash "I Don't Like Mondays".

Geldof has heard about the shooting at a radio station in Atlanta when the telex machine started printing up wire copy about the shooting.

“I read it as it came out. 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?' 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,”

That hasn't prevented comedian Russell Brand from joking about the Live Aid organizer:


"Bob Geldof...no wonder he's such an expert on famine, he has been dining out on 'I Don't Like Mondays' for thirty years"

Brenda Ann Spencer is eligible for parole in 2019.