Bob Geldof said in a new interview that he “blames” himself for the drug-related death of his daughter Peaches. The legendary rocker sat down with ITV News on Wednesday, Oct. 15, opening up about his little girl’s tragic April 2014 death at age 25 from a heroin overdose.
“I put on my snakeskin suit and I can be this other thing,” the musician reflected of performing. “It is utterly cathartic those two hours. I am drained and it’s a very brief respite. It just so happened that this was available to me when the immensity, the enormity of losing my kid happened.”
Geldof, 63, told ITV he was aware that his daughter was receiving treatment for her addiction. “Of course I knew about it. We did more than talk about it,” Sir Geldof claimed. “I don’t want to go into it too much.”
In April, Peaches was found in her home in Kent, England, by her husband, rocker Thomas Cohen. The British socialite’s body was discovered with puncture wounds on her thumbs, wrists, and elbows, and according to the coroner, her system contained a “fatal range” of heroin levels.
Still, Geldof remembered his late daughter — a mother of two young sons Astala, 2, and Phaedra, 17 months — for her ebullient nature and not her addiction. “The first thing is that she was super bright. Too bright,” he said. “She knew what life was supposed to be and, God bless her, she tried very hard to get there and she didn’t make it.”
He added that he was holding himself at least partly responsible for his child’s death. “I’m not just blaming the newspapers. You blame yourself, the father who’s responsible, who clearly failed,” Geldof said. “You go back… you go over, you go over, over. What could you have done? “
Peaches’ mother Paula Yates also passed away from a heroin overdose in September 2000. “The ability to try and understand — though it is incomprehensible — or to come to terms with the immensity of the grief is there,” Sir Geldof concluded. “But it takes a long while for it to filter through the sort of filth of your subconscious… I’m not there with Peaches yet. It was all too soon. It was all too sudden, too unexpected.”
