Geldof: 'Music helped me grieve Yates death'

Sir Bob Geldof has explained that focusing on music helped him to grieve after the death of his ex-wife Paula Yates.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the former Boomtown Rats frontman remarked that he found it quite difficult to move on with his life after Yates died from an accidental heroin overdose more than a decade ago.

"I've been around a lot of death, in Africa and personally, seen too much dying… I don't remember grief for my mum, or bewilderment, so that surges out with all the Paula stuff," he said.

The singer continued: "Bereavement, absolutely unbound. It was overwhelming, this amorphous mass of loss and pain... The impulse to music is about framing your references to the world.

"You're trying to flesh out a sensation, find something that is essentially incoherent, certainly inchoate, and make it tangible. Until I'd done that, I couldn't understand what had happened to me."

The couple were married for almost ten years before divorcing in May 1996. Yates later became romantically involved with INXS singer Michael Hutchence.

After Hutchence's suicide in 1997 and Yates's overdose in 2000, Geldof was awarded custody of the pair's daughter Tiger Lily.