“Reggae’s a unified music, it’s about peace and love. It might be a cliché but we’re all about that…”
UB40 – a common household name and arguably one of the most famous reggae acts. The talented musicians successfully combine Jamaica-inspired beats with classic British pop to create a fine flavour of enlivening, up-tempo music. Over the span of their career, the public have seen the band delivering number one singles and worldwide tours. Next year marks their 40th anniversary, and to celebrate the occasion the guys are set to do one of their biggest headline tours to date.
“We’ve always been a live band. In fact we’re better live than we are on record in my personal opinion”
Since forming the band in 1978, it wasn’t long until UB40 got started climing the ladder to the heady heights of fame. “After only playing a dozen gigs, suddenly we were on the biggest tour of the country at that time,” Ali tells me. “Chrissy Hynde, of The Pretenders, who was number one at the time, she came and saw us and after the show she invited us on a 35-date tour. When we were on that tour we released our first single and by the time we’d finished the tour, it was at number four in the charts. We instantly rebooked the same venues that we’d just played with Chrissy, and then we’d done our first British tour in 1980, so it actually turned into a 70-day tour and we haven’t looked back since. It’s now an annual thing for us to be touring around Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii – not bad for some, eh?”
So, it’s fair to say the odds looked favourable for the group from the very beginning and the opportunities that have risen since have been taken with some style, with the band continuing to progress as the years have gone by. “A great moment for us was when we played a sold-out show at Madison Square Gardens. It happened to be the same week that we were number one on the Billboard Charts in the States, and the only other band in history to play Madison Square Gardens the same week they were number one was the Beatles – smashing company to be in.”
Anyone who lived through the 80s will know the political significance of the band’s name, too. The ‘UB’ stands for ‘unemployed benefit’, referencing the form that needed to be submitted in order to claim benefits. “We were unemployed, you know? We were disenfranchised youth.When we got the band together, one of our friends said, ‘Well, you know you’re all on the dole, so why don’t you call yourselves UB40?’ Which was a stroke of genius really because it instantly gave us three-million Arcadian fans.”
The fact that the band has started from such humble beginnings has only inspired them on to do powerful things and in 1990, they went in protest for Nelson Mandela’s freedom.“We upheld the culture of broadcast in South Africa until Mr Mandela was released. It was one man one vote, we sang about that often enough and we refused to go there until it happened. When it did happen we played a gig in Johannesburg. To sing to 80,000 people who all have clenched fists and shouting ‘Amandla! Awethu! [meaning power is ours] back to you, it was a very moving moment for us all.”
As stated, UB40 have managed to retain a voice in the industry over the past four decades, but Ali believes that there is no type for resting and adapting is key. “It hasn’t got easier because as the years have gone on the music business has changed so we’re still having to learn to adapt, which will always be the case. Since the death of vinyl and the birth of downloads and streaming, it’s a different ball game.”
Ali then expands, sharing with us how the music they perform has worked in their advantage and helped them to stay current. “We had 40 top 20 hits in the 80s and 90s, so we’re the perfect festival band because we can just rock up anywhere and people know our stuff.” Whether that be their own music or covers from other well-established artists. After all, UB40’S version of ‘Red, Red Wine’ Neil Diamond is universally loved.
The band’s wonderfully buoyant take on classics are just part of the reason as to why they’ve attained such success. “We choose a song we personally love and stay true to the melody of it. We try to give it our own backing but we stick to the melody because that’s what we loved about the song in the first place”.
Their selection of Labour of Love albums hears the band cover an a array of timeless songs. “We made three labour of love albums and they were a collections of songs that we grew up listening to,” Ali says. “The albums sold so well that for the next 20 years after that we were just hounded by record companies and fans wanting to know when we were going to make another one.”
Earlier this year, UB40 released their fourth album in the assortment of covers, naming it A real Labour of Love. This time around delivering a compilation of 80’s tracks.
It became their best-received album in decades, and I asked how it felt to know that fans aren’t only nostalgic for their old songs but are also responding to the new tunes. “It means that we’re still relevant, to coin a phrase, and that makes us very happy but it also makes fans happy. We know who we are and we’ve been going for nearly 40 years so that does make us a heritage act, but at the same time we’re making new albums and we’re doing new music. We’re definitely still in it to win it.”
UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro takes place at Sheffield City Hall on 3 April. Tickets available here.
