UB40 celebrate 40th anniversary with 40 gigs – including Portsmouth Guildhall

The group from Birmingham - long-time avatars of multicultural, working class Britain - have sold 100m records worldwide and had number one hits in many different countries including America and their native UK, where they’ve enjoyed 40 Top 40 chart entries and spent 11 years in the national album charts.

They’ve also had four Grammy nominations and been the first reggae band to play in places like the USSR but then UB40 are the genre’s ultimate ‘gateway band’ – a title secured after they performed to an estimated television audience of 3bn at Live8 in 2005.

We’d be forgiven for thinking they have nothing left to prove, but that’s not the case. Their last few albums, recorded after former singer Ali Campbell left, have heralded a creative rebirth for a band that’s rediscovered the joys of writing, playing and performing together.

UB40 have their mojo back and sound rejuvenated on their latest set For The Many, released last month by Shoestring Music Productions, which has been hailed as their finest in years. Inspired by their anniversary and driven by a renewed sense of purpose, they’ve returned to making the kind of album that announced their breakthrough by writing songs with a social conscience, and which includes lengthy dub passages – ingredients that should immediately resonate with fans of Signing Off and Present Arms.

Band members Robin and Duncan Campbell make the point that the levels of racism and inequality in Britain have increased under the current Tory government, just as they did under Margaret Thatcher’s. The struggle is the same, and so it seems almost superfluous to ask if the album title was inspired by Labour’s slogan, ‘For the many and not the few.’

Robin: ‘Yes, absolutely. We’re nailing our colours to the mast as we always do, and we’ve met Jeremy Corbyn several times. He even came to see us play at the Royal Albert Hall but it was young people who overwhelmingly voted for Corbyn, and that gives me hope for the future.’

Duncan: ‘It’s the first time I’ve felt excited by politics for a very long time. I never signed up to the Blairite thing at all but I’ve managed to snatch a few words with Corbyn and he’s bloody marvellous. It was like meeting Nelson Mandela, I’m telling you!’

UB40 are renowned for their political songs - their last few albums contain plenty of them – and there are several more on the new album, two of them written by Duncan. Poor Fool (and also Gravy Train, written by Jimmy Brown and Slinger) describe how the system has betrayed ordinary people (‘If I work a hundred years or more, still won’t get a seat on that gravy train’), while I’m Alright Jack is narrated by a greedy, self-satisfied character who feels little empathy for others’ misfortune, despite being challenged by deejay Pablo Rider.

Duncan: ‘That song refers to any one of those careerist bastards, no matter what they’re called or which party they belong to. We live in an era where someone can get a massive payout for getting it wrong but once you’re on the gravy train, then it really doesn’t seem to matter what you do.’

Robin: ‘It’ about anyone who sets out to feather their own nest basically but Duncan came into his own on this album because those are the best lyrics he’s ever written, without a doubt.’

Duncan’s now been UB40’s lead singer for more than a decade, and has performed to more than a million people worldwide. Like his brothers he possesses the Campbell vocal style, which they honed in their father’s folk group from infancy. Duncan was therefore the perfect choice as Ali’s replacement, and could have been singing with them from the start.

Robin: ‘That was in 1978. Ali originally wanted us to be a dub band but I told him we’d never get anywhere doing that. I said, “The only way I’m joining this band is if there’s singing in it and you’re the lead singer,” but he didn’t want to do it. He wanted to play drums and that’s when I first encouraged Duncan to join us, because the three of us had been singing together from childhood.’

Duncan declined the offer, Ali reluctantly sang lead and it would take thirty years for events to turn full circle. In-between times Duncan played the spoons for the BBC; ran a snooker club in Birmingham and managed bars in Perth and Barbados. He also lived in Jamaica for a year. Labour Of Love IV was his first album with UB40, and a major turning point for all concerned.

Robin: ‘Yes, because we were all there in the same room, jamming on the songs and we recorded the tracks live, without so much as a computer in sight and it was fabulous. We were definitely happy to be back as a band and reliving the kind of chemistry that comes from working together, and Duncan fitted straight in. He enabled us to keep that UB40 sound because of the brotherly blend and when he sings some of the older songs like Food For Thought or One In Ten, he sounds amazingly like a young Ali.’

Robin wrote You Haven’t Called Me Yet for Duncan when he was working on an album with Ali in Jamaica called Duncan Disorderly but it was never used. That’s surprising given how good it is, with the central character sat in some hotel room, wreathed in cigarette smoke and waiting for a call that never comes. The music’s fabulous too, but then UB40 always did have a great rhythm section and prove it again on this track.

Robin: ‘I was trying to write an on-the-road song without it being too corny but it’s also a tribute to Gregory Isaacs because musically, it’s in the same vein as Night Nurse and The Border. That song dates from the early nineties but I’ve always wanted Duncan to do it over.’

You Haven’t Called Me Yet is one of two tracks chosen to preview the new album. Robin’s other contribution is The Keeper, which is the epitome of a UB40 love song with its laidback vocals, close harmonies and well-crafted melodies. Robin, sax player Brian Travers and drummer Jimmy Brown have long been UB40’s principal songwriters but the band members have drawn closer together since Duncan joined, and everyone but Brian contributed songs to the new album.

Robin: ‘Yes, and that’s unheard of! Everybody felt inspired but that’s what being in a band is about because when someone writes a lyric, then we all contribute ideas until we come up with something that’s made between us. That’s how it works.’

Norman Hassan’s songs include Broken Man, featuring Kabaka Pyramid, and All We Do Is Cry, shared with Hunterz and a passionate appeal on behalf of children in need. The burly percussionist also contributes lead single Moonlight Lover – a joyous cover of the Joya Landis rocksteady hit that would grace any national chart. Norman, who is of Yemeni descent, grew up in the same area of Birmingham as the Campbell brothers (Balsall Heath) and often accompanied them to local clubs and shebeens, where they’d hear all the latest Jamaican imports, Moonlight Lover included.

Robin: ‘That was one of the first records Norman ever heard as a kid. He’s always loved it and it was him who got Gilly G to demo the tune with him, soon after we’d done the Promises And Lies tour. If you know Norman, you know that he absolutely sings from the bottom of his heart but Moonlight Lover stayed in the archives for years before we decided to release it. Gilly was doing a day job by then but we’d kept in touch so we rang him and said: “We’re just about to release that track you did with Norman all those years ago. We’ve rerecorded everything on it except your vocal and we’re going to release it as a single, so do you want to come and perform it at the Albert Hall next Tuesday”.’

Duncan: ‘He was brilliant as well. He absolutely killed it.’

UB40 were formed along democratic lines from their inception, with the members sharing everything equally, including songwriting credits. Is that still the case?

Robin: ‘Yes, totally. When most bands break up they blame it on musical differences, but it’s usually financial differences because when the other members see just one or two guys earning all the money from songwriting, then they’ll start fighting to get their stuff recorded.

‘You end up accepting inferior songs so that’s why we said, “no matter who does what, we’ll split everything and every song will be a band composition.” We may acknowledge that so-and-so wrote certain lyrics, but financially everything’s shared between the band members and still is.

‘Remember, it took Ali 30 years before he started to say, “I should be earning more than anyone else,” and that wasn’t down to his composing, because he never wrote any lyrics. It was down to him being lead vocalist and thinking he was therefore more important than the rest of us.’

Bassist Earl Falconer tells us more about this on Whatever Happened To UB40?, but what’s the story behind this track?

Robin:’Well that’s Earl’s take on the spilt but he wrote it after we took part in a documentary which purported to be neutral, but wasn’t. The filmmakers spoke to me, Brian and Jimmy but didn’t ask Earl and Norman a single question despite them being founder members, unlike the two guys with Ali.

‘Earl was left feeling annoyed and frustrated because after Astro quit, people on Facebook were saying that he would be next. That’s why Earl wrote that song – it was to let everyone know he was never going to leave the band, and that those who’d already done so were traitors’

Earl has been involved with several side projects over the years, most notably Circus Records – a label that’s credited with having brought dubstep to the meanstream. His other track on For The Many is Bulldozer, which wouldn’t sound at all out of place in a Jamaican dancehall.

Robin: ‘Right. Earl’s tracks are much more street than we usually do but that’s the kind of music he produces for himself. He’s a jungle freak and that’s always going to inform the stuff he brings us. I know there’s a section of our audience that will find them too extreme because they’re more into rocksteady and lovers’ rock but those tracks are great for the album. They bring another flavour that’s likely to attract younger people who don’t usually listen to UB40, and we’ll be releasing an album of remixes as well that has contributions from many different people, doing different styles.

‘What started out as a simple idea has resulted in this 15-track album called Bigga Baggariddim that’s in the same vein as Baggariddim, which we did in 1985 with some Birmingham rappers. In fact, two of the guys who deejay on that album, Slinger and Pablo Rider, also appear on the main album as well as the collaborations album. Dubmatix, Freestylers, Danny WAV and others have done remixes, something that’ll have crowds blowing their whistles and going crazy, and we have Kabaka Pyramid on the main album too, who’s really articulate. He responded straightaway.

‘Then there’s KIOKO, a local Birmingham band who are on the verge of happening and House Of Shem, who we’ve worked with in New Zealand. They did three songs but there have been quite a few people who’ve wanted to get involved. We’ve also got tracks with Black Hero, Inner Circle, Tipper Irie, Leno Banton, Gilly G and Winston Francis, the original Mr. Fixit. We’ve even got a song with General Zooz from the Indian reggae band Reggae Rajahs, who opened for us when we played in Mumbai.’

In addition to For The Many and the collection of collaborations, there are also plans to release a dub album masterminded by Brian Travers’ son Jamie, whose Dub Sessions series has already proved popular with UB40 fans.

From March 29, they’ll be embarking on a 40-date UK 40th anniversary tour that starts in Portsmouth. Duncan will be making his 500th appearance as UB40’s lead singer during this tour, an abiding confirmation of the band’s legacy.

UB40

Portsmouth Guildhall

Friday, March 29

portsmouthguildhall.org.uk