Few bands can boast of a tenure like that of UB40 – soon to be celebrating their 45th year! That’s not all though; as the artists behind the song ‘Champion,’ which is the official track for the 2022 Commonwealth Games (being held in England for the first time in 20 years), with a new album on the horizon and upcoming tour, UB40 will soon be blasting their finely honed reggae pop fusion on stages all over the USA. I recently caught up with founding guitarist Robin Campbell and new lead vocalist Matt Doyle to discuss the tour, the new album, the Commonwealth Games, and a little bit of everything else.
Andrew Howie: So tell me a little bit about this new track.
Robin Campbell: So we were asked to contribute a track for an album of Birmingham artists for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. We wrote this song with an eye towards the Commonwealth Games, and then discovered after we’d completed it that they’d love it and wanted to use it as the anthem, so that’s how it happened. Happy days.
AH: The Commonwealth Games coming to Birmingham is a big deal, no?
RC: The games coming to Birmingham is great, it’s almost like the Olympics. I think it’s 72 nations competing together. Originally, it was obviously the commonwealth, but now there are many countries competing that have joined the games that weren’t part of the original commonwealth. It’s become a much bigger deal than it used to be. It’s like a minor Olympics, and it’s a massive thing for it to be in Birmingham, and we’re pleased to be hosting it.
AH: Can you tell me a little bit about the rappers featured on this project, Gilly G and Dapz on the Map?
RB: Well originally it was to be on an album of Birmingham artists, so most of the songs on the album are specifically about Birmingham, and we wanted to use the rappers to reference the city, and that’s exactly what Gilly G did. He’s more or less a permanent guest with UB40 now; we take him on the road with us, he’ll be in the States when we come visit. Dapz on the Map is another guy from Birmingham, and we were asked if he could contribute something to the track because he liked it, and that’s how we met him. It’s a very communal thing, really nice just to have people contributing.
AH: This upcoming record will include new original material as well as re-recorded versions of some of your hits. Can you elaborate on why you went in that direction?
RC: The whole point of it is that we’ve been working with Matt now for the past year, and obviously for live purposes he’s been working on old stuff, the classics, you know? We just enjoyed doing them, and he’s so good on them, he sings great on them, so we just thought it would be a nice idea to revisit some of the classic tunes, in addition to doing some new material with Matt, and re-record them with our new vocalist. It seemed like a no-brainer to us, and of course Matt was very much into the idea because he loves all those old songs. These are songs that mostly we recorded before he was born, but he’d been singing them all his life in the backseat of his parents’ car. Why don’t you tell him, Matt?
Matt Doyle: My earliest memories of traveling around with my parents on holiday, we moved around a lot, always had UB40 in the background. We had mixtapes and things, and it was probably about 70% UB40 on these tapes. I think by the time I was five years old I knew them word for word, and if I didn’t know the words I just made ‘em up. But I’ve always been singing these songs.
AH: It must be quite the trip for you to be singing those songs on stage now as the lead singer of the band.
MD: It’s amazing, I have to pinch myself all the time.
AH: Let’s talk for a moment about the lyrical content of some of those old UB40 songs – there’s a fair bit of sociopolitical commentary involved. Do you have any thoughts on how the issues you were writing about then have changed, for better or worse?
RC: That’s the truth of it, it’s just as crazy a world now as it was back then. We didn’t stop making sociopolitical commentary when Thatcher went away, because the world hasn’t gotten any better. We’re still talking about the same things. The hardest thing as a songwriter is that you tend to be complaining about the same stuff, but you have to find a new way of saying it, a new hook, a new line. Because really, you’re going on about the same stuff. The world hasn’t gotten any better. The warmongering hasn’t stopped, isn’t going to stop, imperialism and racism haven’t stopped.
When you’re younger you think things are getting better, because you can see change, but the longer you live on this planet you learn that things are cyclical, and all the crap comes back at some point. Which is why you eventually come to the inevitable conclusion that writing songs about something doesn’t change anything. You just write them because you need to say it, it’s a cleansing operation; you have to say these things because it’s what you believe, but if you think that it’s going to change anything you’re deluded.
AH: Can you talk about what it means to have saxophone lines from [the late] Brian Travers?
RC: Losing Brian left a big hole in the band. He was a prolific lyricist, and of course he did all the brass arranging. We still have a brass section and we still play all his parts, and the fact that we actually have some music that contained sax lines from Brian that we hadn’t used yet was a bonus for us. That’s why we’ve used them on ‘Champion.’ It’s great, it’s a nod to the contribution he made. It’s great to be able to do that, and we won’t be able to do it forever, because eventually we will run out of recorded parts of his, but the fact that we’ve still got a few things means we can still use them, and that’s a great thing.
AH: Matt, what was it that drew you so deeply into the music of UB40?
MD: I don’t think there’s any one thing you can put your finger on, I Think there are just so many factors. For me personally, it’s just the way the music gets me feeling, the whole sound, the roundness, every song is different, and I’m still learning certain meanings to certain songs that I always thought were love songs. There are so many layers to UB40 songs that people may not realize, and now that I’m kind of in there and singing the songs, and the guys are telling me the stories behind them, I didn’t realize the depth to these songs. The way the music gets in your bones. Reggae has always been the kind of soundtrack to my life personally, and Birmingham in general, and I think it replicates the sound of Birmingham. We walk slow, we talk slow. Many, many factors in it.
RC: You’ll get a different answer whoever you ask. Matt gave a pretty good answer, but if you asked any fan, you would get a different answer. That’s what good music does, isn’t it?Â
AH: Can you describe your environment growing up and how it influenced your music?
RC: The influx of Caribbean, and mainly Jamaican immigrants in the ‘50s, they brought their own music with them. It was a big immigration into England, and Birmingham got a lot of Jamaicans, so the area that we lived in, we were surrounded by Jamaican pop music, even before it was reggae, when it was ska, and even before then! But I’d been listening to Jamaican pop music, at least all my life since I was a child, I heard it everywhere I’ve been, because of the area I grew up in, which was a high-immigrant area. It was just everywhere, and all of my friends also heard it everywhere, and we became the band.
We all grew up in the same way, and even Matt has; he’s grown up in the same area, in the same way, surrounded by that cultural melting pot. We just grew up on the music, and when it became reggae in the late ‘60s, that just because the music that mattered to me. Obviously I was listening to other stuff, English pop, The Beatles and all that. American R&B and Motown, it was massive where I lived, we were listening to that too. But reggae changed everything. Reggae made me want to be a musician. And I grew up in a musical family, my father was a musician, but I only really wanted to be one when I got turned onto reggae.
AH: These groups you’re touring with [The Original Wailers, Maxi Priest, Al Anderson, Big Mountain], have you toured with them before?
RC: We’ve never met Big Mountain I don’t think, but we’ve played many times with The Wailers. Maybe not the exact same guys, but many times, and Al Anderson too. Maxi Priest we know very well. We’ve recorded with Maxi and he has supported us as well at various shows. We’ve performed live with Maxi. So yeah, we know these guys well. If you’re a reggae fan, it’s the kind of bill you should be at, you should be going to that kind of concert. It should be a lot of fun.
AH: Is this your first proper tour since the before times, before COVID?
RC: Yes. Our last major tour was in the States in 2019. We spent I think about nine weeks in the States towards the end of the year. We did some British dates when we got home, but that was the last thing we did before COVID and lockdown hit. It gave us a chance to work in the studio, which was cool, because even with lockdown you could send stuff digitally around the world, which we did with several artists all over the world on our collaboration album. So that was fun.
It was quite nice to not be gigging for a couple months, but then you get stir-crazy and itchy feet, and the thought that we were maybe never going to do it again was pretty scary. Now that the world is kind of opening up again, the traveling is still a nightmare, much worse than it used to be. Touring is difficult, but you do it because at the end of the traveling you’ve got shows. We can’t wait. We have been gigging for the last year with Matt but not heavily. He’s now confident and enjoying himself on stage. He was a bit of a rabbit in the headlights when he started, but he’s grown in confidence and he’s firing on all cylinders. In fact the whole band is now, he’s reinvigorated us, like a young man would with a bunch of old guys. We’re having a ball, we can’t wait to get on the road. The States is up first, but we’ll be working all next year celebrating the 45 years. This is our first proper full on tour with Matt, and he’s never been to the States before, he’s a tourist!
AH: Anything you’re particularly excited about on this tour?
RC: We’re doing some great venues, Hollywood Bowl, New York’s Central Park, that’s a gig I’ve never done before! It’s iconic to say you’ve played Central Park! We’re really looking forward to it and just can’t wait to get out there.
