Founding member of UB40 and passionate reggae musician Ali Campbell speaks with Luke Owain Boult about the rift with former bandmates, touring the world and the international language of reggae.
What do you think it is about UB40’s music that speaks to people and has spoken to people for such a long time?
Well it’s reggae. Reggae music is universally loved and has always been, that’s what’s been the secret to our success and the longevity of the band. And we’ve proved that by going all around the world. We’ve just come back from Hawaii, you know, we did four islands in Hawaii, before that we were in New Zealand. We were in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and we were met by naked savages with bones through their noses, and they whipped out their pan pipes and started playing UB40 tunes. It never ceases to amaze me how much reggae is loved. Everywhere we go there’s also home grown reggae. There’s home grown reggae in all those places I mentioned.
You’ve travelled all over the world with UB40. What’s your favourite place to tour if you have one?
UB40 are the most toured band in UK pop history you know? Might even be the most toured band in world history. So we literally have been all round the world many, many times. We’ve been to mainland China once; we want to do a bit more stuff there in China, because that’s like the frontier. So there’s no favourite place really, I mean every gig is my favourite place because we always get great reactions you know. I’ve never had a bad gig; it doesn’t matter where we are in the world. In South Africa we upheld the cultural boycott for many years until Mr. Mandela got in, and then we finally did go to Johannesburg where we played to 80,000 people. We’ve also done the Live Aid shows, and played to a billion people at the live Bollywood awards. They’re all amazing things to do, and every country has got its own beautiful parts and its down parts.
What made you want to come back to working as UB40?
I started UB40 in 1979 to promote reggae and I was very successful, UB40 was very successful, and I was the founding member. I had to leave my own band because because there was complicity with band members and management, there was a lot of skulduggery going on, but it’s kind of old news now. Astro came back to me; I was going out as Ali Campbell, the Legendary Voice Of UB40. Mickey was always with me, he left when I did. And then when Astro came back into the fold, there was me, Mickey and Astro the original members. I thought what the old UB40 would do was make a country and western album; that was the reason for Astro’s departure. Watching them destroy the UB40 legacy basically prompted me to go, ‘oh ok, what we’ll do is call ourselves UB40 again, but we’ll always let people know which UB40 it is, because we’ll never go out without saying UB40 featuring Ali, Astro and Mickey’. We’ve never done a gig without that. We don’t confuse anybody, and also we don’t want to be confused with the old band.
So you’re taking the music back to UB40’s roots.
I’m promoting reggae music, that’s what I started UB40 to do, and I think the old guys doing a country album called Getting Over the Storm was a disaster, it didn’t even sell 5000 copies. That was a slap in the face to me and it was a slap in the face to our fans who over the years have bought about 100 million CDs off of us. I think it’s a slap in the face to them as well, so for the biggest reggae band in the world to start doing country music, I thought that was pretty tragic, and that’s why I took back the UB40 mantle.
UB40 featuring Ali, Astro and Mickey, Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, Wed 4 May. Tickets: £35. Info: 02920 234500 / www.livenation.co.uk