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I started UB40 to promote reggae... | 0:00:04 | 0:00:07 | |
and they're punching off that name at the moment. | 0:00:07 | 0:00:09 | |
This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:13 | |
We've come to a point where we've got to defend ourselves | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
from the shit coming out of his mouth. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:18 | |
Because I was asking questions, they started to demonise me. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
But I couldn't get any information. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:26 | |
To this day, I still don't know what happened to the money. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
It wouldn't surprise me at all if he believes the things he says now. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:35 | |
The lies he's told in the last eight years are just disgusting. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:38 | |
He's a pathological liar. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
You know, saying we've ruined the band's legacy, | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
and ruined reggae music. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:44 | |
Really, we're starting again. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
We're trying to reclaim the name before the legacy's destroyed. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
This is the worst case I've seen, in 45 years in the business. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:04 | |
He's split the band. He's split a family. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
It's a sad story. A very sad story. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
BAND PLAY INSTRUMENTAL | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
BAND END SONG | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
Welcome to the Jug O'Punch Folk Song Club in Birmingham. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
This is the Ian Campbell Folk Group and our first song is The Cockfight. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:45 | |
# Come all ye colliers far and near | 0:01:47 | 0:01:49 | |
# I'll tell of a cockfight when and where | 0:01:49 | 0:01:51 | |
# Out on the moor I heard 'em say | 0:01:51 | 0:01:53 | |
# A queen of black and a bonnie grey... # | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
My family ran the biggest folk club in the country, | 0:01:56 | 0:02:00 | |
for many years, throughout the '60s. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:04 | |
It was at Digbeth Civic Hall. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
And it was, like, hundreds, every week, huge. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
You know, nothing like your average folk club now. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
It was massive and lots of people played there. You know? | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
Many different... Paul Simon... You know, all sorts of people. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:22 | |
Erm, and half of them ended up sleeping on the settee | 0:02:22 | 0:02:24 | |
at our house, you know? | 0:02:24 | 0:02:25 | |
So, we were surrounded by music all of our lives. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:29 | |
Me and Ali were on stage in me dad's club. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
Ali and I were on stage when he was five, | 0:02:33 | 0:02:36 | |
so I must have been six, you know, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:38 | |
and playing penny whistle when I was a kid | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
and, you know, we always talked about being Britain's answer | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
to the Jackson Five! But, you know, things change. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
Me, Robin, Duncan, we used to sing together, yeah. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
We did three-part harmonies. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:50 | |
I can remember me mam coming in thinking it was the radio, | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
when the three of us were singing, you know? And we got quite tight. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:57 | |
'Obviously, the influence of our father is great | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
'because we grew up surrounded by music and musicians. | 0:03:00 | 0:03:04 | |
'All of our lives, if you showed any interest at all, | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
'he would thrust an instrument in your hands, you know, | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
'and say, "I'll get you lessons if you want," you know?' | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
But, like most kids, you're diametrically opposed | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
to what your parents are into, you know, | 0:03:17 | 0:03:19 | |
so we were looking for something else. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
The area we grew up in was an immigrant area, | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
so, I was hearing Jamaican pop music | 0:03:27 | 0:03:29 | |
from the age of eight or something, you know, that's what I heard. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:34 | |
# People get ready to do, do rock-steady... # | 0:03:34 | 0:03:38 | |
We grew up in South Birmingham, in Balsall Heath. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
The music of the streets was reggae, | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
and the music in the youth clubs we went to was reggae. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
So, we thought everybody loved reggae. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
But it was only in our small area of Balsall Heath. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
You know, when we went to secondary school, | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
we realised everybody else | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
was listening to something entirely different - | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
called Gary Glitter and Marc Bolan and David Bowie, you know! | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
That all went over my head, you know. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
I didn't get into any of that music. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:06 | |
Half of our firm, our gang, were West Indian kids. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
Jamaican kids, primarily. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
And they had music coming from Jamaica, | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
their mums and dads or elder brothers and sisters. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
And that's where we got our music, and it was reggae. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
If you were to take eight people out of Balsall Heath, | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
where we come from, eight kids would have looked like us. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
You didn't choose your friends according to their colour. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
They were just your friends. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
Most of us went to school together, in Balsall Heath, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
right in the centre of Birmingham. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:35 | |
Proper mates. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
We spoke about starting a band right from 13, 14 years old. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
But you've got to remember, we left school in 1975, | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
in Birmingham, and, you know, there was no jobs. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:48 | |
There truly was no jobs for anybody. | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
Mass unemployment. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:52 | |
And we figured we'd have more chance starting a band | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
than we would getting a real job. No kidding. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
There was talk about being musicians, | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
without it ever coming to anything. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
And I think that, really, the thing that changed it all, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
that made us serious, was first of all, | 0:05:07 | 0:05:12 | |
seeing Bob Marley live in '76, I think it was, | 0:05:12 | 0:05:17 | |
when he came to Birmingham. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:18 | |
And we went to see him and that made me decide | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
that that was what I wanted to do. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:24 | |
I really wanted to be in a reggae band. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
And I think the same for Ali. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
But we still didn't actually do it. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
# Ain't no rules, ain't no vow we can do it anyhow | 0:05:30 | 0:05:35 | |
# I and I will see you through... # | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
And it wasn't until Ali got compensation for damage to his eye, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:42 | |
you know, pub fight, that he had the money. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
Because he'd never been employed, | 0:05:45 | 0:05:47 | |
so he'd never had the money to buy an instrument. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
So when he got compensation, he bought himself a guitar. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
I think he also bought our very first set of drums. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
But that was kind of a catalyst. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
The first rehearsal that we had, we hired a room | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
and we all turned up there, | 0:06:02 | 0:06:04 | |
in fact we got eight of us and all our gear in a minivan. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:08 | |
And tried to rehearse, but we didn't know how to rehearse. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
Robin knew the chords to House Of The Rising Sun. That was it. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
I was the only one that could play chords, | 0:06:15 | 0:06:17 | |
and I'm trying to teach people chords and stuff | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
and they're not listening, they're... | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
It was just total anarchy. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
And I just said, "K, it's never going to happen, is it?" | 0:06:23 | 0:06:28 | |
And I left. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:29 | |
So Jimmy, the drummer, Earl, the bass player and myself | 0:06:29 | 0:06:34 | |
went and rehearsed for six months until we could play. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:38 | |
And we did that by playing records and copying them. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:42 | |
And other people started drifting in as it started to sound like music. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:47 | |
I lived in this bedsit flat in Moseley | 0:06:47 | 0:06:49 | |
and Earl, the bass player, lived next door in a bedsit. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
And underneath was a big cellar | 0:06:52 | 0:06:54 | |
that you could get to from the outside of the building. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
You know those big tenement houses, big Victorian houses? | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
And we claimed this cellar. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
Nobody used it, it was full of leaves. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:03 | |
So we made it ours. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:04 | |
Stole our electricity off a Hells Angel - | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
proper badged up Hells Angel - | 0:07:07 | 0:07:08 | |
who lived upstairs, who was the greatest guy, knew all about it. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:12 | |
"Don't worry, just stop playing at six o'clock when I get home." | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
And we practised every day. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
And then, after a few months, | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
I went down with Duncan and listened, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:22 | |
and Brian was playing there as well. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
And they actually were making... a sound that was close to music! | 0:07:24 | 0:07:31 | |
And I was impressed enough that they meant it, | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
I believed that they meant it enough for me to commit. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
Although Duncan wasn't! | 0:07:39 | 0:07:42 | |
Duncan just said, "No, it's never going to happen." | 0:07:42 | 0:07:44 | |
And I just said, "Come on, the three of us singing, you know, | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
"it'll be good. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
"Let's do it." | 0:07:50 | 0:07:52 | |
And of course, he didn't, and I did. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
People think I turned down joining a band. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
But I didn't turn down joining a band, | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
I turned down joining a project that was some way off. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
Nobody had any instruments or knew how to play them, | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
but they were going to work all that out. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
And there's lots of people who always say, | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
well, I was given the chance to be a part of that | 0:08:12 | 0:08:15 | |
but to be honest, I was busy! | 0:08:15 | 0:08:17 | |
It didn't seem all that appealing at the time. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:19 | |
He said - he had a job as a croupier, going to Barbados - | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
he went, "Fuck this, I'm going to Barbados!" | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
And who can blame him? | 0:08:25 | 0:08:27 | |
We were in a damp cellar in Moseley, couldn't even play. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:30 | |
We knew three chords, C, F and G. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:32 | |
They were all in that band because they knew Ali. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:36 | |
Most of them were his schoolmates. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
One of them was his brother. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:40 | |
So he was, undoubtedly, the founder. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
And Ali actually came to see me - | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
well, Ali and Robin came to visit me, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
and told me they were starting a band, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
but I couldn't have joined if I wanted to, | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
because I was in prison at the time. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
We rehearsed for almost a year, | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
playing any tune that we particularly loved at that time. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:04 | |
You know, a reggae tune that was out and current, we were learning. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
And slowly, learning to write songs. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
We had a lot of instrumentals with no words and melodies on, | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
which we always had, traditionally, instrumentals on albums. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:17 | |
Which was just - we couldn't write words | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
to go with that piece of music. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:20 | |
I think at the time, | 0:09:22 | 0:09:23 | |
we were nearly going to go out as Geoff Cancer and the Nicotinees. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
That's because at the time, it was post-punk, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex, you know, they had funny names. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
So we were Geoff Cancer... | 0:09:36 | 0:09:38 | |
I was Geoff Cancer! And the band were the Nicotinees for a while. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
We didn't really care what it was going to be called. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
What we was interested in was actually playing music - | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
and the name come from the suggestion from a friend of ours. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:52 | |
He said, "Why don't you call yourselves UB40?" | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
"You know, you're all on the dole, you've all got a UB40 card, | 0:09:55 | 0:09:57 | |
"it makes sense." | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
It gives us three million card-carrying fans instantly. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
We'd start playing gigs - but we'd only play in Birmingham | 0:10:09 | 0:10:13 | |
once every four weeks, five weeks. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
So it didn't look like we were desperate. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:16 | |
We didn't want it to look like that was the only gigs we had, | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
we wanted to make out like we were precious. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:21 | |
And we put posters up in the street, with just our name on, UB40. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:25 | |
And then people would tell us, have you seen that band? | 0:10:25 | 0:10:27 | |
And they hadn't seen us, because we haven't played at these places. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
Hype, you know, we were hyping. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:31 | |
# Give me all you have | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
-# Come over -All you got to give | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
# Come over... # | 0:10:37 | 0:10:39 | |
We shirt-tailed the 2-Tone movement. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
Wouldn't have got a lot of gigs | 0:10:42 | 0:10:43 | |
if it hadn't been for the 2-Tone movement. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
We were never a part of it, but we sort of got a lot of gigs, | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
we got gigs with The Beat and Madness and Selecter and stuff | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
and we did those, but we didn't go down too well. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:56 | |
We were spat at and sieg-heiled, basically, by the skinheads | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
in the audience, because we weren't fast enough. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
But it got us gigs and got us exposure and eventually... | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
we took off. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
# Appeal to the governor of Louisiana | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
# You may get an answer the process is slow | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
# Federal government don't do much to help him | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
# It's been nearly five years And they won't let him go | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
# Tyler is guilty the white judge has said so | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
# What right do we have to say it's not so... # | 0:11:24 | 0:11:27 | |
Chrissie Hynde, from The Pretenders, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:30 | |
saw us playing in a little gig in Covent Garden | 0:11:30 | 0:11:32 | |
called the Rock Garden. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
She came to see us play and she was number one at the time. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:37 | |
And we were going, "Oh, that's that girl off the telly! | 0:11:37 | 0:11:39 | |
"You know, with the number one record." | 0:11:39 | 0:11:41 | |
We didn't know her name, really. Do you know what I'm saying? | 0:11:41 | 0:11:43 | |
And they asked us to go on tour with them. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
# I got brass | 0:11:47 | 0:11:48 | |
# In pocket... # | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
I just had got The Pretenders together, | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
we had our first album out, | 0:11:54 | 0:11:56 | |
and I think we had our first and last number one which was... | 0:11:56 | 0:12:01 | |
had just come out, | 0:12:01 | 0:12:03 | |
and we were looking for a band to tour with, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:05 | |
and my bass player, Pete Farndon, said there is a great reggae band. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
You know, we were all big fans of reggae, of course, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
because in the punk scene, that was all anyone listened to. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:13 | |
And he said, "Go down to the Rock Garden in Covent Garden, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
"see this band. This little band." | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
So I went down and there they were. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
They weren't signed or anything, but it wasn't a little band, | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
the whole place was full of them. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:27 | |
And so I sort of went backstage, to very sheepishly, I might add, | 0:12:27 | 0:12:31 | |
ask if they would want to support my band. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
I felt that was kind of a pompous thing to do, | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
but I zeroed in on Brian | 0:12:37 | 0:12:38 | |
because he was clearly the most accessible, friendly one. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:43 | |
Unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word he said! | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
You know, I had to use the others to interpret what he said. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:49 | |
But, I mean, they were just a great band. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:50 | |
And we toured with them. They came on our first tour. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
# Must we go on ignoring... # | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
It was terrifying, because it was so quick. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:58 | |
We had literally been playing our instruments | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
about eight or nine months, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:01 | |
and suddenly we're on stage supporting The Pretenders | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
in front of 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 people. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
And we were absolutely terrified. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:09 | |
# I'm a British subject and I'm proud of it | 0:13:09 | 0:13:13 | |
# But I carry the burden of shame... # | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
When we started, 1979, in them days, if you weren't political, | 0:13:16 | 0:13:21 | |
you weren't worth listening to. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:23 | |
If you weren't on an independent label, you weren't worth... | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
You were pretend. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
You were being hyped by one of the big multinationals. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
Everybody was left wing in the band, but varying degrees of left wing. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:36 | |
You had to write a lyric everyone felt comfortable with. | 0:13:36 | 0:13:38 | |
And that was the only rule, really. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:40 | |
We didn't set out to write political songs, | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
we didn't set out to change the world politically, | 0:13:43 | 0:13:45 | |
it's just that when you write your own songs, | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
you're going to write about things that are important to you, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
or things that you get emotional about, you know? | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
So we wrote political lyrics. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
We weren't very good at writing love songs, actually. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
When we started, we were a bit embarrassed about it. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
Well, we were kind of political, politicised. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
Disenfranchised, you know? | 0:14:05 | 0:14:06 | |
We had been unemployed for three years since we left school, | 0:14:06 | 0:14:10 | |
at 15, 16 years old. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
And we were part of the Thatcher era, | 0:14:12 | 0:14:14 | |
and if we were going to write our own stuff, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
we wanted it to be able to say something... | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
-Relatable. -Relevant or sensible, or whatever. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
The UB40 thing was supposed to be a positive thing, | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
the fact that you really were at the bottom of the ladder | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
if you were on a UB40 - the only way was up. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
So... | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
That's why we called our first album Signing Off. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:36 | |
MUSIC: Food for Thought by UB40 | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
# Ivory Madonna | 0:15:06 | 0:15:09 | |
# Dying in the dust | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
# Waiting for the manna | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
# Coming from the West... # | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
I mean, I can remember walking through Moseley, I think, | 0:15:21 | 0:15:23 | |
when they'd only been going for a little while, | 0:15:23 | 0:15:25 | |
and hearing the record out of somebody's house | 0:15:25 | 0:15:27 | |
and that was... Brilliant! | 0:15:27 | 0:15:29 | |
Couldn't believe it! That's me brother's, did you hear that? | 0:15:29 | 0:15:33 | |
But of course, within no time at all, they were all over the telly. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
# ..Bells are ringing... # | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
I suppose there must have been sometimes | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
when I must have had pangs of regret, but not jealousy. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
I mean, I was always chuffed to bits. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:47 | |
And proud to be the brother - and it wasn't a bad position to be in. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:50 | |
# Politicians argue...# | 0:15:50 | 0:15:53 | |
I watched their first appearance on Top Of The Pops. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:55 | |
Top Of The Pops was the one thing that everybody watched in prison. | 0:15:55 | 0:16:01 | |
Which, I think, was not because everyone was very keen on music, | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
I think it was because of Legs & Co, | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
or Pan's People, or whatever they were called at the time. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:16:11 | 0:16:12 | |
So I saw UB40 there when they first appeared. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:15 | |
# ..Coming from the West... # | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
-We always thought... -It was going to be successful. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
Yeah! We were quite sure of that, you know. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:24 | |
And I think you have to have that when you start out. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:27 | |
You've got to be a little bit arrogant. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:30 | |
And we had no reason for being arrogant, we were awful, really. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:35 | |
What you heard with the first album | 0:16:36 | 0:16:38 | |
was what we had learned to play so far, you know. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
And I can't actually listen to that album. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
I was proud of what it did for us, but it's all out of tune! | 0:16:43 | 0:16:47 | |
We weren't musicians, so we didn't know how to tune our instruments. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:51 | |
They're great tunes on the album, it's just that we didn't know | 0:16:51 | 0:16:54 | |
technically how to make the music that we wanted. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:57 | |
So the saxophone that Brian was using was the wrong type of sax, | 0:16:57 | 0:17:01 | |
tuned wrong, the bass wasn't tuned properly. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
I was tuned to an open E chord. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
So we learned as we went along, | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
how to tune our instruments, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
but we were three albums in before we got it right! | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
-# The Earth dies screaming -The Earth dies screaming | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
-# The Earth dies screaming -The Earth dies screaming | 0:17:18 | 0:17:22 | |
# Your country needs you let's strike up the band... # | 0:17:22 | 0:17:26 | |
We were very much like a gang. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:30 | |
We decided from day one that we would share everything, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:34 | |
all royalties, eight ways. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:36 | |
Eight equal ways. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:38 | |
And that was an influence of my father's. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
Because he had told us about the business, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:42 | |
how cut-throat it was and how you should never trust a publisher, etc. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
So it just got rid of all those arguments that you hear. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:50 | |
"Musical differences", "creative differences", you know, | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
that tear other bands apart, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
because they feel like they're doing as much work | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
but the next guy who is writing all the songs | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
is the guy earning the money. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
So we just wiped those arguments out, we just never had those rows. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:09 | |
I think that is one of the reasons why we carried on for so long, | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
because there weren't any infighting, | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
people getting more than somebody else. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
I think that's why we lasted so long. You know? | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
I think a lot of our fans bought into that concept, as well - | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
the fact that we weren't like all the other bands which ended up | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
arguing about money and stuff. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
We didn't make good money for a long time. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
We were being offered big advances, you know, of 150 grand, | 0:18:40 | 0:18:44 | |
by certain major record labels, and we refused those | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
because we wanted to go for the points. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
We wanted the artistic control. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:51 | |
Yeah. And luckily, we sold eight million of the first album, | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
so we were on great points, you know, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
and we didn't look back from there. | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
And then we started our own record label. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:01 | |
We had plans to dominate the music world, of course. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
Before we had any money ourselves, we got a little studio together. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:11 | |
We bought this old abattoir, | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
disgusting old place in the middle of Birmingham, | 0:19:13 | 0:19:15 | |
and cleaned it up ourselves. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:17 | |
It was all big refrigerators, with giant thick walls, | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
so they were instantly soundproof. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
And we started a studio. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:24 | |
We had that place for 25 years. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
Spent millions on it, in the end, you know? | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
The building cost 33 grand, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:30 | |
and I think the last mixing desk we bought cost 275 grand. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
# My arms enfold the dole queue Malnutrition dulls my hair | 0:19:41 | 0:19:45 | |
# My eyes are black and lifeless With an underprivileged stare | 0:19:45 | 0:19:49 | |
# I'm the beggar on the corner Will no-one spare a dime? | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
# I'm the child that never learns to read | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
# Cos no-one spared the time | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
# I am the one in ten | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
-# A number on a list -I am the one in ten | 0:19:59 | 0:20:02 | |
# Even though I don't exist | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
-# Nobody knows me -But I'm always there | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
# A statistic, a reminder Of a world that doesn't care... # | 0:20:08 | 0:20:13 | |
People wanted to hear what we were saying, obviously. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:17 | |
One In Ten has become almost an iconic song from that time, | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
that mid-'80s Thatcher period. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
And I think we did turn people on to reggae | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
in ways that they would never have been turned on to it otherwise. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
Our mission was to popularise reggae around the world, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
because we'd been listening to it and grown up on it. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
And loved it. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:37 | |
We were bit evangelistic about it. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
But we just wanted to show people | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
these great pop songs that we knew and loved. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
That's the reason for the Labour Of Love series. | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
-# I've got many rivers to cross -Many rivers to cross | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
# But just where to begin | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
# I'm playing for time... # | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
We wanted to do Labour Of Love as the first album, | 0:20:58 | 0:21:01 | |
but we were talked out of it by the record company. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
"Commercial suicide." | 0:21:04 | 0:21:06 | |
Yeah, it'd be commercial suicide, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:07 | |
because you're known as the dole queue band, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:09 | |
and you've got to write your own stuff, | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
you're not a covers band, and all that. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:12 | |
You'll be perceived as a cabaret act. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
That's because record company people don't really know | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
what they're talking about, usually! To tell the truth. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
And when we said we wanted to do Cherry Oh Baby and all these others, | 0:21:21 | 0:21:25 | |
they said, you can't, you can't, | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
you're known for writing your own material. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:30 | |
# Oh, Cherry, oh, Cherry, oh, baby don't you know I'm in love with you? | 0:21:30 | 0:21:36 | |
# If you don't believe that's true | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
# Then, why don't you try me? | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
# I will never let you down | 0:21:42 | 0:21:45 | |
# I will never make you wear no frown | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
# When you say that you love me madly | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
# Well, then, I'll accept you gladly | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
# Oh, oh, oh, oh... # | 0:21:55 | 0:21:56 | |
Well, we knew it would do well | 0:21:56 | 0:21:57 | |
because they were all sure-fire hits, | 0:21:57 | 0:21:59 | |
as far as we were concerned, you know? | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
And we just knew that if the mainstream public got to hear | 0:22:01 | 0:22:03 | |
these records, they'd fall in love with them just like we did. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
We were always going to be covering our favourite reggae tunes, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
and when we realised, moving out of Birmingham, | 0:22:10 | 0:22:12 | |
that, actually, most people hadn't heard these tunes, | 0:22:12 | 0:22:15 | |
then that was a bonus, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
because most people know Red Red Wine from our version, | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
not from anybody else's version. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:22 | |
# Red, red wine | 0:22:22 | 0:22:26 | |
# Stay close to me | 0:22:28 | 0:22:32 | |
# Don't let me be alone | 0:22:33 | 0:22:38 | |
# It's tearing apart | 0:22:38 | 0:22:43 | |
# My blue, blue heart... # | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
We were broke, completely broke, | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
and I think we had a month's wages left, | 0:22:49 | 0:22:51 | |
or even a week's wages, it might have been, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
when Red Red Wine went to number one, | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
and we were saved, | 0:22:56 | 0:22:58 | |
and it was a big sigh of relief. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:00 | |
-HE LAUGHS -Thank God for that, you know? | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
It's not our last wages, then, you know? | 0:23:02 | 0:23:04 | |
So, it was peaks and troughs all the way through our career. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
# I was wrong | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
# Now I find | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
# Just one thing makes me forget | 0:23:12 | 0:23:16 | |
# Red, red wine... # | 0:23:16 | 0:23:21 | |
Well, it was a boon to many of us. There was eight of us in the band, | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
and a manager, you know, and the road crew. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
The road crew guys were our mates who didn't get an instrument. | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
If they had have done, it could have been a 12-piece band. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
I mean, when the money came in, it had to go a lot of ways. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
We weren't really living like, erm... | 0:23:36 | 0:23:38 | |
We weren't like The Who or The Beatles... | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
until a few years after that. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:43 | |
To run DEP, it was, kind of, 90 grand a month, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:46 | |
you know, and we ran that for 28 years, | 0:23:46 | 0:23:48 | |
so, if you add that up just on its own, that's a lot of dough. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:52 | |
Touring, you know, is very expensive. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
You've got all your airfares, your hotels, | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
your PDs, your wages, you know. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
-It's... -The rider. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:00 | |
When there's... | 0:24:00 | 0:24:01 | |
Where there was 40 of you on the road, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
which there was in the early days, you know, | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
it's an expensive business. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:06 | |
MUSIC: I Got You Babe by UB40 & Chrissie Hynde | 0:24:06 | 0:24:09 | |
# They say our love won't pay the rent | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
# Before it's earned our money's always spent... # | 0:24:17 | 0:24:22 | |
Chrissie Hynde had said, with her looks and my voice, | 0:24:22 | 0:24:25 | |
we should do something together, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
and that was while we were on tour with her, | 0:24:27 | 0:24:29 | |
so I went, "Go on, then." | 0:24:29 | 0:24:30 | |
And then she said it was her idea to do I Got You Babe, | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
which is nonsense, of course. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:35 | |
Well, of course Ali will lie and say it was his idea | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
to do I Got You Babe, but they wouldn't have known that song. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
And, you know, it was... Obviously, it was my idea. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
They would have never acted on it, either, | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
cos they can't get anything done, but I knew it would work | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
with his voice and, you know, and that song. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
We did I Got You Babe and then Breakfast In Bed - | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
there were two big hits with her. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:56 | |
They were great songs. | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
# Babe | 0:24:59 | 0:25:01 | |
# I've got you, babe... # | 0:25:01 | 0:25:02 | |
Well, I recorded two songs with them, | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
and then we, you know, over the years, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:06 | |
I've got on stage with them and done things. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:09 | |
I couldn't even understand what they were fucking talking about | 0:25:09 | 0:25:11 | |
most of the time. Erm... | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
But a real fun band, | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
and I think that's the thing about them is they were such a band. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
# Whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah... # | 0:25:21 | 0:25:24 | |
When we released a record, | 0:25:24 | 0:25:26 | |
it'd literally come out everywhere in the world - | 0:25:26 | 0:25:28 | |
and not all bands could do that, | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
and I think this was down to reggae, not UB40. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
I think everywhere you went, | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
indigenous people adopted reggae as the rebel music. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:37 | |
That was their music. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:38 | |
It represented them and their concerns and their... | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
their politics, which were very similar, you know. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:44 | |
Anybody who's got under the boot, you know, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
can get their politics from rebel music and reggae. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:52 | |
So we'd put a record out and go everywhere in the world. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
We'd go on tour and we'd go everywhere. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:56 | |
You know, we'd go to Russia. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:58 | |
All of the South Pacific Islands - Tonga, Tahiti, the Hawaiian Islands. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
Many, many times, you know. Africa, everywhere. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
We'd be on the road, sometimes, for nine or ten months at a time. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
# Yeah, yeah | 0:26:08 | 0:26:09 | |
# There's a rat in my kitchen | 0:26:09 | 0:26:10 | |
# What am I gonna do? | 0:26:10 | 0:26:11 | |
# There's a rat in my kitchen What am I gonna do? | 0:26:11 | 0:26:14 | |
# I'm going to fix that rat | 0:26:14 | 0:26:15 | |
# That's what I'm gonna do | 0:26:15 | 0:26:16 | |
# I'm going to fix that rat... # | 0:26:16 | 0:26:18 | |
There were definitely a lot of people that were hearing the music | 0:26:18 | 0:26:21 | |
for the first time when they heard us, | 0:26:21 | 0:26:22 | |
and were encouraged to maybe go and find out more about the music. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:26 | |
I think we were part of building that recognition of reggae | 0:26:26 | 0:26:30 | |
as a unique style of music. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
# There's a rat in my kitchen What am I gonna do? | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
# I'm gonna fix that rat That's what I'm gonna do | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
# I'm gonna fix that rat... # | 0:26:38 | 0:26:39 | |
It's a beautiful thing, you know. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
There's been so many highlights over the years - | 0:26:41 | 0:26:43 | |
playing Madison Square Garden, sold-out gigs, | 0:26:43 | 0:26:46 | |
number one in America, album and single. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:51 | |
An amazing... You know, you've reached the top. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
And then, of course, there was South Africa, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:56 | |
where we were one of the first bands there | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
after the ending of the boycott, | 0:26:58 | 0:26:59 | |
singing Sing Our Own Song. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
# And we will fight for the right to be free | 0:27:01 | 0:27:06 | |
# And we will build our own society | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
# And we will sing We will sing | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
# We will sing our own song... # | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
Playing that song in South Africa, | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
with Mandela out of prison and president and apartheid over and... | 0:27:19 | 0:27:24 | |
after having observed the cultural boycott for, you know, | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
the first, whatever it was, 15 years... | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
to then go and play South Africa and sing that song | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
to 70,000 people a night for three nights was... | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
Well, we still hold the live record in South Africa, you know? | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
There's no other artist who's played to 210,000 people in three days. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:46 | |
So, that was an amazing time, | 0:27:46 | 0:27:47 | |
and it was a hair up on the back of your neck moment, you know? | 0:27:47 | 0:27:51 | |
# Amandla Awethu | 0:27:51 | 0:27:55 | |
# Amandla Awethu... # | 0:27:55 | 0:27:59 | |
We were going round the world. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:00 | |
You know, we were selling millions of CDs, | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
which enabled us to do great big tours | 0:28:03 | 0:28:05 | |
and fantastic lightshows and things like that. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
You know, it was like a dream come true. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:10 | |
Of course, a lot of money got wasted because, you know, | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
we were smoking weed and doing coke, you know, and drinking. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
But that happened all the way through our career, you know - | 0:28:17 | 0:28:19 | |
we'd make a lot of money and we'd spend it. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:23 | |
# Wise men say | 0:28:23 | 0:28:28 | |
# Only fools rush in | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
# But I can't help falling in love | 0:28:34 | 0:28:41 | |
# With you... # | 0:28:41 | 0:28:43 | |
My dad was incredibly proud of us - | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
he just didn't like to say too much. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:50 | |
In fact, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award, | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
and he gave a speech, and most of it was taken up with talking about | 0:28:54 | 0:28:58 | |
what a fabulous job we'd done and how proud of us he was, | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
so, you know, that was quite a surprise to me. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:03 | |
He was, really, for the first time publicly acknowledging | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
his sons' success, which was really nice. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:10 | |
# Some things were made to be... # | 0:29:10 | 0:29:15 | |
We were doing really well. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:17 | |
We'd just had our biggest-selling album. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:19 | |
We'd just sold 10 million copies of Promises And Lies in America | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
and we'd just toured for two years solidly, | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
so it was the most money we'd made | 0:29:25 | 0:29:27 | |
up till then in our careers, you know... | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
# Falling in love with you... # | 0:29:30 | 0:29:35 | |
..and it just went missing. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:37 | |
When we came back off tour, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:43 | |
that was when we discovered that we were penniless - | 0:29:43 | 0:29:46 | |
and not only penniless, but we were overdrawn, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:48 | |
mortgaged to the hilt and in deep shtuck. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:52 | |
CHEERING Suddenly the studios closed down | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
and there wasn't money for wages and stuff, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
and we were all really surprised. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:00 | |
"What? How did that happen?" | 0:30:00 | 0:30:03 | |
It turned out that there were tens of millions of pounds | 0:30:03 | 0:30:08 | |
that we'd never even been paid, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:10 | |
that we should have had over the previous 20 years | 0:30:10 | 0:30:13 | |
for record royalties. We never got them. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:15 | |
For, you know, radio play and stuff like that, | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
we never got paid for any of that, and we were... | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
Throughout the '80s and '90s, | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
we were probably the third most-played band | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
in the world on the radio. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
So, there we were - the bank were about to foreclose on the studio | 0:30:28 | 0:30:32 | |
because we'd borrowed money on the strength of it, | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
without knowing it. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:37 | |
So, then we had to borrow £300,000 to stop the bank taking the studio, | 0:30:37 | 0:30:42 | |
and we then spent the next seven, eight years | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
constantly in a cycle of borrowing money, | 0:30:45 | 0:30:47 | |
recording, going on the road and paying that money back. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:51 | |
I started asking questions. | 0:30:53 | 0:30:54 | |
They were just normal questions about, | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
"How much are we paying our staff?" | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
"How come we were getting so little when we were playing sold-out gigs?" | 0:30:58 | 0:31:02 | |
We were selling out the Wembley Arenas and stuff, | 0:31:02 | 0:31:06 | |
and we were getting peanuts for it, and I started saying, | 0:31:06 | 0:31:08 | |
you know, "What's going on?" | 0:31:08 | 0:31:10 | |
You know.... | 0:31:10 | 0:31:11 | |
So I brought in Bill Curbishley, | 0:31:11 | 0:31:13 | |
who's a famous manager in the business, | 0:31:13 | 0:31:15 | |
to find out where the black hole was. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:17 | |
Initially I'd thought everything was being handled | 0:31:17 | 0:31:19 | |
really professionally and in a good way. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:23 | |
It was only after a period of time | 0:31:25 | 0:31:27 | |
I started realising that in order to survive, | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
they were juggling lots of different balls here. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
Having been up to Birmingham a couple of times, | 0:31:34 | 0:31:38 | |
and trying to sit them all down, | 0:31:38 | 0:31:40 | |
and trying to get the eight of them to focus on all of those things | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
was virtually impossible. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
They were so stoned, all of them. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
All they did was smoke dope all the way through the meeting, | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
and I'm trying to get them to pay any attention to the questions | 0:31:50 | 0:31:54 | |
that we were asking, because we weren't their business managers, | 0:31:54 | 0:31:56 | |
we were their music managers. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:58 | |
There were certain things that came up. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:01 | |
One was there were debts to certain banks - | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
loans they'd had which I was unaware of, | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
and had been prior to me joining them. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
There was a loan to an offshore company, | 0:32:10 | 0:32:12 | |
and they were repaying it at something like 33% interest. | 0:32:12 | 0:32:16 | |
I asked who was behind this company, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
what was the reason for this loan, | 0:32:19 | 0:32:21 | |
and didn't get very far. | 0:32:21 | 0:32:22 | |
It then came out that the collateral for the loan | 0:32:22 | 0:32:27 | |
was their catalogue rights, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
which I thought was absolutely abhorrent. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
You know, you get used to living a certain way, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
and, you know, for 25 years, | 0:32:35 | 0:32:37 | |
we've been living like very wealthy people - | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
you know, like millionaires, and... | 0:32:40 | 0:32:42 | |
And that carries on, and if you've got somebody not saying to you, | 0:32:42 | 0:32:45 | |
"Actually, you haven't paid. You owe half a million quid in tax." | 0:32:45 | 0:32:48 | |
-CHEERING -So you have to trust people, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:50 | |
and it seems traditional in the music business. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
You don't get ripped off when you're a kid | 0:32:53 | 0:32:54 | |
because you haven't made enough money to get ripped off, | 0:32:54 | 0:32:57 | |
or to not be noticed for a while, | 0:32:57 | 0:32:59 | |
but, when you get a certain way in, | 0:32:59 | 0:33:02 | |
then there's enough money to... | 0:33:02 | 0:33:03 | |
for somebody to go at. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:04 | |
The revenues that they must have made, | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
particularly in that period in the '90s when it was arenas... | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
And they were a hard-working band, you know? They toured all the time. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
When you're playing multiple arenas in America, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
that's when you're making big money, | 0:33:18 | 0:33:20 | |
and selling the sort of numbers of records that they were selling, | 0:33:20 | 0:33:23 | |
so it would have been awash with money at one stage. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:26 | |
But the trail of where the money went, | 0:33:28 | 0:33:31 | |
we could never find, you know, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:33 | |
and that was a real problem. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:35 | |
Of course, we carried on living as we had been living, | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
so we were living beyond our means, | 0:33:39 | 0:33:40 | |
and so we were getting into further debt. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:43 | |
We carried on trying to finance our business and our lifestyle | 0:33:43 | 0:33:47 | |
and, you know, we were employing, I don't know, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:50 | |
up to 30 people full-time. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:52 | |
What we should have done was just closed everything down | 0:33:52 | 0:33:54 | |
and started again, but we soldiered on, you know, | 0:33:54 | 0:33:58 | |
into ever-decreasing circles. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
By the time we took over, | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
they really only had England and Holland as major markets | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
where they could still play arenas, | 0:34:06 | 0:34:08 | |
and everyone else, it was theatres, so... | 0:34:08 | 0:34:10 | |
But they still toured as if they were an arena band, | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
so there'd be six tonnes of freight going everywhere, | 0:34:13 | 0:34:16 | |
which hammered, you know, the monies that were coming in. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:19 | |
And we kept saying, "Boys, why...?" | 0:34:19 | 0:34:21 | |
And they went, "No, no, no, this is how our production people | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
"tell us we need to tour." | 0:34:24 | 0:34:25 | |
So, I think a lot of it was on wasted cost | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
and, to be honest, I think they were all very naive, | 0:34:28 | 0:34:30 | |
and just believed what they were told. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
The band themselves are to a great extent to blame, | 0:34:32 | 0:34:36 | |
because they would sit at meetings, | 0:34:36 | 0:34:38 | |
and all they cared about really... | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
or the general feeling I got was all they cared about | 0:34:41 | 0:34:43 | |
was their monthly drawings, their monthly salaries. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
But, even when you look at that, | 0:34:47 | 0:34:49 | |
it went nowhere near towards the gross income, | 0:34:49 | 0:34:53 | |
not when you consider they had something like 35 top-30 singles. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:58 | |
They used to sell out concerts. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:00 | |
I mean, I can't really tell you what happened to that income. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:04 | |
There was obviously something that was going on | 0:35:04 | 0:35:06 | |
that I didn't know about. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:08 | |
I was asking a lot of questions and I wasn't getting any answers, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:12 | |
and, even within the band, you know, | 0:35:12 | 0:35:14 | |
I was asking the band members questions, | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
and they were giving me answers that I knew were false, | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
and so it was all going a bit weird. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:22 | |
MUSIC: Here I Am (Come And Take Me) by UB40 | 0:35:22 | 0:35:25 | |
# I can't believe that it's real... # | 0:35:25 | 0:35:28 | |
Look, ego's a massive part of being a musician. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
If you haven't got any ego, you can't do it. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
Even people who profess, "Oh, I'm not egotistical," they are. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
You can't do it unless you're proud of yourself, | 0:35:35 | 0:35:37 | |
and you can stand there and look people in the eye | 0:35:37 | 0:35:39 | |
and say, "Yeah, listen to what I'm going to play now. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:41 | |
"Look what I'm going to do." | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
And it's even more profound in singers, | 0:35:43 | 0:35:45 | |
and I think he started thinking it was his band, | 0:35:45 | 0:35:49 | |
he'd manifested his will, and this is who we are, and we could see | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
as he stood with his back to us every night of the week. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:55 | |
Do you know what I mean? On stage. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
# Here I am, baby | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
# Come and take me... # | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
So, anyway, I think Ali became increasingly unhappy, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
as the music business is dying, | 0:36:05 | 0:36:07 | |
and this huge amount of money's not coming in, | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
and I think he tried to continue living in the same style | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
he'd become accustomed to, | 0:36:12 | 0:36:14 | |
and getting increasingly unhappy, | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
and we were getting increasingly unhappy with his behaviour. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
We'd be going to... | 0:36:18 | 0:36:19 | |
We went to start a tour, and unless we paid a credit card bill | 0:36:19 | 0:36:22 | |
he couldn't pay, he wasn't doing the tour, | 0:36:22 | 0:36:24 | |
and that happened a few times. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:26 | |
We were going, "No, we can't pay your nonsense, | 0:36:26 | 0:36:28 | |
"because there's less and less money coming in. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:30 | |
"You know, we've all got our own responsibilities." | 0:36:30 | 0:36:32 | |
And so, you know, he didn't make us feel the happiest we'd ever felt. | 0:36:32 | 0:36:35 | |
There was a lot of stuff going down, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
and I never got any answers to any of the questions that I was asking. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:42 | |
You know, for four years I couldn't get any information. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
To this day, I still don't know what happened to the money. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
And because I was asking questions, they started to demonise me | 0:36:49 | 0:36:53 | |
as the nutter and, you know, | 0:36:53 | 0:36:55 | |
I didn't know what I was talking about. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:57 | |
So, I was singled out, and I ended up having to leave. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:01 | |
That's not what happened. | 0:37:03 | 0:37:06 | |
It's... | 0:37:06 | 0:37:07 | |
It's not really down to how I remember it, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
it's down to exactly what happened, | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
which was he told us he'd been offered money to do a solo tour, | 0:37:11 | 0:37:15 | |
erm, and we... | 0:37:15 | 0:37:18 | |
having already delayed the release of our album by six months | 0:37:18 | 0:37:22 | |
so that he could promote his album while we were on tour, | 0:37:22 | 0:37:26 | |
we then baulked at the idea of him doing a summer tour | 0:37:26 | 0:37:28 | |
in the middle of our tours. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:30 | |
We said, "You know, we've got dates. We're already committed." | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
And he said, "Well, I've been offered this money. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:34 | |
"I'm doing this tour." | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
And we said, "You can't, cos we've got shows." | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
And he said, "I'm leaving, then," and that was as simple as that. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:41 | |
He's a 50-year-old man. | 0:37:41 | 0:37:42 | |
You know, who starts a solo career in your 50s? Who's...? | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
50-year-old people don't take pop singers that seriously. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:49 | |
Kids do, teenagers take teenagers seriously - | 0:37:49 | 0:37:52 | |
they don't take somebody the same age as their grandfather seriously. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:55 | |
But in him doing that, we had to cancel an American tour, | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
a South American tour... | 0:37:59 | 0:38:00 | |
and he cancelled it all cos he said he'd booked a solo tour. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
And we went, "We've had the advances off this." | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
So we had to... That money had to go back. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:08 | |
The remaining members of UB40 have maintained all along that | 0:38:08 | 0:38:12 | |
I left to pursue a solo career, which I have said is a lie, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:17 | |
and this is my resignation letter. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
"I refuse to tour for more years for silly money | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
"in order to keep Reflex and its staff employed. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
"Nothing at all has changed since we all decided things had to change. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:28 | |
"I don't agree with most of the band's recent decisions. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
"I don't even know who makes them any more. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
"In short, I've had enough." | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
And that's what happened. I never left to pursue a solo career. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:40 | |
Why would I? You know, I would have done that, erm, | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
with the first solo album I made in 1994, | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
when we were at the peak of our careers, you know? | 0:38:46 | 0:38:48 | |
That's when I would have gone solo if I'd wanted to at all, | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
but I never intended to go solo ever. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:53 | |
It was my band. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:55 | |
Them saying that, you know, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:56 | |
that I was going to let them down and we'd been paid for gigs... | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
The gigs we'd been paid for and contracted to do, I did. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:03 | |
He did the Australian tour and one gig in Africa on the way home, | 0:39:03 | 0:39:06 | |
which I think was Uganda, | 0:39:06 | 0:39:08 | |
and then he walked off the stage after the Uganda gig | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
and we never saw him again. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:13 | |
# Red, red wi-ne | 0:39:14 | 0:39:18 | |
# Goes to my he-ad | 0:39:20 | 0:39:23 | |
# Makes me forget that I | 0:39:25 | 0:39:28 | |
# Still need her so-oh | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
# Red, red wi-ne...# | 0:39:36 | 0:39:38 | |
No matter how many sell-out shows we did | 0:39:40 | 0:39:42 | |
and how much money we earned, | 0:39:42 | 0:39:43 | |
there was never any money at the end of the tour. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
You have to remember, | 0:39:46 | 0:39:47 | |
Ali had been asking for years to look at the books. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:50 | |
Four years. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:53 | |
Just being told, "Oh, we forgot to bring you... | 0:39:53 | 0:39:55 | |
"We'll bring you in, next week." | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
And just the same thing, over and over again. | 0:39:57 | 0:39:59 | |
I knew they were committing commercial suicide, | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
if they were willing to let Ali go. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:10 | |
When he left the band, | 0:40:13 | 0:40:14 | |
he seems to think that they were going to go away. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:17 | |
They were all going to go into retirement somewhere. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:20 | |
But they're not going to, you know? | 0:40:20 | 0:40:22 | |
They were going to get another singer, whatever happened. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
They were going to continue, I'm quite sure of that. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
When Ali left, I then went to Duncan and offered him the job | 0:40:28 | 0:40:31 | |
as our new vocalist and he had just said to me, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
that, yes, he'd love the job | 0:40:35 | 0:40:37 | |
but he wouldn't do it without Ali's blessing, | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
which infuriated me, actually, because I was saying, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:44 | |
"Ali's just walked out on us. Why have you got to ask Ali?" | 0:40:44 | 0:40:46 | |
And he said, "Because he's my kid brother and I won't do it." | 0:40:46 | 0:40:50 | |
"I want to do it but I won't do it unless he's OK with it." | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
Duncan phones me up, drunk, | 0:40:53 | 0:40:55 | |
and says, "I've joined the band, Ali." | 0:40:55 | 0:40:59 | |
And I went, "You are kidding!" | 0:40:59 | 0:41:01 | |
And he went, "No, I'm not kidding." | 0:41:01 | 0:41:04 | |
And I said, "Well, I'm very disappointed in you, | 0:41:04 | 0:41:07 | |
"but I can't tell you not to." You know. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
"But I'm seriously disappointed in you, Dunc." | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
I immediately rang Ali and told him that I'd been offered the... | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
..the chance to do it and if he didn't want me to, I wouldn't do it. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
But, he says, "Well, I can't..." | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
"Well, I can't say I'm pleased about it, | 0:41:24 | 0:41:26 | |
"but, of course, I wouldn't ask you not to." | 0:41:26 | 0:41:29 | |
And I said, "OK, fine." | 0:41:29 | 0:41:31 | |
Unfortunately, he's never spoken to me since that day. | 0:41:31 | 0:41:33 | |
I don't really... | 0:41:33 | 0:41:36 | |
I don't see how that's a betrayal. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:38 | |
All he did was accept Ali's job when it was offered to him. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:42 | |
And he's broken-hearted, | 0:41:44 | 0:41:46 | |
because he and Ali were the closest of all of us | 0:41:46 | 0:41:50 | |
because they are less than a year apart in age. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
And Duncan is very, very unhappy to have lost his little brother. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:58 | |
When Ali left, that kind of reinvigorated us, you know, | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
because it had to. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:06 | |
You know, we were in shock. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:08 | |
You know, and traumatised - and, yeah, we had something to prove | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
but, also, the fans' reaction to Duncan was so good | 0:42:13 | 0:42:16 | |
that it just gave us a new lease of life, you know. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:20 | |
We knew that we could carry on. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:21 | |
We knew that we'd got somewhere to go. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:24 | |
To be honest, I thought it was only something I could fail at. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:27 | |
It's just a matter of how badly I did! | 0:42:27 | 0:42:30 | |
You know, I thought it was a sort of... | 0:42:32 | 0:42:34 | |
I don't know, a cleaning up process, a fizzling out type thing, you know. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:37 | |
Ali certainly didn't think there was much hope for us. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:41 | |
It seemed an obvious choice to see if I could do it | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
because it'll keep the brother blend with Rob and all the rest of it | 0:42:45 | 0:42:50 | |
and I'm able to do it. | 0:42:50 | 0:42:52 | |
And it's worked. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
He was very highly strung about it for a long time | 0:42:54 | 0:42:58 | |
because he had big shoes to fill, you know, | 0:42:58 | 0:43:00 | |
and he went from, you know, playing small folk clubs with his dad, | 0:43:00 | 0:43:05 | |
you know, sometimes, | 0:43:05 | 0:43:07 | |
to suddenly playing to thousands in arenas, you know | 0:43:07 | 0:43:12 | |
and travelling all over the world. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
And, yeah, it was terrifying for him | 0:43:14 | 0:43:16 | |
but, as he became instantly accepted, | 0:43:16 | 0:43:20 | |
then he learned to accept the idea himself. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:23 | |
# If you say that you love me madly | 0:43:23 | 0:43:25 | |
# Babe, I'll accept you gladly | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
# Oh-oh-oh... # | 0:43:29 | 0:43:31 | |
I stayed on with the others. | 0:43:56 | 0:43:58 | |
Whether you like it or not, I found myself constantly, | 0:43:58 | 0:44:00 | |
constantly phoning the office to find out what's happening. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
"Are we getting paid this week?" | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
And then, when I've got certain members going, | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
"Well, the trustees aren't after my house." "I'm OK, Jack." You know. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:14 | |
And I'm supposed to sit there, you know, | 0:44:14 | 0:44:17 | |
after selling my house to pay off debts, consequently, | 0:44:17 | 0:44:21 | |
I've paid my share of the debt | 0:44:21 | 0:44:23 | |
but I've also paid other members of the band's debts, | 0:44:23 | 0:44:26 | |
who are still sitting pretty in their houses, | 0:44:26 | 0:44:30 | |
haven't been disrupted one iota, just made my blood boil. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:34 | |
There's no way I could actually physically go out on the road, | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
and be in that person's company | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
without wanting to smack them in the face. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:41 | |
And so, I thought, best thing to do, leave. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:45 | |
It was terribly painful, really, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
because we felt like he'd been a complete Judas. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
He came to us and he said, "I'm so skint, I've got no money." | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
We gave him all the money we had in the bank account. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:58 | |
He said, "I'm leaving if I can't get any money." | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
"We can't give you the money you want | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
"because it isn't there, but have this." | 0:45:02 | 0:45:04 | |
It was everything we had in the company accounts | 0:45:04 | 0:45:06 | |
and he left the next morning. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
Well, you didn't want to stay around | 0:45:08 | 0:45:10 | |
to continue with the country vibe, as well, did you? | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
Well, that was totally... | 0:45:13 | 0:45:15 | |
That was the last straw, that really was. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
And this Getting Over The Storm album, | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
I found myself trying to convince my mates | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
that it could work and they're just looking at me, like, | 0:45:24 | 0:45:27 | |
"Don't know where your head's at, mate. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:29 | |
"But, you know, that ain't reggae." | 0:45:29 | 0:45:31 | |
# Blue eyes crying in the rain...# | 0:45:32 | 0:45:34 | |
Well, the whole decision was ridiculous, to make a country album. | 0:45:35 | 0:45:38 | |
They're the biggest selling reggae band in the world, you know. | 0:45:38 | 0:45:42 | |
And they decided to make a country album. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:44 | |
It's a slap in the face to the fans who, you know, | 0:45:44 | 0:45:47 | |
bought all our records all along. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:49 | |
It's a slap in the face to Astro | 0:45:49 | 0:45:51 | |
and it's certainly a slap in the face to me, | 0:45:51 | 0:45:54 | |
as I'd started UB40 to promote reggae, you know. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:58 | |
And for them to do a country album is still jaw-dropping stuff, for me. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:02 | |
We released an album with, like, | 0:46:06 | 0:46:07 | |
a country influence album and he attacked it furiously, | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
saying we'd ruined the band's legacy and ruined reggae music. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
It's fucking ridiculous. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:16 | |
We're musicians. | 0:46:16 | 0:46:18 | |
We're just trying other stuff and it's a very successful record. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:21 | |
All around the world we go and people know the songs | 0:46:21 | 0:46:24 | |
and it paid for itself. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:25 | |
The worst review we've ever had for it is Ali Campbell. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
He's made it his mission in life to run us down, now | 0:46:30 | 0:46:32 | |
and he's given us a terrible hard time in the press. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:36 | |
# I've got to run | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
# To keep from hiding... # | 0:46:38 | 0:46:40 | |
Whereas, as a band, UB40, we've stayed away from it | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
because it's just... | 0:46:43 | 0:46:44 | |
It's just not very sophisticated. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
It's just a bit wanky, innit? | 0:46:47 | 0:46:49 | |
To run people down and talk about people | 0:46:49 | 0:46:50 | |
when they're not there to defend themselves. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
I would take anything Brian says with a pinch of salt, you know, | 0:46:53 | 0:46:56 | |
because they've launched this... | 0:46:56 | 0:46:58 | |
-Hate campaign. -Yeah! | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
A campaign to discredit me, you know. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:03 | |
Well, it's absolutely true because, when Ali left, | 0:47:03 | 0:47:05 | |
I can remember the band saying, | 0:47:05 | 0:47:07 | |
"Right, we'll take the moral high ground. We say nothing." | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
And I'm in total agreement with that. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
Because, as far as I'm concerned, this just involves the band, | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
it doesn't concern anybody else outside. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
Within four hours of Ali leaving, | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
poor little Brian's little fingers were tapping away, | 0:47:22 | 0:47:26 | |
just assassinating Ali by the second. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:29 | |
And then Jimmy Brown, the drummer, | 0:47:29 | 0:47:31 | |
he jumped in and they haven't stopped since. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
They just haven't stopped. It's just been relentless. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:37 | |
And the same thing's happened with me. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:42 | |
When I left, there's that beautiful quote from fans, you know, | 0:47:42 | 0:47:47 | |
"Sorry to see you go." "Thanks for the memories", etc, etc. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:50 | |
Five hours later, Jimmy Brown, straightaway, you know. | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
"He's been caught with his hands in the till." | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
Which is what he said about me. | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
"Don't let him fool you, this is all about money." | 0:47:59 | 0:48:01 | |
"He wanted more than everybody else." You know. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:04 | |
This is the man who hasn't spent a penny on repaying the loans. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:08 | |
You know, so, let them get on with it. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:12 | |
It's a difficult one for me, this, | 0:48:12 | 0:48:14 | |
because Ali was my best friend when we were children. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:17 | |
He was the best man at my wedding. We were best mates. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:20 | |
We lived next door to each other in Jamaica. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:22 | |
We went on holiday together, always, with our families and kids. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
So it's very painful. He's not the guy I grew up with and knew, | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
and we've come to a point where we've got to defend ourselves. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
Not for egotistical reasons, not for personal reasons | 0:48:34 | 0:48:38 | |
but I've got to defend my friends, his brothers | 0:48:38 | 0:48:42 | |
and I've got to defend my partners here | 0:48:42 | 0:48:45 | |
from the shit that gets written about them, coming out of his mouth. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
-I take it that there's no chance of you getting back together again. -No. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:57 | |
It will. About 10 minutes after hell has frozen over. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:00 | |
No. I don't care what he does. Really. You know, he's... | 0:49:03 | 0:49:07 | |
The vitriol he's heaped on me and, you know, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
fellow band members and Duncan. | 0:49:13 | 0:49:16 | |
The lies he's told in the last eight years are just disgusting. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:19 | |
You know, I've lost all feeling, really. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:23 | |
I've become numb to the whole thing, to be honest. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:27 | |
I'd rather not get back together with him. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:30 | |
It got... I love him but, | 0:49:30 | 0:49:32 | |
as I say, but he hasn't spoken to me since that day. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
He doesn't keep in touch with the family. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
I mean, he doesn't live in Birmingham any more, | 0:49:36 | 0:49:38 | |
as we all still do. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:40 | |
And Dad passed away and Ali didn't come to the funeral, | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
or couldn't come to the funeral, whatever. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:46 | |
You know, we haven't seen him. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:48 | |
It's, er... | 0:49:48 | 0:49:50 | |
It's unfortunate. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:51 | |
What has happened is our family has been ripped asunder. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:58 | |
You know, it's been ripped apart, you know. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
My father, before he died, | 0:50:01 | 0:50:03 | |
refused to talk to me because he took Duncan's side and Robin's side. | 0:50:03 | 0:50:07 | |
You know, and to say I didn't make Dad's funeral - | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
I was in New Zealand at the time. You know what I mean? | 0:50:10 | 0:50:14 | |
That's just a nasty, silly thing to say. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:17 | |
It's very disappointing that Ali's behaved the way he has, | 0:50:17 | 0:50:21 | |
you know, but not altogether surprising | 0:50:21 | 0:50:24 | |
when you've lived with him as long as I have. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:27 | |
My mum refuses to take sides. You know, we're all her boys | 0:50:27 | 0:50:31 | |
and she loves us equally and treats us the same | 0:50:31 | 0:50:34 | |
and refuses to become embroiled. | 0:50:34 | 0:50:37 | |
It's just become so poisonous, the whole situation. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:41 | |
It's particularly sad for our mother, | 0:50:41 | 0:50:45 | |
who has said to me that she's always taken comfort | 0:50:45 | 0:50:50 | |
from the knowledge that her four lads were there for each other. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:55 | |
And she's had to accept that that simply isn't the case now. | 0:50:56 | 0:50:59 | |
They're trying to sue us and we've got to defend ourselves. | 0:51:15 | 0:51:18 | |
Their argument is that we're passing off as UB40. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:24 | |
Our argument is that they're passing off because they've never said | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
that it's not the original line-up | 0:51:27 | 0:51:29 | |
and they've never said UB40 featuring Duncan Campbell, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:33 | |
or featuring Duncan, Robin, and Brian. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:36 | |
We always make it very clear who comes to see us, | 0:51:36 | 0:51:39 | |
it's UB40 featuring Ali, Astro and Mickey. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:42 | |
They know that if they have to go out | 0:51:44 | 0:51:47 | |
with "UB40 featuring Duncan Campbell" | 0:51:47 | 0:51:49 | |
that they'll never get a booking | 0:51:49 | 0:51:51 | |
and we're playing the O2, selling it out. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
The guys that left the band, left the band of their own accord, | 0:51:55 | 0:51:58 | |
you know. Leaving us, the remaining members of the band, | 0:51:58 | 0:52:02 | |
to carry on as UB40. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:03 | |
Until they used the name, Ali's career hadn't happened | 0:52:05 | 0:52:10 | |
and then it dawned on him that... | 0:52:10 | 0:52:12 | |
When he went to Africa and places like that | 0:52:12 | 0:52:15 | |
and he sold himself as UB40, then he suddenly thought, | 0:52:15 | 0:52:18 | |
"Aye, aye, I can...I can do this...everywhere!" | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
And that was what he did. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:23 | |
I don't see why this couldn't be resolved very easily. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:26 | |
But of course, once emotions get involved | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
and bad feeling from the past and accusations - | 0:52:29 | 0:52:34 | |
it gets very muddy and nobody has any rationale or common sense. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:39 | |
But this could have been resolved a long time ago. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
Both parties are in for a quarter of a million quid already | 0:52:42 | 0:52:45 | |
and as soon as you start the ball rolling like this, | 0:52:45 | 0:52:48 | |
it's very difficult to stop it, you know, because... | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
If they walk away with their hands down, they have to pay our costs. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:55 | |
And if we do the same, then we have to pay their costs. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:58 | |
So it just has to keep going and the only people that win | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
are the lawyers, obviously. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:03 | |
We're prepared to go as far as we have to go. We've already... | 0:53:03 | 0:53:07 | |
Again, you know, broken ourselves spending money | 0:53:07 | 0:53:11 | |
for two years on lawyers. | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
Very expensive lawyers, you know. We're prepared to go | 0:53:15 | 0:53:18 | |
as far as we have to go to...be able to use our name. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:24 | |
I've never seen a whole band suffer to this degree. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:33 | |
They've been cleaved down the middle in terms of family members. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
They're all at odds with each other. They've all lost their houses | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
and they've all been bankrupt. It doesn't get much worse than that. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:46 | |
It's quite stunning, in a way, cos when I first joined them, | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
I really thought they were a bunch of happy-go-lucky guys | 0:53:49 | 0:53:53 | |
and for them, none of them, to be seen to have the rewards | 0:53:53 | 0:53:57 | |
from their previous hard work - | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
it just doesn't make sense. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
I'd love to think that somewhere there's this | 0:54:10 | 0:54:13 | |
big pot of money that the eight boys who made up this fantastic band, | 0:54:13 | 0:54:17 | |
would be able to get hold of. But I don't think it exists, | 0:54:17 | 0:54:21 | |
I think it's just been frittered away or been skimmed off | 0:54:21 | 0:54:24 | |
over the years. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:26 | |
It's quite fitting, as well, that they had an album called | 0:54:26 | 0:54:29 | |
Promises And Lies. Because it seems to me that's what's been | 0:54:29 | 0:54:33 | |
the motto of their career - | 0:54:33 | 0:54:35 | |
promises and lies. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
And, erm...it's a sad story, a very sad story. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:43 | |
MUSIC: Dream A Lie by UB40 | 0:54:43 | 0:54:45 | |
# We're still together just the same | 0:54:46 | 0:54:48 | |
# The morning sun I raise my head | 0:54:48 | 0:54:50 | |
# A lonely room an empty bed | 0:54:50 | 0:54:52 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
# Yes, it always seems that way... # | 0:55:02 | 0:55:06 | |
Really, it's starting again. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:09 | |
We're trying to reclaim the name before the legacy is destroyed. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
As soon as Astro came back and played with us, the fans have just - | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
they're loving it, you know, | 0:55:17 | 0:55:18 | |
and really it seems they feel it's a solution | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
that finally, you know... We've reunited again | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
and we're back flying the flag for reggae! | 0:55:25 | 0:55:28 | |
So, yeah, it's looking good for us. And I think it was inevitable... | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
Fans, you know, will vote with their feet. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:34 | |
No, we'll never get back together again - | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
there's been too much skulduggery, you know. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:40 | |
And musically, I wouldn't want to play with those guys again | 0:55:40 | 0:55:44 | |
because the band I've got now is...is | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
a lot better. There's no egos involved in...in our UB40, | 0:55:46 | 0:55:50 | |
you know. Er, and the music's better. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
Since Ali left eight years ago, we've been recording, | 0:55:54 | 0:55:58 | |
performing as UB40. And I still love my life, you know. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:04 | |
I still pinch myself every day that I've had the life I've had, | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
so, I'm not about to be twisted and bitter and... | 0:56:07 | 0:56:11 | |
I'm not about to let that kind of thing consume me, you know. | 0:56:11 | 0:56:15 | |
It's not worth it. That time's gone. I had a wonderful time living... | 0:56:15 | 0:56:20 | |
while it was going on. I still enjoy my life. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:23 | |
It's not as comfortable as it should be but, you know, | 0:56:23 | 0:56:26 | |
it's a lot more comfortable than it would have been | 0:56:26 | 0:56:29 | |
if I had never been in UB40. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:31 | |
And we'll keep going until we drop, you know. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
# Never was a better time | 0:56:37 | 0:56:38 | |
# To try to set the words to rhyme | 0:56:38 | 0:56:40 | |
# Of when a golden love turns blue | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
# And dreams of dreams that won't come true | 0:56:42 | 0:56:45 | |
# Every night I call your name We're still together just the same | 0:56:45 | 0:56:48 | |
# The morning sun I raise my head | 0:56:48 | 0:56:50 | |
# A lonely room an empty bed | 0:56:50 | 0:56:52 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:56:52 | 0:56:55 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:56:58 | 0:57:02 | |
# Yes, it always seems the way | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:57:07 | 0:57:09 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:57:14 | 0:57:18 | |
# Always seems that way | 0:57:18 | 0:57:24 | |
# Yes, it always seems that way... # | 0:57:24 | 0:57:28 |