Reggae, revolution and red red wine
Karl Puschmann catches up with Ali Campbell, the legendary UB40 frontman, to talk band beginnings, protest and politics, their big hits, and why he can’t wait to bring the band’s reggae vibes back to the Bay.
Ali Campbell is bleary-eyed but upbeat when UNO calls. It’s 8am in the UK, and the UB40 frontman only got home from a European festival tour yesterday.
“It’s all a bit mad here,” he jokes, before settling in for a breezy and candid chat about UB40, the influential reggae band he co-founded in 1978 and led to global success before inner band turbulence saw them splitting into two groups.
But before getting into the past, we need to talk about his future return to Aotearoa to headline music festival Kingston Calling this Waitangi Weekend. The brand new reggae tour, with seven stops across the North Island, also features Katchafire, The Black Seeds and Corrella.
“I’m very, very happy to be coming back. It’s one of my favourite places,” he enthuses. “I’ve got a lot of friends there, a lot of Māori friends, so we always have a great time. It's a beautiful country.”
Then he pauses and says, “There are some weird things happening politically that I'm not too sure of. I've heard about the new Prime Minister... I've got to look at all that.”
You may think it’s unusual that a British music icon would know about or even be interested in our politics, but Ali has a long history with our country. He lived here for months when he was a judge on reality show New Zealand’s Got Talent back in 2012, his current tour manager is Māori and he’s even taken the time to read something that a lot of us haven’t; the Treaty of Waitangi.
“I lived in the middle of Auckland in the Viaduct. I know my way around,” he laughs. “And, of course, we've travelled extensively around both the North and the South Islands.”
Aotearoa’s always had a huge love for UB40. This stretches right back to the band’s cracking debut single, the politically charged deep reggae groove of Food For Thought, which topped our charts in 1980, to give the band their first-ever Number One hit. But when I ask why he thinks the band has resonated with us Kiwis so much, he’s modest, saying, “It’s not UB40 that people love. It's the music. People love reggae music.”
“Reggae is unifying, and it's still cool today,” he continues. “That's the important thing. It's still cool. People like us because we're an accessible reggae band.”
Ali grew up in South Birmingham, “on the wrong side of the tracks,” as he says, surrounded by the colourful sounds of the Caribbean and Asian cultures that were his neighbours. Unlike most of England at that time, it was a true multicultural environment, and one that impacted his world view.
“I was very lucky. I had Jamaican, Indian, West Indian and Arabic friends. I grew up amongst this melting pot. I loved it. It gave me a broad outlook on life. I wasn't prejudiced against anybody. Just fascists, I didn't like them. I’d go to a lot of anti-fascist demos and all that stuff. But we'd do it all together.”
Then grinning he adds, “And generally, the police were our enemies. Everybody else was friends.”
Aged 15 he went and saw Bob Marley and the Wailers in concert. It would be a transformative experience.
“It was like seeing the Messiah. I was totally blown away,” he says, a note of awe still resonating in his voice. “The year before that, I'd seen the Jackson 5. And that also blew me away because I was a mad Jackson 5 fan as well. Those two years basically showed my musical future to me. It was life-changing.”
After the show, he decided to form a band. But his plan had two big problems.
“We didn't know how to play. And we didn't have any instruments, so we... acquired our instruments, let's say,” he laughs. “We were on the dole, so we couldn't go and buy them. We had to acquire them.”
With instruments “acquired”, all they had to do next was learn how to play them. To do this, they continually played the 12” version of Gregory Isaacs reggae hit, ‘Mr Know It All’, which features a dub breakdown in the middle, deconstructing each part and slowly working it out by playing along. Eventually, they got to the point where the record stopped and they could continue jamming.
“And that's how we learned to play. Six months later, we'd written our first album, which went on to sell eight million copies. It was ridiculous,” he grins.
That album was Signing Off, a groundbreaking and politically charged album of deep groove reggae whose music and message still resonate today.
“We followed Bob Marley's lead and other reggae artists like Lee Perry, who were political. We felt obliged if we got a platform to write something relevant. And we continue to do so.”
As an example, he cites ‘Burden of Shame’, which, when he sings it live now, has the lyrics “A baby in Gaza dies,” instead of “A boy in Soweto dies”.
“Depressingly, the songs are still as relevant as they were when we wrote them,” he sighs. “I've learned that you don't change anything by singing about it. It's as simple as that. All we're doing is voicing an opinion. It doesn't change anything. Things might have got worse even.”
As well as their political material, UB40 also explored the smoother, pop-leaning side of reggae, with their hugely popular Labour of Love albums, which saw them performing covers of the songs that had influenced them, like ‘Red Red Wine’, ‘The Way You Do the Things You Do’ and ‘Here I Am (Come and Take Me)’.
“We kept getting asked about why we played reggae, so we decided to do those albums,” he says, laughing that they’d been strongly advised against recording a covers album. Labour of Love would top global charts, including here, and go on to sell over 21 million copies.
“They’re the songs we used to hear on jukeboxes in cafés where we used to hang out as kids, playing pinball and running errands for prostitutes. We grew up listening to those songs. We loved them, and we knew that anybody else who got to hear them would love them as well. And we were right.”
After 24 years together, tensions within the band led to a split in 2008, with Ali moving on to front his own group, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell, while the remaining members continued under the original name.
“When I left it was sad, but I couldn't carry on with them. They wouldn't let me promote my second solo album, which was called Running Free, ironically enough,” he says. “All I wanted was a month off to promote it, and they were steadfastly telling me I couldn't do it, so I walked. It’s all very silly and a very petty argument. But I was quite happy to leave and I've had a great time since. I've got my new band, who are all seasoned reggae players, and I love them. That's who I'm bringing to New Zealand. I think they’re the best band around.”
Which makes them a fitting choice to headline Kingston Calling, especially as it’s the first-ever concert to be played at The Bay Oval, in the heart of Mount Maunganui.
“I'm a little bit nervous,” Ali admits when asked how it feels to be christening this new venue. “But it's fun being the first to do anything really.”
I confess to taking a sneak peek at some of his recent setlists, which gets a chuckle when I say he’s bringing some absolute bangers that will keep all fans of UB40’s multifaceted career extremely satisfied.
“It's more or less a Greatest Hits set,” he smiles. “We're not self-indulgent. We know what the people want to hear, so that's what we do.”
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A new rhythm
After calling the Waikato home all his life, Katchafire frontman Logan Bell recently moved to the Bay.
It was just two short years ago that Logan Bell, the Katchafire frontman, and his family made the move from the Waikato to Tauranga’s Welcome Bay. For his wife, who grew up in the Bay, it was a return to her roots, but for Logan it was a completely new experience. While he’d toured the world many times over with the band, the Waikato was the only place he’d ever called home.
“This is the first time I've moved away,” he admits. “We love it here. It's really awesome for our family. I love my house. I'm a total homebody. I don't go anywhere else”.
Then he laughs and says, “I’m nearly a real local now, bro. I almost don't need Google Maps to get around now.”
Already, he says, the relaxed lifestyle, beachtown vibes and the musical community here in the Bay has begun to influence his music.
“Your environment and your vibe always has a lot to do with what's coming out creatively. This morning I was in the studio with Tiki Taane. The other week, me, Laughton Kora, Fran Kora and Joel from LAB got together and had a bit of a jam. It's just a nice community here and a nice vibe for me.”
Over their almost 30-year-long career, Katachfire has become one of Aotearoa’s most beloved reggae bands, first coming to national attention with their 2003 debut album Revival, before building an international audience through hits like ‘Frisk Me Down’, ‘Giddy Up’ and ‘Get Away’ and going on to tour with legendary reggae acts like The Wailers, Shaggy, Lauryn Hill, and, of course, UB40 who they’re sharing the stage with at Kingston Calling.
“We’re blessed to get the call up,” he smiles. “UB40 has always been a huge inspiration of ours, we kind of modeled our career off them. We’ve followed their example and their path in a lot of ways.”
While music styles come in and out of fashion, reggae’s popularity has never waned, especially here in Aotearoa. This, Logan says, is because
reggae is the “people’s music”.
“It touches on matters of truth. And a lot of it's to do with the underdog truth, the sufferer's truth. We, as a nation, are born of that. We can identify with these stories, and we have our own to tell as well. That's why I think it's so easy for us to feel connected to reggae and feel a part of the music and the messages.”