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Browse piano sheets by UB40 on Zen Virtual Piano. A group of schoolfriends from Birmingham's multiracial Balsall Heath started UB40 in 1978; The Guardian calls them once the authentic voice of informed working-class disaffection. Their stepper's beat carried everyday grievances and global protest alike, aimed at apartheid, Thatcherism, racism, world poverty and social injustice. Their first gig was on 9 February 1979 at the Hare & Hounds pub in Birmingham, now marked by a plaque for a 2011 PRS for Music Heritage Award. A band whose first gig is marked by a pub plaque suggests how local its roots remain, whatever its later reach, and how closely the band stayed tied to Birmingham. Ali Campbell recalls spending his whole life surrounded by music, sitting as a child on the carpet listening to people rehearse in the family's front room. Imitating, imperfectly, records by Big Youth, Sly and Robbie, Lee Scratch Perry and King Tubby is how the band learned to play, producing what Campbell calls a hybrid reggae style. A singer raised on family harmonies and a band shaped by imitating records suggest a sound built from listening closely rather than from formal training, with imitation turning into a style of their own. Their first album was taped on a four-track Fostex in the bedsit of a local drummer, Bob Lamb, whose bed sat on stilts above his mixing desk. Late in 1980 they cancelled their deal with Graduate and set up DEP International, a label in which each of the eight members held the same share. The socialist principles of the group stayed firm despite money and success: they always split the songwriting equally and voted on every decision. A record company owned in equal shares and a vote on every decision hint at a band that tried to run itself the way its songs talked about politics, putting fairness into its business as well. Chrissie Hynde teamed up with them in summer 1985 for a version of Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe, which climbed to No. 1 in Britain. Their album Labour of Love honoured the reggae tunes that had inspired them, and Red Red Wine, though written by Neil Diamond, was known to them through the 1969 rocksteady version by Tony Tribe. In 1993 they covered the original 1961 Elvis Presley recording of Can't Help Falling in Love as the first single from their tenth album, Promises and Lies. Ali Campbell quit in 2008 for a solo career; Astro followed him five years on, and the two went out as UB40 as well, which annoyed the original lineup. A history of covers that honoured older reggae, followed by two groups using the same name, shows how a band's identity can later be shared by two groups, and why the original line-up is the one linked to the 1993 recording.
Browse piano sheets by UB40 on Zen Virtual Piano.
A group of schoolfriends from Birmingham's multiracial Balsall Heath started UB40 in 1978; The Guardian calls them once the authentic voice of informed working-class disaffection. Their stepper's beat carried everyday grievances and global protest alike, aimed at apartheid, Thatcherism, racism, world poverty and social injustice. Their first gig was on 9 February 1979 at the Hare & Hounds pub in Birmingham, now marked by a plaque for a 2011 PRS for Music Heritage Award. A band whose first gig is marked by a pub plaque suggests how local its roots remain, whatever its later reach, and how closely the band stayed tied to Birmingham.
Ali Campbell recalls spending his whole life surrounded by music, sitting as a child on the carpet listening to people rehearse in the family's front room. Imitating, imperfectly, records by Big Youth, Sly and Robbie, Lee Scratch Perry and King Tubby is how the band learned to play, producing what Campbell calls a hybrid reggae style. A singer raised on family harmonies and a band shaped by imitating records suggest a sound built from listening closely rather than from formal training, with imitation turning into a style of their own.
Their first album was taped on a four-track Fostex in the bedsit of a local drummer, Bob Lamb, whose bed sat on stilts above his mixing desk. Late in 1980 they cancelled their deal with Graduate and set up DEP International, a label in which each of the eight members held the same share. The socialist principles of the group stayed firm despite money and success: they always split the songwriting equally and voted on every decision. A record company owned in equal shares and a vote on every decision hint at a band that tried to run itself the way its songs talked about politics, putting fairness into its business as well.
Chrissie Hynde teamed up with them in summer 1985 for a version of Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe, which climbed to No. 1 in Britain. Their album Labour of Love honoured the reggae tunes that had inspired them, and Red Red Wine, though written by Neil Diamond, was known to them through the 1969 rocksteady version by Tony Tribe. In 1993 they covered the original 1961 Elvis Presley recording of Can't Help Falling in Love as the first single from their tenth album, Promises and Lies. Ali Campbell quit in 2008 for a solo career; Astro followed him five years on, and the two went out as UB40 as well, which annoyed the original lineup. A history of covers that honoured older reggae, followed by two groups using the same name, shows how a band's identity can later be shared by two groups, and why the original line-up is the one linked to the 1993 recording.
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Common questions
UB40 are a British reggae band formed in 1978 in Birmingham by a group of schoolfriends from Balsall Heath.
Their 1993 cover of Elvis Presley's 1961 original, which led off their tenth album, Promises and Lies.
It was the record company UB40 formed at the end of 1980, with all eight members owning an equal share.
Their first gig was on 9 February 1979 at the Hare & Hounds pub in Birmingham.