The band UB40, was named after the paper form issued by the UK government’s Department of Employment at the time of the band’s formation for claiming unemployment benefit (UB40 ; Unemployment Benefit, Form 40).
The band members began as mates who knew each other from various colleges and schools across Birmingham. Before any of them could play their instruments, Ali Campbell and Brian Travers travelled around Birmingham promoting the band, putting up UB40 posters. The band purchased its first instruments with £4,000 in compensation money that Campbell, who would become the lead singer, received after a bar fight during his 17th birthday celebration.
Their first gig took place on February 9, 1979 at The Hare & Hounds Pub in Kings Heath, Birmingham for a friend’s birthday party. UB40 caught their first break when Chrissie Hynde noticed them at a pub and gave them an opportunity as a support act to her band, The Pretenders. UB40’s first single, “King”/“Food for Thought” was released on Graduate Records, a local independent label run by David Virr. It reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart and was the first record to reach the UK top ten without the backing of a major record label.
Their first album was titled Signing Off, as the band were signing off from or closing their claim on the unemployment benefit. It was recorded in a bedsit in Birmingham and was produced by Bob Lamb. Norman Hassan said of the recording: “if you stripped my track down, you could hear the birds in the background.” This is because his tracks were recorded outside in the garden. Signing Off was released on September 6, 1980, and entered the UK Albums Chart on October 2, 1980. It reached as high as No. 2 in the UK and spent 72 weeks in total on the chart. Signing Off is now a Platinum album.
Despite great success in the UK, UB40’s popularity in the United States was only established after they released Labour of Love, an album of cover songs, in 1983. The album reached No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 8 on the Billboard Top 200 in the US. The album featured the song, “Red Red Wine”, a cover version of a Neil Diamond song (in an arrangement similar to that of Tony Tribe’s version).
Their most successful single release is the cover of the Elvis Presley ballad “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” which was intended to be the main title to the 1992 Sharon Stone movie Sliver and was a number one hit across Europe and in the U.S.
In June 2007, Sparta Florida Music Group started legal action against heiress Paris Hilton and Warner Chappell Music for plagiarism due to similarities between the song “Stars Are Blind” and the song Kingston Town, originally by Lord Creator. It was frequently misreported that UB40 was the instigator of the action, and that it centered on their 1990 cover of the song. However, according to a statement UB40’s site, they are not involved, and “Any speculated legal action taking place against Ms. Hilton would be entirely at the instigation of the original songwriter’s music publisher...who ultimately own the copyright to the song.”
UB40 toured South Africa in July 2007 and headlined the Live Earth concert at the Cradle of Humankind, near Johannesburg. They performed one of the longest sets for the event at approximately 54 minutes.
