Reggae giants UB40 bring a bagga riddim back to Ōtautahi in October. We talk to ‘OG’ Jimmy Brown and new kid Matt Doyle about the band’s new album, falling in love with New Zealand, and the essence of reggae.
What can the audience expect on this visit?
Jimmy Obviously we’re going to be doing the hits - ‘Red Red Wine’, ‘So Here I Am’ and so on – and some of our old stuff as well, maybe ‘One in 10’ and ‘Tyler’ from the first album but also some new stuff, just like there is on the new album, UB45, a combination of old and new. Matt We’ll definitely be throwing a couple of the new tunes in there. We wouldn’t want to oversaturate it with new material because we want people to come and hear the tunes they have been listening to all their lives. But as a band you’ve got to put new material in there to show people what you are up to now.
Jimmy, you’ve been there right from the start, 45 years of gigs. Any highlights?
Jimmy Actually, coming to New Zealand has been one of the highlights. It’s such a beautiful country. It’s one of the few countries in the world where I feel I could actually live. Īn contrast to Australia, which tends to be a bit of a dusty, gammon-ridden shit hole.
You know how to win over a Kiwi audience.
Jimmy Well, what can I say. Australia and New Zealand are chalk and cheese. I can relate to New Zealand. I like the cultural mix. The people are beautiful and the landscape is beautiful as well. So it’s one of the highlights of touring at any time and we’ve had the privilege of coming out many times. Matt I’ve been just the once. I’m looking forward to coming back. I’d like to visit every year if we can.
What impressed you on that first visit?
Matt Everything man, everything. I just fell in love with New Zealand. Just flying in and being able to see three volcanoes! It’s such a beautiful, beautiful country and the people are so welcoming and warm. I could live there if it wasn’t so far away from my family.
I’m sure we could get a petition going for residency.
Jimmy You don’t know you’re born, there. The beauty of the New Zealand landscape is so inspiring. We’ve made some great friends over the years as well, friends we made the first time we toured in 1980 and they’re still friends now. You just don’t do that everywhere. We have close relationships with the Māori nation and also people from the Pacific Islands who are living in New Zealand, for example from Tonga and New Caledonia. We’ve been embraced and we appreciate that. There’s real mutual respect. Beautiful people and some very good weed as well. We always appreciate New Zealand weed.
Some of the best, you think?
Jimmy I wouldn't argue with that. We did have some Maui Wowie once that was mind-blowing. That might have been nearly as good. But in New Zealand, the quality of the weed is always good and there’s always someone waiting at the airport with a bag. And that's how we want it to be. We’re seasoned smokers and we love our weed.
As a band you have supported various campaigns over the years, such as anti-racism – does the fire still burn?
Jimmy Definitely. Matt, for example, has brought a couple of songs to the table for the new album, one of which is ‘Home’. We love it because it feels like an old-school UB40 song like ‘One in 10’ or something like that. The song’s about immigrants and how they’re treated. Matt Yeah, with ‘Home’, the idea came to me when my mum was telling me about my grandad, who was Irish, and how he was afraid to open his mouth in public because of the stick that the Irish were getting back then. The song progressed into a conversation between an immigrant couple who may have been living in England since they were very young, and the climate for them has just got worse and worse over the years. When I was a teenager I started seeing people like the English Defence League and the British National Party coming back and it just seems to come back around, back around, and if you don’t stamp it out enough it just comes around to bite you and that’s why we’re still writing about the same issues and the same subjects. Jimmy At least with Irish people you can be quiet and not be noticed but you can’t do that if you’re black, you can’t white up. The way black people are treated in England today is probably worse than when we were younger.
Do you see any hope?
Jimmy I do see hope in that I don’t think young people are like that. And I don’t believe this old cliché that when people are young they’re revolutionary but when they get older they become more conservative. I don’t believe that, it certainly hasn’t happened to me or to anyone else I know who’s as old as I am. I think young people will retain their desire to clean up the planet and you’ll only do that if you get rid of capitalism because that is what’s killing the planet. And I think young people understand this, that endless consumerism is strangling nature. Once our generation is gone, which won’t be long, younger people will do things more positively and be more progressive because they've been brought up in a world where you mix with a lot of different people and pick up a lot of ideas. Young people are more sophisticated than we were in that way.
Matt, how is it being the new kid. Are you getting the jokes yet?
Matt It feels like I’ve been doing it forever now. I feel like part of the furniture. The guys are hilarious to be around. When you hang around with musicians, in general you’re going to have a laugh. But when you’re hanging out with guys who have been together 45 years ... They’ve definitely made me feel part of the family.
What’s your writing process?
Matt Sometimes I start with a melody and sometimes some lyrics. But the thing is you’ve got to not be precious about the music. If I wrote a whole song with every instrument, I would bring it forward and expect everything to be changed on it. I would want everything to be changed on it. You want everyone to have a say on what they’re playing and that’s how you make the best music, with that collaborative process, everyone putting their stake in. Jimmy We’re a proper band. We all have a contribution to make to the music and no one contribution is more important than any other. That gives us a good attention to detail because you’ve got an individual whose sole job is to play that instrument or sing that song or do that drum beat. It’s not like we have a production team of two telling everyone else what to do, you know. It adds depth to the music. And when you’ve been doing it that long, it’s an open process. Someone can bring a bass line in who isn’t the bass player, someone else will run with it and if it’s a good idea others will contribute to it. It’s an ensemble thing. It’s an ensemble when we play on stage and it’s an ensemble when we produce the music in the first place. It’s very empowering to be a part of that.
That's the essence of reggae, isn’t it – it’s not about the soloists, it’s about how everything becomes one.
Jimmy Yeah, it’s how the arrangement is intertwining, there’s a lot of call and answers. You’ve got to have that space obviously but you’ll get a little subtle keyboard thing going on at the beginning of a bar and then maybe four bars later you’ll get an answer from the guitar, say. It’s the way reggae works and that’s what’s great about having Matt. He was brought up in the same environment we were. We understand reggae music, it’s a way of thinking, and I think a lot of musicians who don’t start by playing reggae – which we did, that’s how we learned to play – musicians who don’t start with reggae find it difficult because it’s highly disciplined. Silence is as much a musical instrument as the guitar. It’s the art of making something sound complete with the smallest amount of ingredients.
UB40 Red Red Wine Tour, Wolfbrook Arena, Tue 8 Oct