After Ali Campbell used a TV appearance to criticise his former UB40 bandmates when brother Duncan had been hospitalised with a stroke, one of his closest colleagues explains how the rift had its roots half a century ago
Robin and Ali Campbell turned themselves from 1970s’ unemployed hopefuls into chart-topping global stars with careers that have now lasted for more than 40 years.
But their high profile decade-long war of words suggests the time-honoured phrase “There’s nowt so queer as folk” is today more powerful than the notion “Blood is thicker than water…”
Seen through the prism of the lyrics to a song made famous by Edwin Starr, many outside observers might well ask: “War… what is it good for? Absolutely nothing say it again…”
The ongoing acrimony between the Campbells seems to be at least on a par with Manchester’s double act of Liam and Noel Gallagher, so one thing seems to be clear.
While brothers can achieve greatness together in any walk of life – think Bobby and the late Jack Charlton in the victorious England 1966 World Cup team – other things can come along and end up driving seemingly well-bonded siblings apart.
And, with the Campbells, there are not just two most brothers Robin Campbell and Ali Campbell… but there are another two involved in the story.
Non-band member David is the eldest followed by guitarist Robin, then Duncan – the current frontman of more than ten years – and original lead singer Ali.
The voice of the band’s first 30 years of hits like Kingston Town, One in Ten and Red Red Wine might be 61 now.
But Ali will, of course, always remain the youngest.
According to UB40’s saxophonist Brian Travers, that’s always been part of the problem – right from their school days.
“Ian and Robin’s story is rather like the brothers in The Kinks, The Everly Brothers, The Beach Boys, INXS,” muses Brian.
“Fame changes people, pecking orders change and egos get frustrated and out of control…”
Like Robin and Ali, Brian also went to Moseley School of Art and it’s there that he reckons today’s fault line was set.
Over the years that hairline crack has become a steaming fissure that gives way to explosions of hot, verbal lava.
UB40’s historic first gig was at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath on February 9, 1979.
You can watch Robin’s original members playing a secret 40th anniversary gig at the venue in October 2018 in the video above.
Of course, there was no sign that night of Ali, whose compensation money for having been ‘glassed’ in the face while celebrating his 17th birthday in the Red Lion in Kings Heath helped to fund UB40’s instruments.
Ali told BirminghamLive in 2016 that he’d received £4,500 in criminal injuries compensation “at a time when I was getting £7.50 a week on the dole at the age of 19”.
“I gave a quarter of it to Robin and Duncan for a car business which they lost within weeks, and put the rest towards band equipment.
“Me, Earl and Jimmy were the original members of UB40. I only invited Robin into the band because he knew the chords to the House of the Rising Sun.”
This week, though, interviewed by fellow Brummie – and Citizen Kane star – Adil Ray, Ali put the boot in to his siblings and former bandmates alike during an appearance on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Why now?
An anagram of ‘Blood is thicker than water’ is ‘Roadblocks within theatre’.
Which is kind of appropriate since Ali has just fired another TV broadside at brother and UB40 band leader Robin and bandmates.
Nothing unusual there, these days, except that sibling Duncan – the second-youngest Campbell brother and current band frontman – was recently rushed to hospital after suffering a stroke.
After Ali quit the band in early 2008, Duncan was brought in as the new lead singer for the original UB40 whose remaining members included Robin, Brian Travers, Earl Falconer, Jimmy Brown and Norman Hassan.
Astro and Mickey Virtue joined Ali and, once he began to use the UB40 name for his own purposes several years later, Robin was outraged and court proceedings began.
Ali then started touring as UB40 feat Ali Campbell, Astro and Mickey Virtue until December 2018 when Virtue quit to leave the band name as UB40 feat Ali Campbell and Astro.
On Monday, August 17, Ali was interviewed by fellow Brummie Adil Ray and co-presenter Charlotte Hawkins on Good Morning Britain.
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UB40’S ALI CAMPBELL STILL WON’T SPEAK TO HIS BROTHER DESPITE HEALTH BATTLE
But despite Duncan’s hospitalisation – which had only been made public 13 days earlier on August 4 – Ali said: “I was kind of betrayed by them and I left citing problems with management.
“All that management has been struck off so I stand vindicated.
“I’m just happy to carry on promoting reggae and our version of UB40.”
Although now minus Virtue from his own spin-off line-up, father-of-eight Ali added: “I think we’ve got the hottest reggae band on the road in the world at the moment so there’d be no point in going back to what we used to do years and years ago.
“I have no contact with them (Robin’s UB40).
“I only get to hear what’s happened like everyone else. I don’t know what’s going on but I know he’s (Duncan) recovering.”
Following Duncan’s stroke, the band issued a statement on its @UB40 Official Facebook page on August 4, 2020 to say: “We can confirm our lead singer and brother Duncan Campbell was taken to hospital after suffering a stroke.
“While we can report he is already up and about, we ask fans to respect Duncan and the family’s privacy as he works his way back to what we all hope will be a strong and speedy recovery.
BirminghamLive understands Duncan is now out of hospital and the official line remains: “We look forward to seeing you all on the road next spring.”
View from the sax
After battling brain cancer for 18 months, Brian Travers has been on his own health-care rollercoaster, not least because of the pandemic which has seen him in lockdown since Christmas when he was still weak from chemotherapy.
Brian readily admits to being a bit out of the loop on band matters.
While an operation on March 28 coincided exactly with the band setting on its 40th anniversary world tour without him, since then he’s been painting like crazy and collaborating on musical projects with other stars.
Brian even made a deeply-moving three generations video and recording of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile to help keep dad Joseph, 85 and son Jamie, 38, busy and entertained during lockdown.
“The band (UB40) didn’t tell me about Duncan being ill for a week,” Brian says without rancour.
Currently clear of the kind of tumours removed in an emergency operation in March, 2019, Brian still hopes to return to live shows if and when Robin’s original UB40 band is able to start to tour again next spring.
While he knows both Robin and Ali equally well, it was Ali that he chose as the best man at his wedding because they were the same age.
Robin was a Christmas Day baby in 1954, Duncan was born April 3, 1958.
More than four years after Robin’s arrival, Brian was born on February 7, 1959 while Ali arrived into the world just eight days later on February 15.
But even Brian admits he hasn’t spoken to Ali after the original frontman who gave the band its distinctive vocal sound walked out in 2008.
That Ali was later to be replaced by their youngest brother, Duncan, only served to seemingly wind Ali up even more and, although Robin insists Ali gave Duncan his blessing, he says Ali hasn’t spoken to him since.
During a 2016 interview at the Hotel Du Vin, Ali told me: “It’s ironic they are suing us for passing them off, when I don’t want people to think I am them!
“After I left, the end for UB40 came when they did their country album – Astro didn’t want to be standing on the stage with a stetson on.
“I’ve heard better tribute bands out there than the remaining members.
“It’s really annoying that the other band members keep saying I left to pursue a solo career.
“I left because of what was going on behind my back. They have stolen my back catalogue of 30 years’ work.”
Brian might ordinarily have expected Ali to call asking how he was after his brain operation last year.
Today, the saxophonist and father of two observes: “(What Ali said on Good Morning Britain) says more about the man than I could say.
“He was speaking loud and clear for himself.”
So why has the relationship gone so badly wrong for two brothers after they’d shared almost 30 years of hits together before Ali left?
“It’s a great shame, but people have to grow,” says Brian.
“The thing about UB40 is that we’ve all known each other since we were kids.
“And when you are kids there’s a pecking order.
“Second years are bigger than first years, you get what I’m saying?
“And when you are in the fifth form. Wow, you’re a man then by comparison.
“Robin was five years older than (me and) Ali and that pecking order existed inside the band.
“Then there are forces at play to try to make it level up.
“As we saw with The Kinks, The Beach Boys, Oasis, INXS and The Everly Brothers, fame changes people, pecking orders change and egos get frustrated and out of control though not necessarily in a bad way.
“When Ali left the band, he left the band.
“We never fell out – but I haven’t heard from him since.”
Looking at Ali’s latest comments on TV, Brian adds: “My view has always been that if someone is not there to defend themselves, then you don’t say anything.
“That has always stood me in good stead. Just leave them alone. I won’t let myself down like that.
“I’ve had a great life with my family and lived the dream of being both an artist and a musician and film maker.
“I have no bucket list – I find it sad when people do have one.”
Even though Brian’s brain operation came just three months after Mickey Virtue left Ali’s band, the Moseley-based star says he still hasn’t heard from the keyboard player either, even though he’s effectively now a neutral figure no longer associated with either band.
“Mickey was always the quiet one, very happy with his own company,” says Brian.
“Mickey married ‘well’ so I presume he has money because he didn’t have it taken off him like I did thanks to our “joint and several” agreement.
“This means that if several of you have debts and you’re the most solvent then you have to cover their debts.”
Family values
As the sons of folk star Ian Campbell, the four siblings David, Robin, Duncan and Ali had a head start in terms of understanding the importance of music to peope’s lives.
When Ian died on November 24, 2012, he was survived by the boys’ mother Pat, who used to run the Brook Advisory Clinic.
She’s now in her mid 80s and, for her sake, you might think Robin and Ali would make up – not least because Ali missed his father’s funeral.
But Ali’s latest outburst after Duncan’s hospitalisation suggests that’s unlikely.
While Ali and Robin had appeared at Waterstones together in 2005 to promote the publication of an autobiography called Blood & Fire (which Brian calls ‘unreliable’), by 2016 Ali was even attacking his own father during our Hotel du Vin interview.
Ian Campbell was a Communist and pioneering singer who recorded the first live folk EP called Ceilidh at The Crown on Station Street – the place where Black Sabbath (then called Earth) later played their first gig in 1968 en route to becoming world famous pioneers of heavy metal.
“Dad made a complete fool of himself,” Ali told me in 2016. “Just before he died, he received a lifetime achievement award from the folk institute.
“At his acceptance speech he said he had two sons who’d formed a reggae band and their first record had eclipsed his 19-year career.
“All along, I had been saying he was a bitter and twisted individual.”
The eldest brother
The fourth brother, and the only one still living in Balsall Heath, is David Campbell, himself a father-of-six.
He, too, could have been the band’s lead singer, except that when they were being formed he was in prison for a terrifying gunpoint raid on a bookies.
Instead of leading the band, the oldest brother watched his sbilings’ debut Top Of The Pops performance on a TV in tough Long Lartin prison, near Evesham.
In an exclusive interview in 2016, David told me: “Until this point I could have been characterised as the problem child,” he admits.
“But (unlike Ali) I didn’t fall out with my family. I just did a stupid thing.”
At the end of 1981, David was invited to replace the departed Simon Woods and become UB40’s second manager.
His three-year spell in the role was “twice as long as I enjoyed it.”
David added: “I would love to sing with all of my brothers although not as UB40.
“I’m a folk singer, not reggae.
“We were really close once. My dominant feeling is sorrow, not anger.
“Before Ali left, everyone would have said that he was the one irreplaceable member. He was the face and voice people knew.
“But, lo and behold, Duncan was there and was able to do the job.
“The way Ali has behaved since is very distressing. Above all, his attitude towards Duncan is completely offensive.”
The eldest brother in the band
Robin Campbell told BirminghamLive in 2016: “There was no battle when Ali left. He spent five years performing under his own name.
“Ali resigned from the band. He never owned the name. He didn’t start the band. He wasn’t the founder.
“We all started the band together. He wasn’t the leader. We were a democratic band that he chose to leave. Thereby, leaving the remaining members to carry on as UB40 and that is what we did. We have never stopped. We never split up.”
Robin added: “Ali hasn’t spoken to Duncan since Dunc joined the band with his blessing.
“When Dunc spoke to him – I was there – and he said (to Ali): ‘If you don’t want me to take the job, then I won’t, (Ali) said: ‘Carry on, why would I object?’.
“But then (Ali) never spoke to (Duncan) again. And he hasn’t spoken to any of us since he left.