Signing Off (1980)

Signing Off is the debut album by British reggae band UB40, released in the UK on 29 August 1980 by Dudley-based independent label Graduate Records. It was an immediate success in their home country, reaching number 2 on the UK albums chart, and made UB40 one of the many popular reggae bands in Britain, several years before the band found international fame. The politically-concerned lyrics struck a chord in a country with widespread public divisions over high unemployment, the policies of the recently elected Conservative party under Margaret Thatcher, and the rise of the National Front party, while the record's dub-influenced rhythms reflected the late 1970s influence in British pop music of West Indian music introduced by immigrants from the Caribbean after the Second World War, particularly reggae and ska – this was typified by the 2 Tone movement, at that point at the height of its success and led by fellow West Midlands act The Specials, with whom UB40 drew comparisons due to their multiracial band line-up and socialist views.

Still considered by many fans and music critics to be UB40's best album, Signing Off was reissued for its 30th anniversary in 2010 as a "collector's edition" containing bonus tracks and a DVD of the videos for the singles plus television footage of the band from the time of the album's release.

Recording

After forming in 1978, the members of UB40 made an agreement to spend the next year doing nothing more than learning their instruments and practising their songs until they felt they were good enough. Saxophonist Brian Travers said, "We commandeered a cellar and started rehearsing every day, nine till five. Our first experiences of playing an instrument started together, and we'd humiliate each other over mistakes. But we were very serious about our music. It was a year before we played our first gig. It was in an upper room at the 'Hare and Hounds' [a pub] in Kings Heath, Birmingham. We played the whole of Signing Off because they were the only songs we knew."

Towards the end of 1979 the band felt confident enough to start recording their songs, and approached local musician Bob Lamb as he was the only person they knew with any recording experience. Lamb had been the drummer with the Steve Gibbons Band for much of the 1970s and was a well-known figure within the Birmingham music scene. He remembered that "'King' was the very first song they ever played to me, and it just blew my mind basically, to realise a bunch of kids could make a sound like that... it blew me away. And that was it for me, I was hooked, it was a bit like Elvis walks in or something, you know, it was one of those moments." However, as the band were unable to afford a proper recording studio, the album was recorded in Lamb's own home at the time, a ground-floor flat in a house on Cambridge Road in Birmingham's Moseley district that later became affectionately known as the "Home of the Hits". Lamb would later use the money he earned from the album's success to build a proper recording studio, Highbury Studio, in an old cricket bat factory in nearby Kings Heath, which remained under his ownership until his retirement in 2010 – during the 1980s and 90s he would go on to produce the early demos for Duran Duran and work on the debut albums by fellow Birmingham natives Ruby Turner, The Lilac Time and Ocean Colour Scene. However, in an interview to mark Signing Off's 30th anniversary, Brian Travers recalled just how basic the recording facilities of the original Cambridge Road "studio" really were:

"Because we couldn't afford a studio and he was the only guy we knew who knew how to record music, we did the album in his bedsit. I remember he had his bed on stilts. So underneath the bed was a sofa and mixing desk. And so we recorded the album there on an eight-track machine, with the same 50p coin going through the electric meter continually because we'd booted the lock off it. And, with it being a bedsit and us being eight in the band, we'd record the saxophone in the kitchen—because there was a bit of resonance off the walls, a bit of reverb—before putting the machine effects on it. While the percussion—the tambourines, the congas, the drums—we'd do in the back yard. Which is why you can hear birds singing on some of the tracks! You know, because it was in the daytime we'd be shouting across the fences 'Keep it DOWN! We're RECORDING!'"

Producer Lamb described the somewhat relaxed recording process: