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,
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 Offs 30th anniversary, Brian Travers recalled just how basic the recording facilities of the original Cambridge Road "studio" really were:
Producer Lamb described the somewhat relaxed recording process:
and also remembered how easy it was to make the album:
The LP album was recorded in three separate sessions: four days in December 1979 just before Christmas which produced the songs "King" and "Food for Thought" for the debut single, and two longer sessions in March–April 1980 and June–July 1980 when the bulk of the album was recorded. The three tracks for the 12" record that came with the album were recorded during 18–20 July 1980 at The Music Centre with Ray "Pablo" Falconer, bassist Earl Falconer's brother, handling production duties. Falconer would go on to produce the majority of UB40's subsequent records until his death in a car crash in 1987.
Musical style and composition
Signing Off featured a mix of reggae and dub material which was lyrically politically charged and socially conscious, while musically it was reverb-heavy, doom-laden yet mellifluous, best exemplified in the hits "King" and "Food For Thought" as well as the searing "Burden of Shame". Four of the album's thirteen tracks were instrumentals—"Adella", "25%" (allegedly titled after the increase in wages demanded by the unions in the late 1970s to reflect a "living wage"
- "Little by Little" highlighted the growing inequality between the rich and the poor.
- "Madam Medusa" was a vivid description of Margaret Thatcher's rise to power depicted in a grotesque style, featuring some of the band's most impassioned and bitter lyrics.
Release and promotion
The album's release was preceded by two double A-sided singles. The first, "King"/"Food For Thought", was released as UB40's debut single in February 1980. It topped the independent music chart for three months, reached number 4 in the main UK singles chart, and went on to sell nearly half a million copies, having been certified silver for sales of 250,000 copies in May 1980.
The follow-up single "My Way of Thinking"/"I Think It's Going to Rain Today" peaked at number 6 on the UK charts in June 1980. Although this was the band's second single before the album was released, "My Way of Thinking" was not included on the album, despite gaining far more radio airplay and television exposure than "I Think It's Going to Rain Today": however, by the time of the album's release the group had come to dislike "My Way of Thinking", with singer Ali Campbell describing the song as "awful".
The original 1980 vinyl release of Signing Off consisted of a ten-track LP (played at the standard 33 rpm) plus a three-track 12" record (played at 45 rpm) which contained the tracks "Madam Medusa", "Strange Fruit" and "Reefer Madness". On the cassette version all thirteen tracks were split over the two sides of the cassette. When the album was issued on CD for the first time in 1984, it contained all thirteen tracks of the LP and cassette versions.
In 1985 the album was repackaged as a double album under the title The UB40 File, with the addition of "My Way of Thinking", "The Earth Dies Screaming" and "Dream a Lie", thus collecting together on a single album all of UB40's output on Graduate Records, before the band's subsequent releases on their own DEP International label. The latter two songs were released as UB40's third single (another double A-side) two months after the release of Signing Off, and were written and recorded at the same time as the album. For a short time in 1981–82 in Australia, the original album was released with a bonus 45 rpm single containing these two tracks, packaged in an identical smaller version of the album cover. The UB40 File has subsequently also been released on CD.
In 2010, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the album's release Virgin Records reissued the album as a three-disc (two CDs and a DVD) "Collector's Edition", with extensive liner notes by Birmingham-born journalist Peter Paphides. The bonus tracks on the second CD included the 12" versions of all four sides of UB40's second and third singles, and the two sessions the band recorded at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios for the John Peel and Kid Jensen shows on BBC Radio 1. The DVD contained the videos made for five of the six songs on their first three double A-side singles, the band's first ever appearance on the BBC television programme Top of the Pops performing "Food for Thought", and the concert recorded at Keele University for BBC2's television series Rock Goes to College. To tie in with the 30th anniversary reissue, the band announced a concert tour where they would perform a first set of the album in its entirety, followed by a second set of other hits.
Artwork
The front and back covers of the album are a replica of the yellow British UB40 unemployment benefit attendance card from which the band took their name, emphatically stamped with the words SIGNING OFF in capital letters. It was a statement by the band of leaving behind the world of unemployment and of their arrival on the music scene. The artwork was created by brothers Geoffrey and David Tristram: Geoff went on to become an artist and novelist, while David became a comic playwright.