Terence ‘Astro’ Wilson Dies, Founding Member of UB40 Was 64

Astro, one of the longtime members of the British reggae pop band UB40, has passed away at the age of 64. His death was announced on a Twitter account he shared with original UB40 singer Ali Campbell, with whom the late reggae singer had performed in a breakaway group for the past eight years. Another longtime member of UB40, saxophonist and songwriter Brian Travers, died of cancer in August.

Born Terence Wilson in Birmingham on June 24, 1957, he said he was nicknamed Astro as a kid from the brand of Dr. Martens “Astronauts” boots that he always wore. Around that same time, he started listening to reggae music and its precursors, ska and rocksteady, which received constant airplay in the neighborhood.

Although he was not one of the founding members of UB40, Astro had joined the band before their debut album, “Signing Off,” had been recorded. Astro explained to the Birmingham Post how he became a part of the band in an interview in 2010. He had been running a disco when he started booking UB40 for gigs. “Once the band was ready to go on I’d grab the mic and say, ‘Here they are, the band you’ve been waiting for, UB40.’ And then I refused to get off the stage – and I’ve been there ever since.”

Drawing on English pop, American Motown and Jamaican reggae, UB40 sold some 70 million records worldwide and recorded more than three-dozen Top 40 hits in Britain. Formed in Birmingham in 1978, the band took its name from a government unemployment benefits form, for each of the eight original musicians was said to have been jobless at the time, and they became known as a voice for working-class disaffection and left-wing politics.

UB40 got their big break in the early 80s when they started opening for the Pretenders. Although they wrote many original songs, the band found their biggest successes by recording reggae cover versions of other songs. Perhaps their best-known such cover is their reggae version of Neil Diamond’s “Red, Red Wine” in which Astro did a toasted verse for the song’s album version. “Red red wine, you make me feel so fine / You keep me rockin’ all of the time.”

The band did not know at the time that Neil Diamond had written the original song, as the writing credit had been listed as “N. Diamond” and the version they had heard prior to recording it was the 1969 reggae version from Jamaican-born singer Tony Tribe. Astro recalled that he thought “N. Diamond” referred to a Jamaican artist named Negus Diamond. The band’s cover of the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts and became the standard interpretation of the song, so much so that Neil Diamond began to perform the song in the reggae style at his own concerts.

UB40 also had major hits with reggae covers of “I Got You Babe” which they did as a duet with the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and had a second Billboard No. 1 hit with a reggae cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” a song that ended up featured in the movie Sliver. No cause of death has been announced for Astro. May he rest in peace.

Topics: Obituaries

Source: movieweb.com