"It's very seldom that the band record altogether in the studio, all the different parts tend to go down separately as overdubs. Sometimes they'll put a rough guide keyboard down as well, but quite often the bass will be recorded just to the drums. In that way he's the inspiration behind most of these songs. When I first started working with the band that took me a bit of getting used to - the idea of putting the bass line down before any other instruments, but Earl is such a strong player that he actually sets the way in which a song's going to go once the bass is down everyone takes their leads from that. It started off like virtually all UB40 sessions, by putting down a rough rhythm with the Oberheim DMX drum machine triggered by SMPTE time code, which is also recorded to the multitrack so that the pattern could be reprogrammed and changed around latter still maintaining perfect timing. "It was never a big heavy session, we never approached it as if we were recording 'the big single' or anything. The whole band really produced the record and as far the engineering goes we all three did a little bit of everything one of my main contributions was being old enough to remember all the words! It was a very loose series of sessions because we had another band in at the time, and so we had to fit in around them, pinching a day here and a day there. "There were actually three engineers on that session, John Shaw, who's the other house engineer here, Ray Falconer the band's live sound engineer and me. One of the house engineers on the session, Alan Caze, talked about how it went to tape. It was recorded at UB40's own studio in Birmingham. Last year UB40's Ali Campbell and Pretender Chrissie Hynde finally talked seriously about being a little more specific in their association to the tune of an old tune by 60's sweethearts Sonny and Cher, I Got You Babe. One of UB40's first major tours was as support with The Pretenders, and it was as far back as that the seeds of cooperation were sewn.
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