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Astro, Founding Member of UB40, Has Died

Photo: Mark Horton/WireImage

Terence Wilson, better known as UB40 founding front man Astro, has died at 64, after a brief illness, according to Ali Campbell and Astro’s Twitter. “We are absolutely devastated and completely heartbroken to have to tell you that our beloved Astro has today passed away after a very short illness,” the statement read. “The world will never be the same without him.” Astro was one of the founding members of Birmingham’s UB40, whose American hits include “Red Red Wine” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” In the U.K., UB40 first came to prominence for their more politically inflected music. “MI5 were tapping our phones, watching our houses, all sorts,” drummer Jimmy Brown told the Guardian earlier this year. “We thought, ‘Haven’t they got criminals to catch?’ We were just a bunch of potheads, smoking weed and playing music. We weren’t planning the revolution, but if the revolution happened, we knew what side we were going to be on.” In the same interview, Astro said he was radicalized in part by the “sus law,” which allowed police to arrest people on the grounds of of acting suspiciously. Shock of all shocks, this law was enforced in a racially biased manner. “It was a weekly occurrence,” he said. “We found it harder to write love songs than militant lyrics, because it was a lot easier to write about stuff you had witnessed or read about. It seemed natural to us.”

Reggae was itself a political choice by the band, as it aligned them with the Windrush generation, African-Caribbean immigrants that came to England after World War II and faced scorn from many. Songs like the anti-Thatcher “Madame Medusa” snuck politics into a dance beat. The band won an early fan in the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, who had UB40 open for them. The band’s biggest Stateside hits were covers. Slate’s Hit Parade podcast’s inaugural episode was about how the Neil Diamond song became a hit for the Brummie band. UB40 split into two bands in 2013, both of which laid claim to being the one true UB40. The other UB40 also announced Wilson’s passing via social media, writing “Our sincere condolences to his family.”

Astro, Founding Member of UB40, Has Died