The Curious Story Behind ‘Red Red Wine’

By Oliver Tearle

Let’s begin with a nice easy pop trivia question. Which band first covered the Neil Diamond song ‘Red Red Wine’, transforming it into a reggae track? Easy, right? Except if you answered ‘UB40’, you need to take a seat on the naughty step and await your drubbing. Nil points, as they say.

Although Diamond – who wrote and first recorded the song in 1967 – has named UB40’s version of ‘Red Red Wine’ as among his favourite cover versions of songs he wrote, the Brummie band were not the first ones to put a reggae spin on this paean to the Lethean qualities of alcohol.

A Diamond Hit

Instead, it was the Jamaican act Tony Tribe who had a (minor) hit with the song back in 1969. The song barely graced the charts, but it brought the song – and its reggae possibilities – to the attention of UB40, the only famous band I can think of who are named after an unemployment benefit form.

Astro, the one black member of UB40, later recalled that the band had no idea that legendary songwriter Neil Diamond had penned ‘Red Red Wine’. You would’ve thought seeing the writing credit ‘N. Diamond’ on the Tony Tribe record would’ve been quite a serious clue, but Astro said they ‘thought it was a Jamaican artist called Negus Diamond or something.’ True story.

Indeed, Diamond has often fared better in the UK charts when other people have had hits with songs he wrote (and nobody realises he wrote): sixteen years before UB40 reached number one with their cover of ‘Red Red Wine’, the Monkees had reached the top spot with another Diamond-penned song, ‘I’m a Believer’. And then there’s ‘Sweet Caroline’, a song frequently covered by shirtless (and tuneless) football fans whenever England play.

A Love Song to Wine

John Keats may have cautioned us not to go to Lethe nor to twist wolfsbane for its poisonous wine, but Neil Diamond clearly never read ‘Ode on Melancholy’, since he – or the singer of the song he wrote, at least – spends ‘Red Red Wine’ essentially singing a song to the bottle of plonk that’s helping him to forget the heartache of having lost the woman he loves.

In other words, it’s a love song to wine, the only ‘friend’ the singer has left, and the only thing capable of allowing him to forget his lovesick woes.

Well, actually it’s not entirely clear who (or what) the song is addressed to, since in the chorus the singer appears to be addressing the wine itself (‘stay close to me’), while at other moments (‘thoughts of you leave my head’) he appears to be addressing (or apostrophising, to use the rhetorical term) his absent ex, who’s legged it away from him.

The full version of the UB40 track also includes a rap (performed by Astro) which hammers home the double-edged-swordedness (is that a phrase?) of using red wine to drown one’s sorrows. In time, one becomes dependent on the wine, and then you have a new woe: alcoholism. Or, as F. Scott Fitzgerald more pithily put it, first you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes you.

A Lazy Cover Version?

I’ve always been amused that fans of UB40’s early political songs like ‘One in Ten’ (which, true to the origin of the band’s name in the unemployment benefit form used during Thatcher’s Britain, addressed the widespread poverty in the UK during the early 1980s) hated the group’s decision to record a cover of ‘Red Red Wine’, as if musical acts can’t sing about a diverse range of things and in a variety of registers.

Such people doubtless also think centrist politicians pushing Net Zero are doing so out of sincerely held and strongly felt ecological beliefs rather than political opportunism, and hate the fact that Coldplay became too ‘big’ after their debut album (whereas I take a different view, and hate the fact that they released any albums at all).

No, the real reason to dislike UB40’s ‘Red Red Wine’ is that the song’s real stroke of genius lies in taking a country song and recasting it as a reggae track. But now we know it’s Tony Tribe who should get the credit for the inspired move, rather than UB40 themselves, what we’re left with is a reggae cover of a reggae cover, whose only slight innovation is to bring the musical setting up to date (and what song isn’t improved by being given an 80s sound?).

So, the song is a nice cover, but not an inspired one. Some cover versions deliberately floor us for the sheer audacity of the liberties they take with their source material, so that what is produced ends up rendering the original the pale imitation of the cover version. (The Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Always on My Mind’ is probably the superlative example of such a phenomenon.) Then there are uninspired cover versions of songs which are produced by people who think that slowing down a pop classic, having it played on a piano and accompanied by some warbling songstress – Ellie Goulding or Lily Allen will usually do – constitutes an ‘innovative’ take on the original, when in fact all they are is so much lazy, derivative dirge.

‘Red Red Wine’ is neither. It’s a cover version that isn’t original (even as a cover version) but it still succeeds, if we don’t expect too much of it. After all, the UB40 rendition has become the definitive version of the song. And Astro’s rap, although only heard on the extended version, is an original interpellation, and helps to temper the maudlin over-reliance on the drink that the original lyrics suggest.

And now, time for a lovely glass of shiraz, I think.