Labi Siffre

Labi Siffre
Birth name	Claudius Afolabi Siffre
Born	(1945-06-25) 25 June 1945 Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom
Genres	Soft rock, soul, Jazz, funk
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer-songwriter, poet and writer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, keyboards
Years active	1970—present
Labels	EMI, Pye, China
Website	www.intothelight.info

Labi Siffre (birth name Claudius Afolabi Siffre; (born 25 June 1945) is a British singer, songwriter, musician and poet. Siffre released six albums between 1970 and 1975, and four between 1988 and 1998. He has published essays, the stage and TV play Deathwrite and three volumes of poetry which are Nigger, Blood On The Page and Monument.

Early life and education

Born the fourth of five children, at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in Hammersmith, London to a British mother of Barbadian–Belgian descent and a Nigerian father, Siffre was brought up in Bayswater and Hampstead and educated at a Catholic independent day school, St Benedict's School, in Ealing, west London. Despite his Catholic education, Siffre has stated that he has always been an atheist.

Musical career

Siffre played jazz guitar at Annie Ross's jazz club in Soho in the 1960s as part of a Hammond organ, guitar, drums house band.

He released six albums between 1970 and 1975. In the 1970s he released 16 singles, three of which became hits: "It Must Be Love" (No. 14, 1971) (later covered by and a No. 4 hit for Madness, for which Siffre himself appeared in the video); "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" (No. 11, 1972); and "Watch Me" (No. 29, 1972). In 1978, Siffre took part in the UK heats of the Eurovision Song Contest. He performed his own composition "Solid Love", which placed fifth of the twelve songs up for consideration at the A Song for Europe contest. Additionally, he co-wrote the song "We Got It Bad" performed by Bob James, which came tenth.

Siffre came out of self-imposed retirement from music in 1985, when he saw a television film from apartheid South Africa showing a white soldier shooting at black children. He wrote "(Something Inside) So Strong" (No. 4, 1987) and released four more albums between 1988 and 1998.

The 1975 track "I Got The..." was released as a single in 2006, having been sampled in the Eminem track "My Name Is" in 1999.

Personal life

Siffre met Peter John Carver Lloyd in July 1964. They remained together until Lloyd's death in 2013, having entered a civil partnership in 2005, as soon as this was possible in the UK.

Discography

Singles which reached the UK charts

• "It Must Be Love" (No. 14, 1971)
• "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" (No. 11, 1972)
• "Watch Me" (No. 29, 1972)
• "(Something Inside) So Strong" (No. 4, 1987)

Studio albums

• Labi Siffre (1970)
• The Singer and the Song (1971)
• Crying Laughing Loving Lying (1972)
• For the Children (1973)
• Remember My Song (1975)
• Happy (1975)
• So Strong (1988)
• Man of Reason (1991)
• The Last Songs" (1998)
• Monument (Spoken Word) (1998)

Live albums

• The Last Songs (Re-mastered)" (2006)

Cover versions

• Olivia Newton-John (English-born, Australia-raised singer and actor) covered "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" in 1975 on her gold-certified MCA album entitled Clearly Love (catalog # MCA-2148). Olivia and Labi's paths have crossed more than once over the years, as illustrated by the fact that Labi and Olivia duetted on a live version of her number-1 pop hit "You're the One That I Want" (written by John Farrar, and originally featured as a duet with John Travolta in the 1978 film adaptation of the musical Grease).
• Madness covered "It Must Be Love" in 1981. The song reached Number 4 in the UK charts and Number 33 in the U.S. in 1983. Labi Siffre also made a cameo appearance in the music video.
• "(Something Inside) So Strong" was covered by Kenny Rogers in 1989 (and became the title track to a hit album). The song was also covered by Vanessa Bell Armstrong in 1988 and again by a host of gospel artists as a tribute to Rosa Parks in the mid-1990s. It was covered by "eternal" in 1994 as part of their EP Crazy. In late 2009 it also featured in the hit BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey, where it was adapted into a Welsh chapel christening ceremony.
  • The Flying Pickets covered the song in their 1994 album The Warning.
  • Michael Ball also released a cover of the song in 1996, which reached Number 40 in the UK.
• Primal Scream sampled "I Got The..." in their song "Kill All Hippies" on their 2000 album, XTRMNTR.
  • It has also been covered by Rik Waller in 2002, when it was released as a single.
• Fatboy Slim sampled Rosetta Hightower's cover of Labi Siffre's "A Little More Line" (from his 1970 debut album Labi Siffre) for the song "That Old Pair of Jeans" on Fatboy's 2006 album Why Try Harder,
• Kanye West used a sample of "My Song" in "I Wonder" on his album Graduation.
• Eminem sampled "I Got The..." on his single "My Name Is" on his album The Slim Shady LP.
• Jay-Z sampled "I Got The..." for his hit "Streets Is Watching" on his album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1.
• Miguel sampled "I Got The..." in his song "Kaleidoscope Dream", taken from his Grammy-nominated 2012 album of the same name.
• Wu-Tang Clan sampled the bass-line from the second half of "I Got The..." for their song "Can It Be All So Simple" from Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
• Kelis covered "Bless The Telephone" for her sixth studio album Food in 2014. RJD2's song "Making Days Longer", from his album Since We Last Spoke, is a cover of Siffre's "Bless the Telephone", from The Singer and the Song. Siffre is credited as writer of the original song in the liner notes.
• Blank & Jones covered "Down" in their 2007 Chillout album Relax Edition Three.
• Joss Stone covered "I Got The..." on her sixth album The Soul Sessions Vol 2.
• Rod Stewart covered "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" on his 1995 compilation Handbags & Gladrags (Mercury UK).
• Move4Parkinson's Voices of Hope Choir covered "Something Inside So Strong" in April 2013 to commemorate World Parkinson's Day. The song reached Number 1 in the Irish R&B iTunes chart.
• Def Squad sampled "I Got The..." on their single "Countdown" on their 1998 album El Niño.

In popular culture

The song "Watch Me," was featured on the NBC pilot for This Is Us.

Labi Saffre's song "I Got The..." was sampled in Jay-Z's "Streets is Watching" in 1997 and Eminem's "My Name Is" in 1999.

His song "My Song" was also sampled in Kanye West's "I Wonder".

In 2014 Siffre appeared on the BBC Radio 4 series Great Lives, championing the life of British author Arthur Ransome. Siffre said that the Swallows and Amazons books had taught him responsibility for his own actions and also a morality that has influenced and shaped him throughout his life.

Bibliography

Poetry

• Nigger (Xavier Books 1993)
• Blood on the Page (Xavier Books 1995)
• Monument (Xavier Books 1997)

Plays

• DeathWrite (Xavier Books 1997)

Essays

• Choosing the Stick They Beat You With (Penguin 2000)

External links

• Labi Siffre in Q & A with "New Humanist" magazine
• Labi Siffre's own web site
• The Argotist interview
• Something Inside So Strong, Soul Music, BBC Radio 4
• Arthur Ransome, Great Lives, BBC Radio 4