Siffre has published essays, the stage and television play Deathwrite and three volumes of poetry: Nigger, Blood on the Page, and Monument.[4] In 2022, his life and work was explored in the BBC series Imagine, under the title, Labi Siffre: This Is My Song.
Siffre studied music at the Eric Gilder School of Music in Wardour Street, Soho. Gilder is remembered with gratitude in his poem "education education education".[8] After leaving school, Siffre worked as a taxi driver and a deliveryman before deciding to concentrate on music.[1]
Siffre played jazz guitar at Annie Ross's jazz club in Soho, London, in the 1960s as part of a Hammond organ, guitar, drums house band.[7]
He released six albums between 1970 and 1975. In the early 1970s, three of his singles became hits: "It Must Be Love" (No. 14, 1971, and performed the song on the BBC's Top of the Pops) (later covered by and a No. 4 hit for Madness,[9] for which Siffre himself appeared in the video); "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" (No. 11, 1972); and "Watch Me" (No. 29, 1972).[10] In 1978, Siffre took part in the heats to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest. He performed "Solid Love", co-written with Tom Shapiro, which placed fifth of the twelve songs up for consideration at the A Song for Europe contest.[11] Additionally, he co-wrote the song "We Got It Bad" performed by Bob James, which came in 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.[12] He wrote "(Something Inside) So Strong" (No. 4, 1987)[10] which he also performed on Top of the Pops, and released four more albums between 1988 and 1998.
Multiple parts of Siffre's 1975 track "I Got The..." were sampled in popular hip hop songs in the 1990s, most notably in the 1999 Eminem single "My Name Is".[13] As a result of the song's newfound fame, it was finally released as a single in 2003.[14] The track was also featured in the Better Call Saul episode "Bagman".[15]
In February 2022, the BBC broadcast Labi Siffre: This Is My Song, as part of the Imagine series, in which Alan Yentob presented a film exploring Siffre's life and work.[17]
Personal life
Siffre met his partner Peter Lloyd in July 1964 and they were together for 48 years. They entered into a civil partnership in 2005, as soon as it was legally possible in the UK.[7] From the mid-1990s until Lloyd's death in 2013 he and Siffre lived in a ménage à trois with Rudolf van Baardwijk in the village of Cwmdu, near Crickhowell, South Wales. Siffre and van Baardwijk married in December 2014. Van Baardwijk died in 2016.[18] Siffre now lives in Spain.[18]
In 2014, Siffre appeared on the BBC Radio 4 series Great Lives, championing the life of British author Arthur Ransome. Siffre said that Ransome's 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.[19]
"—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory.
Notes
^Chart position is from the official UK "Breakers List".
^"Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying" did not chart on the Single Top 100, but did reach No. 14 on the Single Tip chart.[29]
Notable cover versions of Siffre's songs
"It Must Be Love" was covered by Madness in 1981. The song reached Number 4 in the UK chart[9] and Number 33 in the U.S. in 1983.[31] Labi Siffre also made a cameo appearance in the music video.
^Larkin, Colin (2002). The Virgin Encyclopedia of 70s Music. Virgin. p. 398. ISBN978-1852279479.
^ abc"Q&A: Labi Siffre". New Humanist. 14 December 2012. Retrieved 12 March 2016. I've always been an atheist. I've never had religious belief. Pre-teens, I assumed God was in the same make-believe category as Father Christmas; a game of pretend between children and grown-ups.
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