Los Angeles Times and Washington Post
By Tracy Brown / Los Angeles Times
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh allegedly once got into a bar fight with a man he thought might be the lead singer of UB40.
Charles Ludington told The Washington Post that the brawl occurred in September 1985, after a concert featuring the reggae band. At a bar called Demery’s, a small group of students believed they spotted the band’s lead singer, Ali Campbell.
Ludington said he approached the man to ask. “Turns out it wasn’t him,” Ludington said. “He was New Haven tough. He said something aggressive, like ‘Screw off.’”
Kavanaugh escalated the situation, Ludington said, replying with an expletive or something similar “and then threw his drink in the guy’s face.”
Luddington said Tuesday he was slated to be interviewed by the FBI about the fracas.
The FBI reopened Kavanaugh’s background check last week after California resident Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her while he was, in her words, “stumbling drunk,” when both were in high school in 1982. He has strongly denied the accusation.
A White House spokesman did not respond to emails about Ludington’s account. A police report documenting the incident was first reported Monday night by the New York Times.
In the report, a New Haven police officer wrote that after 1 a.m. on Sept. 26, 1985, a man found bleeding from the ear told officers that another man — identified in the report as Kavanaugh — “threw ice at him for some unknown reason.”
Ludington said the aggressive act by Kavanaugh touched off a brief melee. Soon the man and Kavanaugh “were connected in some head lock or wrestling form,” Ludington said.
Within moments, another Kavanaugh friend, Yale basketball star and future NBA journeyman Chris Dudley, was involved, Ludington said. In a brief interview, Dudley disputed Ludington’s account.
When The Post sought comment from Kavanaugh’s attorneys last week regarding allegations of excessive drinking at Yale, the newspaper received a call back from Dudley. “There was drinking and there was alcohol. Brett drank and I drank. Did he get inebriated sometimes? Yes. Did I? Yes. Just like every other college kid in America,” Dudley said. But “he didn’t miss class, he didn’t miss practice. He was an incredibly humble guy.”
Ludington disputed that account.
“I’m sad to say my friendship with Chris is over, he’s not telling the truth. I think he has been trying to protect Brett, like some jock-omerta.”
Anyway, back to UB40.
For those who may not be familiar with what may have been on playlists (er, mix tapes) of college-aged men in the 1980s, UB40 is an English pop reggae band that formed in 1978. Their hits included covers for the Neil Diamond tune “Red Red Wine” and Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (which appears on the soundtrack for the 1993 movie “Sliver”). The group also made an appearance in the 1997 film “Speed 2: Cruise Control.”
Early on in its career, the band tried to distance itself from the Two-tone ska that was popular at the time, claiming it strictly played reggae music.
In a 1988 review of a UB40 concert, Times music writer Richard Cromelin noted the band “rarely cut a groove deep enough to release the rich, dank vapors of great reggae, and it lacked the hyperactive verve of its English ska brethren like the Specials and the Beat.”
In the same review, Cromelin also questioned why “UB40 [is] so popular with the white-bread, KROQ-bred audience.”
Over its long career, the band has notched four Grammy Award nominations in the reggae album category. Among UB40’s most recent releases are the 2013 album “Getting Over the Storm” and “A Real Labour of Love,” released in March (from another branch of the band, known as “UB40 featuring Ali Campbell, Astro and Mickey Virtue”).
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