My first production was Kris Okotie’s I Need Someone and it brought me out – Laolu Akins

One of Nigeria’s foremost music producers, Laolu Akins, shares his experiences with ADEOLA BALOGUN and ’NONYE BEN-NWANKWO

 You don’t look like somebody who is 60.

I’m definitely above 60, but you know, age is a feeling. Because I’m in this industry, it helps us to remain quite simple about things. I’m particularly glad that I’m not bogus, so I tend not to look my age and I thank God for that. I was born as a slim person and no matter what I ate and what I eat now, I never put on weight. So, I suppose it is just a natural thing. And I don’t really think it matters what you do, it’s always important to keep fit.

You were recently involved in the Oleku Concert of Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade as producer; some people may not know what a producer does.

The job of music production as opposed to stage production is fairly related, but there are specific things you would do in producing a music concert as opposed to doing a studio recording. But one has been involved in the industry in several ways and by virtue of exposure; it’s possible for me also to train myself in specific areas. The industry is very wide: it’s not just about performing, writing songs, and recording songs. If you avail yourself the opportunities that abound in the industry, obviously you can go beyond several others.

And you can expand your coast in the area of the industry that you belong. I’ve been a performer; I’ve been most things in the industry and I started production many years ago. I’ve handled artistes in terms of management and producing their records, so it gives me the opportunity of a wide range of involvement in the industry. For the stage, you want to ensure that the sound of the musician is as best as you can get it to be for the audience; you want to ensure that the stage is set in such a way that it’s comfortable for the artiste to perform. It’s also important to have a sequence of activities that take place on the stage, whether you are having one artiste or several artistes.

In the case of Oleku, it was the first time we were doing like that anyway and it was two giants, Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey. So, you had to be as detailed as possible even though this particular concert was good and people said so. I still believe if we have had more time to plan the concert, we would have had a more magical presentation. So, as the producer, you would need to look at certain specific areas to get the show properly going and for the audience to enjoy what they have paid to see and for the artistes to be able to do their best.

What of the studio production?

For the studio, it’s a different ball game. First, you want to make a record and you also want to make a record that will sell; something to attract a lot of listeners. You are going to start from the basics: putting the music together, arranging it in a structural form that will attract the ordinary listener whether he is a vulcaniser or a businessman; whether he is emotional or sentimental. So, various aspects take place in the area of record production. You are concerned as a producer about the content of the music that you want to record, including lyrical and musical; you want to ensure that the artiste is able to deliver those contents appropriately and in the best possible way. You also want to be sure that the technical side of the recording itself is the best that you can have. So, in the event you make a record that is deficient technically, no matter how good the content or the artiste is, you will have a bad record. So, as a producer, you will have to have all of those put in place.

Why did you decide to be behind the scene?

Interestingly, I started out as a performer. I started in a group called Oscar, then Clusters and then Afro Collection and finally BLO. All of those years, I was on stage performing with my colleagues. We were touring and playing in schools and all that. I think that it is always important when you are involved in a job, for example as journalists, I know that if some of you decide a book, you will write an excellent book, no matter what the subject. The same way for the artiste, if you decide in yourself that you want to excel, you must follow through a course by which you achieve excellence. I told myself that having been involved thus far, it would be good for me to be able to expand my territory in the industry that I belonged and one of the things we did when my group was in the UK was we trained ourselves as producers. Myself, Batley Jones, Lemmy Jackson, as BLO, we were in Europe for many years, 1974 to 1980; and during those years even as we were recording, we found time to train as producers and we began to see things that we had done even as performers how we could actually achieve them better than as artistes. That became knowledge acquired and it’s impossible to acquire knowledge without utilising it. And before we left Europe for Nigeria, we formed what we called BLO Production and we decided that once we arrived at home, we were going to start working with a lot of artistes producing them. Before we left BLO, we were producing ourselves even though there were producers, but there was Odion Irojeh, who was the major producer virtually producing everything and we in BLO produced our albums before we travelled. We recognised that there was a need for producers who really understood what music production was all about and we decided to go into it and we came back to Nigeria with the intention to start producing others, even as we worked for ourselves. And when we came home, the first thing we did was working on Chris Okotie’s I Need Someone; we worked with Irojeh as producer, but we did the work together. And that was the first thing that actually brought us out as individually and collectively as a group and from then on, whether we were working individually or doing collective work, we were producing virtually every artiste.

You said you started performing as a schoolboy, how?

In those days, most groups got themselves together in school; having a common interest, started doing something, even football or table tennis. It was the fashion then that people formed music groups; those were the years when the Beatles and others were hot and we fashioned ourselves in the mould of the Beatles and that was how it started. I can tell you that many of us didn’t plan to be musicians; it was simply fun and we did everything to enjoy ourselves and then, it started building up. A couple of our colleagues went into doing something else; some remained, some went away and never touched music again, but some of us stayed and followed through. And I think that once you are able to identify an area where you have flair, it’s important that you follow it.

At times, some children would want to do what their minds tell them to do, but their parents would want them to do otherwise. In your own case, didn’t your parents frown on your choice of music?

I was lucky. By the time that I started playing music, my dad had died, and fortunately for me, my uncle whom I lived with that could stop me had gone to the UK. So, I had my mum, my sisters and other family members, but more importantly, if a child is serious about something, you will know. If a child is just merely having peer pressure that, ‘Oh, my friends are doing it, so I must do it,’ you will also know. And it’s important you remain close to your children to know which way you are going to be able to guide them. In those days, parents didn’t believe that their children would become musicians and if they found that they were becoming more serious about music, they would call them and ask why they wanted to do that. My mum asked me that and it was only the only time she did that. She said, ‘Is it this music thing that you want to do?’ and I said, ‘No, it’s just a hobby,’and anyway, it doesn’t stop me from doing anything else I want to do and she said (it was) okay. That was the first and last time my mum queried me about if I was following music. All my sisters and family members didn’t because I wasn’t a loose child; I was broughtup in a Christian way, so I didn’t have undue excesses and so it was not so difficult for me. But I think I was just lucky, I didn’t have any problem with my parents but many did have. In those days, because parents believed that musicians went into drugs, they followed women, they lived a rough life, they queried their children who wanted to go into music and I understand that. Every parent would like their children to be successful engineers, doctors, lawyers but things are different today. We thank God.

Apart from music, what did you want to do in life as a child?

I actually wanted to be a pilot to be able to fly planes and I wanted to go to aviation school in the United States, but it did not materialise. I was close to it, but a couple of things went wrong at the time and that was botched. I didn’t give up because when I first went to the United States in 1972, some of my friends who we started together here were already in the aviation school in Florida and I said to some of them that once I got back to Nigeria, I would come back to join them, but I never did.

Was it music that took you out of Nigeria for the first time and how?

Yes. I was with a famous group then when Tee Mac came into the country. He ran into  my group and found that it was a solid group that he would like to work with. He had plans to get an African band to Europe, so he got together with us and we changed the name of the group from Clusters to Tee Mac and Afro Collections and we started working together. We were supposed to travel then, but we never did. But in the course of all of that, a gentleman and very prominent British drummer, Ginger Baker, who was a member of a very successful British group called, Cream, came to Nigeria around 1969/70, about the time the Civil War was coming to an end. He came to where we were having our Sunday show called Martini Show at 4 pm every Sunday on the (Lagos) Island. It was renamed Batakoto. Ginger Baker actually drove across the Sahara in the very first Range Rover and came to Lagos on the invitation of Remi Kabaka, who was also a top Nigerian musician. Ginger Baker played music with us, which was filmed by the BBC and he was thrilled. He went left and later came back and said he wanted an African band which he would take to Europe. He came and invited me and members of my group to work with him in what was called Ginger Baker and Salt, and we started rehearsals and the first performance was at Fela’s Afro Court in Yaba, then before we went to Europe in 1972. We first went to Germany. It was the year of the Olympics and we had what was called then Olympics Jazz Festival. That is how music took me out of Nigeria for the first time. We toured Germany after the festival; we went to the United States, then Canada, came back to the US, then to the UK, and back to Nigeria. What happened in 1972 for me as a Christian said something to me: the first time I tried to travel, I made all the plans but something went wrong. Now that I wasn’t planning it, and suddenly, this opportunity came and it was music. That was the point I became a professional musician without meaning to and that for me became a calling and I decided to follow it through. I went all over the world which I would not have been able to pay for all by myself.

What kind of music were you playing then?

In those years, all of us young music groups started first by copying and aping the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Hendricks and all the big foreign and famous musicians. And then we gradually began to compose our own songs, but still fashioning them after the British and European pop music. Young people followed us and fell in love with what we were doing and we began to build up something. And then in Clusters, we made a record called the Choke around 1964 or so and then at the tail end of the world, we made another single called Black Goddess. Our group was the first that went to the East after the war ended and we came back with one of the best singers that lived through the war, Chris Ogali. He was the one that sang Black Goddess in Clusters. It was on that tour too that Beckley Jones who became B of BLO joined the group from the East.

Why did the group break up?

BLO never broke up. As a matter of fact, BLO and the Sunny Okosuns group were the longest groups that stayed together. We had recording contracts with Decca Afrodesia and it was in that process that we went to the UK as BLO in 1974. Decca thought this was a group with potential and they would like to take us to Europe to expose us to bigger markets. They got us a European management company in the UK that managed us throughout the period and at the time we came back to Nigeria, we were still on contract with Afrodesia. But then, the company wasn’t willing to invest any more in the group. They thought we had not made a hit record again and so until we made one; but we believed that a group must be supported and motivated to be able to perform optimally. That was the conflict and we decided to wait the contract out but while doing so, we had already become producers and we just carried on. BLO was formed in October 1972, we were on till 1982 when we made our last singles.

Who were the members of the group?

BLO was originally Beckley Jones which is the B; myself, Laolu Akins, which is the L and Mike Odumosu, which is the O. That is the original cast, but Mike Odumosu left the group in 1973 and joined the Osibisa and we had to replace him. We brought on Biggy Wright who became the O. His name is Oladele and we continued and the time we were travelling, Biggy couldn’t go with us because he was in the military. So, we had to bring somebody else to be the O of the group, but we didn’t get anyone who had O in his name, so we went to the UK with somebody else which we never emphasised. And when we got to Europe, we met Lemmy Jackson. Otuh was his middle name; so we brought him in and he played the keyboard; while somebody else played the guitar.

Which instruments did you play?

I played the drums, which I still do.

Did you start producing the big names when your group started music production?

Not really. The BLO Productions started with unknown names. Chris Okotie was a student at the university. The one that followed him, Ubemi Ama, was also an arts student in the same university. They were even friends. Then I went on to produce a Benin chap called Tony Ukate, who was not known anywhere. Then after, the group produced Christy Essien-Igbokwe’s Give me a Chance. Igbokwe had been around, but that was a major production for her and the album was very successful. Thereafter, we did Onyeka Onwenu’s For the Love of you/All of Us. Then after that, we started working individually and I went into African music. I started with the likes of Shina Peters, I then produced for Mike Okri, Funmi Aragbaye, Adewale Ayuba and so on. Onyeka also was an artiste that I produced. We started with relatively unknown artistes who became successful and eventually went to some big ones.

What makes a producer of those days still relevant today?

When you do a job and it is successful, people want to work with you and it becomes a norm; people begin to say that once he touches your job, it becomes a hit. I know about a lot of artistes that said to me they cannot work with any other producer and I take that as a compliment and I thank God for that. From my own point of view, quite a number of producers in the generation that I belong, first had experience as performers; they had experience as people who went through the mill. A lot of us went through the mill, even before we found the means of training at all in this industry. We were just doing everything by trial and error. Experience is not something you can just discard like that. Number two, we benefited from our formal training. However, a lot of producers of today are doing a lot of things on their own, which was how some of us started. But the good thing is that you can train to be the best, even if you have the talent and I will advise the younger ones to also avail themselves of training. Today, institutions abound all over the world where you can train in all aspects of productions; so there is no more excuse.

Where did you train?

I trained in the UK. Beckley and I trained at the Orange Music Production Centre in the UK and in those years, you didn’t even have those institutions per se, but organisations that provided training for young people. Even now, there are non-governmental organisations that run group training and mentoring for young people, which I’ve been doing for free. I recognise that people need it.

What happened to your education apart from your training in production?

Even in the music industry, the process of training is fairly academic. There is a language for training doctors, engineers, lawyers; the same way is music. I had basic education; I went further to train as a music producer. I also even learnt how to write songs and I’ve written hit songs. One of my songs is being used as a film track in the US. You can do a number of things with raw talent but you cannot go far without education. I believe that young people should understand that: your talent will take you to a level but education will take you further and show you how to apply your talent and make it better. I went to elementary school in Ibese, the Anglican school in Egbado division in the Western Region in those days and I came to Lagos, where I attended Lagos Technical College. Thereafter, I didn’t do any schooling anymore until I went to the UK.

In your sober moments, do you regret not following your dream of becoming a pilot?

No. It was something I wanted to pursue but now, I want to see it as a hobby. Even though you may say I dabble in music and what I have become, I believe some spiritual forces must have directed me at the time it happened. I still would like to fly planes for fun because it is a great feeling when you are up there and do what you like with the aeroplane. I’ve also taken time to read a lot about planes and I’ve quite a lot of friends who are aeronautical engineers and pilots and when we sit down to talk, they understand where I’m coming from.

What prompted you to want to fly a plane?

I came on an excursion when I was in school to the airport many years ago and we saw a lot of aeroplanes. I looked at them and I wondered how the planes went up and came down. When they were showing us around, they told us where the pilot sat and the engineers and the navigators and I just told myself that I would like to be a pilot. So, it was there for me as a goal until destiny took me somewhere else, but I don’t regret it at all.

You lost your dad early, how was your mum able to train you?

My mum was a gem. My father had four of us before he died and I was the youngest, so I was mummy’s pet in a way and she took me everywhere. While everybody else was allowed to look after themselves, I was looked after and my mum was interested  in everything that happened to me, She was also interested in my well-being and to a large extent, she made sure that I went to school. We were of average family; though my mum remarried and I lived with a stepfather for a while before I moved out. I had four after me, two boys and two girls.

What would you consider as the high point of your career?

First and foremost, my group – BLO – became widely accepted and we became very famous in Nigeria. At a certain point, even a foreign record company found us worthy to be taken out of Nigeria to a wider market. That was an achievement; for something started from nothing. Second, when I began to have world exposure; it wasn’t just playing for large crowds around the world. The opportunities I had exposed me as a better artiste and able to practise my profession; that was a high point for me. Then beyond that, when I finally got all of that together and came back to Nigeria and began to produce artistes who made big hits; that for me was another high point. I may not have been able to make a lot of money, but I think that not a few people refer and recommend me to people as someone who is successful in turning things around.

At what point does the producer get something for his effort at producing an artiste?

A lot of artistes today are doing business with friends and when the record becomes a hit, you see them fighting with themselves. It’s because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do in the first instance. It happened to me, I had experienced that. I’ve written songs for artistes which became hits after they were recorded and I’ve been denied royalties because they said I didn’t put down my demand. My mistake then was that I took it for granted that everyone was aware of the norm and I learnt from that and I want people to learn too. The industry is very open and wide now and so nothing should be done without a written agreement. It’s a standard in the industry all over the world and that is the way it should be here. As a producer, I get royalties from records that I make, the same way the artistes get royalties from their recording companies.

You said you were brought up as a Christian and went into music; hasn’t that affected your Christian upbringing?

At a point in my career, I hardly had time to go to church. That happened to me for many years and I know it happens to a lot of artistes, but I think there is a point that you reach in life that you can no longer put aside God. Not that I didn’t recognise the path of God in my life; I prayed at every point; but I wasn’t attending church as I should and as I used to. But I tried as much as possible to find a way of making up for it because personally, I believe absolutely in the power of God for my direction in life.

How do you handle temptations that are often associated with your kind of career?

Is there anybody that is not tempted? One good thing for me is that discipline has helped? I don’t do anything in excess; I don’t even feel like doing anything in excess. I feel comfortable among friends; I drink when I feel like and I’m in control of what I eat and drink by the grace of God. If I want to drink water for three months, I will stay with that and if it is soft drink, or red wine, I can stay with it, but I know when to say stop. And that is due to discipline which I recommend for everybody.

Do you still produce?

Of course, I still do.

What of your family life?

I’m happily married and we have three children: two girls and a boy. My wife is in the aviation industry and she is a wonderful woman that God gave to me. Two of my children have done their master’s programmes and we’re grandparents already. We’re waiting for the other two to bring their partners.

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