Richie Adewusi took a 23-year-old MajekFashek on his sleeves, to represent his interest after he interviewed him for his magazine, Just It, in 1987. Fashek had just released his widely acclaimed album, Prisoner of Conscience, but he was new in Lagos. After much persuasion, Adewusi agreed to represent Fashek as his publicist. The duo bonded so much that Adewusi eventually took charge of the singer’s administrative affairs including concert bookings and his personal needs. Their relationship lasted six years until they parted ways in January 1993. In a no-holds-barred interview, Adewusi narrates to ASSISTANT ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR, GBENGA BADA his experience with the late reggae icon. Excerpts…
WHEN and how did you meet the late MajekFashek?
I met Majek in 1987. I had founded Just It magazine to profile and celebrate young talents and youth activities. It was a project that I initiated to challenge the notion that young people couldn’t get anything done. I was young and fresh from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme. A major focus of Just It was to celebrate young people who were doing remarkable things that other young people could emulate. One day, one of my staff, OsagieAgboanite, who was also a friend and colleague with whom I served in Sokoto, arrived at the office at 51, Ijaiye Road, Ogba, Lagos, enthusing about a new act in town. Osagie said, ‘Richie, there’s a boy in town if you hear his music…he’s on fire.’ Though skeptical, I agreed that we interviewed him for our music section. The meeting was set up and he was invited to the office. On the d-day, this nice looking, impetuous character walked into our office; he could hardly stand in one place at a time. He was restless throughout the interview. Afterward, he was taken downstairs to our in-house studio for a photo-shoot. Osagie subsequently told me that the singer hadn’t done any show in Lagos and that we should discuss it with him. I wondered if we were also music promoters. Anyway, I gave in and after the photo-shoot, I asked if Majek would like to do a concert at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and he agreed. So, we agreed to put him on stage in one month after we interviewed him. We scheduled the concert for July 1987 at the main auditorium of UNILAG.Before we put Majek on stage, I assigned a car to him from the day he came for that interview. We signed a contract with him to do the concerts, and even though it was about a week to the concert, we paid him and provided him a car for the whole week.
That time, Majek had this very successful album with the hit song, Send down the rain, but he also had a group called Jastix. The group had a contract with another recording company. There were so many issues with that recording company, and they couldn’t get their album released. Meanwhile, Majek was working as a producer at Tabansi Records. According to him, as narrated in my first book on him, ‘Trailblazer,’ he said it was Tony Benson, one of Bobby Benson’s children, that talked him into going solo. He got thinking and that was how he went solo but Majek kept trying to pull Jastix together. These issues materialised at the concert. Just before he stepped on stage, I realised that he didn’t have a band. That concert was his first fee-paying concert in Lagos after the release of his solo album. So, he had to piece session men together, and it cost me a fortune; because they were strangers to each other, he had no control over them.
On the concert date, after the band had set up instruments, and done sound-check, the drummer said he wanted to go and eat eba. I said, ‘No problem, don’t worry, I will send someone that will bring you the best eba on campus’ but he insisted on going home to eat the eba that his wife had prepared for him. The possibility of getting someone to drive him home was moot because he lived in Alapere and we were at Akoka, and we had a concert that was to start in less than an hour. Still, he left. Majek started that concert playing the drums by himself. Majek was a multi-instrumentalist. I lost money at that concert because of that incident with the drummer. You know students, especially within the campus, the show didn’t start when we promised them, so they got restless and all of that. Being an alumnus of the school, I instructed my staff that anyone who wanted his or her money back should get a refund. Consequently, we did the concert as a free show but it was a wonderful show. The drummer returned eventually and Majek had to go play the guitar.
After the show, I left the car with him, telling him he could still use it for a week. The day he returned the car to my office, he said nobody had ever treated him like that and he wanted me to manage him. I edited a magazine, and I would have to juggle that with managing Majek. I was hesitant but he persisted.
So, you started representing Majek but in what capacity?
I was never Majek’s manager. Majek never had a manager. That ultimately had an impact on a lot of things. I was his publicist, but I did more than that hence people concluded that I was his manager. My territory was communication and public relations. So, I offered to work with him as his publicist and public relations consultant.
If you check the album slips of his subsequent albums after the Prisoner of Conscience album, what you will see there is Richie Adewusi, ‘Public Relations Consultant.’ When you now check the subsequent albums up to the ‘Spirit of Love’ album, what you will see there is ‘Publicist.’ Let me repeat again, Majek had no manager.
There was a controversy about Majek’s age. You knew him as a young man, how old was Majek at the time of his death?
Majek had a lot of people who claimed to be his managers even till he died. And that has also continued to create confusion because you hear somebody saying he was 72 years old and he said he was his manager. That tells you that, that person knew nothing, absolutely nothing about Majek. Majek died at age 57. I mean, his life story from his mother, his family members, himself and everybody around him was my first book about him, Trailblazer. The book was published in 1989.
As Majek’s publicist, what were the things you did?
I handled all sorts of contractual, organisational, administrative things for him. I worked at organizing Majek. I worked at turning Majek into a product; he had a talent quite alright. I went to work using what I knew in public relations and product creation, to package him. Majek had a lot of appeal.
How many years did you work with Majek?
My story with him started in June 1987. I didn’t agree to represent him until October 1987. And I resigned officially from representing him in January 1993.
As a musician, Majek was complete. He was a complete musician, in the sense that he was an entertainer, a multi-instrumentalist, and a gifted lyricist. With the available technology now, you could just turn down all the rhythm in any of his tracks and enjoy only his songs; you could liken them to poems. He was an accomplished lyricist. Majek was a total and complete musician. The only musical instrument he could not play at the time I met him, and up to the time I resigned from representing him, was the saxophone. And it pained him very much because he always had a problem with the saxophonists during music sessions. He was always like, ‘No men, play this damn thing, man! This is not what I want.’ And he kept saying, ‘I will play this instrument one day men!’
Well, he eventually worked with very talented saxophonists. Prominent among them was Mike Apo. In terms of his talent and appeal, you could liken him to Fela and to some extent, King Sunny Ade (KSA). I’m talking in terms of Nigeria. The bundle of what God programmed in Majek could be seen in Fela, and KSA enjoyed similar acclaim, internationally. But the acclaim turned out to be Majek’s undoing, eventually.
What people have failed to understand is that Majek was actually your typical village boy who migrated from Benin to Lagos, and made it. He had very little education, stopping at secondary school. But he was tremendously talented. Many people and the media criticised him for sounding like this person, sounding like that person, and Majek responded saying, ‘Look, what you guys are saying simply is that I’m a genius. If you’re saying that I can take the music of Bob Marley, BujuBanton, all these great musicians and create one thing, then you’ve called me a genius.’ That’s who he was. That’s how intelligent he was. As a man, Majek was impressionable. He was impulsive. He was very humble, and he came from humble beginnings. If you take into consideration that he was the last of three boys or three men from his mother, all three of them were from three different fathers. That leaves some kind of pressure on anyone, especially the last child.
As a man, Majek was very passionate and loyal to his friends. He was loyal to a fault, even to those who were using him. In most cases, he knew that they were using him, and he would be like, ‘Richie men, let them take the bread, meaning money.’ Majek also was attracted to esoteric things. He was fascinated by magic. And if you put into consideration, that, Majek had a strong background in the white garment church, he also had a lot of challenges growing up, even physical and psychiatric challenges. These got him tied to the Aladura (white garment church) environment which was actually where his music started. He started playing percussion within the Aladura church environment where he was being treated. This was before he became a music star. So, having survived those challenges, he was grateful to God. Even some of his family members tried to use those challenges to blackmail him when he attained fame. They would say, ‘You want us to talk to the public and tell them you are mad.’ I witnessed all of these challenges brewing at the backdrop of his success. It was a lot to deal with for an unprepared, unschooled person. He was principled but Majek had a very rebellious spirit. Rebellious in the sense that, he saw things differently from other people. Most of us do anyway but we still learned to live with society. Majek didn’t understand what it meant to respect contracts. So that was actually a major challenge in whatever transpired with him going forward.
You left him in 1993. Why did you quit?
Well, it’s heavy. It’s painful. I left Majek in 1988; that was the year of the MAMSER tours packaged by Rtd. General Ibrahim Babangida’s administration to prepare Nigeria for democracy and Majek was the lead artiste. He was the only one that the Federal Government contracted to tour all the states in the country except for states that didn’t want him because they thought he was too revolutionary. My work relationship with Majek was based on agreed terms. I told him that he couldn’t play every show and that we have to agree on the kind of shows he wanted to play. I told him, ‘You can play shows to promote product brands, universal rights, advance a particular cause, shows that have meaning. In other words, you can’t play birthdays, naming ceremonies, and all that, because you are not a Juju or Fuji artiste.’ We created a clearly defined path, going forward, and it worked.
But it wasn’t easy to put Majek on stage at that time. You needed to provide a minimum of N60,000. That fee was not chicken feed, and that was just his artiste fee asides equipment, accommodation, transport, and hospitality. So, to put Majek on stage then, a promoter would spend between N200,000 and N400,000 as far back as 1988. However, we insisted on not having him play political shows or perform for cigarette companies. One of those instances was when Lucky Igbenedion was going to contest for the governorship of Edo State. Majek’s mother hailed from Benin, and Majek was more Benin than Yoruba. He spoke more Benin. He couldn’t even speak Yoruba like that but he was from Ilesha.
His lawyer then later became Attorney General in Edo State. They organised a meeting and Igbinedion wanted Majek to play at his campaign rally but I declined, stressing, that Majek won’t support any politician but the people around him kept pushing and they set up a meeting in Surulere. At the meeting, they started speaking their language, and at a point, I said, ‘Can we have this meeting in English because I don’t understand the language’ and Igbinedion turned to me and said, ‘Who is this guy?’ Majek responded saying, ‘Bros, leave this guy o. He said we need to speak English.’ That was how much he respected, trusted, and bonded with me. Igbinedion wasn’t happy, so, I said to him, ‘I cannot deny that Majek is your brother but he can only come to your campaign as a brother and not as the Prisoner of Conscience, and the band can’t play at your campaign.’
Igbinedion got angry and walked out of the meeting. Then he returned to insist that Majek performed for him but I also insisted that once he played the show, he would lose his claims to non-partisanship. Of course, Majek didn’t play at the campaign. What I am getting at is that I had a listening client that followed the road map that we had drawn. (The Nation)
