What Tunde gained in being acculturated in Nigeria was instrumental to his outlook on music and the creation of melodies for Lighthouse Family songs. It also proved, at some point, to be the cause of healthy conflict with Paul.
He was wary of the air of power and influence that came with being a stepson of a military head of state. Tunde did not exactly grow under the nose of the former Nigerian leader. The aversion he felt was not for the man but for the attention such unmistakable influence his presence brought. Although Obasanjo might have earned a reputation for being a hard-nosed wartime general, Tunde told me he was very jovial and insightful. He remembered Obasanjo accepting him as his son.
Obasanjo would ask him about his girlfriends even though he was just But he would quickly follow up with pieces of advice that Tunde said helped shape him. Tunde and Paul tried making a comeback in , , and But there was a general loss of the spark that could propel them to do new music. But they did do tours in and The hiatus was also enabled by personal tragedies they suffered individually. Tunde lost his mother in , 20 years after he left Nigeria for the UK to study accountancy.
Her death left him demoralised so much that he felt like quitting music. Although he was always in constant touch with her before she passed away, he was unable to travel to Nigeria to see her due to unrelenting band commitment.
Although they were always in constant touch with each other, It will be almost two decades later — and another solo album — before Tunde and Paul could finally come back together not only to do tours but to also release an album and remaster 10 of Lighthouse Family classic hits for the first time.
Their fans have their long-term manager Keith Armstrong to thank. Three months later, Armstrong called him and the journey to the making of another Lighthouse Family album began. They pulled through those challenges to deliver an album that serves as a reminder of why they were one of the most famous bands in Europe in the s and early s. Lighthouse Family is going on a tour towards the end of the year.
That includes a date in South Africa, where Tunde can get a whiff of Nigeria. But he thinks maybe he can get more than a whiff: playing on home soil. He loves them. In contrast, Barlow, in The Times , expected that the band could last for "ten years or more".
Peden's hiring was described as a "big spend", and music videos were filmed overseas in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Still, this did not translate to considerable single or album sales within ; it wasn't until "Lifted" was re-released in that it reached the top five on the UK Singles Chart, and Ocean Drive , which had been deleted, rebounded and was certified six-times platinum by the end of , spending weeks on the UK Album Chart in the process.
Its follow-up Postcards from Heaven achieved similar sales status in Lighthouse Family scaled down their appearances in early because of what they called a "heavy promotional schedule" following the release of Whatever Gets You Through the Day in This led to both men pursuing individual projects.
Baiyewu became a solo artist, while Tucker joined a rock band, The Orange Lights. It was the first performance of Lighthouse Family in eight years.
During an interview on breakfast TV show BBC Breakfast on 17 January , Lighthouse Family revealed they had still been talking to each other during their time away, and that there was no current defined timescale for the release of a new album. However, Tucker mentioned during the interview that the duo had "pockets Tunde Baiyewu. No, one mostly thinks of his services to the easy listening genre, a man whose biggest hits, Lifted and Ocean Drive , were suggestive only of someone enviably carefree.
When he sang, he did so with a perpetual smile on his face. Nevertheless, while the Lighthouse Family were one of the country's biggest pop acts in the mids, Tunde's extended family in Nigeria was in the grip of a horror that few would be able to bounce back from. His stepfather was Olusegun Obasanjo , once the military leader of his country, who later fell foul of Nigeria's then dictator Sani Abacha.
When Obasanjo accused him of human-rights abuse, Abacha had him arrested, beaten and sentenced to life in prison. Tunde's mother, Obasanjo's wife, was grief stricken.
Obasanjo, Tunde explains, wasn't Muslim, but Christian. It's not uncommon in Nigeria. We prayed. We prayed nightly. Tunde was born in Willesden Green, north-west London, in His father had arrived in the UK a decade before to study structural engineering, and later sent for his wife when he felt sufficiently established in his subsequent career. Their son was born a British citizen whose life in England would end abruptly before the completion of his first term at school.
And I remember him hitting me one time with an umbrella. Presumably, I'd done something wrong. But that's it, because suddenly he wasn't there any more. He was away, back home, trying to get better. But his father, who had cancer, didn't get better. She refused to tell me what the matter was, and it was only later I pieced together that it must have been news from home telling her that my father's battle against cancer had failed. He was Craving a support network she didn't have in London, Tunde's mother returned to Nigeria, taking her four-year-old son and his toddler sister with her.
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