As a kid from Alabama, if he’d been told he’d one day be singing at his pal King Charles’ coronation, he’d surely have been ‘dancing on the ceiling.’ But, turning 75 next week, Lionel Richie is, to steal the title of one his many global hits, a man who inspires ‘endless love.’ From Hello to Three Times a Lady, his repertoire of beautifully executed songs is astonishing.
As a tribute to the man whose soulful voice became a soundtrack to the 1970s and 80s and beyond, a compilation of some of his most memorable interviews - with everyone from Michael Parkinson, to Jools Holland and Steve Wright - are being released as a BBC Radio 2 special. With over 100 million albums sold worldwide, an Oscar, four Grammy awards and the distinction of MusiCares Person of the Year among his accolades, Lionel Ritchie more or less fell into a musical career.
But stumbling across opportunities formed something of a pattern in his young life, according to an interview with the late Michael Parkinson. “All of my friends were in the clergy, all of my mentors, they could play basketball, ping pong and shoot pool better than anyone in town and so I decided I would go to church as you get to play pool and ping pong,” he said.
“I was supposed to go to university for two years and two years at Wyoming Seminary when I ran into three guys from the Commodores and I remember calling the Bishop on the phone and saying ‘I don’t think I’m going to be a priest’.” The original Commodores lineup consisted of William King on trumpet, Thomas McClary on guitar, Ronald LaPread on bass, Walter ‘Clyde’ Orange on drums and Milan Williams on keyboards. Lionel started off playing the saxophone and never dreamed of becoming a singer.
Recalling his early days in the band he told Jools Holland: “We met as freshmen on the campus. It was an amazing experience. I started playing the horn but as time went on they asked me to sing the songs and asked me to be the vocalist and one song after the next I started to develop more confidence so I put the horn down.”
After being introduced to a lady who worked with the Jackson Five, The Commodores soon became their supporting act and the rest, as they say, is history. “She came by Benny’s house and said ‘I’m looking for a fun act and Benny said ‘they’re here sleeping on my floor’. End of story,” he continued. “We did two and a half years touring as the fun act and once we got to California they said ‘you’re sold.’
We thought we were going to plug into this new Motown machine and we sat around for about a year waiting for the writers to come and we realised all they were bringing us was Temptation tracks and Miracles tracks, so we said ‘wait a minute we want to sound like The Commodores’. Of course, they said ‘well you’ll sound like The Commodores but with a Motown sound’, so I grabbed a tape recorder and started writing.”
In 1974 Lionel Richie’s first hit with The Commodores, Machine Gun, stormed the charts, but less than a decade later in 1982 he left the band to go it alone. His first solo album, Lionel Richie, gained him a hit with Truly, which also won him his first Grammy for Best Male Vocalist in 1983. And it was during his solo career that Richie became one of the most successful balladeers of the 1980s.
His real life experiences - or rather those of his family, friends and fans - are the inspiration for his touching lyrics. It was a speech his father gave at his parents’ 37th wedding anniversary that inspired Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady. “Dad got up to make the toast and the speech that he gave was that he wanted to just thank my mother for all of the sticking by him through the good times and the bad times and the lean times,” he told Jools Holland. “He just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you and how much he loved her. I said ‘what a great story because I pass through my house everyday and I don’t say thank you.’
“I just take for granted certain things will be done and I said ‘I wonder how many other guys are in that same position’ and, of course, I found out later on that the whole world was in that same position because that song just went right around the world. But to bring my father back up at the end, he’s been calling me probably every year since then and asking me ‘are you sure I don’t get a royalty for coming up with the idea?’”
Meanwhile, his hit Still tells both sides of the story of his married friends who broke up, and Sail On was inspired by another friend who turned up at his house at 3am saying he never wanted to see his wife again. As for Dancing on the Ceiling? He was coming out of a nightclub and overheard someone saying they had had a great night and had been dancing on the ceiling, of course!
