Lionel Richie on touching inspiration behind Three Times A lady and playing for King Charles
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.
The late Michael Parkinson and Lionel Richie
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.”
Sting, Jools Holland and Lionel Richie on 'Later with Jools Holland'
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.
Lionel Richie. Sheila E, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Harry Belafonte and Smokey Robinson at the American Music Awards in 1986
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!
King Charles III and Queen Camilla make surprise appearance on American Idol with Katy Perry and Lionel Richie
Despite his global fame, Ritchie is showing no sign of slowing down. Currently touring America, last year he visited the UK, where he headlined Glastonbury and played for King Charles to mark his Coronation. But, according to the radio tribute, this whirlwind of work is typical for the superstar. He and Tina Turner recorded Endless Love in just two hours - between 3am and 5am one morning, because it was the only time their schedules could align. And he told Steve Wright that despite decades of experience, he was not the best person to decide which songs should be released from his albums.
“I’m the worst person at selecting, that’s why I finish the songs and then play them for someone. Because I tell you the ones I threw out: All Night Long, Running with the Night and Hello,” he said. “Not to mention Brickhouse - I absolutely thought it was the worst. And Three Times a Lady I mean how excited was I to put that out during disco? I was not excited! These are the songs where I said ‘don’t put them out, it could ruin my career’. So nowadays I just write them and back out of the room.”
If he had to pick a favourite track of his, he’d be hard pressed to choose between three - All night long, Dancing on the Ceiling and Hello. “Dancing on the Ceiling because if you’ve ever seen the crowd just lose it. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life, people over 90 they’re up dancing!” he told Steve Wright. While winning an Oscar for Say You, Say Me and performing for the King’s Coronation have been the highlights of his career, performing at Glastonbury in 2023 didn’t disappoint.
Lionel Richie on stage at Glastonbury
"That was as good as it gets,” he told Jo Whiley, following his performance when his security guards performed a flash mob. “Even after all my years of performing. It was the perfect show, when the crowd took over like that. I’ve been to a lot of shows, that was karaoke at its finest.”
Despite an amazing career, he never imagined he would be asked to take part in King Charles’ coronation. “Every once in a while you get a chance to step into history. I never imagined I would be involved in something like this,” he told Kirsty Young. “I’m from Alabama and he’s from the Royal Family but we have the same heart.”
One of the world’s best-selling artists of all time, his success, he told Steve Wright, has been down to his chosen subject matter - love. “Who would have ever known that of all the subjects I could have chosen - or should I say that chose me - love is the only subject that never goes out of style,” he said. “So from one generation to the next Truly will always be Truly and Stuck on You will always be Stuck on You. Every generation, whether you start out with acid rock, punk rock, gangster rap - sooner or later you’re going to open your mouth and say ‘I love you’ to somebody and you’re going to fall back to Lionel Richie. I don't know how that works.”
Lionel Richie at the BBC is on BBC Radio 2 this Saturday and available to listen on BBC Sounds from Friday.