Lionel Richie is desperate to write a “juicy” book about his career but has to wait until the people he wants to include die.
Richie first shot to fame as part of the Commodores before finding huge success as a solo artist. With nearly 50 years in the music business under his belt Lionel has some good stories to tell, but admits he may have to put off penning the tome for a few years yet.
“Most of the people I want to write about are not dead yet, so I have to wait a little longer,” he told chat show host Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night (04Feb16). “To have a juicy book I’m going to have to wait a while! But if I want to do a humanitarian book I can do it now. To do the real book I’ve got to wait a couple of years until everybody passes away.
“I’m hoping that I’m not on that list leaving before I write the book. So they might tell me to write the book and then put it in storage for a while!”
One of Lionel’s most famous tracks is Hello, the video for which showed a woman moulding a bust of him in clay. Lionel spent the entire day of shooting warning director Bob Giraldi that the carving looked nothing like him, before he was told one very important fact.
“I spent the entire time telling Bob – that bust does not look like me. It didn’t look like me. And it worried me, and the lady was working on it, and I was saying, ‘Bob, that doesn’t look like me!'” he recalled.
“So finally we were getting ready to shoot it and he said, ‘Lionel, she’s blind!’ That’s pretty good for a blind person.”
Lionel is set to be honoured at an upcoming event after being named MusiCares Person of the Year 2016. Stars including Rihanna, Lenny Kravitz, Usher, John Legend, Dave Grohl, Stevie Wonder, Ellie Goulding, Florence Welch and Pharrell Williams will all take to the stage to perform Lionel’s biggest hits, which is something he is truly blown away by.
“I have been a fan of the business (MusiCares) for so long,” he said. “I try to be calm when people say to me, ‘Oh my God Lionel you’re going to be honoured by MusiCares, do you know the people who’ve had it in the past?’ And I’ll go ‘Yes, (Bob) Dylan, Yes, (Paul) McCartney’. And then I get home and I go, ‘YES, oh my God!’
“If ever there were a night when I’m going to be excited just to be there… but they are singing my songs. And then at the end they said, ‘Lionel would you sing?’ Uh, yeah! It’s such an honour when your peers come out and they want to sing your songs.”
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