Lionel Richie says Michael Jackson still has the magic
Mar 27 2009 by Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo
Can soul saviour Lionel Richie help Michael Jackson make a success of his comeback? Gavin Allen talks to one of *****’s best friends.
LIONEL Richie remembers the moment Michael Jackson showed him why music was the greatest career he could choose – so now Richie is returning the favour.
As a teenager, Richie was a very talented tennis player and earned a tennis scholarship to Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, where he also nabbed a degree in economics, while also enjoying success with his Motown group The Commodores. However, Richie says his choice was easy.
“The wonderful thing about life is that it makes things clear for you,” says Richie, who is currently touring his latest album, Just Go.
“I went to the Arthur Ash tennis academy at 19, ready to play, but they told me I was too old.
“Then I checked out my accounting grades and my teacher said to me, ‘Lionel, it would be great if you had embezzled the money but you lost the money’, so I wasn’t going to make me a great accountant. And then I went to a Jackson Five concert – we were the opening act – and I saw Michael Jackson walk on stage with his brothers, with no money in the bank, play an hour and 10 minutes and walk off with $200,000.
“I figured it was a no-brainer.”
That was in 1968 when Richie was the young lead singer and saxophonist with The Commodores, who went on to score hits with the likes of Easy and Three Times A Lady as part of the legendary Motown Records.
Since then, Richie and Michael Jackson have remained such good friends they verge on family, with Jackson serving as godfather to Richie’s adopted daughter Nicole.
“I speak to him quite a bit now that he has become Papa Jackson,” says Richie, who adopted Nicole with his first wife and later had two children with his second ex-wife. “Realising that they don’t come with a manual means that for Michael I am now the wise old philosopher. He’ll call me and say – ‘Li’o’nel how do I do this?’ – so I’m talking to him now more than ever and I’m glad of that because I need to get him back into what he does best.”
That means putting Jackson back on stage and Richie is delighted the King of Pop has sold out his huge 50-date residency at The O2 arena.
“I’m working along with that whole campaign group, I’m with him,” says Richie, who will be a smooth-talking 60 in June.
“I’ll say to you what I said to him, no-one in our business ever died because of what they did on stage – they have always died because of what they did off stage.
“No matter what problems I have had in my life, I can walk on stage and I don’t have those problems for two hours.
“I just think what he needs to do is remind himself of that, and it will take five or six shows for it to click, but this is the most dynamic performer of our time and for him to not be on stage is a crime.”
The size of Jackson’s residency has also led to widespread debate about whether Jackson will be able to fulfil the massive engagement. Can Jackson still cut it, does he still have the moonwalk magic?
“Last time I could see him, hell yeah,” asserts Ritchie, who duetted with Jackson on the 1985 charity hit We Are The World.
“He’s not that 25-year-old or 30-year-old anymore so he will have to discover some things about himself that he didn’t quite want to face up to I’m sure, but what he does have is a mound of hit records.
“He has to just get it in his head that we (as performers) are on that stage because people want to see us singing those songs.
“Whether you moonwalk or skywalk or float in from the back of the stage, that’s all extra added attractions, but the most important thing is to pick up the microphone and sing Thriller, that’s all that matters.
“Speaking from an artist’s point of view, there is an insecurity of being away for a while, even with me being off stage for a year and a half there is a little butterfly that goes off and you wonder ‘do I know what I’m doing?’.
“He has been off a lot longer than that so the butterfly will be there. But if I have to drag him on stage myself, I will.”
Lionel Richie plays at Cardiff International Arena on Thursday, April 2. Tickets cost £35-£75 from 029 2022 4488
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