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#2388 – Lionel Richie Podcast Episode Description
Lionel Richie is a singer, songwriter, producer, and television personality. He has sold more than 125 million albums worldwide and been the recipient of four Grammy Awards, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and 18 American Music Awards. Look for his memoir, “Truly,” on shelves now, and catch him live on tour in 2025.
www.harpercollins.com/products/truly-lionel-richiewww.lionelrichie.com
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#2388 – Lionel Richie Podcast Episode Summary
Based on the provided context, the phrase “has joined the group” refers to someone becoming a member of a group, band, club, or team. Throughout the conversation, there are multiple references to joining various groups, inviting members, and welcoming new people. Specific examples include:
– “we joined the band”
– “He should’ve joined the…”
– “Join the team.”
– “Welcome to the club.”
– “add one more bestie.”
– “they’re in, they’re in.”
– “invite you to…”
These statements all indicate the act of someone joining or being added to a group or collective. However, the context does not specify exactly who “has joined the group” in a particular instance. The general meaning is clear: it signifies the addition of a new member to a group. If you are looking for a specific individual who joined a specific group, that information is not explicitly provided in the context.
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#2388 – Lionel Richie Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
Speaker: 0
00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
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00:03
The Joe Rogan experience.
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00:06
Ai meh day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Here we go.
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00:12
How we doing? Good. We’re rolling.
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00:14
Love it. Pleasure to meet you, sir.
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00:16
But it’s about time. Yes.
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00:17
Thank you very much for being here. This is an honor.
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00:20
It is sai here, man. Same here.
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00:21
How does a person like you fit your life into a book? Because you your career is so wide and so long. You’ve had so many experiences from the Commodores in the seventies.
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00:40
Seventies.
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00:41
Seventies. Seventies. Seventies. Seventies. Seventies. So, Joe, let me tell
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00:47
you something. It it really accounts for I’ll tell you the joke of the book first. Okay. Ai? I’m probably the only guy in the world that had a book had a book with probably a thousand pages in it. I turned a thousand pages in it,
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01:01
and they said, what the hell is this?
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01:05
And I said War and Peace. War and Peace. And I said, and I’ve got some more stories. I’ve got some more stories. And so for the first time in the history of Harper’s, probably, they said, mister Ritchie, no more stories. We don’t need need more stories. In fact, can we take some of the stories out?
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01:20
Oh, no.
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01:20
So to answer your question, we can’t fit all of my life story in a book, but we just had to find the ones that were actually, you know, humorous in certain cases, educational in certain cases because it’s wide. It’s it’s big in that. And but I enjoyed the process of kind of looking back. Because if you understand me, Ai have the Italian race car ai theory.
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01:43
What’s behind me doesn’t count. It’s what’s in front of me.
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01:46
That’s a very good way of looking at life.
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01:49
So what this book made me do was actually turn around and look behind me. And I tell you what I discovered. I I discovered Lionel Richie. Because up to this point, I’d never really gone into the depths of how I got here. I just remember because you wanna you wanna forget. You just kept going.
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02:09
Just kept going. Look. Keep going straight. You tripped over that. I don’t remember. You tripped over that. I don’t remember. What’s next? Yeah.
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02:16
And you try to kinda you know, it’s like playing football. You got hit really badly on that last play, but you go back to the huddle. Right.
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02:24
You know
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02:24
what I’m saying? Right. Are you hurt? You won’t know until tonight after you get off the field, and they’ll tell you you broke your arm. You know what I’m saying? But it’s it’s it’s really don’t stop moving forward, And that’s really what this whole thing was. This exercise in this book was really for me to actually go, I I can’t believe I did that.
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02:44
Did you learn anything about yourself from going back and and just re recalling all these stories and putting them to paper?
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02:51
Did I learn? Did I did I learn? Absolutely. It’s if you had said to me, when I first arya, my life. You know, my dad used to always have this line over and over again. You know, a great fighter is not determined by how many punches he can throw. It’s how many punches he can take. And I realized that I could take punches. I’m the most unlikely person to take a punch because I’m not that guy.
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03:22
If I can talk my way out of it, I will. But if you understand life itself, number one, that’s difficult. And then if you start thinking about the music business, the entertainment business, it’s an impossibility. You’re gonna get punched every day of your life. And what’s that punch? No.
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03:40
No. No. No. That’s the punch. Now can you get up off the floor and come back? Can you get a bad review and come back?
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03:48
Can they not like you and you come back? Can you find that that’s a humorous thing instead of a tragic thing? Can you come back? Can you lose friends along the way? Can you come back? So you don’t really realize, you know, this is a business.
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04:02
If you look at it, think about how many people we’ve lost. When I started writing this book, I started thinking to myself, where’s Luther? Where’s Michael? I wanna tell you more stories about Prince, but it’s not fair because in certain cases, I want him to be here to laugh with the joke too.
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04:21
Right.
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04:21
You follow me?
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04:22
Yeah.
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04:22
And so then you start realizing, damn, this is lucky. This is really blessed time now because I’m in rare survival air, if you will. I’m still here at at 200 years old talking about my career, but I’m telling the story. Someone else is not telling it for me. That’s important.
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04:41
That’s important. Ai? Because so many times when someone passes and then you get this sort of cobbled together version of their life without their own unique personal perspective, you miss a lot.
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04:53
You miss a lot and especially things that people thought were terrifying or tragic. If you talk to the person themselves, that was a learning experience. So you keep thinking, oh my god. What did you do when that happened? And you go, no. No. No. No.
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05:09
Sai needed that because I wouldn’t have been to the next person if I had not experienced that because it’s it’s like trying to go, you know, to scrimmage before a big game. You’re you’re with your team. Well, they hit harder from the other team, so you gotta practice hard. Well, the only way to get into the music business, you gotta be on the field. Practice is not in the equation. Right.
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05:36
You gotta get out on the field, and it’s nasty. And it’s not designed for you to survive. And I try to say this to the kids on American Idol. I said, listen. I love you. You got a great personality, but you better hope, like hell, you have a sense of humor.
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05:52
Because if you don’t, it’s gonna eat you ai.
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05:57
Did you develop this develop this mentality along the way, or was this something that you just uniquely had?
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06:05
I this is my this is my character. I I I if you understand something, I was and I tell this joke all the time. I was I was too small to play football, too short to play basketball. Baseball was a projectile coming at me at 300 miles an hour. I’m not standing in front of that thing, and the only thing I could play was tennis.
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06:23
So you understand, walking around on a tennis court in the middle of the civil civil rights movement, you know, it you have to develop a
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06:30
sense of humor. Otherwise, you’re gonna die. And so
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so I I found also again, it’s funny what your father will say to you, back in you wonder how did he get through all of his ai? Because they went through the struggle of life. And he said, if you lose your sense of humor, they got you. And I always remembered the fact that if you can find something funny out of this experience, Take that to the next day.
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07:00
And so I kinda use that as my mantra, basically, that okay. Where am I? I’m at the Grammys. Okay. What am I complaining about?
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07:12
I’m complaining about I don’t like my seat. What did they just say? I won. Who cares? You know what I’m saying? Yeah. Or you’re just at the Grammys.
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07:25
You know how many people don’t get to come to the Grammys Right. Just on the invitation. And so you have to go back and look at this as far as is it really that serious or, you know, you have to kinda put things in perspective. And so, you know, the first half of my career was just a matter of how do I get there.
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07:47
The second half of my career is can I please try to enjoy a little bit of it? And that’s where I am right now because, you know, it’s the song stuck around. More importantly, I’m still here, which is the blessing because
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08:01
still here and you look great. Well, I’ll
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08:03
take that as a compliment.
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08:04
You really do. You look very healthy.
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08:06
Well, considering energy. Looking at you across the table from me, I Ai think I left my muscles
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08:11
back in the hotel ram,
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08:14
but but, you know, it it’s all about, two and a half hour show a night for the last fifty years. That’s my, that’s my golf game.
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08:25
Training. Training.
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08:26
Because you gotta be ready for two and a half hours, and I don’t care what you think. You’re the greatest guy in the world. I’ll put you on that stage and give you 50,000 people. And you, after running with a ai or all night long, sing a sing a slow song. I dare you.
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08:44
Yeah. And do it since 1970. Like, what was the calendar? ’72? Did you start?
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08:50
Meh me tell you. We started in ’68 Woah. On the on the university campus. We were students. It started out as a group called the Mystics, and we were the talent show. We didn’t realize that we were the joke of the seniors of the juniors. But they have a freshman talent show every year, and we wanted to be the band to be the freshman talent show. We came out on stage and killed it.
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09:14
And it was a guy another group there called the Jays, which was the seniors. They had been there for the last four years, and they were the biggest group on campus. They’re about to break up. And a guy named Michael Gilbert gave us a phone call and said, I wanna put a group together, and I was looking at you four guys.
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09:34
Would you like to come and join this band over here? The answer is that was the beginning of the Commodores.
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09:41
And how old were you at the time?
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09:43
19 years old. Wow. Thank you very much. Wow. 19 years old and we’re gonna take over the world. Joe, you know what I mean? In other words, you know, there’s the there’s James Brown, there’s Marvin, and there’s the Commodores. You know you know how that works. You know? Yeah.
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10:01
And what I love about that period of time, we could be, you know, all right, all wrong, but we were all together. It didn’t make any difference. So we experienced every possible imaginable part of growing up together. I didn’t grow up with brothers. I have one sister. So these became forget the band.
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10:25
These were five brothers, and we were in every disaster you could probably think about. And we laughed our way in and out of every today, we’d all be in jail. I can ai that statement. I meh, but back then, it was it was the best.
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10:43
And at 19 years of age, you’re just starting starting to become a meh, and then you’re thrust into superstardom arya a crazy time in human history.
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10:56
It was well, first of all, we didn’t really get into recording until 7172. We were just the biggest, largest, most dynamic band in our heads across the South And until we were the opening act for the Jackson five, their first tour that they went out on, we were the opening act for them.
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11:20
That was our first look at holy crap. This is this is huge. And then I’m I’m an economics major and accounting ai. And all of a sudden, I kept thinking, I don’t know what this business is, but, I think I wanna be in it because you have to understand something. When you play tennis, what’s the number one thing you will never hear ever? A girl screaming. That’s not gonna happen. Football, basketball, you hear them all day long.
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11:51
I was going to be an Episcopal priest thinking that’s my avenue, and I’m on stage one ai, the Jackson shah, and all of a sudden, some girl said, sing it, baby. And I said, call the minister back on the phone. I said, I don’t think I’m gonna be priest material. I just want you to understand.
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12:14
You know, I mean, you you you have to know at that point. You have to identify your lane. You know? I had never heard that, Joe, in my life.
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12:23
Of course.
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Who knows? You know what I’m saying? And How
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many people ever get to hear you say it, baby? Twenty twenty one years old. Yeah.
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12:30
Right? I got an emotion. Thank you very much. And from that point on, it was just a matter of riding this wave of we finished that Jackson tour. We ended up in Motown, Hollywood Bowl. They Motown saw us there. Suzanne DePass was, of course, the one who put the the Jackson’s together and all that.
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12:51
She knew us from, from, our manager, Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard Island. Next thing we know, we’re recording. Wow. Hallelujah. And then
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13:04
you’re off to the races.
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13:05
We’re off to the races. Off to the races, Joe. And I tell you, you know, looking at this book, it’s a question Ai survived or how I survived. But the question to me was, I survived? Because it’s not it’s I mean, I can tell you stories and it well, they’re in the book, but I’m just saying there are moments when you just look around and go, thank god for just being naive, young, stupid, didn’t have any idea of what the heck you were doing, but what a great adventure.
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13:46
I’m in a subway, 04:00 in the morning, my saxophone, and I had this little secret thing that no one knew. I had this sai sheesh. Sheath? Sheath. Sheath. Sheath.
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14:01
Sheath around my neck. Didn’t know it had a secret compartment. Of course, everybody in Harlem knew it was a secret compartment. I had all my money in that. I’m walking around going, no one knows I have my money in there. Ai? Which is everybody had money in there. I would walk up and down the subway.
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14:17
No one would touch us. No one. I don’t know. It has to be a sense of divine guidance or big Frank Lucas just told everybody don’t touch us. One or the other.
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14:29
But, I mean, it was just one of those moments in time where, you know, Ai had some people say to me, you were in Harlem at 04:00 in the morning in the subway saloni? I said, yeah. With a saxophone? With a saxophone. God bless you, kid. God bless you.
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14:48
It’s it must seem almost surreal looking back because you had such an incredible life, such an incredible career. It almost I mean, I can’t imagine what it feels like just reminiscing and going through the stories and and just just looking at the actual facts of what you did.
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15:09
I’m glad I’m doing the book now because ai, I would be, let’s say, when I got to about 98, 99, because I’m planning on the full life. Right? There’s an old man at the barbershop still telling lies about his life when he was growing up, you know, because they it has to be a ai. You know?
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15:31
And and, you know, there was one title I was joking around with, which is you’re not gonna believe this shit.
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15:39
That’d be a great title.
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15:40
That would be the ai, you know, and I was thinking that might be the way to go. And then, of course, I kept thinking, no. But from a philosophical point of view, that’s not gonna fly. Ai? Okay. We’ll pull that back. But the point is, it’s almost not believable.
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15:51
I mean, when you start calling off names, it’s almost like name dropping. And you start thinking about who mentored you, who gave you the advice, who was there for you exactly at the right time, who came in, who left right on time. You know what I’m saying? There are moments that happen that if I tried to script this thing, if I try to put it down as a complete play, chapter by chapter, you know, act by act, you couldn’t make this up.
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16:26
I mean, it just it reads like a like a book.
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16:30
It or like a crazy movie. Like, if your life was a movie, I’d be like
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16:34
Yeah.
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16:35
That seems a little unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah. Too many good things happen to
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16:38
that. Yeah. Yeah. But all yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To the point where somebody says I meh a couple of ai, friends. Ai am I drawing a blank? Rick James. Rick James had a great line for me. Every time he saw me, I say, Rick, how you doing? I hate you. And that means I love you, but I hate you. I I hate you, man.
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17:03
And, of course, I get it, you know, because things along the way become almost charmed. Right. You know, it’s like, okay. Did I go out and call Dick Clark and say I wanted to host the American Music Awards? No. No.
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17:24
He he called meh us and said, Lionel, forget that guy in New York. Look at that guy in New York. You you’re doing it. You’re doing it. I mean, forget that guy. And now whoever that that guy was, the gift was handed to me.
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17:37
And now I spent the next two or three weeks trying to convince mister Clark that I don’t have any training in how to be a host. And that’s when he would come to me and say, you schoolboys are all the all the same. You think you need a diploma before you think you know something.
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17:57
You know, these lines that come out of this whole story, you know, that’s not orchestrated. That’s not scripted. It came from the other side back this way.
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18:09
Yeah. Do you feel charmed?
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18:11
Yes. Yeah. You feel like the
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18:13
word I have reason
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18:14
The word I’ll use is blessed. It’s one of those things where, my grandmother said something to me a while a while back. I just finished, I just finished Endless Love, and, I went back to Tuskegee, and I’m walking around in the house pacing back and forth. She says, what on earth are you doing? And I said, I’m trying to figure out my next move.
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18:41
And she said, did you come to school to, join the Commodore? She said, no. No. I I I meh them I met them on the campus. Yeah.
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18:50
She said, did you plan on being a writer? No. No. No. No. I found out I was a writer. She said, did you plan on being a lead singer?
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18:57
I said, no. No. No. No. I I found out when I joined the group that she said, why don’t you just get a good night’s sleep and wait for god to give you the next Wow.
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19:05
And that’s how I started my career.
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19:10
That’s an incredible woman. You know? That’s incredible
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19:13
perspective. Quit trying to figure this out. Did you figure it out before? No. Then just relax. Chill out. Can you read and write music? No. Okay. Just chill out. That’s so hard
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19:26
to tell a young person, though, and have them absorb it because especially someone going through what you’re going through. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer. Most hard beverages overcomplicate everything. Happy Dad keeps it simple. Low carbonation, gluten free, and only a 100 calories in every can.
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19:44
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20:34
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20:40
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, I try to tell the kids on American Ai. You know? Sometimes you have to look at failure as a great sign. If they had told the Commodores on the first time we audition, you got it. Ready to go. The answer is we weren’t ready to go. It took no and no and no, and we edit signing at Atlantic, no. Signing at Philly International, no. But we’re the greatest band ever. You’re right.
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21:15
What did, they say to us? You sound just like the temptations. You sound just like a Sai in the Family Stone. What do you sound like? Wow.
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21:28
What do we sound like? I don’t know. Sai the only way we have to find out is we have to start not imitating somebody else. Now comes the thing of, well, what do we sound like? Right. And I didn’t know I didn’t know how to ai, so I how do you write?
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21:47
You follow me? And then you get to Motown. I’m sai to Motown. I don’t know how to read or write music. What the hell am I doing here with this band? I’m not the lead singer. I sing some cover songs. And then you walk down the hall and there’s Marvin.
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22:04
So I sai I’m gonna interview Marvin. Excuse me, Marvin. What music conservatory did you graduate from? And he said, what the hell is that? I said, well, I mean, how do you write your music? He said, no. No, little brother. Can you Yeah.
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22:21
He says, all that you can’t play with three fingers, humming into a tape recorder. And then you go down the hall again, and it’s Smokey. And there’s Barry Gordy who built Motown. Excuse me, mister Gordy. What, what university did you graduate from? Meh said Ai at I was at a car plant.
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22:40
What are you talking about? Everything that I grew up with on the campus of Tuskegee as a kid, I grew up on the university campus. That’s academia. Did not apply in the world of hustle. You understand?
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22:56
Yeah.
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22:57
So I’m now meeting the guys and ladies who found their hustle.
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23:02
They had a PhD in hustle.
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23:03
A PhD in hustle. And I am telling you, Joe, from that moment on, I was let out of the box. Somebody let me out of the cage. Because in academia, there’s a logical reason why you know what you know because you studied it. Right. But I was that kid that was sitting in the class going, Mister Ritchie, mister Ritchie, would you like to join the rest of the class? Ai was daydreaming. Right.
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23:37
I found at Motown, the whole damn company was tapping on the table. Ai found out in New York City, whole town is tapping on the table at this. Right? And so from that point on, I joined this creative source force fraternity, sorority of crazy out of control people that gave me permission to dare to listen to myself.
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24:05
That must have been so exciting to learn that that the structure that you learned in academia, like, no. These wizards No. No. These wizards of music, these masters of giving people emotion and power and energy.
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24:20
Right. Sai mean, I I Ai mean, I get chills in it talking to you, watching Marvin record. And you keep thinking he walked in with a paper and he he had written these letters. No, man. He is scatting at the microphone. Really? Oh, sai the you know, and I’m thinking myself, what am I watching? And then he said, bring the microphone over to the couch.
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24:44
He’s on the couch singing in the couch in the control room. What what’s when am I watching? I said, what’s happening? In other words, it was just so organic and so you know? Because you think about the orchestra and they’re there and the no, man.
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25:03
This is inside of a wonderful dream of watching creativity just explode with no no doors, no windows, no walls. And he was making this up in real time. Wow. You’re talking about freestyle. My man was freestyling coming up with some of the greatest lyrics ever on life’s planet. And I kept thinking, okay.
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25:29
So let me go back and put that in my little hamper. So was did he
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25:34
have an idea of where he was going with these songs?
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25:39
I think he had a feeling about the ai, but did he know the exact words? You know, it’s like when you close your eyes and you’re in it. Yeah. But sai, I didn’t understand how to be in it. You know? I I kept thinking well, let me put it this way. I was trying to think.
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25:58
So you because of the academic background.
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26:00
You’re you’re ai to logically there’s a logical reason why you’re about to say what you’re going to say. Right. Instead of just saying, okay. Just turn on the mic. Yeah. You know what I’m saying? Just turn on the mic, man. I got it. You know, to this day, I I have a thing that I do that still wears out my management and, I have to do a speech or something.
Speaker: 1
26:24
And they sai, okay. Can you give me the speech so we can put it on the teleprompter? And I said, I I Ai don’t have a speech to give you. Ai, we need the speech to put on the teleprompter so you’ll know what to say. I I I I don’t know what I’m gonna say. What do you mean you don’t know what to say? I said, no.
Speaker: 1
26:44
I won’t know what I’m gonna say until I get there. And I walk out on stage. I said, now how long do you want the speech? They said, could we have five minutes? I’ll give you five minutes worth of speech.
Speaker: 0
26:55
They just have to trust you. Wow.
Speaker: 1
26:58
That’s how I do it.
Speaker: 0
27:00
And you learn from watching the greats. The greats. And there there must have been such an unique shift in perspective in how you view the world and how you approach things. To see people, to know that your daydreaming was actually just talent trying to burst free. Exactly. And they knew how to just take that talent and just be unharnessed.
Speaker: 1
27:24
It was to the point where I was actually trained. You know, this is grandma Foster, Ram Foster. She courted my grandfather in Booker t Washington’s house. That’s where she came ram, Tuskegee. My grandfather, they knew Booker t. She knew George Washington Carver. In ai home in Tuskegee, Alabama, there’s a crocheted piece from mister Carver, doctor Carver. My dear missus Foster, congratulations on your wedding. Wow. That’s a crocheted piece.
Speaker: 1
28:04
The the deed to my house has the Washington family’s name on the deed to my house. It was given to me ai not meh to me, to my grandmother and grandfather by the Washington family, Booker t. So now when you have all that background, it’s kinda one of those things where where do you go with this thing? You know? Right.
Speaker: 1
28:26
And so, you know, my my upbringing was pretty pretty amazing where it had structure had structure. And now here I am over in this other side where wait a minute. You mean I don’t have to remember anything. I can make up something.
Speaker: 0
28:45
Woah. And allow the universe to just give you Woah. Wait. I can just
Speaker: 1
28:52
make up something. But what do you wanna make up? I don’t know. So then it’s a word that we learn called receiving. Oh. I’m just receiving. So now where does receiving come from? Yeah. Receiving comes from the silence. It’s not the noise. It’s in the silence.
Speaker: 0
29:14
Right.
Speaker: 1
29:15
So here I am between one and six in the morning, and everyone thinks, what’s Lionel doing? He’s just kinda sitting there. What’s he doing? Nothing. But let me hear let me let you in on a little sound that’s terrifying to most people. You ready for this? You hear that, Joe? Silence. Right?
Speaker: 1
29:42
Now if you can hear, Out of the silence comes the you’re receiving that from the other side.
Speaker: 0
29:57
It is a receiving, isn’t it?
Speaker: 1
29:59
Yeah. When you you know, sometimes you just have to just blank it out. Some people call it meditation. Mhmm. Some people have all ai of names for it. I just love to listen to silence. By the way, there’s only 12 notes, Joe. It’s not a 145 notes. It’s only 12 notes. So everything that has ever happened that you have ever heard on any radio, it’s only 12 notes.
Speaker: 1
30:23
So how do you turn 12 notes into something that sounds new, different? That’s amazing to me. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
30:32
It is amazing.
Speaker: 1
30:33
And so in the silence and all you have to do is learn how to figure out what are the four chords because if you got four or five chords you can write a whole album. But it’s the melody that goes on top that you have to be able to hear. And so once I learned that Marvin and Smokey and, you know, Michael Quincy and, you know, these are Hendrix. Ai Sai just saw the poster coming in, you know.
Speaker: 1
31:01
They all made careers. Not only careers, they had their unique sound out of 12 notes. Think about that. Now if you think it’s hard enough to get a hit record, how do you become unique unto yourself Right. With those 12 notes?
Speaker: 0
31:19
That is one of the geniuses of Hendrix is that you could tell Hendrix with, like in three seconds.
Speaker: 1
31:25
He didn’t have to come in singing.
Speaker: 0
31:27
No. No. You just heard a little bit of guitar. Do do do do do.
Speaker: 1
31:30
Done. Yeah. Yeah. Do do. Done. Do do. Done. Do do do. You can, like, that’s You can you can you can
Speaker: 0
31:37
you can you can. Yeah. Right. Sai was nine. That’s Hendrix. Like, there’s a sound that he was able to make. And there’s very few people that figure out how to do that.
Speaker: 1
31:45
I did I did not understand that. The blessing was not in having a hit record. The blessing was in having unique sound. Okay? Stevie sounds like Stevie. Smokey sounds like Smokey. You know what I’m saying? And so when you start thinking about okay. Now ai the way, you can’t rehearse that.
Speaker: 1
32:05
That’s either your gift or you you you can’t say, well, I’m gonna work on my sound. No. No. No. It’s it’s a real thing.
Speaker: 1
32:14
That’s why when we do we are, when we do American Idol, I tell them over and over again. I’m not looking for singers. I’m looking for tyler. What’s gonna make me close my eyes and remember you? I don’t wanna see you. Can I identify you by your voice? That’s a career.
Speaker: 0
32:35
Do you have conversations with people that don’t know how to receive? And do you try to like, when you’re talking to a young artist sana maybe they’re a little bit too technical ram maybe they’re a little bit too constrained, Do you have conversations with them about what do you say to them?
Speaker: 1
32:54
Yeah. I do, and I could see their frustration. You know? Ai, I can’t believe. I just it’s amazing how you went to that augmented seventh with the diminished nine ai a raised eighteenth with a 45. And I’m sitting there going, I can’t read music. And he goes, and the way you did that modulation ram a bari, da, da,
Speaker: 0
33:15
da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,
Speaker: 1
33:15
da, da, da, da vocal around, it came back down to that augmented seven over and raised ai. I kept saying, I can’t read music. Wow. So I bryden tell them, listen. Forget the notes. Can the crowd sing your song? If they can’t sing your song, dazzling them with notes is not gonna get it.
Speaker: 1
33:42
That’s the first thing. That’s for the guys who can read and write and do the full Juilliard at Berkeley and Tyler. That’s for them. Now for the kids who are just brilliant, by the way and they know their music, but they don’t know how to receive. My answer now is now that you know the technical, forget it. Oh. Now tell me what you’re feeling. Now play vatsal.
Speaker: 1
34:13
And instead of playing 15 chords, play one and as much as you can holding that one chord. And then when you get tired of putting everything in that one chord, that’s the second chord coming up. Do you follow me? Yeah. Because what happens is musicians, they wanna go, we are the. Yeah. No. No. No. Stop playing. Bang. We are the world. Bang. We are just keep holding that go.
Speaker: 1
34:43
Bang. We are the ones that make a brighter day. Let’s not give meh. Bang. There’s a bang. Yeah. Now you change. Yeah. You follow me?
Speaker: 0
34:53
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
34:53
Because if you confuse me and you dazzle the world with all of your musicianship, you just miss the melody that the whole world can sing. You missed the purity. You missed the purity. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
35:07
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Speaker: 0
35:29
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Speaker: 2
35:48
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Speaker: 2
36:11
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Speaker: 0
36:24
Did did they get it when you try to tell it to you? Or is it one of those things ai you’re gonna have to live more?
Speaker: 1
36:29
You’re gonna have to live more. Yeah. But I because remember now, when Marvin said to me he was giving me the words of wisdom when, when Norman Whitfield who wrote cloud nine and all these, you know, just amazing temptation songs. Cloud nine will be what you wanna be. You can’t you don’t need no responsibility. Everybody come in now. He’s playing he’s playing one note. Wow. Okay.
Speaker: 1
37:04
They hadn’t changed yet. He wrote the whole first verse. Okay. Ball of confusion. Still on one note. Wow. Okay.
Speaker: 1
37:13
It takes time to understand what that master just told you. Right. You follow me?
Speaker: 0
37:19
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
37:20
And then once you
Speaker: 0
37:31
restaurant and they put too much sauce on the steak.
Speaker: 1
37:33
I could have given you a better answer. No. It cannot
Speaker: 0
37:36
do that.
Speaker: 1
37:36
Just just give me some chicken. Yeah. Give me fried chicken. Give me baked chicken. Give me smothered chicken. Don’t don’t don’t get too crazy. Ai. And at the end, just give me an apple pie. Just give me a key lime pie. Just just you know what I’m saying? Give me a lemon meringue. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
37:53
Give me pumpkin pie.
Speaker: 0
37:54
You don’t have to get crazy.
Speaker: 1
37:55
Don’t get we have a deconstructed Yeah. And I go, just put it together. Put the whole thing together and give it to me. You know? That’s all
Speaker: 0
38:02
That that’s just sometimes with some music, that’s one of the things you can’t connect to. It’s ai it’s over complicated, and you hear some music and it’s ai, god, there’s so much going on. And then you hear some acoustic version of a song, you’re like, oh meh god.
Speaker: 1
38:15
That’s it.
Speaker: 0
38:16
Oh my god. Yeah. You just hear the the the speak scratching
Speaker: 1
38:20
across the strings ai, oh my god. Yeah. Mister mister Gordy, Ai I’ve known him enough now where I can say Barry, but he’s clearly mister Gordy. You know? Clearly. He taught me the the greatest line ever. Ai went to him and I Ai met him in the hallway, and he would never ever say, oh, congratulations.
Speaker: 1
38:43
You got a hit record. That’s not what he would say. He’d always say, Marvin’s got a hit. Marvin’s got a smash coming out. I go, mister Gordo, I just wanna let you know I have a number one record. That’s that’s that’s that.
Speaker: 1
38:55
If Marvin’s got one coming out, it’s gonna be a smash. And then what do you have next? What do you have next? And then I said, okay. Well, I I Ai got a hit record. He says, I said, let me go out to the car and get a tape. I want want you to hear it.
Speaker: 1
39:11
No. No. No. You got a hit record. It to me. Wow. It to me. If you need to play music, you got a nice tune. There’s your tempo.
Speaker: 1
39:25
Now it to me. Wow. Now that means that the crowd is gonna sing along every note with you. You don’t have to wait to the hook. They’ll sing the verse
Speaker: 0
39:36
with you. What is that pressure like?
Speaker: 1
39:41
I would love to tell you it was a pressure. No? No. I would tell you that there’s an old expression, that a jazz musician said to me years ago. You either understand or you don’t. You can either hear it
Speaker: 0
39:58
Right.
Speaker: 1
39:58
Or you don’t. That’s all it is. In other words
Speaker: 0
40:01
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
40:02
That if and and my line is, if you can hear me tapping on the table and all you hear is me tapping on the table, you’re not a songwriter. But if you hear me tap on the table
Speaker: 0
40:17
And you start
Speaker: 1
40:18
and you hear a song Yeah. You’re a songwriter. Class dismissed. Right. We don’t have to waste any more time.
Speaker: 0
40:28
It is a bizarre thing that creativity, which is one of the most important things in our society, cannot be taught.
Speaker: 1
40:33
No. No. Ai bizarre. I mean, you meet brand new person every day. I meet crowds of people. You meet one on one people every day. That’s difficult. That’s difficult. And to know something about them and sana them to find out more, And how does your personality work with that other person? That’s a skill.
Speaker: 1
40:56
But that’s not even a skill. That’s not something you practice. That’s something you had in you ram way down deep. It’s just the more you do it, you got better and better at being that person.
Speaker: 0
41:08
That’s exactly correct.
Speaker: 1
41:08
You follow me?
Speaker: 0
41:09
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
41:09
So if I said to you right now, how did you study that, Joe? You go, yeah. Just turn on turn on the mic.
Speaker: 0
41:15
Well, I’ll tell you, Ai got got I just got very fortunate that a job existed that didn’t exist before, which is podcasting, where you get to talk to interesting people.
Speaker: 1
41:24
There you go.
Speaker: 0
41:24
And luckily for me, I I don’t have anybody telling me who to have on. So I just go through I have, like, a line of emails every day, and I’m like, oh, Lionel Richie. Hey. Fuck yeah. I said, fuck yeah. That one.
Speaker: 1
41:38
I put down Ai put down fuck yeah, Lionel Richie.
Speaker: 0
41:41
But there’s a bunch like that. Oh, I’d like to talk to him. But there’s some guy who’s an astronomer. Oh, yeah. Bring him on. I’m ai see some of his stuff, then I’ll go watch some videos, listen, give lectures. I’m like, alright. Yeah. But to me, it’s just I’m just very fortunate that this is just how my personality is. I’m just curious about how people think.
Speaker: 1
41:57
Well, you Ai mean, again, it’s one of those things out of your natural curiosity, that’s you. Yeah. Ai follow me? Well, out of my natural ADD, ADHD, hypersensitive, whatever they use when I was growing up, I found it all serves me well. Yes. It all came out in songwriting.
Speaker: 0
42:19
It it does serve you well, which is so important for people to hear. Everybody wants to diagnose everybody and medicate them. I had, for sure, ADHD when I was a kid.
Speaker: 1
42:27
Oh, please.
Speaker: 0
42:28
I think everybody that I know that’s talented and creative has ADHD.
Speaker: 1
42:31
Whatever that means. I tell all the parents, leave them alone.
Speaker: 0
42:34
Leave them alone.
Speaker: 1
42:34
Leave them alone. No. There’s there’s two types of kids, and I keep trying to tell them. There’s academics. They’re great. You want them to meh? They can remember. They can recite. They do numbers. And then there’s the creatives. Okay. The last thing you wanna do is put a creative kid in a room full of academics.
Speaker: 1
42:55
The grades are not gonna be great. Right. And you’re gonna worry them to death. Yep. Put them in a creative school where they they’re nurtured into their yes.
Speaker: 1
43:05
They they they were gonna they’re gonna work on meh. And, yes, they’ll work on their science, but don’t make that the priority. No one to this day has ever asked to see my college degree. No one to this day has ever asked me to see my high school diploma. Do you understand me? So sai was I an a student, b student, c bryden? C student, babes.
Speaker: 1
43:26
I mean, I was right there on the borderline of disaster, but I was just happy to be there. Right. But the point was, it’s not important. Right. What did you end up being? Who did you end up discovering? How comfortable are you with yourself?
Speaker: 1
43:43
By the time you get out of elementary school school going into high school, you’re so inundated in let me tell you what’s wrong with, Lionel. Lionel has a problem with and if you listen to that crap, by the time you go into college, it’s not happening. Right. Now here’s the joke.
Speaker: 1
44:03
They told my family, my mom and dad, truthfully, Lionel is not college material. I mean, in other words, he’s he’s should be creative. You know who they forgot to tell? Me. The best thing they ever did. They didn’t tell me about that conversation, which means it was okay.
Speaker: 1
44:22
I didn’t use that as my crutch. Don’t tell somebody they have a handicap. Just leave them alone.
Speaker: 0
44:29
Just let them figure out what they actually like to do.
Speaker: 1
44:31
Not a handicap.
Speaker: 0
44:32
Right.
Speaker: 1
44:32
In other words, I I learned years ago, a race car driver, He sees 200 miles an hour as can I get this to go any faster? Magic Johnson. The basketball goal looks like the size of the inside of a of a building. That’s how big it is in his head. To me and you, it’s a little tiny thing at the other end of the court. You ai me? Yeah. Okay.
Speaker: 1
44:57
So my point is everybody has a unique brain in how they see things. Quit trying to put everybody in this one little box. If we can set up education where meh those that see it in freestyle has a freestyle moment. Mhmm. We’ll get more out of kids.
Speaker: 1
45:15
We’ll get more out of people if you just quit trying to condemn them and let them flourish in their lane, if you will.
Speaker: 0
45:23
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
45:23
And that’s the special part. Yes. Okay. Reading and ai. You got it. That’s important. And now with with AI coming and all this stuff, you don’t have to do that anymore. But I’m just saying it’s there’s some basics you have to have. But then after that, I think we’re we’re crippling our kids because we’re giving them too many gatas in a world that’s constantly changing.
Speaker: 0
45:43
Yes. Especially now.
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45:45
Especially now.
Speaker: 0
45:45
But if you if you your child is a creative. The problem is that is such a gamble. Say if your child wants to be a lawyer, you go, okay. You go to law school, meh your degree, pass the bar, get work for a firm, you’re a lawyer. There’s a path. Right. You wanna be a singer ai, oh, Christ.
Speaker: 0
46:02
My my recommendation,
Speaker: 1
46:06
get the law degree and then try to be a singer.
Speaker: 0
46:11
Have a backup plan?
Speaker: 1
46:12
Backup back I mean, other words, you know, in my case, I didn’t have a backup plan. I mean, I’ve, luckily, my freshman year, I found that thing and, I mean, how did it work? That’s why I said to you, is it divine guidance? It’s divine guidance.
Speaker: 0
46:25
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
46:26
I didn’t have a plan b, but I’m sure there would have been one if it was time for that to come into play. Yeah. If I told you how many lawyers now excuse me. How many lawyers started out as singers? They wanted to be a in a band. Ai if I told you how many people that are now on Wall Street, what do they do on the weekends? They have a band. Yep. You follow me?
Speaker: 0
46:49
Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of that.
Speaker: 1
46:50
And so as time goes on okay. So you’re not the lead singer, but you’re the lawyer in the record company, or you’re the manager, or you’re the agent. You follow what I’m saying? That 99,000,000 jobs under the word entertainment. Right. It’s just that maybe you weren’t gonna be the star Right.
Speaker: 0
47:08
Of
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47:08
the show, but you arya in the show.
Speaker: 0
47:11
That’s easy for Lionel Richie to say, though. Because you’re that lawyer that wishes he sai ai star, it’s a real problem.
Speaker: 1
47:16
I know. And trust me, I run into those guys who hate me. They oh, yeah. Lionel Richie. Oh, yeah. Right. No. I I I get it. Of course. I get it. And and and I I understand it it’s, and ai the way, I mean, what what I like about the book is everyone just to let you know, it it sounds like, you know, I I won.
Speaker: 1
47:40
I won. No. It was a struggle. I’m the shyest guy in the world. It was painful. Joe walking on that stage, Ai said it was a freshman talent show.
Speaker: 1
47:49
The curtains open. I went off with the curtains. The only reason that I was on that stage, I didn’t grow up with the guys in the Mystics. They didn’t know that Lionel Richie from Tuskegee, Alabama was the shyest kid in town. They didn’t know that. These are guys that I didn’t grow up with. Oh.
Speaker: 1
48:10
So they said, hey. Hey, man. You brought your horn? Yeah. You wanna be in a band? Now you’re talking to a kid who goes, okay.
Speaker: 1
48:17
We’re gonna do a baseball team. What was the answer?
Speaker: 0
48:21
Okay. We’ll take Ai. Which
Speaker: 1
48:25
okay. We get to let’s do a basketball game.
Speaker: 0
48:27
Okay. Alright. We’ll take Lionel. Let’s play football. Okay. We’ll take Lionel. These guys came along
Speaker: 1
48:36
and said, hey. You got your horn? Yeah. Yeah. You wanna be in our band? Yeah. Right? Right. Bingo. You mean you don’t know about me?
Speaker: 0
48:49
You don’t have to be defined by other people’s ideas of you.
Speaker: 1
48:52
That’s exactly right.
Speaker: 0
48:53
Yeah. So
Speaker: 1
48:53
they said and they said, okay. Here’s the part, and I can you play the saxophone? Yeah, man. I ai so I didn’t tell tyler I brought
Speaker: 0
48:59
the horn to school to learn how to play
Speaker: 1
49:00
it, but I could play by ear. I could play by ear. So unless we’re reading music, I sound like I know what I’m talking about. Right. So it’s became one of those things. And by the time I got in the Commodores, I didn’t tell anybody. I’m the greatest horn holder that ever lived.
Speaker: 1
49:23
Are you kidding me? Sai just keep that secret and keep on going. But what I’m saying to you, just think about this for a moment. I mean, it didn’t start out with confidence. It came out with a sooner or later, they’re gonna know I’m an imposter. And slowly but surely, who worked the hardest?
Speaker: 1
49:45
Me. Because sooner or later, they’re gonna find out You gotta catch up. That I gotta catch up. So every time we had some time off, I’m interviewing Marvin. I’m interviewing you name it. Anybody. Tell me what you did to get to where you’re going. Then I found out nobody went to school to know what they know.
Speaker: 1
50:06
Holy crap. Now we we’re on to something really serious. Uh-huh. Because then I had some moments. And so if I can’t play it, I can it.
Speaker: 1
50:15
But most of the time, I could just play it. Okay. I can play this. And as you learn, you grow quickly. You have to learn quickly now because we just signed the contract and said we’re now on Motown Records. I gotta do a fast track here.
Speaker: 1
50:28
But it happened in real time. At any moment, they could have called up and said, we’re gonna cut the group down to the most significant people in the group. Rich, you’re out. Oh, oh, shit. So I had to go make sure let me let me make sure I get this.
Speaker: 1
50:46
I’m working harder than anybody you ever seen before in your life. And so that’s how it’s a whole life of insecurity. It wasn’t secure. And then you get your first song, you go, oh, okay. Okay. That was lucky. Okay. Then the guy said, hey, kid. You got any more of those songs? Yeah.
Speaker: 1
51:05
Yeah. Yeah. I I I I got another one. You go home and look at the guy in the mirror and go, you got any more songs? Because I’m talking to myself. And that’s when you realize, okay. Out of fear, I gotta come up with another song.
Speaker: 1
51:21
So everyone keeps thinking this this confident guy walking in. I got another song for you. I gotta tell you how many times I walked on stage, Joe, and had a panic attack. Right in the middle of the show, I’m having a massive panic attack. Really? Because I’m supposed to look like I got this. Wow.
Speaker: 1
51:43
When actually,
Speaker: 0
51:46
I don’t. But eventually, you did.
Speaker: 1
51:49
Well, that’s what happened to Barbara Streisand and that’s what happened to I mean, once you realize as you start interviewing people, the people who are scared to death on stage and then they ai as time went on, they they got used to it. But I realized the thing that scares you to death is the thing you have to keep going forward on. That’s my dad’s line again.
Speaker: 1
52:13
What’s the what’s the what’s the similarity between a hero and a coward? One step forward
Speaker: 0
52:19
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:20
And one step back. No matter how much it scares me, step forward.
Speaker: 0
52:26
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:27
And so each ai, I was not gonna say I’m not going on stage. I go on stage, and I’m sana sweat for two hours and try to fake my ass off. And now it’s ai second nature now, but at the time, give me a break.
Speaker: 0
52:43
That’s so important for young people to hear that a guy like you would panic.
Speaker: 1
52:47
Oh, are you kidding me? Oh my god, man. Have you ever met the president before in life? No. Have you ever been on stage in front of a 100,000 people? No. Have you ever been in a club with four people in the room looking at you going, what you gonna do? No. I mean, you I mean, listen.
Speaker: 1
53:05
I mean, it’s that’s why when I see these kids on American Idol, I don’t know how they do that. I came in with five other guys going, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right? They’re singing acapella Yeah. To me and Carey and Luke are you excuse me. And 20,000,000 people watching and a 200,000,000, live impressions.
Speaker: 1
53:30
Get the freak out of here. Sai I’m just saying for me to be this authority, if you will, I can relate to every one of their heartbeats on that stage. Ai know what they’re fearing. That’s why when I get around arya, you don’t try to blow them away with your importance. First of all, do you need a hug first? What do you need?
Speaker: 1
53:55
Let me talk to you for a minute. Because you let me talk you down for because you’re you’re expecting too much out of us. You follow me? Yes. Because we’re all we’re all students of scared to death.
Speaker: 0
54:09
Yeah. If you’re not, you’re you’re in the wrong business. That’s exactly.
Speaker: 1
54:12
And by the way, the the book is not about how I won. It’s how I got not to the speak, how I survived the valleys. The valleys of insecurity is it, man. How do you get up and go, you’re gonna host the American Music Awards. Dick wants you to do that. Oh, okay.
Speaker: 0
54:35
Was that a big scary one for you? Because you brought that up
Speaker: 1
54:37
a couple times. That one bothered you a lot? Everything scared me. Yeah. I Ai know you’re not expecting this interview, but I’m pleased. Everything scared me. We have to understand. Mhmm. Lionel, we’re going to do a a a a meh for a movie. It’s called, In This Love. I’m only doing Kenny’s album.
Speaker: 1
55:05
I’m only doing the Commodore’s album, but because it’s Franco Zeffirelli and John Peters and everybody, I’m thinking, okay. I I can do an instrumental. Right? Then halfway through the thing, they said, well, we’re gonna shoot a scene where we just need the lady to sing a first verse to the person in the in the scene.
Speaker: 1
55:24
Can you write a first verse? Yeah. Yeah. My love, there’s only you in my life. The only thing that’s right.
Speaker: 1
55:30
My first love, you’re a breath that I take every step I make. Thank you. Okay. Got it. Is that it? Yeah. Right. No.
Speaker: 1
55:38
Lionel, we’ve decided now to make this a duet and we’re gonna get Diana Ross to sing, the the ladies part. Who do you recommend to sing? The ai part. Are you out of your mind? It’s me. What are you talking about? You recommend I I I’m not gonna recommend somebody else.
Speaker: 0
55:59
Beating around the bush?
Speaker: 1
56:00
I think they were. I think they I think they I think they were backing me up because I told them I don’t have time. Right. So I they they baited me by saying, you know, it’s gonna be meh. But by the time I got there, I’m thinking, okay. Now here’s the problem. Diane is in New York. I’m in LA. I’m doing two albums, Commodores and Kenny Rogers. I’m not going to New York, and she can’t come to LA.
Speaker: 1
56:27
Where are we gonna meet? Tahoe. Tahoe? We go to Tahoe, but what even Tahoe? Reno. She’s playing Reno.
Speaker: 1
56:37
So at the end of my Commodore night, ten to six, Kenny Rogers. Six to ten, Lionel Richie. And then ten to four in the morning, I gotta get on a plane, fly to Tahoe, and put Diana Ross on endless love. Wow. Now what you don’t know when you’re that part of your life that you could die from having creativity to my grid.
Speaker: 1
57:06
It was I mean, it was so exciting, but at the same time, I never written a duet ever. So my first duet in life was with Diana Ross. Do you think I was nervous? Do you think I was nervous?
Speaker: 0
57:20
Do you
Speaker: 1
57:20
think I was nervous? Ai mean, I just kept praying, god, for God’s sai, don’t let me pass out in front of mister Ross.
Speaker: 0
57:30
Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
57:31
So what I’m just saying to you, the the title of the book could be scared to death. I got titles, man. You know? Yeah. Because it’s it’s not it’s it’s the first time of everything. I’ve never done this before. And so just imagine being put into a situation throughout my entire career Wow.
Speaker: 1
57:54
Where, you know, step forward, Lionel. Step forward. Step forward. Step forward. Step forward. Can you all can you all hear my heart beating? No. Okay. Good. Good. Step forward.
Speaker: 1
58:05
Step forward. That’s what it’s been. Wow.
Speaker: 0
58:10
Like I said, that’s so important for young people to hear ai I think they see someone with such a career and so much success. They go, well, that ai just probably crazy confident and Yeah. Always has been and just talented, kissed by God. No. No. No.
Speaker: 0
58:22
I I I tell people every day
Speaker: 1
58:25
what this book did for meh, I discovered Lionel Richie. Ai the Italian race car driver.
Speaker: 0
58:33
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
58:34
I never looked behind me. I never paid attention. And then all of a bryden, this book made me turn around and look behind me.
Speaker: 0
58:43
It’s interesting because if you wanna get things done in life, you kinda have to be the Italian race car driver. But if you wanna get this thing done in life, write a book about your life Yeah. That requires that introspective thinking Yeah. And that recollection and that recognition of, like, oh meh god. Like, what did I go through?
Speaker: 1
59:00
I mean, what what was that? I mean, you think about it. You know, let’s I mean, you think, yes. I got the hit record at the same time my mother was dying. Now those two don’t go together. Right. You follow me?
Speaker: 0
59:14
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
59:15
I’m in I’m in the world tour of my life. It’s the dancing on the ceiling tour. It’s I’m going to establish me around the world. It’s the all night long dancing on the ceiling tour. My father’s dying. Oh, god. You follow what I’m saying? I mean, so it’s okay. So now how’s dad doing?
Speaker: 1
59:39
Oh, well, he’s he’s he’s doing okay. How’s mom doing? Okay. Mom. Meh. Okay. Should I come home? And Ai well, she’s okay.
Speaker: 1
59:47
She’s sai but, I mean, she’s she’s okay, but I can cancel the tour and come home. Oh, okay. But, I mean but but how’s she doing? Well, my sister’s there. She mom’s doing fine. She’s doing great. But you don’t realize she’s in the decline, but you keep trying to balance this. What do I do?
Speaker: 1
01:00:06
Yeah. You know? And and so it’s it’s all happening while it’s happening. And so it’s you know, how do you kind of compartmentalize the show, the writing, and real life family? You know? Is it the is it the reunion?
Speaker: 1
01:00:29
We’re having the reunion. Okay. You know? It’s the class reunion. It’s the family reunion. It’s have you ever been to the family reunion? No. Didn’t make the family reunion.
Speaker: 1
01:00:40
Why? Because when you’re in the Commodores, when you really have your shows, it’s Christmas, New Year’s, all the holidays, all summer. So if you happen to have any kind of reunion during those times, you’re not gonna make it. So it’s the sacrifices. How many barn ai did I make during college? None. Pep rallies? No. Basketball tournaments? None. But I’m the Commodores. We’re the Commodores. You follow me? Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:01:09
So I always tell people what comes with success are the sacrifices. And even after you make the sacrifices, it’s not guaranteed that you’re gonna win.
Speaker: 0
01:01:22
And at your highest of highs, like the all night long days, you’re dealing with your father dying. Exactly. So people would just see all they’re seeing is you and thousands of people screaming and cheering when you’re on stage all over the world, sold out shows Yeah. But you’re dealing with your father dying.
Speaker: 1
01:01:39
Yeah. You’re you’re you’re dealing with moments. You’re trying to pretend like you’re not seeing it. You know, there’s a moment when you go home and your parents age right in front of you. You never noticed it before. He wasn’t dying yet, but you could see the decline until dancing on the ceiling. You see a little bit more of the decline. You follow what I’m saying?
Speaker: 1
01:02:06
And then finally, you realize, holy shit. This is not gonna be good at all. But but you keep pretending like it’s not happening, if you know what I mean. You kinda put that in that little compartment. He’s getting older, but he’s he’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. The answer is, oh, he’s not.
Speaker: 1
01:02:25
And then from that, do you think that everything else in your life is okay? Is the marriage okay? No. It’s not okay. Nothing’s okay. Why?
Speaker: 1
01:02:33
Because all priorities are going towards this new thing you’ve never experienced before called freaking hit record. Going saloni, I’m leaving the Commodores. I’m leaving the Commodores. These are the only five guys I’ve ever trusted in my life. So everyone keeps thinking, yeah. You went solo. No. No. No, guys.
Speaker: 1
01:02:58
What was that word that comes with that? Scared. Fear. Yeah. So everyone keeps thinking, and then I decided to go solo. Oh, shit. Who who are you talking to?
Speaker: 0
01:03:14
I’m leaving the Commodores too. It’s crazy. Come on, man. Crazy. The Commodores is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and for you to say, I’m gonna do it on my own.
Speaker: 1
01:03:26
No. No. That’s not the way it was.
Speaker: 0
01:03:29
Is that your turn again? I’m not Ai not leaving you guys. What are you talking about? Leaving the covers is crazy.
Speaker: 1
01:03:37
I mean, first, you almost can’t. You you can’t do it, but what was happening behind the scenes? That’s the story. What was happening behind the scenes was, and I understood. I understood. But ai, I didn’t sana accept it. It’s the guys. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker: 1
01:03:54
The article read, and then Lionel Richie sat down to the piano and started playing his classic hits. Review. What’s a guy like the Commodore what’s sai guy like Lionel Richie doing in a funk band like the Commodores? Joe, try to go back to rehearsal after that review. Oh, god. You got it? Yeah. Or now we’ve done Endless Love. Now we’ve done Lady with Kenny Rogers. Tell us, Lionel, how you started the group. Oh, no.
Speaker: 1
01:04:29
I I didn’t start the group.
Speaker: 0
01:04:31
Oh, no.
Speaker: 1
01:04:31
And now you walk into a group interview, and they knock Clyde over and they knock, whack over the the trumpet player, Tommy. Lionel, tell us about the band. Oh, no. So what I tried to do was come later. Mhmm. But by coming later meh, you think you’re big enough now where you don’t have to be in the group. Well, if I don’t Right.
Speaker: 1
01:04:51
If I’m on time, they’ll disrespect you. Right. I got the feeling. I got their angst. Yeah. You follow me?
Speaker: 1
01:05:00
And this
Speaker: 0
01:05:01
is a different time in the world. See, today, you could elevate those folks through social media and and bring them up with you.
Speaker: 1
01:05:06
Of course. Of course. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:05:08
That’s the beauty of today.
Speaker: 1
01:05:10
Of course.
Speaker: 0
01:05:10
If you’re working with talented people and they’re not getting shine, you go, hey, this is this ai great. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody go see him. Yeah. Check it out.
Speaker: 1
01:05:17
And then all
Speaker: 0
01:05:17
of a sudden, boom. And now they get the love and the recognition. But back then, everybody was on their own. It was a dog eat dog world, and it was controlled by gangsters.
Speaker: 1
01:05:26
I ai my case. Gangsters. The the answer was I realized one very important thing. Throw the word degree out of your vocabulary. The music business. A degree, a degree in music, a degree in business, a degree in what? No. No, man. This was street degree. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:05:49
Street psychology. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:05:50
What what did the guy tell me? He said, Ai tell you the the the best course I ever took in life. And this is a true story. He said, you know, you schoolboys are funny, man. He says, you all learn how to account for the money. He says, we count the money. And I said, okay. So what does that mean? He says, somebody’s gotta teach you how to steal. Oh god.
Speaker: 1
01:06:14
No no no no best lesson I ever took in my whole life because once you learn how to steal the money You know how to stop you know how to stop people stealing.
Speaker: 0
01:06:25
Yeah. There’s so many stories of bad deals. I mean, I was reading an excerpt from this book. I don’t know if it’s true. It’s a guy that thinks that Hendrix was killed rather than he ai. And, he thinks that what was going on was that Hendrix was leaving his management. Uh-huh.
Speaker: 0
01:06:42
And his management had him locked up in some crazy contract. They were stealing money from him, and and they thought that he’d be more valuable dead since they owned the records.
Speaker: 1
01:06:51
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:06:54
And that’s this is this is ai you coming from the seventies, in the professional business from the seventies on dealing with that was the business back then. Yeah. I mean Yeah. Look at Phil Spector. The ai in jail now for shooting a woman in the mouth of his house. These were Yeah. Gangsters.
Speaker: 1
01:07:14
Yeah. I mean, the the the answer is there is a one moment when I looked into my mom and dad’s face, and I said, hey. They they just sold $363,000 from me. And my mother said, you leave those people alone and come home. And I go, no. No. No. No. Mom. Mom. Mom.
Speaker: 1
01:07:42
It only cost me $362,000 to learn that lesson. It’s never gonna happen again. And I was so excited about it. She looked at me and said, my son’s crazy.
Speaker: 0
01:07:54
That is a crazy response.
Speaker: 1
01:07:55
But but the answer is very logical. You can lose millions.
Speaker: 0
01:07:58
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:07:58
You can lose billions. Sure. Okay? So if it only took me 362,000, I got off light, man. Yeah. You understand me? For sure. But it’s and not only that, can you keep your can you keep your life? I mean, just think about it. You know? When you go to the box office, everybody had a gun. Now here’s the beautiful part about it because I knew that later. Nobody’s gonna shoot anybody.
Speaker: 1
01:08:23
It’s just if you how naive were you? If you were naive and a little schoolboy, you could get shot and killed. But as you started learning who the gangsters are, that was just an intimidating factor. But you had to be once you knew them Yeah. Then they go, come on, Ai. Just cover us a little bit. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:08:43
But It’s even more disconcerting. They become normal. They become normal. That’s what gets weird. That’s what gets weird. When you’re around normalized gangstership
Speaker: 1
01:08:50
That’s exactly right. And then you start and then your mother starts meeting them on their way to Miami. They would drive, and they stop by Tuskegee to see the schoolboys. And here’s a guy dead of homecoming season in a full head to toe mink hat, mink coat, pink Eldorado Take Eldorado.
Speaker: 1
01:09:13
Driving across the campus, and you go to your instructors. Yeah. This is my, my friend, you know, Tyler Paul. Sai ai all kind of got names for him. I don’t know. We had a oh ai god. We had we had names. You can’t you can’t make this up. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:09:31
You know, and how do you introduce them to the president of the university? The answer is you don’t.
Speaker: 0
01:09:36
Right? You don’t do it. You don’t. You don’t. God. What was it like navigating that world?
Speaker: 1
01:09:44
It was, Joe, one of the most exciting things ever. Why? I never experienced anything like this before. Right. I mean, I I I mean, listen.
Speaker: 0
01:09:52
Who does?
Speaker: 1
01:09:53
Ai. You mean wait. Wait. See. See. We played gangster. They weren’t playing gangster. Right. You follow me? Right. So we are with the gangsters.
Speaker: 0
01:10:06
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:10:07
And it just became so another world where what the ai say in our world, Lionel, it’s not how long you ai. It’s how well you live ai you’re living. Now that’s a profound statement from him. That’s I don’t sana know anything about that, but you have to listen. Right? Yeah. They don’t plan on living a long life, but they plan on living well while they’re here. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:10:37
So it’s nothing to say when you go back to New York for the next summer. Whatever happened to so and so? Oh, yeah. He got shot in December. Normal.
Speaker: 1
01:10:45
Normalized. That’s that’s normal. Yeah. He’s leaving town. Right. Or they are leaving town. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:10:50
And so as time went on, it became a short term view of a very long term problem that has always been normalized because a part of legal is illegal or desirables and undesirables. That’s just a part of the city. Right. And here’s what you ai out the most important thing. The desirables know the undesirables. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:11:25
You go backstage and you go, wait. You two know each other? What? Right. You know? But that’s what happens in this world of cities, in this world of culture.
Speaker: 1
01:11:35
You know, everybody has that what’s that line I used to use all the time? Who are you really? Right. Right. And until it it is revealed later Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:11:45
In the music business, we see all. Backstage is all. Front row is all. Right. You follow me? Right.
Speaker: 1
01:11:54
So you just have to understand it’s sai it’s probably one of the greatest education in the world because everybody backstage is who they are Right. Not who they say they
Speaker: 0
01:12:04
are. Right. Right. That’s gotta be bizarre seeing, like, captains of industry mingling with gangsters. Heads of ai Hi, Bill.
Speaker: 1
01:12:14
Hi, Bill. Hi, John. Hi, David. And by the way, it’s okay. But remember now, we’re a street business. Right. We’re a street business. And is it
Speaker: 0
01:12:24
a street business because gangsters always controlled a certain percentage of what’s going on the streets and cities? Or is it a street business because you don’t really need an education to do it, you do it on instinct and everyone needs it because it’s really like what you’re what you produce is like a drug.
Speaker: 0
01:12:44
You know, I can listen to one of your old songs and it’s it just puts me in a state of mind like, Bingo. Man, it does something to you physically. So they’re, you know, they’re in the drug business too.
Speaker: 1
01:12:55
But bingo.
Speaker: 0
01:12:56
They’re in
Speaker: 1
01:12:56
I mean they’re
Speaker: 0
01:12:57
in the cash business. They’re in a live entertainment and nightclub business.
Speaker: 1
01:13:00
Let’s talk Vegas. Right. Founded. But it was a Harvard ram, the founder of of of Vegas? No. Okay? So what I’m saying to you, the problem that happened with all of these businesses we now have, they legitimized it. They messed the whole thing up. Right. Did the movie business start out with wonderful PhD guys from
Speaker: 0
01:13:25
No. No.
Speaker: 1
01:13:26
The it started from the street. Yeah. You follow me?
Speaker: 0
01:13:30
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:13:30
And so what we are trying to do now is we’ve tried to legitimize all of this stuff. Homogenous. Homog ai. We We wanna do the whole thing. The answer is no. No, man. We messed the whole thing up. Yeah. Because what it was is the fascination of, hey, Lionel.
Speaker: 1
01:13:44
Can I put my name on your album? Right. Why? I gotta move some stuff around. But the answer is Ai couldn’t do it because I don’t wanna get in trouble from the you know, you’re kinda trying to dodge these guys, but the point is it’s real.
Speaker: 1
01:13:57
So I can’t what I won’t I won’t put a business like that together. What I’ll do is start the business. Hey. What a great way to do that. But the only thing wrong with that is, as time goes on, someone asks a very difficult question. I like to see the books. That’s a tough one. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:14:18
Go deal with that one. Yeah. So you follow where we’re coming from. So I for us, for me, as as they used to call us in Harlem, the schoolboys, you know, for the schoolboys, this was fantasy land. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:14:32
Are you kidding me? I mean, we didn’t think we’re gonna die. This was like the best course we ever took in the world from the originals. Right. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:14:40
This is not some hearsay, and they adopted us as the schoolboys.
Speaker: 0
01:14:45
That’s so wild. That must have been just an insane experience as a young man going to the
Speaker: 1
01:14:52
Oh, god. You have no idea. Real. You have Joe, you have no
Speaker: 0
01:14:57
I can’t even imagine.
Speaker: 1
01:14:58
Idea. And then, you know, I mean, the days of the days of smalls paradise. I mean, this is the club of clubs in Arya. The days of Studio fifty four, Michael Jackson’s 20 birthday. Give me a break. I mean and it back then, what I loved about private clubs was the reason it was private is because if you can’t keep a secret, if you weren’t in the building, you can’t find out what’s happening in the building.
Speaker: 1
01:15:36
Now everybody’s got a phone. Right. And everybody can’t wait to take a picture or ram on somebody. So you can’t have a private club in the park because everybody’s gonna tell what they saw inside.
Speaker: 0
01:15:48
Exactly.
Speaker: 1
01:15:49
But back then, once they let you in those doors Yeah. First of all, it was a privilege that they thought that much about you to to let you in. And then once you got in, it was you were in the you were in the club, man. Wow.
Speaker: 0
01:16:06
God, it must have been so ai. And to be surrounded by so many extraordinary people at that ai, What was it like watching Michael Jackson explode? Because I you know, I talk about him and I talk about Elvis a lot Yeah. And that if you look at it as a study of fame, that there’s a certain level of fame that you achieved that’s completely and wholly unmanageable. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:16:32
And it’s like the Elvis level. Yeah. And I think he was like the first guy to really reach that level. Yep. And then it was Michael Jackson who went to a completely different place.
Speaker: 0
01:16:39
Michael Jackson, he’s even surpassed
Speaker: 1
01:16:41
that Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:16:41
Which seems more insane.
Speaker: 1
01:16:42
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:16:43
And there is that photograph.
Speaker: 1
01:16:44
That’s sai that’s a Studio 54 on Michael’s 20 birthday. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And the mustache was thicker than ever, man. I just
Speaker: 0
01:16:57
it dripped out. Did y’all know I had
Speaker: 1
01:16:59
the little hookup on the side? Come on, man.
Speaker: 0
01:17:03
You know, because he he never had a a normal moment. No. He was famous when he was a little boy. I remember when when a b what was was what show did ABC would would they broadcast? That was a was
Speaker: 1
01:17:17
it Ed Sullivan? Was that oh, you then they first when they first hit Yes. It was either Ed Sullivan or Dick Clark. I think it was Ed Sullivan when they blew up blew up.
Speaker: 0
01:17:25
But I remember him singing ABCs when he was just a boy. And I was like, my god. He is so talented. Like like exploding in saloni. Exploding in charisma, like I’d never seen before. You’d seen so many artists and so many people that were maybe maybe it was because of the youth too.
Speaker: 0
01:17:48
It’s like he’s so free. He was so free. Yeah. But the so so much charisma and talent. It was just insane. Like, look at this.
Speaker: 0
01:17:59
Give me some of this.
Speaker: 1
01:18:00
I ai, I mean, come on. Listen.
Speaker: 0
01:18:02
You can’t play any of it. No. No.
Speaker: 1
01:18:04
But but but watch him jump out front if he does. If when you see the scene where he comes out front oh, this guy didn’t know the clip. But if he ever spins around one time and you’ll see something that looks so simple to do, he got that from Jackie Wilson. Ai said, where did you get that from? He said, Lionel, that’s Jackie Wilson.
Speaker: 1
01:18:28
That that’s but if you see him spin and come back dead center now this is when he was just getting his wings to flap. Wow. This is this is old
Speaker: 0
01:18:39
is he here?
Speaker: 1
01:18:39
He’s gotta be 12. Wow. 12, 11, 12. And and, of course, at this time, it was just ridiculous because he knew what he was doing. He knew exactly. Ai mean, this is the oldest soul you’ve ever met in your life.
Speaker: 0
01:18:57
Really?
Speaker: 1
01:18:58
I I couldn’t tell you. And then they walk off stage and turn into 12 year olds. This kid turned up to itching powder in your Afro or see how you stand out front and sai how he points to ai. Now shake shah your sai. I know what he’s singing right now. Wow. Right? Okay Yeah be Crazy. He was crazy. Good.
Speaker: 1
01:19:34
And if you see him with that I mean, I’ll be honest with you. I mean, we forgot sometimes that that this is gonna happen. Because when you’re backstage or in the hotel ram, sai a kid
Speaker: 0
01:19:50
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:19:51
As a kid. Then as time went on, things happened where you could see it getting weird. For example, I’d go down the hall and I’d say, where’s Mike? And they said he’s in the room. Okay. And meanwhile, what became normal was watch out, be careful, the girls are coming. Watch out, be careful, stay in the room, the girls are coming. Now if you understand the Commodores, Jermaine was a bass player.
Speaker: 1
01:20:21
He hooked up with the bass player of the Commodores, Ronald. The drummer, Clyde. Follow me? The lead singer, Me. So Michael and I bonded at twelve, thirteen because of the lead singer. So I went down to check him out and Ai say, where’s Michael? He’s in the room.
Speaker: 1
01:20:38
I go in the room. Hey, Mike. Where are you? Okay. Where is he? He’s hiding in the bathroom. The girls are out there. I said, girls? Wait a minute.
Speaker: 1
01:20:47
There’s no girls out there. They sealed off the floor. Come go with me. Now they got mad at me because I walk out in the hall and go, come go with me. I said, you seen the girls out there?
Speaker: 1
01:20:56
Oh, I thought they would I thought they were in the whole Ai. Okay. So in other words, watch out. Be careful. But they’re protecting the golden goose, ladies and gentlemen. No. Do you follow me? Yeah. But the golden goose needs play period time. He needs ai.
Speaker: 0
01:21:11
Right. He’s still a kid. He’s a kid. And so You’re freaking him out.
Speaker: 1
01:21:15
Jermaine, Tito, these they’ve listen. They go on dates, guys. They hang. They you know? Michael can’t hang downstairs. Wow. Right? And so as time went on, you could see the slow shutdown of trying to protect an incredibly talented person, but at the same time, he got special treatment.
Speaker: 1
01:21:36
And so what I tried to do every chance I could was, hey, man. Come and get you in the car. Come over here. Let’s get it together. You know?
Speaker: 1
01:21:44
Right. Hang. Hang. Hang. Yeah. You know?
Speaker: 1
01:21:47
And and so, you know, we went through that period of time where we don’t stay together long because once we the Commodores took off, we didn’t have that everyday time anymore. Right. You follow me? But every once in a while, we meh together and and, you know, there’s a little rumor that’s out right now that I I I wanna clean up right quick.
Speaker: 1
01:22:05
They said in Lionel’s book, Lionel called my, Michael smelly. Didn’t like the way he smelled. I said, no. That’s not what it so let me clean this up. Okay?
Speaker: 0
01:22:16
Okay.
Speaker: 1
01:22:16
So imagine sending your clothes out anywhere and you get half of your clothes back. The other half of your clothes are souvenirs. You follow me? So what he would do is if he had a pair of jeans, right, he’d wear the jeans until they ai to run away from ram.
Speaker: 0
01:22:35
Do you understand? Stealing his clothes. Stealing his clothes. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:22:38
Oh my god. Or or or he’d he’d he’d walk in the house some days, and I’m looking down at his feet, and I go, Michael, your shoes are flopping on your feet. The the the two ai too large for you. I know Lionel. The guy we were in some place, he gave me a pair of shoes, and I told him thank you very much.
Speaker: 1
01:22:59
I said, but, Michael, you could have gotten the shoes in the right size. I know, but I didn’t wanna embarrass him. So he’s walking around with two sizes too large. You understand me? So he’ll come by the house.
Speaker: 1
01:23:10
We wore the same ai, right, in certain by the time he became that teenager. So I sai, go in the closet, get a pair of jeans. So literally, he changed clothes. And ai the way, he left the clothes on the floor in the room and walked away from him. In other words, he he’d wear them until he got into the pair. And so we call him Quincy called him. Okay. Here comes Smelly.
Speaker: 1
01:23:33
And so his nickname was for in for the ai, was Smelly. You follow me? So when I said it in the book Right. Everybody go, oh my god. Lytle called Michael Jackson Smelly. And I go, no. That’s not it. That’s that’s his name.
Speaker: 1
01:23:50
That was his
Speaker: 0
01:23:52
I revealed that. That’s hilarious. But it’s so hilarious that people are just stealing his clothes.
Speaker: 1
01:23:58
Oh, man. Please. I mean The poor guy. The kid when he was 12, 13, 14, sana underwear out, it doesn’t come back. T shirt out, no T shirt back. Socks out, no socks back. So it’s what he basically had was a new pair of underwear. Every time he put a pair of underwear on, it was new. Wow.
Speaker: 1
01:24:17
Yeah. Because it’s just not gonna happen. It’s coming back.
Speaker: 0
01:24:19
Sai ai wanna watch arya Michael Jackson’s underwears out there on eBay or something.
Speaker: 1
01:24:23
Can I tell you? If the if the I stole it in the seventies. K. That’s an admission Ai stole it. That’s number one. But ai the way, very valuable. Meh valuable. Probably crazy value. You know what? I would love to put that out there and say no prosecution needed.
Speaker: 0
01:24:39
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:24:39
It was not gonna happen, but could you reveal yourself? So because that’s gotta be the I would have that ram right away.
Speaker: 0
01:24:45
It’s just so bananas that that was just ubiquitous. They would just sai us close. But it just makes sense. Totally. What I what I was saying is about the Elvis thing, applies to him plus, is that there there’s no road map for that. There’s no road map for navigating that level of fame, you know.
Speaker: 0
01:25:02
And even you as as an adult, as a grown meh, you know, your when your peak of fame had to have been so surreal that it’s it’s hard to not lose who you are. Most people lose who they are. Right. If you say, oh, she went crazy, bitch, you would go crazy too.
Speaker: 1
01:25:24
Goddamn right. You don’t
Speaker: 0
01:25:24
know what the fuck you’re talking about. Damn right. You never been a superstar in front of the whole world or judging everything you do. No.
Speaker: 1
01:25:31
And then and then that thing came along called the phone. At least at least if they did see you
Speaker: 0
01:25:37
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
01:25:37
They caught you in that place. Yeah. But they only saw you. But now they’re looking at you everywhere. Right. So the press is everybody. Just imagine that.
Speaker: 0
01:25:50
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:25:50
Okay. So but, I mean, in my case, I got used to it. I I gotta admit. I mean, of course, you think something happened. Or did I do
Speaker: 0
01:26:00
it now?
Speaker: 1
01:26:00
Did I did I Oh,
Speaker: 0
01:26:01
no worries. It probably was probably messing with it before you.
Speaker: 1
01:26:04
I I live
Speaker: 0
01:26:05
pop out all the time.
Speaker: 1
01:26:05
I live with that sound all the time. No. But what happens with me was we went from you could actually be you could actually sneak. I like that word. Speak. Around. Sneak means you could look out. Do you see anybody you know? If you don’t see anybody you know, you can sneak. And then something happens one day.
Speaker: 1
01:26:27
You walk in a ram. You you came into the back door. You sit at a table in the back door. The band starts playing three times
Speaker: 0
01:26:38
a lady. Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:26:40
And then everybody turns around and says, hi, Lionel.
Speaker: 0
01:26:43
Oh, no. Okay. Okay. Alright.
Speaker: 1
01:26:47
And you thought you were just sneaking your ass off. You ain’t sneaking nothing. You’re trying to sneak around and
Speaker: 0
01:26:51
eat some dinner.
Speaker: 1
01:26:52
It ain’t not happening. Nope. And then the next thing that happens, which is you wanna have a nice anniversary dinner. Right? The anniversary dinner is the best dinner ever. Romantic place. Mhmm. And three ladies walk over tables, a ai line, a lot more. Tell you we love you, and you wanna tell you about great. That’s great.
Speaker: 1
01:27:13
And then your wife says, who are those ladies? I don’t know. I’ve never met them before. I know, but they seem so familiar. What? Uh-oh. Okay. Wait.
Speaker: 1
01:27:27
This is not good because now the romantic session just turned into but now I’ve never experienced this before. Ai now. This is new. This is ai. I I know now not to go to the romantic place.
Speaker: 1
01:27:38
You go over some place where you can have a have a great ai, but the point was back then, this is first time happening. Right. And you’re trying to be like all your other friends. You take your wife out or you take your girlfriend out or you go to dinner and you have no. No. No, man. It becomes now everybody’s watching you, and they can’t wait to come over and say, can I have an autograph? Right.
Speaker: 1
01:27:58
And now they come up and say, can we have a picture? Right. And so it becomes this is very weird. This is very weird. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:28:07
You have
Speaker: 0
01:28:07
to plan where you go. Plan where you go.
Speaker: 1
01:28:09
And more importantly, be fully dressed before you leave. Don’t so do something stupid. Right? Right. I mean, it I don’t I don’t want I’m I love it. I’m I’m No.
Speaker: 0
01:28:21
It’s not a complaint.
Speaker: 1
01:28:22
It’s just Ai got I’ve
Speaker: 0
01:28:23
got a unique aspect of your life.
Speaker: 1
01:28:25
I’ve got a famous person. I tell people all the time, and this is the truth. I hope you like people. I hope you like people because if you don’t, you’re not gonna like fame. Right. Okay? They keep thinking they’re gonna be famous and rich and no. No. No.
Speaker: 1
01:28:42
Do you like people? Right. Because they’re gonna be in your face and in your business with an opinion all the time. Yeah. Now you wanna go to recital with your kid, and it’s your kid’s piano recital. I hope you like being famous.
Speaker: 1
01:28:59
Because while your kid is playing the recital, the parents are gonna be asking you for your autograph. Not the kids. The parents. Yeah. I made the mistake and decided I’ll go to SeaWorld with my kid, and I’ll go by myself on the parents’ bus.
Speaker: 1
01:29:15
You know who protected me on the whole trip? The kids. My kid. Miles said, okay. We gotta protect my dad because the parents are coming.
Speaker: 1
01:29:25
And everybody at SeaWorld showed up, and there’s Lionel Richie at SeaWorld with his kid. So I had four little kids surround me and go I said, guys, I’m with them. We’re with the school, but, I mean, it becomes holy ai. What the hell’s going on?
Speaker: 0
01:29:41
It’s annoying for them too.
Speaker: 1
01:29:43
Of course, it is. Yeah. But you can’t have that moment
Speaker: 0
01:29:47
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:29:47
With your kids. And and it’s and it’s a big it’s a big deal because at that time, ABC, NBC, CBS, and a new station just came out called CNN. Other than that, to see you, to have a ai Right. Was like Different. Come on, man.
Speaker: 0
01:30:07
Yeah. No one I I I couldn’t imagine what it was like being famous when there’s only four channels in the radio.
Speaker: 1
01:30:15
The Olympics, 2.5, 2,600,000,000 people watching live live. Wow. So I went from Lionel Richie to Lionel Richie all night long. The end of my name became all night long. Lionel Richie all night long. Hey, Les.
Speaker: 0
01:30:38
Lionel Richie all night long.
Speaker: 1
01:30:40
Every country in the world, I became Lionel Richie all night long.
Speaker: 0
01:30:45
Wow. What was that like performing There it is. In front of that many humans? What was that feeling like? Was it different than a regular performance?
Speaker: 1
01:30:56
Joe, it it it felt like a regular performance, but I had never in my life had the world watching. So I rehearsed it. We did it, not realizing it was the world, literally the world watching. And it go back and look at that little podium. What was supposed to happen at the beginning of this was Ronald Reagan was supposed to come out and greet had his speech.
Speaker: 1
01:31:30
I know I speak on behalf of everyone in America and the entire world, how proud we are of these fine athletes. That was his speech. Right? Because that night, there were death threats. They had you know, they decided it’s too risky to have him on the field.
Speaker: 1
01:31:47
Lionel, would you give the speech on behalf of all of America and the entire world? Stop me where I am. Oh my god. So before I started singing, I had to make my speech. I know how proud we are here in America and around the world of these fine athletes.
Speaker: 1
01:32:13
And now we’re gonna sing all night long, but I had to give this ai. Wow. And I told him, I sai, that was the that was the proud moment after I came off stage. Before I went on stage was, well, mister Reagan’s worried about his ai. What what about mine? What’s gonna happen here? You know?
Speaker: 1
01:32:33
But it was so overwhelmingly you’re talking about energy and adrenaline, and you can’t beat 2,600,000,000 people live. And it you think Super Bowl was something special? I’ll tell you what this was. Nobody there was not another channel covering anything. The whole world was watching this.
Speaker: 0
01:33:00
That’s hard for people to imagine in this day of contact. Exactly right. That that will never happen again. Mm-mm. Unless it’s the aliens are landing Monday at 8AM.
Speaker: 1
01:33:09
Exactly correct.
Speaker: 0
01:33:10
That’s the one where the aliens landed. Oh, that fake fake
Speaker: 1
01:33:13
You’re right. Alright. And by the way, that’s what hap that was the opening. But what you don’t see there, that’s that was the o that’s very good, man. I hadn’t seen this clip. What was happening with that was just before it started, they sealed off the airspace. And I I remember looking out, there were four helicopters facing out, and the problem was you couldn’t hear them, Joe.
Speaker: 1
01:33:43
And I kept thinking, I’m looking at helicopters, and they said I said, what’s that right there? And they said, they sealed off the airspace. Woah. Nothing’s coming in to this place. +1, 234. Wait.
Speaker: 0
01:33:57
You couldn’t hear the helicopters that were holding up the flying saucer?
Speaker: 1
01:34:00
I couldn’t hear a thing. How’s that possible? I don’t know. That’s what’s scary. That’s what I’m saying to military
Speaker: 0
01:34:08
air with 51
Speaker: 1
01:34:09
ship You understand what I’m saying? And the answer to me was okay. Ai mean the alien guy You you understand me at this point?
Speaker: 0
01:34:19
This is 1984.
Speaker: 1
01:34:20
Yeah. And Howard k Smith. Remember the sports announcer, I think. Was it was it Howard k Smith? He was Howard Cosell. No. Howard he was with Howard k Smith. How no. He was with, Wide World of Sports.
Speaker: 0
01:34:32
Okay.
Speaker: 1
01:34:33
And he kept saying, this is going to be an amazing night for you. And I said, yeah. Oh, okay. Not knowing what this was gonna be. And there was a kid that was backstage, and he said, oh my god. This is gonna be the biggest night ever. You know who that kid was? Cuba Gooding Junior. Wow. He was one of the dancers.
Speaker: 0
01:34:55
Wow.
Speaker: 1
01:34:55
And from that moment on, I kept thinking, what’s gonna happen? I said, here’s what I want you to do. They’re not looking at me. Your parents are looking for you. So get a signal. Give them something where you wave your hand so they’ll know that that’s you. But the truth of that was that was one of those interesting moments in time where the world was watching and there was no other way to happen.
Speaker: 1
01:35:22
Ai woke up the next morning, drove down the street. I could be five cars back from the traffic ai, and somebody passed meh and
Speaker: 0
01:35:32
go, hey, Lionel Richie all night long.
Speaker: 1
01:35:35
Lionel Richie all night long.
Speaker: 0
01:35:36
It’s Lionel Richie all night long.
Speaker: 1
01:35:38
Oh, god. What just happened?
Speaker: 0
01:35:39
Did you get your windows tinted?
Speaker: 1
01:35:41
I got everything tinted, ai. Sai was wearing tints.
Speaker: 0
01:35:44
What you talking about? That might be the biggest audience anyone has ever performed forever
Speaker: 1
01:35:51
if you think about it. Without dying, of course. I meh, yeah. I mean, it’s I don’t know what that was, but it freaked me out because I went from slightly invisible to fully visible anywhere. My friend got married. I kept saying to him, you don’t want me at your wedding? He said, no. No. No. You have to come to the wedding.
Speaker: 1
01:36:19
I said, you don’t want me at your wedding? Here’s what happened. I decided to go. Here’s there he is walking down the aisle. There he is saying I do, and there he is walking out with his lovely bride. Every other picture after that is his mother-in-law with me, his family with me.
Speaker: 1
01:36:38
He’s no longer in the wedding. Right. Every picture was me in his his wedding book. And I said, you don’t want me at your funeral. Nobody’s gonna ever know you left. It’s not gonna happen.
Speaker: 0
01:36:54
What was that like for you? Like, ai, that that giant shift, was that hard to manage?
Speaker: 1
01:36:59
Pain in the ass. Yeah. For the first couple of ten years, You know? Because you gotta get used to this. I mean, you know, and and and also you have to understand it becomes an annoyance to your friends. Mhmm. Hey, Lionel. Let’s go down to the bar and get a drink. Very simple. Ai right. We’ve been doing that for the whole life. Right. No.
Speaker: 1
01:37:18
You go down to the bar, the bar turns around. Yeah. No. So now your friends become security officers. Right. You follow me? Yeah. Okay. This is not cool. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:37:28
You know? And sai, yeah, it it becomes a little bit of a hassle. So if you wanna have your friends, you either have to bring them up to your hotel thing or you bring them over to the house. Right. There’s no hanging out. Right. You know, it’s not gonna happen that way. And, again, it’s you get used to it over time.
Speaker: 1
01:37:48
And
Speaker: 0
01:37:49
Fuck with you psychologically? Hell, yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:37:50
Are you kidding me, man? I mean
Speaker: 0
01:37:52
because, a person relies on the perspective that they get from interacting with people if the majority of your interactions are bizarre.
Speaker: 1
01:38:00
And then ai, one day, you say, okay. You walk into the ram. Prepare to talk to the room.
Speaker: 0
01:38:09
Right. Just accept that.
Speaker: 1
01:38:10
Yeah. This is what it is. Muhammad Ali said it correctly. We had lunch one afternoon in New York, and, it’s time for it to be over. And as we were having lunch, there are people coming up to the glass looking in. Oh, that’s Ai. That’s that’s Muhammad. That’s Lionel. That’s Muhammad. That’s Lionel. Ai. Okay.
Speaker: 1
01:38:30
It’s time for us to go. Mhmm. And my security had meh, and I’m ready to go. I said, where’s your security, Muhammad? He said, I don’t need any security.
Speaker: 1
01:38:40
I said, what do you mean you don’t need security? I said, there’s tons of people out there. He said, no. No. No. No. No. They’ll take care of me.
Speaker: 1
01:38:47
And he walks out the door, and everybody’s going, get back. Get back. Get back. Get back. It’s it’s Muhammad. In other words, you you you neutralize the room.
Speaker: 1
01:38:56
You can either make it a frenzy
Speaker: 0
01:39:00
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:39:00
Or you can that’s what Michael, God bless him, he couldn’t get that in his head, but he couldn’t. Even if he tried to do that, his whole persona was the frenzy. Yes. He has to have the frenzy. Otherwise, that’s not Michael. Right. You know?
Speaker: 1
01:39:14
So I I just kinda got to the point where you go into that zen mode and how do I get across the airport? There’s only one way. You gotta walk across
Speaker: 0
01:39:22
the airport. You and Ai, though, is like you had a normal life Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:39:26
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:39:26
Yeah. For a long time and then became an artist and then
Speaker: 1
01:39:29
I knew how to navigate.
Speaker: 0
01:39:30
Yeah. You got a slow drip in the initial days. He had the explosion. The explosion that he got was ai like I said unlike anything anybody had ever seen before. I don’t know. I can’t imagine how he could diffuse a crowd ai it’s not impossible.
Speaker: 1
01:39:43
They would swarm him. Never was going to happen. No. Never.
Speaker: 0
01:39:46
The thing about Muhammad Ali too is ai one of the rare people that was loved by almost all humans.
Speaker: 1
01:39:54
Absolutely.
Speaker: 0
01:39:55
Especially after everyone realized he was right about the Vietnam War. Of course. Of course. And then he returns three years later, and then, you know, he makes his way to the title again.
Speaker: 1
01:40:04
Again.
Speaker: 0
01:40:05
And then the he was so loved.
Speaker: 1
01:40:09
He was so loved. And a beautiful person. I mean, what I and, again, trauma. I mean, when you see him out in public, he was mister showbiz, but he was carrying a lot. He was carrying his belief. He was carrying his his growth, losing the family, gaining another family, still being the icon. I mean, think about that. Mhmm. You know, is he gonna win?
Speaker: 1
01:40:37
Is he gonna lose? With me, I just gotta sing all night long again.
Speaker: 0
01:40:41
Right. With him, he’s gotta win again. And he knows he’s starting to get brain damage.
Speaker: 1
01:40:46
There we go. There we go. He knows it.
Speaker: 0
01:40:47
Yeah. There’s no if, ands, or buts
Speaker: 1
01:40:49
about it.
Speaker: 0
01:40:49
By the time he gets past Frazier in the first fight and then Foreman, just the Foreman fight saloni, Ernie Shavers.
Speaker: 1
01:40:57
Every every hit. Every hit.
Speaker: 0
01:40:58
Every hit. And then later in his career, it gets sad. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just ai there’s very few people that transcend whatever sport they are and become, like, one of the key features of culture.
Speaker: 1
01:41:10
Yeah. He was And he was. Magical. Magical. But for me, he was the hero. Yeah. Because this is a guy who found his freedom. When you can walk out and go, I’m gonna speak my truth and I don’t care. Now this is back in the days when Hoover was Hoover and the, you know, the investigations where the investigation that’s heavy, man.
Speaker: 1
01:41:35
I mean this is not this is life and death situations and and for him to accept his role as the educator and also the the beacon of hope, you know when I got that in in my book when that when that man came up to me and said you must survive because you’re our beacon of hope.
Speaker: 1
01:41:56
Wow. Ai I there’s a moment in time when you realize there is a responsibility here and whether you wanted to be the teacher or not, there are folks looking at you besides the folks in Tuskegee.
Speaker: 0
01:42:10
Yeah. And you’ve got something to share and that something is very valuable. When someone can hear wise words from someone they love and respect, it it it’ll shift your perspective in life. Mhmm. And that that’s such a gift that you could give people.
Speaker: 1
01:42:25
But it doesn’t come I I keep trying to tell people every day. It doesn’t come with the word flawless. Of course. It comes with flaws. How did you how did you learn that? You put your foot in the shit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you understand? How do you know that? Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:42:44
And and the only way to know it, the only way to understand it, you know, what you don’t wanna do is have someone describe to you life because they read it. Right. I wanna know about life that you lived it. Right. Now that’s the person I’m taking my advice from.
Speaker: 0
01:42:58
Oh, a 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Like someone teaching you music that’s never written a song.
Speaker: 1
01:43:03
Like, that’s crazy. Exactly. Unless they’re Rick Rubin. Unless they’re Rick Rubin.
Speaker: 0
01:43:06
And by the way by the
Speaker: 1
01:43:07
way, you said, that’s a strange brother, boy. Tattooed. That I mean, I got chills when you called his name. No, man. Ai can hear.
Speaker: 0
01:43:16
He’s the real deal. I That’s the real
Speaker: 1
01:43:19
deal. Love him.
Speaker: 0
01:43:20
He’s the real deal.
Speaker: 1
01:43:22
That’s a real deal. That’s a real
Speaker: 0
01:43:24
That’s a real real exchange.
Speaker: 1
01:43:25
Ai to Rick’s house one day, and I said, oh, man. This is gonna be great. He’s out by the beach. He walked in, and I said he said, sit right over there, Rick. It’s only one, beanbag chair on the floor. That’s it. That’s the whole living room. And I
Speaker: 0
01:43:43
said, where’s the living room?
Speaker: 1
01:43:48
Or or there’s the terrace off of his bedroom. Great. He has the doors. The dare the doors open off onto his terrace. Yeah. They forgot to put the terrace out there. So so open windows Sai said there’s no terrace.
Speaker: 0
01:44:05
I think that’s what he wants.
Speaker: 1
01:44:07
That’s exactly what he wants. He wants things off. Ah, man. I love him. You’re right.
Speaker: 0
01:44:11
He’s such a genius.
Speaker: 1
01:44:12
Ai love him.
Speaker: 0
01:44:12
I I love him to death. Oh, god. He sends me the wackiest text too.
Speaker: 1
01:44:17
Oh. When he ain’t gonna change.
Speaker: 0
01:44:19
He goes down rabbit holes. Oh. But he’s awesome. But there’s people like him, right, that just have some special gift of they just hear things.
Speaker: 1
01:44:30
But that’s the point. Yeah. That’s that’s the point in in life in ai. If you have a chance to be around someone that’s authentic unto themselves, at the same ai, they’re receiving. It’s not just songwriting. Right. You know, there are people who are receiving messages and you go, do me a favor. Just sit down and tell me the story.
Speaker: 0
01:44:52
Well, authors all talk about that. I I love I love
Speaker: 1
01:44:55
I mean, for example, every time I go to Atlanta, Georgia, who’s backstage? Greatest fan, greatest mentor ever. Andy Young. Oh. Okay. Did he see it? He saw it all. Did he miss anything? Nothing. And he sits back there. Ai sometimes had been fifteen, twenty minutes late to go on stage. Why? Keep talking. Keep talking, Andy.
Speaker: 1
01:45:18
You follow me? Yeah. He’s just spewing the meh. And again, the answer becomes, how do you feel about where we are now? I’m optimistic. Wow. That’s really heavy.
Speaker: 1
01:45:35
You know what I’m saying? Yeah. And and so I I just sit as a bryden, and that’s what happens in life. If you have a chance, who comes backstage to my shows? Everybody. And they sit there and I have a chance to find out.
Speaker: 1
01:45:50
Now they say you’re this person, and the answer is, no. They’re not. Everybody has a front Right. And a back. Especially a public narrative
Speaker: 0
01:46:02
You understand. If you don’t know them personally.
Speaker: 1
01:46:04
You don’t know them personally. And so with me, I have found the greatest parts in the world of this whole story is that they come as fans, everybody. And that’s the part that really makes me feel really great about traveling around the world because it it it gives remember ai, I know the world of the world.
Speaker: 1
01:46:26
A lot of people know Detroit or they know America, but they don’t know Europe or they don’t know Asia or they Joe, I’m 200 years old. I scratched on everything. But the point is it’s when I come home to write a song, I don’t write a song based on if it’s gonna be a song that can identify to America only.
Speaker: 1
01:46:52
I write a song that the world will understand.
Speaker: 0
01:46:55
Because you’ve been to the world.
Speaker: 1
01:46:57
I’ve been to the world. Yeah. So when I came home to write all night long, everybody looked at me ai, you out of your freaking mind is freaking Calypso. Ain’t no Calypso music on the radio. I sai, there’s a thing called world beat. That’s why every gangster, every politician, every school teacher, everybody.
Speaker: 1
01:47:16
When you go on vacation, what do you hear? It’s called the world beat. Sai when I play the world beat on anything, you automatically feel familiar. Right. But now try to play that in the middle of funk. Try to play that yo. What is Ai doing? You know?
Speaker: 1
01:47:41
But the point is, you know, it’s I when you travel the world and you come back home and you put a song out, it’s gonna resonate to the world. And as time goes on, it will resonate to America. But I I do from the world back in certain cases.
Speaker: 0
01:47:57
Yeah. Just based on your life experiences.
Speaker: 1
01:48:01
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:48:01
No. That’s amazing. Yeah. But it’s like a lot of great artists have done that. Of course. Bryden out and where people are ai, what are you doing? Exactly. Why are you doing something that’s different than something that’s bryden insanely successful? Exactly. Why would you mess with the formula?
Speaker: 1
01:48:16
Lionel Richie’s story. Lionel Richie crossed over and can’t get black. You got me? Okay. Sai in other words, what wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Three times a lady. Yo. Right. That’s a waltz, ai brother. Right. That’s what what what what what what you doing, man? You’re copping out? And the answer is no.
Speaker: 1
01:48:36
No. No. I’m ai copping out. You know? But my answer was very clear. If Mozart were black, would it be Mozart? No. Because he wouldn’t be funky enough.
Speaker: 1
01:48:46
And you wouldn’t have played him.
Speaker: 0
01:48:51
Also, why would anybody challenge authenticity? If someone has an authentic idea, it’s it’s who they are at this moment. This idea that you’re supposed to stay in this box.
Speaker: 1
01:49:02
Well, no. That’s called now? What? An algorithm.
Speaker: 0
01:49:06
Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:49:07
You follow me?
Speaker: 0
01:49:07
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:49:07
So I Basically, the same thing. Everyone keeps thinking, oh, man. Yeah. It’s gonna take over. No. It won’t. And, hopefully, if you’re smart enough and get out of the way of the of this regurgitating over and over again the same goddamn song
Speaker: 0
01:49:22
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:49:23
And go over here. It’s gotta be somebody that goes, I wanna say this. Right. And and and no AI can tell you that. Right. It’s gonna what’s that word? Touch people. Yeah. You gotta have something that touches someone. Yes. It can rhyme all day long. Right. But does it touch you? Right.
Speaker: 1
01:49:43
That’s coming from something else that’s gonna be the new thing, and we’ve gotta allow a place where the new thing can come through.
Speaker: 0
01:49:52
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:49:52
Because ai, it will become it gets to be a Right. And that’s when you hear, we only play 98 beats a minute. Well, you know what happens on the fifth song? You turn the channel. First song. Second song. Third song. Fourth song.
Speaker: 0
01:50:13
Turn the channel. It’s formula.
Speaker: 1
01:50:16
Because you wanna hear something that goes that’s the trick. Yeah. Change up the ear. Yeah. But someone said, let’s just keep it all the same. So now I have to ask the question.
Speaker: 0
01:50:31
This is the business people. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:50:33
Yes. These are the people who don’t write songs. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:50:35
Of course.
Speaker: 1
01:50:36
I mean, that’s like going to a concert. And the first song is and the second song is
Speaker: 0
01:50:40
Yeah. And the
Speaker: 1
01:50:41
third song, you go, where we gonna eat? Right. Okay? It’s something’s gotta switch up. The lights have to change. Something has to happen. Right. Otherwise, it becomes monotonous. Thank you.
Speaker: 0
01:50:52
Yeah. Yeah. That struggle between the creatives and the money people always exists.
Speaker: 1
01:50:59
Ai. I’m telling you, it used to be wonderful because the creative people were the guys who owned ai labels.
Speaker: 0
01:51:05
Right. When did it switch?
Speaker: 1
01:51:07
When they started consolidating all the in other words, they started buying up Motown, and then they bought up A and M, and then they bought up Mercury, and then they bought up Polygram. Now you’ve got this big giant okay. So it’s Warner Brothers, Sony, Universal. We got them all.
Speaker: 1
01:51:24
And then the independence and then the and then it became one big Just a machine. One big indigestion.
Speaker: 0
01:51:32
Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of people just wanna make money, and they don’t make music.
Speaker: 1
01:51:35
And and then the what if the guy says, I know how to sell, I know how to sell, records. Ai I sold 18,000,000,000 hamburgers before I came here. What the freak are you talking about?
Speaker: 0
01:51:51
What the fuck? I’m a businessman, Lyle. Ai think it’s complicated?
Speaker: 1
01:51:55
Now can you give me your album in the third quarter?
Speaker: 0
01:51:58
Oh, god. And
Speaker: 1
01:51:59
I’m going Sai I normally give my album when I finish it. Now what are you talking about? Oh, okay. Third quarter means what? Oh, no. Alright. Can we have it in the first quarter? If we can have it in the first quarter, it’ll be fine.
Speaker: 0
01:52:11
Did you was this a slow thing, or did it just become overwhelming at a certain point? Ai like, when did they get to consolidate?
Speaker: 1
01:52:18
The most irritating part of it was you start an album, and by the time you finish the album, they sold the company.
Speaker: 0
01:52:26
Oh, god.
Speaker: 1
01:52:27
And the people who started the album with you are no longer there. So that’s a new group of people that’s receiving the album that has no idea that you’ve been working on the album in the first place. Oh god. And then what label did they put that on? Okay. They put Motown over on Mercury, and then they put Motown Mercury over on Polidor.
Speaker: 1
01:52:46
Then they put now you’re sitting there going, okay, guys. Who do I belong to? Who do I belong to?
Speaker: 0
01:52:53
Oh, no.
Speaker: 1
01:52:54
Oh, no. No. No. It went it went it it went so sideways that, you know and and then as we slowly get further further down the road of of lack of, of communication, Half the time you go to another company, they didn’t know what the hell you’ve done. You know, they go, okay. Now, you know, I’ve got a hip hop group that’ll love I got a writer that can write with you, Lionel.
Speaker: 1
01:53:21
Who who you who you talking to? I mean, you know what I’m saying? I mean Right. You know, we got a writer that can write with you. I don’t need a writer to write with me. What are you talking about? I I don’t I got my own stuff.
Speaker: 1
01:53:32
What it’s like having somebody sai ai a guy that can help Stevie.
Speaker: 0
01:53:37
It’s just imagine What are
Speaker: 1
01:53:38
you talking about?
Speaker: 0
01:53:39
Stage of your career, someone coming along and telling you how to do it.
Speaker: 1
01:53:42
Yeah. Yeah. Because they are a and r people from the last label. Oh god. And so you get up there and you go and ai
Speaker: 0
01:53:49
the way, whatever person they tell you they want you to write with, that’s the single. Oh, god.
Speaker: 1
01:53:55
So you go, okay. Just hold on for a minute. Everybody take a step back. The worst thing the worst thing I ever heard in life one time was the the guy sai, I’ve got a surprise for Stevie. He turned in his album, and I got I’ve forgotten the artist’s name, and I can’t think of it. I got them to remix his album. Oh, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: 1
01:54:14
Joe, you never heard from Stevie again for ten years. Wow. I mean, come on. Ai of all, if you know Stevie, every okay. He knows where that is. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:54:29
And you remixed it before you put out the original?
Speaker: 0
01:54:35
Oh. Oh. Just imagine the gall to think you could do
Speaker: 1
01:54:39
it better, but in Stevie Wonder. But that’s what I’m saying. When you when you bring in non creative people who
Speaker: 0
01:54:47
are doing cocaine I
Speaker: 1
01:54:48
I I didn’t wanna say that, but the answer is a lot of, but a lot of blow. They’re doing cocaine, so
Speaker: 0
01:54:53
they have some really unnecessary confidence.
Speaker: 1
01:54:56
Right. And, again, you have to understand something. They know. They know because why do they know? Because they said so. And what I’ve learned is there are two types of arya, creative artist and created artist. Okay? And these people are specialized in creating arya. But if you happen to be talking to a creative artist, shut the fuck up. Yeah. Shut the fuck up.
Speaker: 0
01:55:26
Shut the fuck up. Leave it alone.
Speaker: 1
01:55:27
Shut the fuck up.
Speaker: 0
01:55:28
Yeah. Could you imagine a group of those people and Prince brings them head and sai, this is my song. They’d be like, are you out of your fucking mind?
Speaker: 1
01:55:36
And by the way, they did. They did. And you know what he said? Fuck you.
Speaker: 0
01:55:43
But you know what I’m saying? Like, that’s one of those songs where you’re just ai, it’s so great and so authentic and so insane, and nobody heard anything like that before.
Speaker: 1
01:55:51
That’s that’s what I’m saying. Yeah. You or Sana. Madonna for the Pepsi commercial. You know what he gave what she gave him for the Pepsi commercial? Like a prayer. Right. Right? Black man on the cross with Sana. That’s the commercial she gave him. Right. And I they said, this is disastrous. I said, it’s Madonna.
Speaker: 1
01:56:13
What were you thinking you were gonna get? What did you think? What did you think you were gonna get? Ai just
Speaker: 0
01:56:18
giving him a real name.
Speaker: 1
01:56:20
But, I mean, you see what I’m saying? Yeah. But meh, was the record successful? Hell, yeah. Huge. That’s what I’m saying.
Speaker: 0
01:56:26
Massive.
Speaker: 1
01:56:27
Get out of the way.
Speaker: 0
01:56:28
Yeah. Get out of the way.
Speaker: 1
01:56:29
Bob Dylan, Get out of the way. Get out of the way. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:56:32
But people can’t figure that out if they’re not creative people. They really genuinely think that they know better.
Speaker: 1
01:56:37
But they want control. Yes. And the answer to it is, I would rather have a company full of out of control arya than a bunch of control pencil pushers and accountants that know nothing about people and what they like or what could titillate their sensibilities.
Speaker: 0
01:56:57
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:56:58
Okay? It’s gotta be somebody that knows how to well, are they gonna be in clubs all night? No. But we are. Are they gonna travel around the world to festivals and everything? No. They’re not gonna be there, but we are. Right. So when you trust us when we come back home and say, okay. I got the shit.
Speaker: 1
01:57:15
It’s just
Speaker: 0
01:57:16
they think they know better, and they have the money, and they have the power, and they wanna keep control. And one of the things that they really do enjoy controlling is controlling people that could do things that they can’t do.
Speaker: 1
01:57:26
Very true. Yeah. And that’s the and ai the way, they know. Yeah. And they’ll come up to you and what they call is giving you ai. You know what it’s called to me? Insulting. Right. Yeah. It’s insulting.
Speaker: 0
01:57:40
They’re giving you ai. It’s just so it’s just so crazy. Someone who doesn’t do it giving you advice on how to do it.
Speaker: 1
01:57:46
You wanna hear how that sounds? Ai, if I were you. Oh. And you know what I say back quieted to myself? But you’re not.
Speaker: 0
01:57:52
But you’re not.
Speaker: 1
01:57:53
But you’re not.
Speaker: 0
01:57:54
If I were you, if you were if you were me, you would be listening to you going, what is
Speaker: 1
01:57:58
this fucking idiot saying? If I came back to you, mister you know? And I’d say, hey. If I were you, I would do this with the company. And you look at me and go, kids, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And that’s the right answer. Right. But if you’re talking to an artist Right.
Speaker: 1
01:58:14
By the way, we could run the company if you let us. Yeah. But the point is, it’s too late. Everybody knows everything now, and so that’s the point. It’s called the it’s called the Peter principle. Everyone elevates their themselves to their level of incompetence.
Speaker: 1
01:58:31
And now that you arya who you are, you’ve now null and bored yourself and the industry, whatever it is we’re into. You’ve done it. It’s done. Cooked. So my point now is we’ve got a world now of specialist that knows nothing about the actual doing it. Right. It’s a world.
Speaker: 1
01:58:51
That is crazy
Speaker: 0
01:58:52
that and they have so much power and control over artists. And they have been successful in creating an artist.
Speaker: 1
01:58:58
But not even but not even arya. Everybody. I mean, in other words, they have people who have never been in a successful marriage longer than twelve weeks giving you advice on marriage. It’s true. Ai think about this. Yeah. You know, if I were you, Ai do this. My answer is, if you ever wanna find out about anything, don’t ask anybody young.
Speaker: 1
01:59:23
Ask old people. They’ve been through the blitz of World War two. They’ve been through this the depression. They’ve been through the crisis. Don’t ask anybody young. Why?
Speaker: 1
01:59:34
Because if it comes on the phone, you don’t know anything. If you want some real good ai, when I got to Motown, who do I ask first? Marvin. Right. You think he knows?
Speaker: 0
01:59:48
He knows.
Speaker: 1
01:59:49
Crazy as he can be, but it doesn’t matter. Right. He was the creative killer. Who do I ask about record business? Meh, Ahmed Oerdegen. Yeah. Come on, guys. These guys were the most incredible people on the planet. And so what I’m saying to you is ai now, we’re taking advice from people who just graduated from nothing.
Speaker: 0
02:00:11
Right.
Speaker: 1
02:00:12
Where are you coming from? Sai that that’s where Ai I only I just find it very interesting that before I ask the question of anything, I go, how did you do it first? And you sai, well, this is my first time doing it. Thank you. I’ll I’ll talk to you later.
Speaker: 0
02:00:33
It’s just bizarre that the the industry needs people like that. It’s just a bad setup. It’s a bad it’s ai it doesn’t maximize creative output. It gets in the way.
Speaker: 1
02:00:46
Well, let me tell you. It it’s we’re so far down the road now because what happens now is it it all became legitimate when I say that. I not that I was a a ai a nice fan of of gangsters, but but it’s something rewarding about giving someone a chance to play. Here’s some money.
Speaker: 1
02:01:16
Go play. Now what’s gonna happen is he’s either gonna win or you’re gonna lose. But if you win, you might get a group called The Beatles. If you win, you might get a group out of San Francisco called Sly ai the Stones. If you win, you might get a group called The Temptations.
Speaker: 1
02:01:33
If you win, you might get Diana Ross. If you win, you might get a Taylor Swift.
Speaker: 0
02:01:39
You know what I’m saying?
Speaker: 1
02:01:40
In other words, just just let the arya go. Right. Let them go. And that goes with everything. You know, there’s there’s people who, like I said, in in school, they’re incredible academically. They can recite to you everything that’s ever happened and will give you every, you know, backup to that.
Speaker: 1
02:02:01
Now that we have chat g p t, it’s not not so much the same, but but the point is and then there are those that go, I wrote a poem. I’d like you to hear it. Ai I read a book. I want you to hear about it. I have an idea about going to Mars. What?
Speaker: 1
02:02:20
I mean, you know, you just I mean, the first thing is before you become a genius, you have to take the responsibility of being an absolute idiot to everybody around you. An idiot is when you came up with your first idea. Lionel, where do you hear all your songs from? I hear them from the other side. Lionel’s an idiot.
Speaker: 1
02:02:43
Where did I say that? On a university campus. Now when the world finally becomes attuned to your frequency oh my god. You hear the word genius. The answer is no. I’m still the idiot that suggested it from the beginning.
Speaker: 0
02:03:01
Ai I think if you said that today, don’t don’t you think more people would be inclined to listen to you saying the songs the ideas come from the other side?
Speaker: 1
02:03:09
But now yes. Now. But now yes. Because I can explain to them because ai? They trust me now.
Speaker: 0
02:03:17
But even if they didn’t know you now, I think that idea is more
Speaker: 1
02:03:20
Well, yes. Yeah. Now, yes. You’re right. Because now we’ve opened that channel up now to where people can talk like that.
Speaker: 0
02:03:25
Yes.
Speaker: 1
02:03:25
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. But back then, nineteen seventy, sixty nine, sixty eight
Speaker: 0
02:03:33
Right.
Speaker: 1
02:03:33
Talking like that means Ai is on either LSD or some ai of tab. He’s on some kind of tab. Yeah. But he’s definitely not in his right mind.
Speaker: 0
02:03:44
Yeah. Or he’s mentally unwell. And you understand. Exactly. Just aids in his brilliance, but he’s crazy.
Speaker: 1
02:03:49
He’s crazy. He’s a badass maniac. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:03:52
Yeah. But he won’t be here long. Right. Yeah. That’s like Kanye West.
Speaker: 1
02:03:55
Yeah. We’ll get Genius maniac. We’ll meh him to rehab as soon as possible. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:04:01
Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s what they were doing a lot of Kanye’s career, just trying to manage his insanity that also led to this insane creative output.
Speaker: 1
02:04:09
Yeah. I mean, I’ll be honest with you. Richard Pryor, I use this as my perfect example. I mean, I I I would just wait for his next what’s coming out of his mouth? Right. And then one day he sobered up and couldn’t get funny. Mhmm. And I kept thinking, what just happened? Well, he went to rehab. Well, yeah, I know, but where’s the Right. Where’s your edge?
Speaker: 0
02:04:35
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:04:36
And now sai, you know, some if there’s a word for it, there’s a phrase for it where you learn your craft under the influence of. Mhmm. And if you happen to not know how you got there off of the influence, then when you finally get off of it, you don’t know how to get back to it Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:04:53
Unless you go back
Speaker: 0
02:04:55
on it. Even if you do, it’s a different place. Mhmm. Like, my one of my favorite examples of this is Stephen King.
Speaker: 1
02:05:03
Oh.
Speaker: 0
02:05:04
I love Perfect. Early Stephen King. Perfect. If you listen I mean, if you read rather the ai, Tommyknockers, I mean, misery, mister Cujo, Meh Sematary, but this was co cane snorting Oh, yeah. Beer drinking out of his fucking mind. Like, he he wrote entire books and doesn’t remember anything about writing them.
Speaker: 1
02:05:27
Okay. To be in their presence is one of the most incredible things you’ll ever see and hear and experience in your life. Again, I got to the point where if I was just allowed in the ram, remember now, I mean I was allowed in the room when Marvin and and Stevies and
Speaker: 0
02:05:55
Did you grasp that historically at the ai, like what that meant?
Speaker: 1
02:05:59
I couldn’t breathe. Did I grasp it? I couldn’t breathe. Wow. I mean, do you know what this was? This was the gift of life. I mean, that’s Berry Gordy. Right? You know what Berry Gordy was back in the day? God. He existed on the moon somewhere. You know? Hollandosian Holland.
Speaker: 1
02:06:22
These are you know, this is all they’re in the moon. Aretha Franklin and and, Ahmed Erdegan and, King Curtis. And this is this is the moon people, man. Sammy Davis junior, Sydney Poitier, it’s a moon people. And to have them sit in a room, not in a seminar, in their living room saying, you know what?
Speaker: 1
02:06:48
Let me tell you a story about who now there’s one part of me going mhmm mhmm and there’s another part of me going holy shit Ai sitting here listening to a freaking Barry Gordon City party You follow me? Yeah. How did I get in that room? So another title was gonna be was fly on the wall, but I just didn’t wanna be a fly.
Speaker: 1
02:07:12
But but the point is, I mean, I had the opportunity one on one, not in a TED Talk Right. But one on one with some of the greatest people of our time.
Speaker: 0
02:07:26
How well did you know Richard Pryor?
Speaker: 1
02:07:28
Oh my god, man. Richard was wonderful. I meh, well, I mean, Paul Mooney, Richard Pryor, and,
Speaker: 0
02:07:38
I knew Mooney real well.
Speaker: 1
02:07:39
I mean, this sai, again, totally out of his ai, Totally funny, but more importantly, totally in charge. I mean, he knew his I saw his frustration because they were trying to deal with him commercially. They discovered that maybe he might be able to be on network television. Wrong answer. You know?
Speaker: 1
02:08:05
But he was so gifted in presenting the street struggle, and you laughed about it. Miss Rudolph was miss Rudolph, man. I mean, when he said miss Rudolph, everybody knew what you’re talking about, you know, or, you know, they put me in jail for shooting my car. I mean, Ai meh, you know, but to know him off, camera, to know him off the stage, you know, what I found a lot about my, comedian friends is, you know, there’s a to make things funny, you have to take dark things and make them funny.
Speaker: 1
02:08:50
Yeah. But they sai most of the time in darkness, and Richard was in darkness a lot of time a lot of time of his life.
Speaker: 0
02:08:59
Yeah. That was surprising to people. You know, when you see a guy that’s so funny and so loved, you see assume his life must be amazing. But he was struggling all the time.
Speaker: 1
02:09:09
All the time.
Speaker: 0
02:09:10
I mean, he later revealed that, you know, the story from, Jojo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, which is, like, loosely based around his ai.
Speaker: 1
02:09:17
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
02:09:18
He accidentally caught on fire. Yeah. But in real life, he set himself on fire. Of course he did.
Speaker: 1
02:09:23
Yeah. Yeah. I meh, the book the book that I just finished is is the struggle. Everyone keeps saying what it just start off in the rural South. Forget the rural South. I was struggling with myself, which is what everybody struggles with. Sai the answer is you it’s not that I made it.
Speaker: 1
02:09:47
It’s this who was I struggling with?
Speaker: 0
02:09:49
You’re struggling with yourself.
Speaker: 1
02:09:51
And all of us are struggling with ourselves. Yeah. That’s what made the book to me so meaningful because people ai walked back to me go, Lionel, I felt the same way. Now you know what that’s called in my business? A hit record. When you write a song and everybody comes back to you and says, man, I was feeling the same way, you gotta hit record. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:10:09
Well, when you can write in a book vulnerability, where you can write in a book fear, where you can write in a book I’m not sure, I wasn’t sure, I was scared, they go, how could you be scared and and do all that? And the answer is step forward. Yeah. Step forward. Scared to death. We’re all scared to death. Are you kidding me?
Speaker: 1
02:10:32
You know, we don’t know what we’re doing from day to day. It’s just we work it out. Yeah. But it’s not where we all this confidence and crap. No.
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02:10:42
No. No.
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02:10:42
And as time goes on, you kinda develop a little oh, okay. And it’s called filling out your skin as time goes on. Mhmm. You get a little bit more confident in the fact that Sai kinda know what I’m doing. Becoming a professional. There you go. But for the beginning stages of your life, what the hell you’re doing? Come on.
Speaker: 0
02:10:59
Yeah. You can’t. Yeah. But it’s just very valuable for people to hear that from someone that’s very successful. Mhmm. Because people just look at a guy like you and go, he’s just Lionel Richie. I mean, it’s just it is what it is. You know what I mean? I know. Must be nice.
Speaker: 1
02:11:14
I know.
Speaker: 0
02:11:14
That’s how they look at it.
Speaker: 1
02:11:15
I know.
Speaker: 0
02:11:16
I know. They don’t think of, oh, that’s a bizarre path that a human being took Right. To superstardom. Ai? It’s a strange Ai.
Speaker: 1
02:11:23
And at any one point in the life, I could have turned around and said Ai quit.
Speaker: 0
02:11:27
Yeah. And that’s that’s very valuable for people to hear as well. And people will in the fact that you’re so honest and you’re so open about things, it helps so much because when people read that, they’ll they’ll think of themselves and the the moments where they’ve struggled, the moments where they’ve been unsure of themselves or not sure what to do or wanted to quit and didn’t Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
02:11:45
Mhmm. It’s ai this is universal. Mhmm. It’s universal. And the difference between a Lionel Richie and, Sandy Smith out there who’s listening to this is that Sandy Smith hasn’t started taking her first steps. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:11:56
And that if she keeps going down that line Right. She could be her. Yeah. You know, it’s just Yeah. It’s just keep going. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:12:03
It’s the there’s there’s saloni, there’s gifts of God, there’s all sorts of things, but one of those things they all have in common, if you know of them, it’s the they kept going. Yeah. Like Like, Jimi Hendrix clearly obviously was godly gift.
Speaker: 1
02:12:16
Absolutely.
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02:12:16
Gifted. Just gifted to something special. Yeah. Also worked
Speaker: 1
02:12:20
like a motherfucker. Ai, the work the work ethic was insane.
Speaker: 0
02:12:25
Has to be. Yeah. Think about how many records Nas wrote. Oh. They were releasing records for years after his death. Of course. Years after his death. Of course. Because he never left the studio. Of course. It just worked. Of course. That’s how you get that That’s
Speaker: 1
02:12:36
how you get there.
Speaker: 0
02:12:37
Ai see Biggie on the streets in Brooklyn when he was 17 years old. You’re like, oh, okay. Okay. With sheets of paper Yeah. Wrapping with perfect flow at 17. You’re like, okay.
Speaker: 1
02:12:45
I get it.
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02:12:46
You just go.
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02:12:47
Or you get around major corporate leaders, and you say to myself, oh meh god. You built this company. I sai, I was bankrupt 12 times. Yeah. You know what I’m saying? Oh, you were? Yeah. All you remember was the shah. Yeah. But you don’t remember, oh, what what what are you talking about? You know?
Speaker: 1
02:13:03
In other words, how many times can you take no? How many times can you take rejection? Right. How many times can you go, I quit? And then you wait for the next morning and go, I got another idea. Yeah. Because the the world is designed to make you go away. Right. Right.
Speaker: 1
02:13:19
It’s very simple. Right. Don’t get psyched out. I tell the kids on on American Ai, don’t get psyched out. Just because this person can hit every note perfectly and you have this cracky voice, then it’s it’s but I can’t remember this perfect voice, but I can remember your cracky voice.
Speaker: 1
02:13:36
That means you’ve got a personality. This is a great karaoke singer over here.
Speaker: 0
02:13:44
Right. Perfect notes don’t work. Something authentic that really
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02:13:47
resonates with you. There we go. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:13:49
There we go.
Speaker: 1
02:13:50
There we go. Yeah. I wanna know what your little corp is. What’s that what’s that thing? Yeah. You know, Cardi b is Cardi b for a reason. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:13:59
Do
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02:13:59
you follow what I’m saying? Now there’s a lot of folks that came along.
Speaker: 0
02:14:02
Right.
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02:14:02
Cardi b is I mean, I’m just using her as a one example. But the the wonderful thing about it is she came with a personality. Shah came with a thing.
Speaker: 0
02:14:10
Yeah.
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02:14:10
You know? Yeah. You know? And to me, that’s the quality I’m looking for, not only in the music business, but in life. Okay. So you’re rich. Okay. So but who are you? What Right. What what what’s your what’s your thing? What’s your who are you?
Speaker: 0
02:14:27
Do I like being around you?
Speaker: 1
02:14:28
Do I like being around you? Are you tell me what you what is it? Yeah. Otherwise, you’re just rich. Okay. Yeah. And you got stuff. Okay. But who are you? Right.
Speaker: 0
02:14:40
You have a shitty foundation in your house. Exactly. Right. You have a beautiful house on a shitty foundation.
Speaker: 1
02:14:45
Oh, you got no taste at all? Yeah. There’s a lot of
Speaker: 0
02:14:47
no taste. Well, listen, Ai. It’s been a real honor having you on here, man, and a real pleasure, and I really enjoyed talking to you, man. It’s fascinating conversation, and I really applaud your honesty and your your insight into your life. It’s it’s amazing. It’s really awesome.
Speaker: 1
02:15:05
Well, I gotta be honest with you. There’s an old expression that goes, sometimes you don’t wanna meet the person because they may not be what you thought they were. You know? You’re exactly who I thought.
Speaker: 0
02:15:18
Oh, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:15:19
No. I meh, because, you know, you’ve mastered this personality where you can sit down and talk to just about everybody. And on the days when you struggle with trying to make a communication with somebody and it doesn’t work out, I go, I understand why it didn’t work
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02:15:33
out because, you know,
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02:15:35
you you sometimes you have a block right in front of you. You go, okay. Ai just have to deal with the block. Yeah. But I’ve enjoyed this, man. This is
Speaker: 0
02:15:40
I’ve I’ve really had
Speaker: 1
02:15:41
as well. Lot of fun.
Speaker: 0
02:15:42
Thank you. And best of luck with everything, and you’ve already had best of luck. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Speaker: 0
02:15:48
No
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02:15:57
did not do it. How? Ai, you know what it was. If you know Lionel Richie okay. Let me tell you something. For the time it took me to write this book, two two and a half years. Okay? So let me just let me be honest with you. You don’t want me to read this book because I’d go, I don’t wanna put that in, guys. Can I change that one line? And you follow me?
Speaker: 0
02:16:24
Right. Right.
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02:16:24
So I keep creating. I keep creating. And so it’s just one of those things.
Speaker: 0
02:16:30
Dude who read it at least sound a little like you?
Speaker: 1
02:16:32
Oh, no. Wait. Wait. I’m I’m drawing a blank. Why am I drawing, drawing a blank?
Speaker: 0
02:16:36
Blair Underwood.
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02:16:37
Blair oh, jeez. Blair Underwood. Okay. Blair Underwood. I love we first of all, we kind of had kids in in common. Our kids were the same school.
Speaker: 0
02:16:48
Mhmm. So when
Speaker: 1
02:16:48
I say we had kids in common, no. We didn’t have the same thing. No. No. But we had kids at the same ai, and so we met back then. But what I love about him is he understands the I call it the middle class approach to to to my life. In other words, he understood the fact that did we grow up in the rural South? Did we struggle? Did we no. No. It’s it’s not that ai of struggle.
Speaker: 1
02:17:12
We had a struggle of understanding our identity and how to take that forward as arya, and he understood the humor. I love his voice because it’s not so identifiable that it if it was a Morgan Freeman, I’m just giving that as a perfect example, and I love Morgan. Right. But it’s too identifiable. I want somebody who can tell a joke and it sound like Lionel.
Speaker: 0
02:17:32
Right. Right.
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02:17:33
Ai know, he had that quality. And so when I I said, no. No. No. I want I want you. We hit it off. Well, his voice, you’ll hear it. Understandable. You’ll under you’ll understand.
Speaker: 0
02:17:43
Well, thank you, Lionel. Thank you again, and best of luck again with everything. We appreciate it. Thanks, sir. It was awesome. Bye, everybody ai.