Motown Spotlight: April 2025 - Lionel Richie

With Lionel Richie touring the UK in June and with “My Love” celebrating its forty-second birthday, I thought what better time to reflect over one of the first interviews he gave as a soloist, which also marked the first of three chats I’d have with him over the years, but sadly, none in recent times. As often happens when I write about a particular subject or person, I tend to veer off into other directions, and I guess the same will happen here. So, let’s TCB and see where it takes us….

Lionel never really wanted to leave the Commodores, as he told me during a 1982 chat but, “it was stifling in the group, particularly when it got to the point where all of us wanted to write and produce. It was very competitive. I’d been a member of that group for fifteen years or so, and to leave wasn’t the easiest of things for me to do. I don’t have any immediate plans to perform with them again, although if it was for a very special occasion, then of course I’d do it…But we knew it wasn’t going to work, particularly when the friction started.”

However, a year earlier, it was a bewildered Lionel who admitted things had run away with him because “I wasn’t thinking of the word ‘solo’ as a solo artist. I was only thinking of a solo album. What Motown asked me to do was to put out a solo album after the success of ‘Lady’ and ‘Endless Love’ because it was perfect timing. So, the word ‘solo’ just meant record.”

The friction he mentioned earlier was fuelled by the media who were damaging his relationship with the Commodores because he said, “People who are not aware of what it takes to keep a group together , don’t realise that they are helping out in adding to the paranoia of keeping a group intact. That’s when the rift starts happening.” All the while, the remaining group members held their silence in public, while in private they debated the viability of Lionel staying with them. When his commitments began clashing with those of the group, the writing was on the wall.

In case the two hit singles I mentioned passed you by unnoticed, “Lady” was recorded by Kenny Rogers and was Lionel’s first composition and production outside the Commodores. “Endless Love” was a beautiful duet with Diana Ross, and title song from the Franco Zeffirelli film of the same name. The song was, by the way, Diana’s biggest selling single to date, and was a huge bargaining tool in her plans to leave Motown.

Later on we learned the Commodores had actually rejected “Endless Love” which had given Diana and Lionel a US chart topper for nine long weeks. Somehow though, I don’t think it’s a group song, as it was perfect for two singers, although Lionel wrote it first as an instrumental, and secondly for himself.

He explained how the single evolved. “Polygram called me and asked did I have a song for their new movie. I didn’t have, so I went to see the movie although I really didn’t want anything else to do at that time. Then Polygram said all they wanted was an instrumental and I could do that on a weekend. That would have been easy, no problem. Next thing I know, I get told they want lyrics and wanted me to sing them. So I agreed, still a weekend thing – no problem. Then I hear them say, ‘We’ve got Diana Ross to sing it with you’ – now I have a problem! This was turning into a bigger project by the minute but it turned out to be a wonderful weekend.”

With changes to itineraries and hastily arranged plane flights, the couple actually recorded the song together, with Diana being quoted as saying, “I was really pleased with it because it was one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever recorded.” As a quick aside here – which is rather cute – Polygram executives were familiar with Lionel’s habit of composing in his bathroom. (“It’s been my experience that people will follow you all over the house but won’t follow you into the bathroom”) so sent him a box of toilet tissue and a bottle of expensive champagne with a note reading,”This should help you with your writing!” Nice touch. “Endless Love” was the second biggest-selling single of the year in America, after Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes”, and has been re-visited several times by other artists. Anyway, back to the plot…

After the Commodores dropped James Carmichael as their producer (Lionel – “There’s five producers in the group don’t forget”) Lionel snapped him up. “James works with me now. I don’t know why the group made the decision they did because it seems so strange. Their ’13’ album, which I like, is a good beginning for them. But they need an identity, a focal point. They need a face. When I was with them, I was the lead singer, and mine was the face of the group like, say, Mick Jagger and the Stones, or Michael Jackson and the Jacksons. I think Clyde should be promoted to be that face for them. He’s a prominent singer and seems to be the strongest.”

As you know, Lionel was the Commodores’ major composer and, of course, lead vocalist, so it had to happen that the songs on his first solo album would be compared to those recorded by the group. This thinking would follow him through the early stages of his career. As a member of the Commodores, he said he had begun to consider himself fortunate if two of his compositions were recorded per album. “There’s six guys with a song each, so there isn’t too much room for me anymore. If I said I was the group’s writer, they’d kill me. I was never the writer of the Commodores, it was just that my songs became singles and were hits, so everyone assumed that role was mine. ” Now, he had the freedom he’d wanted for so long.

Tracking down Lionel wasn’t easy because with the release of his double-gate debut self-titled solo album in 1982, Motown’s promotion people had him running hither and thither around the States, with the occasional phone interview with the UK press squeezed in, of which I was one.

“It was a really strange feeling doing this album and it was only when we were finishing it off that I realised there was only me on it because my picture was on the cover! It was different for me for I was only used to submitting one or two songs for a Commodores’ album and when we thought about cutting something on me I realised I’d have to have nine or ten songs ready. Over the years, I’ve written eighty to a hundred songs and I still had those, so I had to decide which ones were best. It was such a hard task that I decided to ask James Carmichael to help me. He’s one of the Commodore really anyway. I also felt he was the right person and he really wanted to give it a go. The whole experience was fun. I really enjoyed myself.”

However, it later transpired that James Carmichael wasn’t actually Lionel’s first choice. “I wanted Quincy Jones but at the time he was tied up with Michael Jackson. He suggested I go to Maurice White – who was also busy. At that point, Carmichael told me the Commodores were interested in producing themselves and that freed him up.”

Working together was seamless, Lionel added, the chemistry flowed. “I tape my idea with just the piano. Then Carmichael takes the tape and says ‘I hear it, meet me at the studio.’ He puts the rhythm and the music around that piano. His job is to make it sound like a ‘record’ without destroying the innocence or sensitivity of the original thought.” In reply, James told journalist Steven Ivory. “My mission is to help him reach his destination.”

Mr Richie’s beforementioned ‘fun’ was sensational. The album spawned a trio of hit singles starting with “Truly”, followed by “You Are” and “My Love” in April 1983, with the latter failing to repeat the success of its predecessors on the UK chart. It stalled at number seventy, despite the first thirty thousand being released in a wraparound colour poster.

To work with him on the album, Lionel decided to use studio musicians and not the Commodores, because he wanted to ‘play around’ and not be confined to a self-contained unit. To this end, he contacted Joe Walsh (with whom he’d wanted to work for a long time) and Richie Zito.

Other musicians to climb on board included Nathan Watts, Paulinho da Costa and Greg Phillinganes, who wrote “Serves You Right” with Lionel. “Working with a group can become hard work because each of us knows that part we have to play in the recording and we rely on each other to play that part. I didn’t want a cast of thousands in the production either. The challenge was to find musicians who were willing to sweat and pull off precisely what I was looking for. In fact, the piano I played was an old brown beat up one which turned out to be the piano Carole King used on ‘Tapestry’.”

Of the album’s content, or some of the tracks at least, he said, “I wanted to begin with a ‘straight to the gut’ approach, so I chose ‘Serves You Right’. For me, the R&B lyrics as well as Country lyrics are the most direct in the world. They go straight from one person’s mouth to another’s ears. ‘Wandering Stranger’ is a song that sums up my inner feelings. It deals with my search, and I think the search of a lot of people right now who are wandering around the streets without a clue as to what’s going on.”

Tennis star Jimmy Connors, who had recently called upon the singer to partner him in a Las Vegas tournament, helped out with the vocals on “Tell Me”, while Kenny Rogers sang second lead and backing vocals on “My Love”. It was a star-studded recording, all right, where all contributors – including mixing engineers Calvin Harris, and Chris Clark’s sister Jane as additional mixer – worked closely with James Carmichael, both under Lionel’s control.

The title “Truly”, the first single, was inspired by demand. “I was performing in either Philadelphia or New York and there was a little girl in the audience who kept saying ‘Endless Love’ was her favourite song. She came backstage after the show….and asked me to write a song for her which resulted in ‘Truly’.”

Yet, in another interview, he insisted he penned the song for Barbra Streisand. “It was one of those songs. The notes and words were written for her but then a couple of years later I was singing them myself. So I guess it’s supposed to be.” The song was considered by many to be a Commodores’ soundalike of “Easy” – but, to be honest, who cared.

Together with scoring a significant UK hit, “Truly” topped the US chart for two weeks. Regrettably, not so the Commodores, who released “Painted Picture”, featuring lead vocals from Mean Machine member and co-writer Harold Hudson, as their first single without Lionel, which struggled for any chart placings.

There’s so much more I could drone on about when it comes to Mr Richie, but I am conscious that my love and respect for him isn’t shared by all and, of course, that he’s no longer a Motown artist. “I’m just the guy who writes love songs” he once told me. And that’s good enough for me. So, if I was asked what impression he left me with after chatting with him in his London hotel several years following our first phone call, my answer would be – “Lionel is a caring person who has a big heart.”