Playa, Playa!
OG Lionel Richie is sharing some of his music industry secrets in a new interview in the July 2015 issue of British GQ, available on Thursday June4th.
During the start of his music career, with the Commodores, Richie and his crew had one goal — to "make love to every girl in the world."
"When the touring [with the Commodores] started we knew we were gonna do a hundred shows in as many cities, maybe more, in a year. So we decided: we're gonna make love to every girl in the world. That was our mission statement," Richie told GQ.
Richie, now 65, was young at the time, and he and his boys kept score of all the women they were bedding. But he adds that after a while, sleeping with so many women started to take a toll on his body.
"I mean…we all kept score, yeah. We were college guys, so we liked stats. And when you start out, it's madness: there's one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. It's great. You're killing it," Richie Adds. "But all of a sudden you get to the fifth show and you're, like: Everybody get out of my room! You can't do it. I don't care whether you're 19 and sexually possessed – you can't do that and put on high-heeled boots and run across the stage every night."
However, Lionel – who divorced his second wife Diane Alexander in 2004 – said the pressure of performing and seducing women eventually turned him onto drugs.
He explained: "That's why drugs became so inviting: because you get a hit of this, and it gives you the stamina. But how long does it last? And then you're in rehab, and what kind of bullshit is that? Or you're falling down on stage and passing out halfway through the show."
Although this time was magical for Richie, he had to end the escapade abruptly in fear of fathering children with strange women.
He details: "It wasn't the sex and it wasn't the drugs. It was… babies. Holy shit! The first time you get that phone call when someone says… hey, guess what? That's called fear, shock and awe. That's when I realized the gun was loaded, you know what I'm saying?….you start hearing stories from guys in other bands of 'I went to Philadelphia to meet my kid', 'I went to New York to meet my kid.' That puts the fear into the heart of any 19- or 20-year-old. A lot of guys didn't care. But fortunately enough, The Commodores had a different standard there. We had some basic ground rules. As much as I would love to think we were dangerous we weren't as dangerous as the dangerous guys. We were Ivy League funksters as opposed to the hard core."
Founder and Creator of Singersroom.com and IncredibleWork.com. Follow me on Instagram at @gary.gentles.
