[ WEEKEND ]
COURTESY OF JACK UTSICK PRODUCTIONS
Richie did not plan Every successful entertainer can look back over his or her career and pick out events that became turning points. Lionel Richie's first career-shaping event came in 1978 when "Three Times a Lady," a song he'd written while with the Commodores, became the group's first single to hit No. 1 on the mainstream pop charts.
on going solo
‘Three Times a Lady’
By John Berger
got his career rolling
jberger@starbulletin.com"It was my wake-up call. It was the song that really turned the tables, and, joke of it was, it was a waltz in the middle of the disco era and I didn't know any better! Instead of trying to follow a trend, I was just writing what I was feeling, and that's when I discovered that there's a side of the writing of Lionel Richie that was just not following the crowd," he said by phone Tuesday from California.
Richie's performance at the Blaisdell Arena tomorrow night will mark a welcome return to Hawaii for the five-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. He played Hawaii the first time when the Commodores played Conroy Bowl at Schofield Barracks in the mid-1970s. The band would return to headline an arena show before Richie went solo several years later.
Jump forward to 2003, and the Blaisdell gig is part of a campaign to reintroduce Richie to American pop music fans. His ninth solo album, the live "Encore," was released first in Europe and Japan, and is scheduled for its American debut next month.
"Encore" hopes to build on the numbers generated from his 2001 album "Renaissance," which brought Richie back to the charts when it peaked at a respectable No. 62 on the Billboard Pop Album chart. A song off that album, "Angel," also placed on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart.
Where: Blaisdell Arena Lionel Richie
When: 7:30 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $69.50, $59.50 and $49.50
Call: 591-2211 or 526-4400The album, recorded over several nights during a stint at Wembley Arena in London, contains the bulk of hits Richie has written over his career, from "Three Times a Lady" up to "Angel." Two new songs are also included -- "To Love a Woman" (a duet with Enrique Iglesias) and "Goodbye."
BUT RICHIE'S earlier work when still a member of the Commodores remains an important part of his discography, and he recalls the group's early days as a mixture of bravado and naiveté. At times they talked about "going after the Beatles."
"I remember that statement," Richie said. "We did believe we were going to be 'the black Beatles,' and we did believe we were going to take over the world."
Formed in 1970 while classmates at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the Commodores auditioned for Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff at Philadelphia International, only to be turned down after playing a set of songs by the label's biggest stars.
"They told us, 'We already have those acts.'"
But in 1972 they got a deal with Motown Records and, two years later, got a hit with "Machine Gun."
As one of the band's lead vocalists and saxophone player, Richie considered himself one of the band's lesser talents at the time.
"Somebody once asked me about my musical background, and my answer was that I was the greatest horn-holder that ever lived. I was also the greatest shower singer -- in the shower, I felt I was going to take over the world! ... In other words, did I know this was going to end up being a career? Absolutely not!"
Yet, almost 29 years after the success of "Machine Gun," three of the six founding members of the band are still in the music business, with Richie as a solo artist since 1982 and William King and Walter "Clyde" Orange currently performing as a three-man Commodores unit with J.D. Nicholas.
"I tell people every day, thank God for the Commodores, because I never would have discovered Lionel Richie. It gave me the opportunity to sit inside this little cocoon of brothers -- it wasn't even a band -- and we were either all right or all wrong, but most of all, we were all together. I got to experiment within this little cocoon of brothers, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me."
AS FOR GOING solo, Richie said that he was not enthusiastic about leaving the group and thought of himself as nothing more than one member of a six-man group until it happened.
"The last thing I wanted to do was go solo, but Motown didn't say to me, 'Would you like to go solo?' The question was, instead, 'Would you like to put out a solo album?' And after the success of 'Endless Love' ... it was perfect prime-time marketing for them to say that Lionel Richie needs to have a solo record out."
That hit ballad, a movie theme that was a duet with Diana Ross, would top the Hot 100 for nine weeks in 1981.
By that time, Richie and the band had to cope with journalists who described his band mates as if they were his backup band -- in other words, fielding queries like, "What's a guy like Lionel Richie doing in a funk band like the Commodores?"
"Now go back and try to explain to the guys that you didn't tell them to write that -- or there'll be a concert review that says, 'Right in the middle of the concert, Lionel Richie sat down at the piano and finally played his great songs' -- something like that's not going to go over well with the band. These are the kind of things the guys had to endure. I understood the anguish they were going through, and there was nothing I could do about it."
And then, with the success of his second solo single, "Truly," there was no question at Motown that Richie would record a second solo album. It was titled "Can't Slow Down," sold more than 10 million copies and won "Album of the Year" honors at the Grammys in 1984.
By then he was out of the Commodores.
"I never ever thought it was going to be a breakup. I just thought we needed a cooling-off period, and once this solo crap was over, we'd get back together, but the rocket never turned around. From there on it was 'We Are the World' (which Richie co-wrote with Michael Jackson), and it was pretty much set in stone after that.
"But it was one of the most difficult periods of my life because I didn't even see myself as the lead singer of the group. If anything, when we started, I saw myself as the only one they could throw away at a certain point, and I wanted to make sure I did as much as I could so they wouldn't! I was trying to write more, sing more, whatever I could do.
"It proved to be the selling point of my success, but bad business for the group."
RICHIE'S NEXT 11 singles were all Top 10 hits, and three of them -- "All Night Long (All Night)," "Hello" and "Say You, Say Me" -- also went to No. 1 and were certified gold.
Two decades later, Richie still enjoys touring and says he has no desire to become a reclusive studio act who writes and records in isolation. He's working on another album, as well as a Broadway musical that will present his songs in a format similar to ABBA's "Mamma Mia." He's also looking forward to playing China for the first time later this year.
"To me, success in our business is still the same: record sales and box office attendance. As long as I'm a writer, I have to go meet the public to see what it is that they want. There's always someone that will come up to me and say, 'Lionel, I've met this girl and I'm stuck on her,' and right there, I got the idea for the next record."
Richie still feels lucky that he beat the long odds against singers who leave a successful group in search of bigger success solo. Some have a hit or two, or some moderate success, but few surpass the level of success they achieved as a member of the group they left.
"I tell people who tell me that they're going solo to remember one thing: You can count the number of successful solo attempts on two hands, that's it."
And 20 years later, his enthusiasm for music hasn't waned. Given the right song and the right circumstances, he said he'd like to record with a wish list of artists.
"I like diversity, and there is such a wonderful world out there from Pink all the way across to Lenny Kravitz. Alicia Keys I would love to do it with just because of her acoustic thing, and then of course there's Mary J. Blige -- I could just lock her in the studio and never come out because she's just got that vibe.
"Pink, because it's not believable, it's not expected, but she's a melody person. You can sing along with every one of those records. I'm not a rapper. I'm a singer and a melody person, and anybody who has melody I'm looking to play with."
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