Reinventing Lionel Richie

The new album is amazing. It’s very important to you, I imagine, in a few different ways. You named it after your hometown.

It means a lot to me, because I think probably what I lot of people forgot or what I had to go back and remind them is that I’m born and raised here. This is not a guy who moved from Chicago and came home and decided he was gonna make himself a country record. The songs that stuck around and probably will stick around longer than I’m gonna be here came from Red Clay Country. I wrote “Easy” down here. I wrote “Sail On” down here. So if I really wanted to go all the way — “Lionel does Nashville?” No, Lionel does Tuskegee.

I had a manager years ago, Ken Kragen, and I walked into his office one day – his first day of managing me – and I said, “What are you gonna do to launch me,” and he said, “Well, first of all we’re gonna take five steps back and get with your songs who are more famous than you are and then from there we’re gonna go forward.” So what I’m gonna do now is just go back and step with those songs that have already gone country and have been country for years, and I’m just gonna stand next to them again with great country artists and hug them. Because we’re not trying to create something new, they’ve already been here. I’m the one who’s been missing.

When Conway Twitty told me to come years ago, I didn’t do it. When Kenny Rogers told me to come here years ago, I didn’t do it. When Alabama told me to come here years ago, I didn’t do it. Now, I get it. But the songs have always been here. I’m just stepping in and going, “those are my children over there, I belong to them.”

Did you first hear country music when you were a kid?

It was called radio. If you’re born and raised in Tuskegee, there was no R&B and pop and country and classical, it’s called, “I’m gonna turn on the radio,” and, you know, that was it. Charlie Pride was on the radio. And I think back on all these guys. Radio was, believe it or not, country music. And then on Saturdays and Sundays, it was gospel music. And then a little R&B station in Alabama. But you know, it was only country radio.

So you took to it right away?

It’s a part of my DNA. The funny thing about it is, I wasn’t indoctrinated in categories. Unfortunately, I missed that, so when I got into the business, they said, “Who are you going after?” I said, “well I’m going after The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Billie Joel, and Johnny Cash.” Are you kidding me? They didn’t tell me that those guys are not in the same category. Those are the guys who were kicking ass. I’m going after Conway Twitty. Kenny Rogers was kicking ass. In other words, what else is there to think about? As a young songwriter, was I shooting a little too high? I think so. I didn’t know any better. That’s what I was listening to. And then there’s little Led Zeppelin sitting over here in the corner so I got my rock wings. So where does it all fall? It’s this melting pot in my head with no limitations. And that’s really what it was. Nobody told me I couldn’t do it until I got into business and they started saying, “No, no what category are you gonna be in?” and I said, “none,” and I fought it.

I will tell you when we did “Three Times A Lady,” everybody keeps saying, “Oh my god, what a standard.” No we put “Three Times A Lady” out in the middle of disco. It was not welcomed. And “Sail On” was out in the middle of R&B and it wasn’t welcomed. And when the hook only came in one time and that’s at the end of the song, it wasn’t welcomed. We sped up “Say You Say Me” in the middle of the record, and all the disc jockeys started editing the middle part out until it was a hit and then they put it back in.

And of course “All Night Long” just kind of made everybody throw up because calypso on radio. Then all of the sudden we did the Olympics with it. I’m just saying we defied the laws of normality and common sense to the point that they started saying, “What is this crazy guy doing next?” And then you find something really corny like “Hello, is it me you’re looking for.” That’s really corny. I tell people everyday. They say, “what gave you the nerve to do it?” and I say, “really stupid, really naïve, really didn’t know that I was supposed to be in a box.”

It’s interesting to hear you say it because now it’s such a part of the canon.

That’s exactly right. I can’t tell you how many people told me throughout this journey, “That’s gonna ruin your career and that will never be played, are you kidding me, that’s never gonna work.” Now those guys are out of business and I’m still walking around here going, “Thank you”. But what went along with that, I must admit, was radio back then was radical. They were looking for somebody to go after and prove everybody wrong. So you could find two or three disc jockeys who would say, “Give me that record, kid. This is gonna be ridiculous.” So you had a couple people who would always be the radicals. Now radio is pretty much homogenized, we’ve got these categories again where, “We only play that kind of music or that beat.” But what really makes songwriters work so hard to be different is that you had somebody on radio going, “Give me that, that’s different and it’s a smash record.”

You thought this album would take three weeks to record and it ended up taking nine months. What happened there?

Well there’s a difference between saying, “I’m gonna do one duet,” versus 13. We did 15 in total here. But the point is, here we go, naive me again. “Oh yeah Lionel, in Nashville we do things really fast. We basically go into the studio and cut it in three weeks and have it finished and done.” Okay, so then Shania Twain says, “I don’t want to record it here in America, I want to do it in the Bahamas.” Oh okay, that’ll take us two weeks right there. And then Willie Nelson says, “well I’m driving on the bus from TX,” So what date will you arrive in Nashville? “I don’t know, I’ll let you know.” Okay, so we’re playing off of everyone’s schedule. And then Tim McGraw was on tour and Rascal Flatts was in the studio. So now I’m realizing, we are waiting for everyone to be available. Because an album like this has not been done. This is pretty much off the beaten trail. And these are not up and coming singers. And on top of that, what makes it really wonderful is that… there’s a difference between singers and stylists. These are all stylists. All these guys sound just like themselves. 15 seconds into any song you go, “oh that’s Tim McGraw”. You know it right away. They all have these wonderful little sounds and you go, “I know who that is”. And that’s what makes this album wonderful.

I heard that Shania Twain had some doubts about singing.

You know, I still think I was kind of punk’d on that one. I love it when an artist – and I use this all the time, this is my definition of a songwriter – we’re egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes. Now if we’re allowed to stay in our heads for any longer than a day, we can talk ourselves into feeling like you’ve never known before. The only time we get our lives right is when you put me on stage and when you put me in front of a microphone to record. Now, put me on the street with my two grandkids and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It’s not rehearsed and I don’t know because it’s out of my comfort zone, and you can start doubting yourself. “What am I doing? What’s going on here?” And that’s what happened with Shania. I asked her two simple questions. “When’s the last time you recorded?” She said seven years ago. “When’s the last time you went on stage?” Seven years ago. And there’s your problem. I said, “when you walk in front of that microphone you’re gonna sound just like Shania Twain.” And she walked in and – by the way, “My First Love” is the first take. I used that to make sure it reminded her of, that’s the first time you opened your mouth. That’s not the second or third attempt at the song. She nailed it. No kidding.

And Blake Shelton?

He’s the guy with no volume knob. I couldn’t figure out. “Blake, when do I come in?” There’s two people that I just fell down laughing when they started singing and that was Jennifer Nettles and Blake. What gave me the nerve to say, “you go on and put your vocal on and I’ll match what you’re doing?” What was I thinking about? You don’t let those guys loose on your record and say I’ll match the vocal. But Blake was just… first of all, I think his personality was just off the chain. I don’t know which I enjoyed more: the album of jokes by Blake Shelton or the vocal by Blake Shelton. Because he’s that kind of personality. All of them came to the table armed with enough stories and funny tidbits to keep us laughing for the next 5 years.

You’ve said that Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts can sing in the key of “Z Flat.”

Oh please, man. This guy. Every now and then I’d tease him and go, “Could you come down here and join the rest of us in singing?” I’d go, “Where you gonna harmonize?” and he’d say, “I got you covered Lionel,” and he sings up there where dogs listen. Man, can you get those vocal chords to go any higher? But he’s got this voice, man, that I’m actually fascinated with. I’d always tell him – we did the CMAs – and I said, “Do me a favor, when you’re actually singing, frown up so I know that you’re actually singing,” because he hits the note smiling at you. And the note’s coming out. I’m from the school of “If it’s that high, you gotta frown your face.” There is no frown. I love him by the way. I love the band. You know, we stay in contact quite a bit.

I thought it was endearing that Kenny Chesney brought his mom with him to watch your duet.

That story, I fall down laughing every day. He says, “My mom has never been in a recording studio. My mom never comes to the studio. And when she found out that I was going to do a song with Lionel Richie, she said ‘I’m coming to the studio.’” She came in and just – I got it right away who he was. She talked. I stopped the session and we took pictures. We took pictures from the left, the right, from the side, holding her from the back, I was behind her, in front of her – just as sweet as she can be. And again, that just tells you. I now know where he found the songs from. She played them first. Lionel Richie in his life started with that lady right there.

Tim McGraw mentioned that R&B and country music are close cousins. How so?

Absolutely. “Oh Baby Don’t Leave Me” and “Take This Job And Shove It” – those are two honest statements. The more honest you can say something, the closer you are to either R&B, blues, country, that’s all it is. And then everything else after that, in our business, is called a hybrid. Then you start to write off some flower things, but “Stuck On You” is “Stuck On You.” “Boy Named Sue” is “Boy Named Sue”. I think that’s what really makes it work. If you really want to put flavor in it, one gets a steel guitar and one doesn’t. The only thing we changed on “Stuck On You” is we put a steel guitar in it. Where I left the steel guitar out before because it wouldn’t have translated R&B if I had put the steel in. Even though it would have been novelty for R&B, but they wouldn’t have played it. The only difference now is you brought in the steel. But other than that the story’s the same. We didn’t change the melody at all and we didn’t change any chords. It’s so close to the realization of what – we’re storytellers in our business. R&B singers and country writers are storytellers. The delivery could be a little more soulful at times, but it’s really the story that makes it work. That’s the way of the togetherness right there.

Has your process of writing songs changed much over the years?

Yes and no. We’re all superstitious. So I remember when I first started out playing, I didn’t have a piano. I could only write songs on the university campus piano in the music room. So I couldn’t write a song until I got back to that room. Then the first thing I did was I bought a piano and put it in my house in Alabama, and now I could only write songs on that piano in Alabama in Tuskegee. And then we started touring and I realized the first time I get back to Tuskegee is gonna be four months from now. Ah, so now you got to learn how to write anywhere and everywhere. So then it got to the point where I could only write songs at the Holiday Inn in Hollywood, California. And then finally, you just give up and go, “I can write songs anywhere.” But it took me a minute to kind of break out. I could only have that white tennis hat on if I’m gonna record. To this day, I still have to have some kind of a hat on. It’s superstitious thing.

We all drive ourselves crazy, but the truth of the matter is the process for me works very simple. I write the hook first, mumble through the verse, and once I have the hook down, I can write you a verse. It takes me a while to write a verse because I want to be clever, but the hook is everything. If you don’t have the hook, forget the verse. And the only song I ever did where I wrote the hook last was “All Night Long”. I wrote, “Well my friends, the time has come, da da da, Karamu, Fiesta, da da da, come on and sing along.” I didn’t have a hook so I struggled about a month trying to figure out, “What is the hook to this song?” And it took me that long to find it.