In a revealing new memoir, singer Lionel Richie shares a candid story about his friend, the late Michael Jackson, and a nickname bestowed upon him by music producer Quincy Jones.
Richie fondly remembers Jackson, who passed away prematurely on June 25, 2009, at the age of 50, describing him as “Smelly” in his autobiography, “Truly.”
“It was obviously a joke, but there’s a reason for it,” Richie explains. “Normally when you’re on tour, you send your clothes to the hotel laundry. Michael sent his, but they didn’t come back. They were stolen by staff because everyone wanted to keep a souvenir of him…”
“So, over the years, he got into the habit of always wearing the same clothes, until he threw them away. Quincy Jones therefore nicknamed him ‘Smelly’ – I can say it now that he’s gone, but not because of the smell. Just because he left his clothes lying around everywhere.”
“The stakes were higher than his health”
Richie, who co-wrote the iconic song “We Are the World” with Michael Jackson in 1985, recalls: “No one can understand what Michael Jackson’s life was like! One day, he comes to my house, and I notice he’s wearing the same outfit as last week. I sent him to my closet to get a clean pair of jeans – we were the same size. But when he left, I discovered he had left his dirty laundry on the floor, good to throw away. He didn’t care.”
For Lionel Richie, becoming famous at age 12 was a curse: “In his later years, he became a commodity, someone everyone used to build money. He no longer knew who he could trust. The real question wasn’t whether he would be able to give fifty concerts, as planned, but whether he was already capable of doing one. No one tried to find out if he was strong enough to face it. Because the stakes were higher than his health.”
“Truly,” by Lionel Richie, published by Harper Collins, 624 pages, 20.90 euros. © DR
