The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2388 - Lionel Richie

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Oct. 2, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:17:48

Joe Rogan Experience #2388 - Lionel Richie

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23:17

lionel richie

01:48:10

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unidentified		Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
		The Joe Rogan Experience.
		Train by Day, Joe Rogan, podcast by night, all day.
		How we doing?
		Good.
		We're rolling.
		Love it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pleasure to meet you, sir.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It's about time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much for being here.
unidentified		This is an honor.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It is same here, man.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Same here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How does a person like you fit your life into a book?
		Because you, your career is so wide and so long.
		You've had so many experiences from the Commodores in the 70s.
		The 70s.
		Still rocking.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		70s.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		70s.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So, Joe, let me tell you something.
		It really accounts for, I'll tell you the joke of the book first.
		I'm probably the only guy in the world that had a book, had a book with probably a thousand pages in it.
		I turned a thousand pages in.
unidentified		They said, what the hell is this?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		War in peace.
		War and peace.
		And I said, and I've got some more stories.
		I've got some more stories.
		And so for the first time in the history of Harper's, probably they said, Mr. Richie, no more stories.
		We don't need any more stories.
		In fact, can we take some of the stories out?
unidentified		Oh, no.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So to answer your question, we can't fit all of my life story in a book.
		But we just had to find the ones that were actually, you know, humorous in certain cases, educational in certain cases, because it's wide.
		It's big and that.
		But I enjoyed the process of kind of looking back.
		Because if you understand me, I have the Italian race car driver's theory.
		What's behind me doesn't count.
		What's in front of me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a very good way of looking at life.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So what this book made me do was actually turn around and look behind me.
		And I tell you what I discovered.
		I discovered Lionel Ritchie.
		Because up to this point, I had never really gone into the depths of how I got here.
		I just remember, because you want to forget.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You just kept going.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Just kept going.
		Look, keep going straight.
		You tripped over that.
		I don't remember.
		You tripped over that.
		I don't remember.
		What's next?
		And you try to kind of, you know, it's like playing football.
		You got hit really badly on that last play, but you go back to the huddle.
		You know what I'm saying?
		Are you hurt?
		You won't know until tonight after you get off the field, and they'll tell you you broke your arm.
		You know what I'm saying?
		But it's really don't stop moving forward.
		And that's really what this whole thing was.
		This exercise in this book was really for me to actually go, hmm, I can't believe I did that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you learn anything about yourself from going back and just recalling all these stories and putting them to paper?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Did I learn?
		Did I learn?
		Absolutely.
		If you had said to me when I first started my life, you know, my dad used to always have this line over and over again.
		You know, a great fighter is not determined by how many punches he can throw.
		It's how many punches he can take.
		And I realized that I could take punches.
		I'm the most unlikely person to take a punch because I'm not that guy.
		If I can talk my way out of it, I will.
		But if you understand life itself, number one, that's difficult.
		And then if you start thinking about the music business, the entertainment business, it's an impossibility.
		You're going to get punched every day of your life.
		And what's that punch?
unidentified		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No.
		That's the punch.
		Now, can you get up off the floor and come back?
		Can you get a bad review and come back?
		Can they not like you and you come back?
		Can you find that that's a humorous thing instead of a tragic thing?
		Can you come back?
		Can you lose friends along the way?
		Can you come back?
		So you don't really realize, you know, this is a business.
		If you look at it, think about how many people we've lost.
		When I started writing this book, I started thinking to myself, where's Luther?
		Where's Michael?
		I want to tell you more stories about Prince, but it's not fair because in certain cases, I want him to be here to laugh with the joke too.
		You follow me?
		And so then you start realizing, damn, this is lucky.
		This is really blessed time now because I'm in rare survival error, if you will.
		I'm still here at 200 years old talking about my career, but I'm telling the story.
		Someone else is not telling it for me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's important.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's important.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, because so many times when someone passes and then you get this sort of cobbled together version of their life without their own unique personal perspective, you miss a lot.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You miss a lot.
		And especially things that people thought were Terrifying or tragic.
		If you talk to the person themselves, that was a learning experience.
		So you keep thinking, oh my God, what did you do when that happened?
		And you go, no, no, no, no, no.
		I needed that.
		Because I wouldn't have been to the next person if I had not experienced that.
		Because it's like trying to go, you know, to scrimmage before a big game.
		You're with your team.
		Well, they hit harder from the other team.
		So you got to practice hard.
		Well, the only way to get into the music business, you got to be on the field.
		Practice is not in the equation.
		You got to get out on the field, and it's nasty.
		And it's not designed for you to survive.
		And I try to say this to the kids on American Idol.
		I said, listen, I love you.
		You got a great personality, but you better hope, like hell, you have a sense of humor.
unidentified		Because if you don't, it's going to eat you alive.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you develop this mentality along the way?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or was this something that you just uniquely had?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		This is my character.
		If you understand something, I was, and I tell this joke all the time, I was too small to play football, too short to play basketball.
		Baseball was a projectile coming at me at 300 miles an hour.
		I'm not standing in front of that thing.
		And the only thing I could play was tennis.
		So you understand, walking around on a tennis court in the middle of the civil rights movement, you know, you have to develop a sense of humor, otherwise you're going to die.
		And so I found also, again, it's funny what your father will say to you back, and you wonder how did he get through all of his life?
		Because they went through the struggle of life.
		And he said, if you lose your sense of humor, they got you.
		And I always remembered the fact that if you can find something funny out of this experience, take that ha-ha to the next day.
		And so I kind of use that as my mantra, basically, that, okay, where am I?
		I'm at the Grammys.
		Okay.
		What am I complaining about?
		I'm complaining about I don't like my seat.
		What did they just say?
		I won.
		Who cares?
		You know what I'm saying?
		Or you're just at the Grammys.
		You know how many people don't get to come to the Grammys just on the invitation.
		And so you have to go back and look at this as far as is it really that serious?
		Or, you know, you have to kind of put things in perspective.
		And so, you know, the first half of my career was just a matter of how do I get there?
		The second half of my career is, can I please try to enjoy a little bit of it?
		And that's where I am right now because, you know, the song's stuck around.
		More importantly, I'm still here, which is the blessing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're still here and you look great.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I'll take that as a compliment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You really do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You look very healthy.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, considering looking at you across the table from me, I think I left my muscles back in the hotel room.
		But, you know, it's all about two and a half hour show a night for the last 50 years.
		That's my golf game.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Training.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Training.
		Because you've got to be ready for two and a half hours.
		And I don't care what you think.
		You're the greatest guy in the world.
		I'll put you on that stage and give you 50,000 people.
		And you, after running with a night or all night long, sing a slow song.
		I dare you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And do it since 1970.
		Like, what was the Commodore?
		72 years started?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me tell you, we started in 68 on the university campus.
		We were students.
		It started out as a group called the Mystics.
		And we were the talent show.
		We didn't realize that we were the joke of the seniors, of the juniors.
		But they have a freshman talent show every year.
		And we wanted to be the band to be the freshman talent show.
		We came out on stage and killed it.
		And it was a guy, another group there called the Jays, which was the seniors.
		They had been there for the last four years, and they were the biggest group on campus.
		They were about to break up.
		And a guy named Michael Gilbert gave us a phone call and said, I want to put a group together.
		And I was looking at you four guys.
		Would you like to come and join this band over here?
		The answer is, that was the beginning of the Commodores.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how old were you at the time?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		19 years old.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		19 years old and we're going to take over the world, Joe.
		You know what I mean?
		In other words, you know, there's James Brown, there's Marvin, and there's the Commodores.
		You know how that works, you know.
		And what I love about that period of time, we could be, you know, all right, all wrong, but we were all together.
		It didn't make any difference.
		So we experienced every possible imaginable part of growing up together.
		I didn't grow up with brothers.
		I had one sister.
		So these became, forget the band.
		These were five brothers.
		And we were in every disaster you could probably think about.
		And we laughed our way in and out of every, today we'd all be in jail.
		I can make that statement.
		I mean, but back then, it was the best.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And at 19 years of age, you're just starting to become a man, and then you're thrust into super stardom in a crazy time in human history.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It was, well, first of all, we didn't really get into recording until 71, 72.
		We were just the biggest, largest, most dynamic band in our heads across the South.
		And until we were the opening act for the Jackson 5, their first tour they went out on, we were the opening act for them.
		That was our first look at, holy crap, this is, this is huge.
		And then I'm an economics major, an accounting minor.
		And all of a sudden, I kept thinking, I don't know what this business is, but I think I want to be in it.
		Because you have to understand something.
		When you play tennis, what's the number one thing you will never hear ever?
		A girl screaming.
		That's not going to happen.
		Football, basketball, you hear them all day long.
		I was going to be an Episcopal priest, thinking that's my avenue.
		And I'm on stage one night at the Jackson show, and all of a sudden, some girl said, sing it, baby.
		And I said, call the minister back on the phone.
		I said, I don't think I'm going to be priest material.
		I just want you to understand.
		You have to know at that point.
		You have to identify your lane.
		You know, I had never heard that, Joe, in my life.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know what I'm saying?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many people ever get to hear it?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		21 years old, right?
		I got an emotion.
		Thank you very much.
		And from that point on, it was just a matter of riding this wave of, we finished that Jackson tour.
		We ended up in Motown, Hollywood Bowl.
		Motown saw us there.
		Suzanne DePass was, of course, the one who put the Jacksons together and all that.
		She knew us from our manager, Cape Cod, and Martha's Vineyard Island.
		Next thing we know, we're recording.
		Hallelujah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then you're off to the races.
unidentified		We're off to the races.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Off to the races, Joe.
		And I tell you, you know, looking at this book, it's a question, I survived or how I survived.
		But the question to me was, I survived?
		Because it's not, it's, I mean, I can tell you stories and it's, well, they're in the book, but I'm just saying there are moments when you just look around and go, thank God for just being naive, young, stupid, didn't have any idea of what the heck you were doing, but what a great adventure.
		I'm in a subway, four o'clock in the morning, my saxophone, and I had this little secret thing that no one knew.
unidentified		I had this seeth, seesh, seeth.
unidentified		Sheath?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Sheath.
unidentified		Sheath.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Sheath around my neck.
		Didn't know it had a secret compartment.
		Of course, everybody in Harlem knew it was a secret compartment.
		I had all my money in that.
		And I'm walking around going, no one knows I have my money in there, right?
		Which is everybody knew I had my money there.
		I would walk up and down the subway.
		No one would touch us.
		No one.
		I don't know.
		It has to be a sense of divine guidance.
		Or Big Frank Lucas just told everybody, don't touch us.
		One or the other.
		But I mean, it was just one of those moments in time where, you know, I've had some people say to me, you were in Harlem at 4 o'clock in the morning in the subway alone?
		I said, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		With a saxophone?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		With a saxophone.
		God bless you, kid.
		Wow.
		God bless you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It must seem almost surreal looking back because you've had such an incredible life.
		Such an incredible career.
		It almost, I mean, I can't imagine what it feels like just reminiscing and going through the stories and just looking at the actual facts of what you did.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad I'm doing the book now because otherwise I would be, let's say, when I got to about 98, 99, because I'm planning on a full life, right?
		There's an old man at the barbershop still telling lies about his life when he was growing up, you know, because it has to be a lie.
		And, you know, there was one title I was joking around with, which is, you're not going to believe this shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That would be a great title.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That would be the title, you know, and I was thinking that might be the way to go.
		And then, of course, I kept thinking, no, but from a philosophical point of view, that's not going to fly right.
		Okay, we'll pull that back.
		But the point is, it's almost not believable.
		I mean, when you start calling off names, it's almost like name dropping.
		And you start thinking about who mentored you, who gave you the advice, who was there for you exactly at the right time, who came in, who left right on time.
		You know what I'm saying?
		There are moments that happen that if I tried to script this thing, if I tried to put it down as a complete play, chapter by chapter, you know, act by act, you couldn't make this up.
		I mean, it just, it reads like a book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or like a crazy movie.
		Like if your life was a movie, I'd be like, that seems a little unrealistic.
		Too many good things happen to that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		But yeah, to the point where somebody says, I remember a couple of my friends, why am I drawing a blank?
		Rick James.
		Rick James had a great line for me.
		Every time he saw me, I say, Rick, how you doing?
		I hate you.
unidentified		And that means I love you, but I hate you.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I hate you, man.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And of course, I get it, you know, because things along the way become almost charmed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's like, okay, did I go out and call Dick Clark and say I wanted to host the American Music Awards?
unidentified		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No.
		He called us and said, Lionel, forget that guy in New York.
		Look at that guy in New York.
		You're doing it.
		You're doing it.
		I mean, forget that guy.
		Now, whoever that guy was, the gift was handed to me.
		And now I spent the next two or three weeks trying to convince Mr. Clark that I don't have any training in how to be a host.
		And that's when he would come to me and say, ah, you schoolboys are all the same.
		You think you need a diploma before you think you know something.
		You know, these lines that come out of this whole story, you know, that's not orchestrated.
		That's not scripted.
		It came from the other side back this way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you feel charmed?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		You feel like the word I'll use is blessed.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It's one of those things where my grandmother said something to me a while back.
		I just finished Endless Love.
		And I went back to Tuskegee.
		And I'm walking around in the house pacing back and forth.
		She says, what on earth are you doing?
		And I said, I'm trying to figure out my next move.
		And she said, did you come to school to join the Commodore?
		She said, no, no, I met them.
		I met them on the campus.
		She said, did you plan on being a writer?
		No, no, no, no.
		I found out I was a writer.
		She said, did you plan on being a lead singer?
		I said, no, no, no, no.
		I found out when I joined the group that she said, why don't you just get a good night's sleep and wait for God to give you the next?
		Wow.
		And that's how I started my career.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's an incredible woman.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible perspective.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Quit trying to figure this out.
		Did you figure it out before?
		No.
		Just relax.
unidentified		Chill out.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Can you read and write music?
		No.
		Okay.
		Just chill out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so hard to tell a young person, though, and have them absorb it.
		Because especially someone going through what you're going through.
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unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I try to tell the kids on American Idol, you know, sometimes you have to look at failure as a great sign.
		If they had told the Commodores on the first time we auditioned, you got it, ready to go, the answer is we weren't ready to go.
		It took no and no and no.
		And we at it, signing at Atlantic, no.
		Signing at Philly International?
unidentified		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But we're the greatest band ever.
		You're right.
		What did they say to us?
		You sound just like the Temptations.
		You sound just like Slying the Family Sone.
		What do you sound like?
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		What do we sound like?
		I don't know.
		So the only way we have to find out is we have to start not imitating somebody else.
		Now comes the thing of, well, what do we sound like?
		Right.
		And I didn't know.
		I didn't know how to write.
		So I, how do you write?
		Follow me.
		And then you get to Motown.
		I'm signed to Motown.
		I don't know how to read or write music.
		What the hell am I doing here with this band?
		I'm not the lead singer.
		I sing some cover songs.
		And then you walk down the hall and there's Marvin.
		So I decided I'm going to interview Marvin.
		Excuse me, Marvin.
		What music conservatory did you graduate from?
unidentified		And he said, what the hell is that?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I said, well, I mean, how do you write your music?
		He said, no, no, no, brother.
		Can you hum?
		Yeah.
		He says, all that you can't play with three fingers, humming into a tape recorder.
		And then you go down the hall again.
		And it's smoky.
		And there's Barry Gordy who built Motown.
		Excuse me, Mr. Gordy.
		What university did you graduate from?
		He said, I was at a car plant.
		What are you talking about?
		Everything that I grew up with on the campus of Tuskegee as a kid, I grew up on the university campus.
		That's academia.
		Did not apply in the world of hustle.
unidentified		Mmm.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You understand?
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So I'm now meeting the guys and ladies who found their hustle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They had a PhD in hustle.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		They had a PhD in hustle.
		And I am telling you, Joe, from that moment on, I was let out of the box.
		Somebody let me out of the cage.
		Because in academia, there's a logical reason why you know what you know because you studied it.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But I was that kid that was sitting in the class going, Mr. Richie, Mr. Richie, would you like to join the rest of the class?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I was daydreaming.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I found at Motown, the whole damn company was tapping on the table.
		I found out in New York City, the whole town is tapping on the table and dancing, right?
		And so from that point on, I joined this creative source force fraternity sorority of crazy out-of-control people that gave me permission to dare to listen to myself.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That must have been so exciting to learn that.
		The structure that you learned in academia.
		Like, no, these wizards.
unidentified		No, no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		These wizards of music, these masters of giving people emotion and power and energy.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I get chills sitting here talking to you, watching Marvin record.
		And you keep thinking he walked in with a paper and he had written these lyrics.
		No, man.
		He is scatting at the microphone.
unidentified		Really?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, see that baby.
		You know, I'm thinking to myself, what am I watching?
		And then he said, bring the microphone over to the couch.
		He's on the couch singing in the couch in the control room.
		When am I watching?
		What's happening?
		In other words, it was just so organic and so, you know, because you think about the orchestra and they're there and the, no, man, this is inside of a wonderful dream of watching creativity just explode with no doors, no windows, no walls.
		And he was making this up in real time.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You're talking about freestyle.
		My man was freestyling, coming up with some of the greatest lyrics ever on life's planet.
		And I kept thinking, okay, so let me go back and put that in my little hamper.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So did he have an idea of where he was going with these songs?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I think he had a feeling about the idea.
		But did he know the exact words?
		You know, it's like when you close your eyes and you're in it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But see, I didn't understand how to be in it.
		You know, I kept thinking, well, let me put it this way.
		I was trying to think.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So because of the academic background.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're trying to logically.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There's a logical reason why you're about to say what you're going to say.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Instead of just saying, okay, just turn on the mic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know what I'm saying?
		Just turn on the mic, man.
		I got it.
		You know, to this day, I have a thing that I do that still wears out my management.
		And I have to do a speech or something.
		And they say, okay, can you give me this speech so we can put it on the teleprompter?
		And I said, I don't have a speech to give you.
		Lionel, we need the speech to put on the teleprompter so you'll know what to say.
		I don't know what I'm going to say.
		What do you mean you don't know what to say?
		I said, no.
		I won't know what I'm going to say until I get there.
		And I walk out on stage.
		I said, now, how long do you want the speech?
		They said, could we have five minutes?
		I'll give you five minutes worth of speech.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They just have to trust you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's how I do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you learn from watching the greats.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		The greats.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And there must have been such an unique shift in perspective and how you view the world and how you approach things to see people, to know that your daydreaming was actually just talent trying to burst free.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they knew how to just take that talent and just be unharnessed.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It was to the point where I was actually trained.
		You know, this is Grandma Foster, A.M. Foster.
		She courted my grandfather in Booker T. Washington's house.
		That's where she came from, Tuskegee.
		My grandfather, they knew Booker T. She knew George Washington Carver.
		In my home in Tuskegee, Alabama, there's a crocheted piece from Mr. Carver, Dr. Carver.
		My dear Mrs. Foster, congratulations on your wedding.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's a crocheted piece.
		The deed to my house has the Washington family's name on the deed to my house.
		It was given to me, not to me, to my grandmother and grandfather by the Washington family Booker T. So now, when you have all that background, it's kind of one of those things where where do you go with this thing, you know?
		Right.
		And so, you know, my upbringing was pretty amazing where it had structure, had structure.
		And now here I am over in this other side where, wait a minute, you mean I don't have to remember anything, I can make up something.
		Whoa.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And allow the universe to just give you.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Whoa.
		I can just make up something.
		But what do you want to make up?
		I don't know.
		So then it's a word that we learned called receiving.
		I'm just receiving.
		So now where does receiving come from?
		Receiving comes from the silence.
		It's not the noise.
		It's in the silence.
		So here I am between one and six in the morning.
		And everyone thinks, what's Lionel doing?
		He's just kind of sitting in there.
		What's he doing?
		Nothing.
		But let me hear, let me let you in on a little sound that's terrifying to most people.
		You ready for this?
		You hear that, Joe?
unidentified		Silence.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Right?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Now if you can hear, out of the silence comes the, you're receiving that from the other side.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is a receiving, isn't it?
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		When you, you know, sometimes you just have to just blanket out.
		Some people call it meditation.
		Some people have all kind of names for it.
		I just love to listen to silence.
		By the way, there's only 12 notes, Joe.
		It's not 145 notes.
		It's only 12 notes.
		So everything that has ever happened that you've ever heard on any radio, it's only 12 notes.
		So how do you turn 12 notes into something that sounds new, different?
		That's amazing to me.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		It is amazing.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And so in the silence, and all you have to do is learn how to figure out what are the four chords.
		Because if you got four or five chords, you can write a whole album.
		But it's the melody that goes on top that you have to be able to hear.
		And so once I learned that Marvin and Smokey and Michael Quincy and these are Hendrix, I saw the poster coming in.
		They all made careers, not only careers, they had their unique sound out of 12 notes.
		Think about that.
		Now, if you think it's hard enough to get a hit record, how do you become unique unto yourself with those 12 notes?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is one of the geniuses of Hendrix, is that you could tell Hendrix with like in three seconds.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He didn't have to come in singing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		You just heard a little bit of done.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Doo-doo.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Done.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Doom, doom, done.
unidentified		Doom.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Doo-doo.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You can humming.
unidentified		You can humming.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Six was nine.
		That's Hendrix.
		Like, there's a sound that he was able to make.
		And there's very few people that figure out how to do that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I did not understand that.
		The blessing was not in having a hit record.
		The blessing was in having a unique sound.
		Okay.
		Stevie sounds like Stevie.
		Smokey sounds like Smokey.
		You know what I'm saying?
		And so when you start thinking about, okay, now by the way, you can't rehearse that.
		That's either your gift or you can't say, well, I'm going to work on my sound.
		No, it's a real thing.
		That's why when we do American Idol, I tell them over and over again, I'm not looking for singers.
		I'm looking for stylists.
		What's going to make me close my eyes and remember you?
		I don't want to see you.
		Can I identify you by your voice?
		That's a career.
		Mm.
unidentified		Mm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you have conversations with people that don't know how to receive And do you try to, like, when you're talking to a young artist and maybe they're a little bit too technical or maybe they're a little bit too constrained, do you have conversations with them about what do you say to them?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I do.
		And I can see their frustration, you know.
		Lionel, I can't believe.
		It's amazing how you went to that augmented seventh with a diminished nine with a raised 18th with a 45.
		And I'm sitting there going, I can't read music.
		And he goes, and the way you did that modulation from body da dana.
		And I said, I can't read music.
		And he kept saying, and the way you turned that vocal around, it came back down to that augmented seventh over a raised ninth.
		And I kept saying, I can't read music.
		So I try to tell them, listen, forget the notes.
		Can the crowd sing your song?
		If they can't sing your song, dazzling them with notes is not going to get it.
		That's the first thing.
		That's for the guys who can read and write and do the full Juilliard and Berkeley and kill her.
		That's for them.
		Now, for the kids who are just brilliant, by the way, and they know their music, but they don't know how to receive.
		My answer now is now that you know the technical, forget it.
		Now, tell me what you're feeling.
		Now play that.
		And instead of playing 15 chords, play one and hum as much as you can holding that one chord.
		And then when you get tired of putting everything in that one chord, that's the second chord coming up.
		You follow me?
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because what happens is musicians, they want to go, we are the dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, ding, ding, bang.
		No, no, no.
		Stop playing.
		Bang, we are the world.
		Bang, we are.
		Just keep holding that go.
		Bang, we are the ones that make it brighter day.
		That's that gibby.
		Bang, there's a bang.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Now you change.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because if you confuse me and you dazzle the world with all of your musicianship, you just miss the melody that the whole world can sing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You miss the purity.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You miss the purity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
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joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Do they get it when you try to tell it to you?
		Or is it one of those things like, you're going to have to live more?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You're going to have to live more.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because remember now, when Marvin said to me, he was giving me the words of wisdom, when Norman Whitfield, who wrote Cloud Nine and all these, you know, just amazing temptation songs.
unidentified		Cloud Nine, be what you want to be.
unidentified		Doon, do, you can, you don't need no responsibility.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Everybody come in now.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He's playing one note.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay, they hadn't changed yet.
		He wrote the whole first verse.
		Okay.
		Ball of confusion.
		He's still on one note.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It takes time to understand what that master just told you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then once you understand the simplicity is the secret.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		The simplicity is the secret.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like when you go to a restaurant and they put too much sauce on the steak.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't have given you a better answer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You just have to do that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Just give me some chicken.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Give me fried chicken.
		Give me baked chicken.
		Give me smothered chicken.
		Don't, don't, don't get too.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And at the end, just give me an apple pie.
		Just give me key limp pie.
		Just, you know what I'm saying?
		Give me a lemon meringue.
		Give me pumpkin pie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't have to get crazy.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Don't get crazy.
		We have a deconstructed.
		And I go, just put it together.
		Put the whole thing together and give it to me.
		You know, that's because.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because sometimes with some music, well, it's one of the things you can't connect to.
		It's like it's overcomplicated.
		And you hear some music and it's like, God, there's so much going on.
		And then you hear some acoustic version of a song.
		You're like, oh, my God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You just hear the pick scratching across the strings.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're like, oh, my God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Mr. Gordy, I've known him enough now where I can say Barry, but he's clearly Mr. Gordy.
unidentified		Clearly.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He taught me the greatest line ever.
		I went to him and I met him in the hallway.
		And he would never, ever say, oh, congratulations, you got to hit record.
		That's not what he would say.
		He'd always say, oh, Marvin's got a hit.
		Marvin's got a smash coming out.
		I go, Mr. Gordon, I just want to let you know I have a number one record.
		Marvin's got one coming out.
unidentified		It's going to be a smash.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then, what do you have next?
		What do you have next?
		And then I said, okay, well, I got to hit record.
		He says, I said, let me go out to the car and get a tape.
		I want you to hear it.
		No, no, no.
		You got to hit record, hum it to me.
		Wow.
		Hum it to me.
		If you need to play music, you got a nice tune.
		There's your tempo.
		Now hum it to me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Now that means the crowd is going to sing along every note with you.
		You don't have to wait to the hook.
		They'll sing the verse with you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is that pressure like?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I would love to tell you it was a pressure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, I would tell you that there's an old expression that a jazz musician said to me years ago: you either understand or you don't.
		You can either hear it or you don't.
		That's all it is.
		In other words, and my line is: If you can hear me tapping on the table and all you hear is me tapping on the table, you're not a songwriter.
		But if you hear me tap on the table and you hear a song, you're a songwriter.
		Class dismissed.
		We don't have to waste any more time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is a bizarre thing that creativity, which is one of the most important things in our society, cannot be taught.
unidentified		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I mean, you meet brand new person every day.
		I meet crowds of people.
		You meet one-on-one people every day.
		That's difficult.
		That's difficult.
		And to know something about them and want them to find out more.
		And how does your personality work with that other person?
		That's a skill.
		But that's not even a skill.
		That's not something you practice.
		That's something you had in you from way down deep.
		It's just the more you do it, you got better and better at being that person.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly correct.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So if I said to you right now, how did you study that, Joe?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You go, just turn on the mic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you, I just got very fortunate that a job existed that didn't exist before, which is podcasting, where you get to talk to interesting people.
		There you go.
		And luckily for me, I don't have anybody telling me who to have on.
		So I just go through, I have like a line of emails every day, and I'm like, ooh, Lionel Richard.
		Fuck yeah.
		I said, fuck yeah, that one.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I put down, fuck yeah, Lionel Richards.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there's a bunch like that.
		Ooh, I'd like to talk to him.
		There's some guy who's an astronomer.
		Oh, yeah, bring him on.
		Let me see some of his stuff.
		Then I'll go watch some videos, listen to him, give lectures.
		I'm like, all right.
		But to me, it's just, I'm just very fortunate that this is just how my personality is.
		I'm just curious about how people think.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, again, it's one of those things, out of your natural curiosity, that's you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And follow me.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, out of my natural ADD, ADHD, hypersensitive, whatever they use when I was growing up, I found it all serves me well because it all came out in songwriting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It does serve you well, which is so important for people to hear.
		Everybody wants to diagnose everybody and medicate them.
		I had for sure ADHD when I was a kid.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, please.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think everybody that I know that's talented and creative has ADHD.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Whatever that means.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I tell all the parents, leave them alone.
unidentified		Leave them alone.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Leave them alone.
		You know, there's two types of kids, and I keep trying to tell them: there's academics.
		They're great.
		You want them to remember.
		They can remember.
		They can recite.
		They do numbers.
		And then there's the creatives.
		Okay.
		The last thing you want to do is put a creative kid in a room full of academics.
		The grades are not going to be great.
		And you're going to worry them to death.
		Put them in a creative school where they're nurtured into their, yes, they're going to work on math.
		And yes, they'll work on their science, but don't make that the priority.
		No one to this day has ever asked to see my college degree.
		No one to this day has ever asked me to see my high school diploma.
		You understand?
		So was I an A student, B student, C student, C student, babes.
		I mean, I was right there on the borderline of disaster.
		But I was just happy to be there.
		But the point was, it's not important.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		What did you end up being?
		Who did you end up discovering?
		How comfortable are you with yourself?
		By the time you get out of elementary school, going into high school, you're so inundated.
		And let me tell you what's wrong with Lionel.
		Lionel has a problem with, and if you listen to that crap, by the time you're going to college, it's not happening.
		Right.
		Now, here's the joke.
		They told my family, my mom and dad, ah, truthfully, Lionel is not college material.
		I mean, in other words, he should be creative.
		You know who they forgot to tell?
		Me.
		The best thing they ever did.
		They didn't tell me about that conversation, which means it was okay.
		I didn't use that as my crutch.
		Don't tell somebody they have a handicap.
		Just leave them alone.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just let them figure out what they actually like.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because it's not a handicap.
		In other words, I learned years ago, a race car driver, he sees 200 miles an hour as, can I get this score any faster?
		Magic Johnson, the basketball goal looks like the size of the inside of a building.
		That's how big it is in his head.
		To me and you, it's a little tiny thing at the other end of the court.
		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so my point is, everybody has a unique brain and how they see things.
		Quit trying to put everybody in this one little box.
		If we can set up education where let those that see it in freestyle has a freestyle moment.
		We'll get more out of kids.
		We'll get more out of people if you just quit trying to condemn them and let them flourish in their lane, if you will.
		And that's the special part.
		Yes, okay, reading and writing, you got it.
		That's important.
		And now with AI coming and all this stuff, you don't have to do that anymore.
		But I'm just saying there's some basics you have to have.
		But then after that, I think we're crippling our kids because we're giving them too many gottas in a world that's constantly changing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, especially now.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Especially now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But if your child is a creative, the problem is that is such a gamble.
		Say if your child wants to be a lawyer, you go, okay, well, you go to law school, you get your degree, pass the bar, get to work for a firm, you're a lawyer.
		There's a path.
		Right.
		You want to be a singer.
		Like, oh, Christ.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		My recommendation, get the law degree and then try to be a singer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Have a backup plan?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Backup back.
		I mean, in other words, you know, in my case, I didn't have a backup plan.
		I mean, I, luckily, my freshman year, I found that thing.
		And I mean, how did it work?
		That's why I said to you, is it divine guidance?
		It's divine guidance.
		I didn't have a plan B, but I'm sure there would have been one if it was time for that to come into play.
		If I told you how many lawyers now, excuse me, how many lawyers started out as singers?
		They wanted to be in a band.
		If I told you how many people that are now on Wall Street, what do they do on the weekends?
		They have a band.
		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, there's a lot of that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And so as time goes on, okay, so you're not the lead singer, but you're the lawyer in the record company.
		Or you're the manager.
		Or you're the agent.
		You follow me?
		That 99 million jobs under the word entertainment.
		It's just that maybe you weren't going to be the star of the show, but you're in the show.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's easy for Lionel Richie to say that.
unidentified		If you're that lawyer that wishes he was a real problem.
unidentified		I know.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And trust me, I run into those guys who hate me.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, Lionel Ritchie.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, I get it.
		Of course.
		I get it.
		And I understand.
		And by the way, I mean, what I like about the book is everyone, just to let you know, it sounds like, you know, I won, I won.
		No, it was a struggle.
		I'm the shyest guy in the world.
		It was painful.
		Joe, walking out on that stage, I said it was a freshman talent show.
		The curtains open.
		I went off with the curtains.
		The only reason that I was on that stage, I didn't grow up with the guys in the mystics.
		They didn't know that Lionel Ritchie from Tuskegee, Alabama was the shyest kid in town.
		They didn't know that.
		These are guys that I didn't grow up with.
		So they said, hey, hey, man, you brought your horn?
		Yeah.
		You want to be in a band?
		Now you're talking to a kid who goes, okay, we're going to do a baseball team.
		What was the answer?
unidentified		Okay, we'll take Lionel.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's do a basketball game.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		All right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		We'll take Lionel.
		Let's play football.
		Okay.
		We'll take Lionel.
		These guys came along and said, hey, you got your horn?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You want to be in our band?
		Yeah.
		Right?
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Bingo.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You mean you don't know about me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't have to be defined by other people's ideas of you.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly right.
		So they said, and they said, okay, here's the part.
		And I, can you play the saxophone?
		Yeah, man, I played saxophone.
		I didn't tell them I brought the horn to school to learn how to play it.
		But I could play by ear.
		I could play by ear.
		So unless we're reading music, I sound like I know what I'm talking about.
		Right.
		So it became one of those things.
		And by the time I got in the Commodores, I didn't tell anybody.
		I'm the greatest hornholder that ever lived.
		Are you kidding me?
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So just keep that secret and keep on going.
		But what I'm saying to you, just think about this for a moment.
		It didn't start out with confidence.
		It came out with a sooner or later, they're going to know I'm an imposter.
		And slowly but surely, who worked the hardest?
		Me.
		Because sooner or later, they're going to find out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You got to catch up.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That I got to catch up.
		So every time we had some time off, I'm interviewing Marvin.
		I'm interviewing, you name it.
		Anybody.
		Tell me what you did to get the way you're going.
		Then I found out nobody went to school to know what they know.
		Holy crap.
		Now we're onto something really serious.
		Because then I had some aha moments.
		And so if I can't play it, I can hum it.
		But most of the time I could just play it.
		Okay, I can play this.
		And as you learn, you grow quickly.
		You have to learn quickly now because we just signed the contract and said we're now on Motown Records.
		I got to do a fast track here.
		But it happened in real time.
		At any moment, they could have called up and said, we're going to cut the group down to the most significant people in the group.
		Rich, you're out.
unidentified		Oh, shit.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, shit.
		So I make sure.
		Let me make sure I get this.
		I'm working harder than anybody I've ever seen before in your life.
		And so that's how it's a whole life of insecurity.
		It wasn't secure.
		And then you get your first song and you go, oh, okay, okay.
		That was lucky.
		Oh, okay.
		Then the guy said, hey, kid, you got any more of those songs?
		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
		I got another one.
		You go home and look at the guy in the mirror and go, you got any more songs?
		Because I'm talking to myself.
		And that's when you realize, okay, out of fear, I got to come up with another song.
		So everyone keeps thinking this, this confident guy walking in, I got another song for you.
		I got to tell you how many times I walked on stage, Joe, and had a panic attack.
		Right in the middle of the show, I'm having a massive panic attack.
		Really?
		Because I'm supposed to look like I got this.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		When actually I don't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But eventually you did.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		well that's what happened to Barbra Streisand and that's what happened to I mean once you realize as you start interviewing people the people who are scared to death on stage and then they realize as time went on they got used to it But I realized the thing that scares you to death is the thing you have to keep going forward on.
		That's my dad's line again.
		What's the similarity between a hero and a coward?
		One step forward and one step back.
		No matter how much it scares me, step forward.
		And so each time, I was not going to say I'm not going on stage.
		I go on stage and I'm going to sweat for two hours and try to fake my ass off.
		And now it's like second nature now.
		But at the time, give me a break.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so important for young people to hear that a guy like you would panic.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Are you kidding me?
		Oh my God, man.
		Have you ever met the president before in life?
		No.
		Have you ever been on stage in front of 100,000 people?
		No.
		Have you ever been in a club with four people in the room looking at you going, what you got to do?
unidentified		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, listen, I mean, that's why when I see these kids on American Idol, I don't know how they do that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I came in with five other guys going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Right?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		They're singing a cappella to me and Carrie and Luke.
		Are you kidding?
		Excuse me.
		And 20 million people watching and a billion, 200 million live impressions.
		Get the frick out of here.
		So I'm just saying, for me to be this authority, if you will, I can relate to every one of their heartbeats on that stage.
		I know what they're fearing.
		That's why when I get around artists, you don't try to blow them away with your importance.
		First of all, do you need a hug first?
		What do you need?
		Let me talk to you for a minute.
		Because let me talk you down because you're expecting too much out of us.
		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because we're all students of Scared to Death.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you're not, you're in the wrong business.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly.
		And by the way, the book is not about how I won.
		It's how I got, not to the peaks, how I survived the valleys.
		The valleys of insecurity is it, man.
		How do you get up and go, you're going to host the American Music Awards?
		Dick wants you to do that.
		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Was that a big scary one for you?
		Because you brought that up a couple times.
		That one bother you a lot.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Everything scared me.
		I know you're not expecting this interview, but I'm pleased.
		Everything scared me.
		We have to understand.
		Lionel, we're going to do an instrumental for a movie.
		It's called In this Love.
		I'm only doing Kenny's album.
		I'm only doing the Commodore's album.
		But because it's Franco Zepharelli and John Peters and everybody, I'm thinking, okay, I can do an instrumental, right?
		Then halfway through the thing, they say, well, we're going to shoot a scene where we just need the lady to sing a first verse to the person in the scene.
		Can you write a first verse?
		Yeah, yeah.
		My love, there's only you in my life.
		The only thing that's right, my first love, you're a breath that I take every step I make.
		Thank you.
		Okay, got it.
		Is that it?
		Yeah, right.
		No.
		Lionel, we've decided now to make this a duet.
		And we're going to get Diana Ross to sing the lady's part.
		Who do you recommend to sing?
		The guy's part.
		Are you out of your mind?
unidentified		It's me.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		What are you talking about?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I'm not going to recommend somebody else.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Were they beating around the bush?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I think they were.
		I think they were backing me in because I told them I don't have time.
		Right.
		So they baited me by saying, you know, it's going to be an instrumental.
		But by the time I got there, I'm thinking, okay, now here's the problem.
		Diana's in New York.
		I'm in L.A. I'm doing two albums, Commodores and Kenny Rogers.
		I'm not going to New York, and she can't come to L.A. Where are we going to meet?
		Tahoe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Tahoe.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		We go to Tahoe, but it wasn't even Tahoe.
		Reno.
		She's playing Reno.
		So at the end of my Commodore night, 10 to 6, Kenny Rogers.
		6 to 10, Lionel Ritchie.
		And then 10 to 4 in the morning, I got to get on a plane, fly to Tahoe, and put Diana Ross on Endless Love.
		Wow.
		Now, what you don't know when you're that part of your life, that you could die from having creativity, too much creativity.
		It was, I mean, it was so exciting, but at the same time, I never written a duet ever.
		So my first duet in life was with Diana Ross.
		Do you think I was nervous?
		I mean, I just kept praying, God, for God's sake, don't let me pass out in front of Mr. Ross.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So what I'm just saying to you, the title of the book could be Scared to Death.
		I got titles, man, you know, because it's not, it's the first time of everything.
		I've never done this before.
		And so just imagine being put into a situation throughout my entire career.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Where, you know, step forward, Lionel.
		Step forward.
		Step forward.
		Can you all hear my heart beating?
		No, okay, good, good.
		Step forward.
		Step forward.
		That's what it's been.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Like I said, this is so important for young people to hear.
		Because I think they see someone with such a career and so much success, they go, well, that guy's just probably crazy confident and always has been and just talented, kissed by God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		I tell people every day, what this book did for me, I discovered Lionel Ritchie.
		I'm the Italian race car driver.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I never looked behind me.
		I never paid attention.
		And then all of a sudden, this book made me turn around and look behind me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's interesting because if you want to get things done in life, you kind of have to be the Italian race car driver.
		But if you want to get this thing done in life, write a book about your life.
		That requires that introspective thinking and that recollection and that recognition of like, oh my God, like, what did I go through?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what was that?
		I mean, you think about it.
		You know, I mean, you think, yes, I got to hit record at the same time my mother was dying.
		Now, those two don't go together.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
		Yeah.
		I'm in the world tour of my life.
		It's the dancing on the ceiling tour.
		I'm going to establish me around the world.
		It's the all-night long dancing on the ceiling tour.
		My father's dying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow what I'm saying?
		I mean, so it's, okay, so now, how's dad doing?
		Well, he's doing okay.
		How's mom doing?
		Okay, mom, mom, okay, okay.
		Should I come home?
		Lionel, well, she's okay.
		But, I mean, she's okay.
		but I can cancel the tour and come home.
		Okay.
		But, but, but how's she doing?
		My sister's there.
		Mom's doing fine.
		She's doing great.
		But you don't realize she's in the decline.
		But you keep trying to balance this.
		What do I do?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, and so it's all happening while it's happening.
		And so it's, you know, how do you kind of compartmentalize the show, the writing, and real life family?
		You know, is it the reunion?
		We're having the reunion.
		Okay.
		You know, it's the class reunion.
		It's the family reunion.
		Have you ever been to the family reunion?
		No.
		Didn't make the family reunion.
		Why?
		Because when you're in the Commodores, when you really have your shows, it's Christmas, New Year's, all the holidays, all summer.
		So if you happen to have any kind of reunion during those times, you're not going to make it.
		So it's the sacrifices.
		How many barnfires did I make during college?
		None.
		Pep rallies?
		No.
		Basketball tournaments?
		None.
		But I'm the Commodores.
		We're the Commodores.
		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So I always tell people, what comes with success are the sacrifices.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And even after you make the sacrifices, it's not guaranteed that you're going to win.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And at your highest of highs, like the all-night long days, you're dealing with your father dying.
unidentified		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So people would just see, all they're seeing is you and thousands of people screaming and cheering when you're on stage all over the world, sold-out shows.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But you're dealing with your father dying.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're dealing with moments.
		You're trying to pretend like you're not seeing it.
		You know, there's a moment when you go home and your parents age right in front of you.
		You never noticed it before.
		He wasn't dying yet, but you could see the decline until dancing on the ceiling.
		You see a little bit more of the decline.
		You follow what I'm saying?
		And then finally, you realize, holy shit, this is not going to be good at all.
		But you keep pretending like it's not happening, if you know what I mean.
		You kind of put that in that little compartment.
		He's getting older, but he's okay.
		He's okay.
		The answer is, no, he's not.
		And then from that, you think that everything else in your life is okay.
		Is the marriage okay?
		No, it's not okay.
		Nothing's okay.
		Why?
		Because all priorities are going towards this new thing you've never experienced before called freaking hit record.
		Going solo.
		I'm leaving the Commodores.
		I'm leaving the Commodores.
		These are the only five guys I've ever trusted in my life.
		So everyone keeps thinking, yeah, you went solo.
		No, no, no, guys.
		What was that word that comes with that?
		Scared.
		Fear.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So everyone keeps thinking, and then I decided to go solo.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, shit.
unidentified		What the fuck are you?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Who are you talking to?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Leaving the Commodores, too.
unidentified		It's crazy.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Come on, man.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Crazy.
unidentified		Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Commodores is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And for you to say, I'm going to do it on my own.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, no, that's not the way it was.
		I'm not leaving you guys.
		What are you talking about?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Leaving the Commodores is crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you almost can't.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It can't do it.
		But what was happening behind the scenes?
		That's the story.
		What was happening behind the scenes was, and I understood, I understood, but still I didn't want to accept it.
		It's the guys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		The article read, and then Lionel Ritchie sat down to the piano and started playing his classic hits.
		Review.
		What's a guy like the Commodore?
		What's the guy like Lionel Richie doing in a funk band like the Commodores?
		Joe, try to go back to rehearsal after that review.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You got it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Or now we've done Endless Love.
		Now we've done Lady with Kenny Rogers.
		Tell us, Lionel, how you started the group.
unidentified		Oh, no.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I didn't start the group.
unidentified		Oh, no.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And now you walk into a group interview, and they knock Clyde over, and they knock whack over the trumpet, Tommy.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Lionel, tell us about the band.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So what I tried to do was come later.
		But by coming later, oh, you think you're big enough now where you don't have to be in the group.
		Well, if I don't, if I'm on time, they'll disrespect you.
		Right.
		I got the feeling.
		I got their angst.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And this is a different time in the world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		See, today you could elevate those folks through social media and bring them up with you.
unidentified		Of course, of course.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the beauty of today.
unidentified		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you're working with talented people and they're not getting shine, you go, hey, this guy's great.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Everybody go see him.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Check it out.
		And then all of a sudden, boom.
		And now they get the love and the recognition.
		But back then, everybody was on their own.
		It was a dog-eat-dog world and it was controlled by gangsters.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I rest my case.
		Gangsters.
		The answer was, I realized one very important thing.
		Throw the word degree out of your vocabulary.
		The music business.
		A degree, a degree in music, a degree in business, a degree in what?
		No, no, no, man.
		This was street degree.
		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Street psychology.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		What did a guy tell me?
		He said, I'll tell you the best course I ever took in life.
		And this is a true story.
		He said, you know, you schoolboys are funny, man.
		He says, you all learn how to account for the money.
		He says, we count the money.
		And I said, okay, so what does that mean?
		He says, somebody's got to teach you how to steal.
unidentified		Oh, God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
		Best lesson I ever took in my whole life.
		Because once you learn how to steal the money, you know how to stop people from stealing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		There's so many stories of bad deals.
		I mean, I was reading an excerpt from this book, and I don't know if it's true.
		It's a guy that thinks that Hendrix was killed rather than he died.
		And he thinks that what was going on was that Hendrix was leaving his management.
		And his management had him locked up in some crazy contract.
		They were stealing money from him.
		And they thought that he'd be more valuable dead since they owned the records.
		And that's, this is, this is like you coming from the 70s in the professional business from the 70s on dealing with, and that was the business back then.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, look at Phil Spector.
		The guy's in jail now for shooting a woman in the mouth in his house.
		These were gangsters.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, the answer is there is a one moment when I looked into my mom and dad's face and I said, hey, they just stole $363,000 from me.
		And my mother said, you leave those people alone and come home.
		And I go, no, no, no, no, mom, mom.
		It only cost me $362,000 to learn that lesson.
		It's never going to happen again.
		And I was so excited about it.
unidentified		She looked at me and said, my son's crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is a crazy response.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But the answer is...
		You can lose millions.
		You can lose billions.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So if it only took me $362,000, I got off light, man.
		You understand me?
		For sure.
		But not only that, can you keep your life?
		I mean, just think about it.
		When you go to the box office, everybody had a gun.
		Now, here's the beautiful part about it, because I knew that later.
		Nobody's going to shoot anybody.
		It's just if you, how naive were you?
		If you were naive and a little schoolboy, you could get shot and killed.
		But as you started learning who the gangsters are, that was just an intimidating factor.
		But you had to be, once you knew them, then they go, come on, Lionel, just cover us a little bit, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's even more disconcerting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They become normal.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		They become normal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what gets weird.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's what gets weird.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you're around normalized gangsters.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly right.
		And then you start, and then your mother starts meeting them on their way to Miami.
		They would drive, and they stop by Tuskegee to see the schoolboys.
		And here's a guy dead of homecoming season in a full head-to-toe mink hat, mink coat, pink Eldorado.
unidentified		Say El Dorado.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Driving across the campus.
		And you go to your instructors.
		Yeah, this is my friend, you know, Tall Paul.
		I got all kinds of things, got names for my, we had a, oh my God, we had, we had names.
		You can't, you can't make this up.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, and how do you introduce them to the president of the university?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		The answer is, you don't, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't do it.
unidentified		You don't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't.
		God.
		What was it like navigating that world?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It was, Joe, one of the most exciting things ever.
		Why?
		I never experienced anything like this before.
		Right.
		I mean, listen.
unidentified		Who does?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Listen.
		You mean, wait, wait, see, see, we played gangsta.
		They weren't playing gangster.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So we are with the gangsters.
		Right.
		And it just became so another world where what the guys say, in our world, Lionel, it's not how long you live, it's how well you live while you're living.
		Now, that's a profound statement from him.
		I don't want to know anything about that, but you have to listen, right?
		They don't plan on living a long life, but they plan on living well while they're here.
		So it's nothing to say when you go back to New York for the next summer, whatever happened to so-and-so.
		Oh, yeah, he got shot in December.
unidentified		Normal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Normalized.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's normal.
		He's leaving town or they're leaving town.
		And so as time went on, it became a short-term view of a very long-term problem that has always been normalized because a part of legal is illegal.
		Or desirables and undesirables.
		That's just a part of the city.
		And here's what you find out: the most important thing.
		The desirables know the undesirables.
		You go backstage and you go, wait, you two know each other?
unidentified		What?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, but that's what happens in this world of cities, in this world of culture.
		You know, everybody has that, what's that line I used to use all the time?
		Who are you really?
		Right.
		And until it is revealed later, in the music business, we see it all.
		Backstage is all.
		Front row is all.
		Right.
		You follow me?
		So you just have to understand it's probably one of the greatest educations in the world because everybody backstage is who they are, not who they say they are.
		Right, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's got to be bizarre seeing like captains of industry mingling with gangsters.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Heads of enormous.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Phil.
		Hi, Bill.
		Hi, John.
		Hi, David.
		And by the way, it's okay.
		But remember now, we're a street business.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		We're a street business.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And is it a street business because gangsters always controlled a certain percentage of what's going on in the streets and cities?
		Or is it a street business because you don't really need an education to do it?
		You do it on instinct and everyone needs it because it's really like what you produce is like a drug.
		You know, I can listen to one of your old songs and it just puts me in a state of mind like, oh, bingo.
		Man, it does something to you physically.
		So they're, you know, they're in the drug business too.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Bingo.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they're in the cash business.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're in the live entertainment and nightclub business.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk.
		Vegas.
		Right.
		Founded.
		Was a Harvard grad, the founder of Vegas?
		No.
		Okay.
		So what I'm saying to you, the problem that happened with all of these businesses we now have, they legitimized it.
		They messed the whole thing up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Did the movie business start out with wonderful PhD guys from these?
		It started from the street.
		You follow me?
		And so what we are trying to do now is we've tried to legitimize all of this stuff.
		Homogenized.
		Pasteurize.
		We want to do the whole thing.
		The answer is, no, no, man.
		We messed the whole thing up.
		Because what it was is the fascination of, hey, Lionel, can I put my name on your album?
		Right.
		Why?
		I got to move some stuff around.
		But the answer is I couldn't do it because I don't want to get in trouble from the, you know, you're kind of trying to dodge these guys.
		But the point is, it's real.
		So I care what I won't, I won't put a business like that together.
		What I'll do is start the business.
		Hey, what a great way to do that.
		But the only thing wrong with that is, as time goes on, someone asks a very difficult question.
		I like to see the books.
		That's a tough one.
		Go deal with that one.
		So you follow where we're coming from.
		So for us, for me, as they used to call us in Harlem, the schoolboys, you know, for the schoolboys, this was fantasy land.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Are you kidding me?
		I mean, we didn't think we were going to die.
		This was like the best course we ever took in the world from the originals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		This is not some hearsay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And they adopted us as the schoolboys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so wild.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That must have been just an insane experience as a young man going to be real.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You have no surreal.
		You have Joe.
		You have no idea.
		And then, you know, I mean, the days of the days of Small's Paradise.
		I mean, this is the club of clubs in Harlem.
		The days of Studio 54.
		Michael Jackson's 21st birthday.
		Give me a break.
		I mean, and back then, what I loved about private clubs was the reason it was private is because if you can't keep a secret, if you weren't in the building, you can't find out what's happening in the building.
		Now everybody's got a phone, and everybody can't wait to take a picture or rat on something.
		So you can't have a private club in the book because everybody's going to tell what they saw inside.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But back then, once they let you in those doors, first of all, it was a privilege that they thought that much about you to let you in.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then once you got in, it was, you were in the you were in the club, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		God, it must have been so exciting.
		And to be surrounded by so many extraordinary people at that time.
		What was it like watching Michael Jackson explode?
		You know, I talk about him and I talk about Elvis a lot and that if you look at it as a study of fame, that there's a certain level of fame that you achieve that's completely and wholly unmanageable.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's like the Elvis level.
		And I think he was like the first guy to really reach that level.
		And then it was Michael Jackson who went to a completely different place.
		Michael Jackson even surpassed that, which seems more insane.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		And there's that photograph.
		That's at Studio 54 on Michael's 21st birthday.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And the mustache was thicker than ever, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It dripped down.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I had to look over on the side.
		Come on, man.
		You know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because he never had a normal moment.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was famous when he was a little boy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I remember when ABC, what show did ABC broadcast?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That was, was it Ed Sullivan?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Was that when they first hit?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It was either Ed Sullivan or Dick Clark.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I think it was Ed Sullivan when they blew up, blew up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I remember him singing ABCs when he was just a boy.
		And I was like, my God, he is so talented.
		Like, exploding in talent.
		Exploding in charisma.
		Like I'd never seen before.
		You'd seen so many artists and so many people that were, maybe it was because of the youth too.
		It's like he's so free.
		He was so free.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so much charisma and talent.
		It was just insane.
		Like, look at this.
		Give me some of this.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I mean, come on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Listen.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You can't play any of them.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, no, but watch him jump out front if he does.
		When you see the scene where he comes out front, oh, this guy didn't know the clip.
		But if he ever spins around one time and you'll see something that looks so simple to do, he got that from Jackie Wilson.
		I said, where did you get that from?
		He said, Lionel, that's Jackie Wilson.
		But if you see him spin and come back to dead center, now this is when he was just getting his wings to flap.
		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How old is he here?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He's got to be 12.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		12, 11, 12.
		And of course, at this time, it was just ridiculous because he knew what he was doing.
		He knew exactly.
		I mean, this is the oldest soul you've ever met in your life.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't tell you.
		And then they walk off stage and turn into 12-year-olds.
		This kid turned up to itching powder in your afro.
		Or see how you stand out in front of the points to you?
		Now, I know what he's saying right now.
		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right?
unidentified		God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Crazy.
		He was so crazy.
		And if you see him with that, I mean, I'll be honest with you.
		I mean, we forgot sometimes that this is going to happen.
		Because when you're backstage or in the hotel room, That's a kid.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's a kid.
		Then as time went on, things happened where you could see it getting weird.
		For example, I'd go down the hall and I'd say, where's Mike?
		And they said he's in the room.
		Okay.
		And meanwhile, what became normal was, watch out, be careful.
		The girls are coming.
		Watch out, be careful.
		Stay in the room.
		The girls are coming.
		Now, if you understand the Commodores, Jermaine was a bass player.
		He hooked up with the bass player of the Commodores, Ronald.
		The drummer, Clyde.
		Follow me?
		The lead singer?
		Me.
		So Michael and I bonded at 12, 13 because of the lead singer.
		So I went down to check him out.
		And I'd say, where's Michael?
		He's in the room.
		I go in the room.
		Hey, Mike, where are you?
		Okay.
		Where is he?
		He's hiding in the bathroom.
		The girls are out there.
		I said, girls, what do you mean?
		There's no girls out there.
		They sealed off the floor.
		Come go with me.
		Now, they got mad at me because I'd walk out in the hall and go, come go with me.
		I said, you see any girls out there?
		Oh, I thought they were in the hall, Lionel.
		Okay, so in other words, watch out, be careful.
		But they're protecting the golden goose, ladies and gentlemen.
		Do you follow me?
		But the golden goose needs play period time.
		He needs play time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, he's still a kid.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He's a kid.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're freaking him out.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Jermaine, Tito, listen, they go on dates, guys.
		They hang.
		Michael can't hang downstairs.
		Wow.
		Right?
		And so as time went on, you could see the slow shutdown of trying to protect an incredibly talented person.
		But at the same time, he got special treatment.
		And so what I tried to do every chance I could was, hey man, come and get you in the car.
		Come over here.
		Let's get it together.
		You know, hang, hang, hang.
		You know, and so, you know, we went through that period of time where we don't stay together long because once we, the Commodores took off, we didn't have that everyday time anymore.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
		But every once in a while we get together and, you know, there's a little rumor that's out right now that I want to clean up right quick.
		They said in Lionel's book, Lionel called Michael smelly.
		Didn't like the way he smelled.
unidentified		I said, no, that's not what I. So let me clean this up.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So imagine sending your clothes out anywhere and you get half of your clothes back.
		The other half of your clothes are souvenirs.
		You follow me?
		So what he would do is if he had a pair of jeans, right, he'd wear the jeans until they tried to run away from him.
unidentified		People were stealing his clothes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		They're stealing his clothes, right?
unidentified		Oh, Michael.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Or he'd walk in the house some days, and I'm looking down at his feet, and I go, Michael, your shoes are flopping on your feet.
		They're two sizes too large for you.
		I know, Lionel.
		The guy we were in someplace, he gave me a pair of shoes, and I told him, thank you very much.
		I said, but Michael, you could have gotten the shoes in the right size.
		I know, but I didn't want to embarrass him.
		So he's walking around with two sizes too large.
		You understand me?
		So he'll come by the house.
		We wore the same size, right?
		By the time he became that teenager.
		So I said, go in the closet, get a pair of jeans.
		So literally, he'd change clothes.
		And by the way, he left the clothes on the floor in the room and walked away from him.
		In other words, he'd wear them until he got another pair.
		And so we call him, Quincy called him, okay, here comes Smelly.
		And so his nickname was, for the insiders, was Smelly.
		Follow me?
		So when I said it in the book, everybody goes, oh my God, Lionel called Michael Jackson Smelly.
		And I go, no, that's not it.
		That's his name.
		I revealed that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's hilarious.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's so hilarious that people were just stealing his clothes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man, please.
		I mean, the kid when he was 12, 13, 14, sent underwear out, it doesn't come back.
		T-shirt out, no t-shirt back.
		Socks out, no socks back.
		So what he basically had was a new pair of underwear every time he put a pair of underwear on.
		It was new.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because it's just not going to happen.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Coming back from the moment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how many Michael Jackson's underwear is out there on eBay or something.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Can I tell you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They stole it in the 70s.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's an admission.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I stole it.
unidentified		That's number one.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But by the way, very valuable.
unidentified		Very valuable.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Probably crazy.
		You know what?
		I would love to put that out there.
		Say no prosecution needed.
		It was not going to happen because you've revealed yourself.
		Because that's got to be the, I would have that frame right away.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just so bananas that that was just ubiquitous.
		They would just steal his clothes.
		But it just makes sense.
		Because what I was saying is about the Elvis thing applies to him plus, is that there's no roadmap for that.
		There's no roadmap for navigating that level of fame.
		You know, and even you, as an adult, as a grown man, you know, when your peak of fame had to have been so surreal that it's hard to not lose who you are.
		Most people lose who they are.
		If you say, oh, she went crazy, bitch, you would go crazy too.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		God damn it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know what the fuck you're talking about?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Damn right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're never going to superstar in front of the whole world or judging everything you do.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then that thing came along called the phone.
		At least if they did see you, they caught you in that place.
		Yeah.
		But they only saw you.
		But now they're looking at you everywhere.
		So the press is everybody.
		Just imagine that.
		Okay, so I mean, in my case, I got used to it.
		I got to admit.
		I mean, of course, I think something happened.
		Or did I do it?
		Did I, did I?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no worries.
		Somebody was probably messing with it before you.
		They pop out all the time.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I live with that sound.
		All the time.
		No, but what happens with me was we went from, you could actually be, you could actually sneak.
		I like that word.
		Sneak.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sneak around.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Sneak means you could look out.
		Do you see anybody you know?
		If you don't see anybody you know, you can sneak.
		And then something happens one day.
		You walk in a room.
		You came in through the back door.
		You sit at a table in the back door.
		The band starts playing three times a lady.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then everybody turns around and says, Hi, Lionel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And you thought you were just sneaking your ass off.
		You ain't sneaking nothing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're trying to sneak around and get some dinner.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It ain't not happening.
		And then the next thing that happens, which is you want to have a nice anniversary dinner, right?
		The anniversary dinner is the best dinner ever.
		Romantic place.
		And three ladies walk over to you and say, hi, Lionel.
		How are you?
		We want to tell you we love you and you want to tell you about it.
		Great.
		That's great.
		And then your wife says, who are those ladies?
		I don't know.
		I've never met them before.
		I know, but they seem so familiar.
		What?
unidentified		Uh-oh-oh.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay, wait, this is not good.
		Because now the romantic session just turned into, but now I've never experienced this before.
		Remember now, this is new.
		This is not, I know now not to go to the romantic place.
		You go someplace where you can have a great time.
		But the point was back then, this is first time happening.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And you're trying to be like all your other friends.
		You take your wife out or you take your girlfriend out or you go to dinner and you have a no, no, no, man.
		It becomes now everybody's watching you and they can't wait to come over and say, can I have an autograph?
		And now they come up and say, can we have a picture?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And so it becomes, this is very weird.
		This is very weird.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You have to plan where you go.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Plan where you go.
		And more importantly, be fully dressed before you leave.
		Don't do something stupid, right?
		But I mean, I don't want.
		I love it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it's not a complaint.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've gotten feeling a unique aspect of your life.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I've got it.
		I'm a famous person.
		I tell people all the time, and this is the truth.
		I hope you like people.
		I hope you like people.
		Because if you don't, you're not going to like fame.
		Right.
		Okay?
		They keep thinking they're going to be famous and rich.
		No, no, no.
		Do you like people?
		Right.
		Because they're going to be in your face and in your business with an opinion all the time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Now, you want to go to a recital with your kid, and it's your kid's piano recital.
		I hope you like being famous.
		Because while your kid is playing the recital, the parents are going to be asking you for your autograph.
		Not the kids, the parents.
		I made the mistake and decided I'll go to SeaWorld with my kid, and I'll go by myself on the parents' bus.
		You know who protected me on the whole trip?
		The kids, my kid, Miles said, okay, we got to protect my dad because the parents are coming.
		And everybody at SeaWorld showed up, and there's Lionel Ritchie at SeaWorld with his kid.
		So I had four little kids surround me and go, I said, guys, I'm with them.
		We're with the school.
		But I mean, it becomes, holy crap, what the hell's going on?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's annoying for them, too.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Of course it is.
		But you can't have that moment with your kids.
		And it's a big deal because at that time, ABC, NBC, CBS, and a new station just came out called CNN.
		Other than that, to see you, to have a sighting, was like different.
		Come on, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no one knows.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't imagine what it was like being famous when there's only four channels and the radio.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		The Olympics.
		2.5, 2.6 billion people watching live, live.
		Wow.
		So I went from Lionel Ritchie to Lionel Richie all night long.
		The end of my name became all night long.
		Lionel Richie all night long.
		Hey, that's Lionel Richie all night long.
		Every country in the world, I became Lionel Ritchie all night long.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		What was that like performing in front of that many humans?
		What was that feeling like?
		Was it different than a regular performance?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Joe, it felt like a regular performance, but I had never in my life had the world watching.
		So I rehearsed it.
		We did it, not realizing it was the world, literally the world, watching.
		And go back and look at that little podium.
		What was supposed to happen at the beginning of this was Ronald Reagan was supposed to come out and greet, had his speech.
		I know I speak on behalf of everyone in America and the entire world, how proud we are of these fine athletes.
		That was his speech, right?
		Because that night there were death threats.
		They had, you know, they decided it's too risky to have him on the field.
		Lionel, would you give the speech on behalf of all of America and the entire world?
		Stop me where I am.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So before I started singing, I had to make my speech.
		I know how proud we are here in America and around the world of these fine athletes.
		And now we're going to sing all night long.
		But I had to give this thing.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And I told them, I said, that was the proud moment after I came off stage.
		Before I went on stage, was, well, Mr. Reagan's worried about his life.
		What about mine?
		What's going to happen here?
		You know, but it was so overwhelmingly.
		You're talking about energy and adrenaline and you can't beat 2.6 billion people live.
		And you think Super Bowl was something special?
		I'll tell you what this was.
		Nobody, there was not another channel covering anything.
		The whole world was watching this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's hard for people to imagine in this day of content.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Exactly right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That will never happen again unless it's the aliens are landing Monday at 8 a.m.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Exactly correct.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the one where the aliens landed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that fake fake.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And by the way, that's what happened.
		That was the opening.
		But what you don't see there, that was the open.
		That's very good, man.
		I hadn't seen this clip.
		What was happening with that was just before it started, they sealed off the airspace.
		And I remember looking out, there were four helicopters facing out.
		And the problem was you couldn't hear them, Joe.
		And I kept thinking, I'm looking at helicopters.
		And they said, I said, what's that right there?
		And they said, they sealed off the airspace.
		Nothing's coming into this place.
		One, two, three, four.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You couldn't hear the helicopters that were holding up the flying saucer.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't hear a thing.
unidentified		How's that possible?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what's scary.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's what I'm saying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Military 61 ships.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You understand what I'm saying?
		And the answer to me was, okay.
		You understand me at this point?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is 1984.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And Howard K. Smith, remember the sports announcer, I think was it Howard K. Smith?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Howard Cosell?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, Howard K. Howard K. Smith.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, he was with Wide World of Sports.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And he kept saying, this is going to be an amazing night for you.
		And I said, yeah.
		Okay, not knowing what this was going to be.
		And there was a kid that was backstage.
		And he said, oh, my God, this is going to be the biggest night ever.
		You know who that kid was?
		Cuba Gooding Jr.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He was one of the dancers.
		Wow.
		And from that moment on, I kept thinking, what's going to happen?
		I said, here's what I want you to do.
		They're not looking at me.
		Your parents are looking for you.
		So get a signal.
		Give them something where you wave your hand so they'll know that that's you.
		But the truth of that was that was one of those interesting moments in time where the world was watching and it was no other way to happen.
		I woke up the next morning, drove down the street.
		I could be five cars back from the traffic light.
		And somebody passed me and go, hey, Lionel Ritchie, all night long.
unidentified		Lionel Richie, all night long, hey, it's Lionel Ritchie all night long.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God, what just happened?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you get your windows tinted?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I got everything tinted, babe.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I was wearing tints.
unidentified		What you talking about?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That might be the biggest audience anyone has ever performed for ever.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you think about it.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Without dying, of course.
		I mean, yeah.
		I mean, it's, I don't know what that was, but it freaked me out because I went from slightly invisible to fully visible.
		Anywhere.
		My friend got married.
		I kept saying to him, you don't want me at your wedding.
		He said, no, no, no, you have to come to the wedding.
		I said, you don't want me at your wedding.
		Here's what happened.
		I decided to go.
		There he is walking down the aisle.
		There he is saying, I do.
		And there he is walking out with his lovely bride.
		Every other picture after that is his mother-in-law with me, his family with me.
		He's no longer in the wedding.
		Every picture was me in his wedding book.
		And I said, you don't want me at your funeral.
		Nobody's going to ever know you left.
		It's not going to happen.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was that like for you, like psychologically, that giant shift?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Was that hard to manage?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Pain in the ass.
		For the first couple of 10 years.
		You know, you got to get used to this.
		I mean, you know, and also you have to understand it becomes an annoyance to your friends.
		Hey, Lionel, let's go down to the bar and get a drink.
		Very simple.
		That's like, you've been doing that for the whole life.
		Right.
		No.
		You go down to the bar, the bar turns around.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So now your friends become security officers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
		Okay, this is not cool.
		Right.
		You know, and so it becomes a little bit of a hassle.
		So if you want to have your friends, you either have to bring them up to your hotel thing or you bring them over to the house.
		Right.
		There's no hanging out.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's not going to happen that way.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And again, it's you get used to it over time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did it fuck with you psychologically?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Hell yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Are you kidding me, man?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because a person relies on the perspective that they get from interacting with people if the majority of your interactions are bizarre.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then finally, one day, you say, okay, you walk into the room, prepare to talk to the room.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Just accept that Muhammad Ali said it correctly.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		We had lunch one afternoon in New York, and it's time for it to be over.
		And as we were having lunch, there are people coming up to the glass, looking in.
		Oh, there's Muhammad.
		That's Muhammad.
		That's Lionel.
		There's Muhammad.
		There's Lionel.
		Muhammad.
		Okay, it's time for us to go.
		And my security had me, and I'm ready to go.
		I said, where's your security?
		Muhammad, he said, I don't need any security.
		I said, what do you mean you don't need security?
		I said, there's tons of people out there.
		He said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
		They'll take care of me.
		And he walks out the door.
		And everybody's going, get back, get back, get back.
		It's Muhammad.
		In other words, you neutralize the room.
		You can either make it a frenzy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Or you can, that's what Michael, God bless him, he couldn't get that in his head.
		But he couldn't.
		Even if he tried to do that, his whole persona was the frenzy.
unidentified		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He has to have the frenzy, otherwise that's not Michael.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, so I just kind of got to the point where you go into that Zen mode and how do I get across the airport?
		It's only one way.
		You got to walk across the airport.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The difference between you and Michael, though, was like you had a normal life for a long time and then became an artist.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I knew how to navigate it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You got a slow drip in the initial days.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He had the explosion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The explosion that he got was like, like I said, unlike anything anybody had ever seen before.
		I can't imagine how he could defuse a crowd.
		Like, it's not even possible.
		No, swarm him.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Never was going to happen.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, never.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The thing about Muhammad Ali, too, who's like one of the rare people that was loved by almost all humans.
		Absolutely.
		Especially after everyone realized he was right about the Vietnam War.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then he returns three years later, and then, you know, he makes his way to the title again.
unidentified		Again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then he was so loved.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was so loved.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And a beautiful person.
		I mean, what I and again, trauma.
		I mean, when you see him out in public, he was Mr. Shobiz.
		But he was carrying a lot.
		He was carrying his belief.
		He was carrying his growth.
		Losing the family, gaining another family, still being the icon.
		I mean, think about that.
		You know, is he going to win?
		Is he going to lose?
		With me, I just got to sing all night long again.
		With him, he's got to win again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he knows he's starting to get brain damage.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There we go.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There we go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's no if, answer, but by the time he gets past Frasier and the first fight and then foreman, just the foreman fight along Ernie Shavers.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Every hit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then later in his career, it gets sad.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just like there's very few people that transcend whatever sport they are and become like one of the key features of culture.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		He was magical.
		Magical.
unidentified		But for me, he was the hero.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because this is a guy who found his freedom.
		When you can walk out and go, I'm going to speak my truth and I don't care.
		Now, this is back in the days when Hoover was Hoover and the investigations were the investigations.
		That's heavy, man.
		I mean, this is not, this is life and death situations.
		And for him to accept his role as the educator and also the beacon of hope, you know, when I got that in my book, when that man came up to me and said, you must survive because you're our beacon of hope.
		Wow.
		There's a moment in time when you realize there is a responsibility here.
		And whether you wanted to be the teacher or not, there are folks looking at you besides the folks in Tuskegee.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and you've got something to share.
		And that something is very valuable.
		When someone can hear wise words from someone they love and respect, it'll shift your perspective in life.
		And that's such a gift that you could give people.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But it doesn't come, I keep trying to tell Bill Verte, it doesn't come with the word flawless.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It comes with flaws.
		How did you learn that?
		You put your foot in the shit.
		I mean, you understand?
		How do you know that?
		And the only way to know it, the only way to understand it, you know, what you don't want to do is have someone describe to you life because they read it.
		I want to know about life that you lived it.
		Now, that's the person I'm taking my advice from.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, 100%.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like someone teaching you music that's never written a song.
unidentified		Yeah, that's crazy.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Unless they're Rick Rubin.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Unless they're Rick Rubin.
		And by the way, by the way, by the way, you said, that's a strange brother, boy.
		I mean, I got chills when you called his name.
		No, man, I can hear.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's the real daddy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the reality.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I so love him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's the real.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a real experience.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's a real experience.
		I went to Rick's house one day and I said, oh, man, this is going to be great.
		It's out by the beach.
		He walked in, and I said, he said, sit right over there.
		Rick, it's only one beanbag chair on the floor.
		That's it.
		That's the whole living room.
unidentified		And I said, where's the living room?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Or there's the terrace off of his bedroom.
		Great.
		He has the doors.
		The doors open off onto his terrace.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		They forgot to put the terrace out there.
		So it opens windows.
		There's no terrace.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think that's what he wants.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly what he wants.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He wants things off.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Ah, but I love him.
		You're right.
		He's such a genius.
		I love him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I love him to death.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He sends me the wackiest text, too.
unidentified		Woof.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, he ain't going to change.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He goes down rabbit holes.
		But he's awesome.
		But there's people like him, right, that just have some special gift of, they just hear things.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But that's the point.
		That's the point.
		In life, in life, if you have a chance to be around someone that's authentic unto themselves, at the same time, they're receiving.
		It's not just songwriting.
		There are people who are receiving messages and you go, do me a favor, just sit down and tell me the story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, authors all talk about that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I love, I love.
		I mean, for example, every time I go to Atlanta, Georgia, who's backstage?
		Greatest fan, greatest mentor ever.
		Andy Young.
unidentified		Okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Did he see it?
		He saw it all.
		Did he miss anything?
		Nothing.
		And he sits back there.
		I've sometimes been 15, 20 minutes late to go on stage.
		Why?
		Keep talking.
		Keep talking, Andy.
		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He's just spewing the message.
		And again, the answer becomes, hmm.
		How do you feel about where we are now?
		I'm optimistic.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's really heavy.
		You know what I'm saying?
		And so I just sit as a student.
		And that's what happens in life.
		If you have a chance, who comes backstage to my shows?
		Everybody.
		And they sit there and I have a chance to find out, hmm.
		Now, they say you're this person.
		And the answer is, no, they're not.
		Everybody has a front and a back.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially a public narrative.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You understand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you don't know them personally.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You don't know them personally.
		And so with me, I have found the greatest parts in the world of this whole story is that they come as fans, everybody.
		And that's the part that really makes me feel really great about traveling around the world.
		Because it gives, remember now, I know the world of the world.
		A lot of people know Detroit or they know America, but they don't know Europe or they don't know Asia or they, Joe, I'm 200 years old.
		I scratched on everything.
		But the point is, it's when I come home to write a song, I don't write a song based on is it going to be a song that can identify to America only.
		I write a song that the world will understand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you've been to the world.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I've been to the world.
		So when I came home to write all night long, everybody looked at me like, you out of your freaking mind.
		It's freaking calypso.
		Ain't no calypso music on the radio.
		I said, there's a thing called world beat.
		That's why every gangster, every politician, every schoolteacher, everybody, when you go on vacation, what do you hear?
unidentified		It's called the world beat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mm-hmm.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So when I play the world beat on anything, you automatically feel familiar.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But now try to play that in the middle of funk.
		Try to play that.
		Yo, what is Lyle doing?
		But the point is, you know, it's, when you travel the world and you come back home and you put a song out, it's going to resonate to the world.
		And as time goes on, it will resonate to America.
		But I do from the world back in certain cases.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just based on your life experiences.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, that's amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's like a lot of great artists have done that.
unidentified		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Broke out and where people are like, what are you doing?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why are you doing something that's different than something that's been insanely successful?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why would you mess with the formula?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Lionel Richard's story.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Lionel Richard crossed over and can't get black.
unidentified		Oh.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You got me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, wait a minute.
		Wait a minute.
		Wait a minute.
		Three times a lady.
		Yo.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's a waltz.
		Little brother.
		Right.
		What you doing, man?
		You copping out?
		And the answer is, no, no, no, no.
		I'm not coping.
		But my answer was very clear.
		If Mozart were black, would he be Mozart?
		No, because he wouldn't be funky enough.
		And you wouldn't have played him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, why would anybody challenge authenticity?
		If someone has an authentic idea, it's who they are at this moment.
		This idea that you're supposed to stay in this box.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, that's called now?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		An algorithm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You follow me?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's basically the same thing.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Everyone keeps thinking, oh man, it's going to take over.
		No, it won't.
		And hopefully, if you're smart enough and get out of the way of this regurgitating over and over again the same goddamn song and go over here, it's got to be somebody that goes, I want to say this.
		And no AI can tell you that.
		It's going to, what's that word?
		Touch people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You've got to have something that touches someone.
unidentified		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It can rhyme all day long.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But does it touch you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's coming from something else that's going to be the new thing.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And we've got to allow a place where the new thing can come through.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because otherwise it will become, it gets to be a hum.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And that's when you hear, we only play 98 beats a minute.
		Well, you know what happens on the fifth song?
		You turn the channel.
		First song.
		Second song.
		Third song.
		Fourth song.
		Turn the channel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's formula.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because you want to hear something that goes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's the trick.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Change up the ear.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But someone said, let's just keep it all the same.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So now I have to ask the question.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is the business people, right?
unidentified		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		These are the people who don't write songs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, of course.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's like going to a concert.
		And the first song is, and the second song is, and the third song, you go, where are we going to eat?
		Right.
		Okay.
		Something's got to switch up.
		The lights have to change.
		Something has to happen.
		Right.
		Otherwise, it becomes monotonous.
		Thank you.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That struggle between the creatives and the money people always exists.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I'm telling you, it used to be wonderful because the creative people were the guys who owned the labels.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		When did it switch?
		When they started consolidating all the things.
		In other words, they started buying up Motown and then they bought up AM and then they bought up Mercury and then they bought up Polygram.
		Now you've got this big giant.
		Okay, so it's Warner Brothers, Sony, Universal.
		We got them all.
		And then the Independence and then the da-da-da.
		And then it became one big one big indigestion.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A bunch of people who just want to make money and they don't make music.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then what if the guy says, I know how to sell, I know how to sell records linel.
		I sold 18 billion hamburgers before I came here.
		What the frick are you talking about?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm a businessman.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I'm a businessman, Lionel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think it's complicated?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Now, can you give me your album in the third quarter?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And I'm going, I normally give my album when I finish it.
		Now, what are you talking about?
		Third quarter means what?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Can we have it in the first quarter?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		If we can have it in the first quarter, it'll be fine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you say, was this a slow thing or did it just become overwhelming at a certain point in time?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, when did they get consolidate?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		The most irritating part of it was you start an album, and by the time you finish the album, they sold the company.
		Oh, God.
		And the people who started the album with you are no longer there.
		So there's a new group of people that's receiving the album that has no idea that you've been working on the album in the first place.
		And then what label did they put that on?
		Okay, they put Motown over on Mercury.
		And then they put Motown Mercury over on Polydor.
		And they put, now you're sitting there going, okay, guys, who do I belong to?
		Who do I belong to?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, no, no.
		It went so sideways that, you know, and then as we slowly get further, further down the road of lack of communication, half the time you go to another company, they didn't know what the hell have you done.
		You know, they go, okay, now, you know, I've got a hip-hop group that love, I got a writer that can write with you, Lionel.
		Who are you talking to?
		I mean, you know what I'm saying?
		I mean, you know, we got a writer that can write with you.
		I don't need a writer to write with me.
		What are you talking about?
		I don't, I got my own.
		That's like having somebody say, I got a guy that can help Stevie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just imagining the stage of your career, someone coming along and telling you how to do it.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because they are ANR people from the last label.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And so you get up there and you go, and by the way, whatever person they tell you they want you to write with, that's the single.
unidentified		Oh, God.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So you go, okay, just hold on for a minute.
		Everybody take a step back.
		The worst thing I ever heard in life one time was that the guy said, I've got a surprise for Stevie.
		He turned in his album and I got, I've forgotten the artist's name and I can't think of it.
		got them to remix his album.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Jesus Christ.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Joe, you never heard from Stevie again for 10 years.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, come on.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		First of all, if you know Stevie, every ch- Okay, he knows where that is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And you remixed it before you put out the original.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And just imagine the gall to think you could do it better than Stevie Wonder.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But that's what I'm saying.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		When you bring in non-creative people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Who are doing cocaine.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I didn't want to say that, but the answer is a lot of it.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		A lot of blows.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're doing cocaine, so they have some really unnecessary confidence.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And again, you have to understand something.
		They know.
		They know because why do they know?
		Because they said so.
		And what I've learned is there are two types of artist, creative artist and created artist.
		Okay.
		And these people are specialized in creating artists.
		But if you happen to be talking to a creative artist, shut the fuck up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, shut the fuck up.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Shut the fuck up.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Shut the fuck up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, could you imagine a group of those people and Prince brings them head and says, this is my song.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They'd be like, are you out of your fucking mind?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, they did.
unidentified		They did.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And you know what he said?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Fuck you.
unidentified		But you know what I'm saying?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, that's one of those songs where you're just like, it's so great and so authentic and so insane and nobody heard anything like that before.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's what I'm saying.
		Yeah.
		A Madonna, Madonna for the Pepsi commercial.
		You know what she gave him for the Pepsi commercial?
		Like a prayer.
		Right.
		You're right?
		Black Man on the Cross with Madonna.
		That's the commercial she gave him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And they said, this is disastrous.
		I said, it's Madonna.
		What were you thinking you were going to get?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What did you think?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		What did you think you were going to get?
		She's giving him a real name.
		But I mean, you see what I'm saying?
		But yet, was the record successful?
unidentified		Hell yeah.
unidentified		Huge.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's what I'm saying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Massive.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Get out of the way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, get out of the way.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Bob Dylan, get out of the way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But people can't figure that out if they're not creative people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They really genuinely think that they know better.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But they want control.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And the answer to it is, I would rather have a company full of out-of-control artists than a bunch of controlled pencil pushers and accountants that know nothing about people and what they like or what could titillate their sensibilities.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay, it's gotta be somebody that knows how to, well, are they gonna be in clubs all night?
		No.
		But we are.
		Are they going to travel around the world to festivals and everything?
		No, they're not going to be there.
		But we are.
		So wouldn't you trust us when we come back home and say, okay, I got the shit?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just they think they know better and they have the money and they have the power and they want to keep control.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And one of the things that they really do enjoy controlling is controlling people that can do things that they can't do.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Ah, very true.
		Yeah.
		And by the way, they know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And they'll come up to you and what they call is giving you advice.
		You know what it's called to me?
		Insulting.
		Right.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It's insulting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Giving you advice is just so, it's just so crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Someone who doesn't do it, giving you advice on how to do it.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You want to hear how that sounds?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Lionel, if I were you.
unidentified		Oh.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And you know what I say back quietly to myself?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But you're not.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If I were you, if you were me, you would be listening to you going, what is this fucking idiot saying?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		If I came back to you, Mr., you know, and I'd say, hey, if I were you, I would do this with the company.
		And you look at me and go, kids, you don't know what you're talking about.
		And that's the right answer.
		Right.
		But if you're talking to an artist, by the way, we could run the company if you let us.
		Yeah.
		But the point is, it's too late.
		Everybody knows everything now.
		And so that's the point.
		It's called the PETA principle.
		Everyone elevates themselves to their level of incompetence.
		And now that you are who you are, you've now null and bored yourself and the industry, whatever it is we're into, you've done it.
		It's done.
unidentified		Cooked.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		So my point now is we've got a world now of specialists that knows nothing about the actual doing it.
		Right.
		It's a world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is crazy.
		And they have so much power and control over artists.
		And they have been successful in creating an artist before.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But not even artists.
		Everybody.
		I mean, in other words, they have people who have never been in a successful marriage longer than 12 weeks giving you advice on marriage.
		It's true.
		Think about this.
		You know, if I were you, I'd do this.
		My answer is, if you ever want to find out about anything, don't ask anybody young.
		Ask old people.
		They've been through the blitz of World War II.
		They've been through the depression.
		They've been through the crisis.
		Don't ask anybody young.
		Why?
		Because if it comes on the phone, you don't know anything.
		If you want some real good advice, when I got to Motown, who did I ask first?
		Marvin.
		Right.
		You think he knows?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He knows.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Crazy as he can be, but it doesn't matter.
		He was the creative killer.
		Who did I ask about a record business?
		Barry.
		Ahmed Erdogan.
		Come on, guys.
		These guys were the most incredible people on the planet.
		And so what I'm saying to you is, right now we're taking advice from people who just graduated from nothing.
		Where are you coming from?
		So that's where I only, I just find it very interesting that before I ask the question of anything, I go, how did you do it first?
		And you said, well, this is my first time doing it.
		Thank you.
		I'll talk to you later.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just bizarre that the industry needs people like that.
		It's just a bad setup.
		It's a bad setup.
		It's like it doesn't maximize creative output.
		It gets in the way.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me tell you, we're so far down the road now because what happens now is it all became legitimate when I say that.
		Not that I was a nice fan of gangsters, but it's something rewarding about giving someone a chance to play.
		Here's some money, go play.
		Now, what's going to happen is he's either going to win or you're going to lose.
		But if you win, you might get a group called the Beatles.
		If you win, you might get a group out of San Francisco called Slying the Stones.
		If you win, you might get a group called The Temptations.
		If you win, you might get Diana Ross.
		If you win, you might get a Taylor Swift.
		You know what I'm saying?
		In other words, just let the artist go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Let them go.
		And that goes with everything.
		You know, there's people who, like I said, in school, they're incredible academically.
		They can recite to you everything that's ever happened and will give you every backup to that.
		Now that we have Chat GPT, not so much the same.
		But the point is, and then there are those that go, I wrote a poem, lucky to hear it.
		Or I read a book.
		I want you to hear about it.
		I have an idea about going to Mars.
		What?
		I mean, you know, you just, I mean, the first thing is before you become a genius, you have to take the responsibility of being an absolute idiot to everybody around you.
		An idiot is when you came up with your first idea.
		Lionel, where do you hear all your songs from?
		I hear them from the other side.
		Lionel's an idiot.
		Where did I say that?
		On a university campus.
		Now, when the world finally becomes attuned to your frequency, oh my God, you hear the word genius.
		The answer is, no, I'm still the idiot that suggested it from the beginning.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think if you said that today, though, don't you think more people would be inclined to listen to you saying the songs, the ideas come from the other side?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But now, yes.
		But now, yes.
		Because I can explain to them, because why?
		They trust me now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But even if they didn't know you now, I think that idea is more expensive.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, now, yes, you're right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because now we've opened that channel up now to where people can talk like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
		But back then, 1970, 69, 68, talking like that means Lionel is on either LSD or some kind of tab.
		He's on some kind of tab, yeah.
		But he's definitely not in his right mind.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, or he's mentally unwell.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you understand his AIDS and his brilliance, but he's crazy.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He's crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's like a genius maniac.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But he won't be here long.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's like Kanye West.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we'll get him to rehab as soon as possible.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's what they were doing a lot of Kanye's career, just trying to manage his insanity that also led to this insane creative output.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest with you.
		Richard Pryor, I use this as my perfect example.
		I mean, I would just wait for his next what's coming out of his mouth.
unidentified		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And then one day he sobered up and couldn't get funny.
		And I kept thinking, what just happened?
		Well, he went to rehab.
		Well, yeah, I know, but where's the...
		Where's your edge?
		And so, you know, there's a word for it.
		There's a phrase for it where you learn your craft under the influence of.
		And if you happen to not know how you got there off of the influence, that when you finally get off of it, you don't know how to get back to it unless you go back on it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Even if you do, it's a different place.
		Like one of my favorite examples of this is Stephen King.
		I love early Stephen King.
unidentified		Perfect.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you listen, I mean, if you read rather The Shining, Tommy Knockers, I mean, Misery, King Cujo, Pet Cemetery, but this was cocaine, snoring, beer, drinking out of his fucking mind.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like he wrote entire books and doesn't remember anything about writing them.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		To be in their presence is one of the most incredible things you'll ever see and hear and experience in your life.
		Again, I got to the point where if I was just allowed in the room, remember now.
		I mean, I was allowed in the room when Marvin and Stevies and God, I couldn't even.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you grasp that historically at the time, like what that meant?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't breathe.
		Did I grasp it?
		I couldn't breathe.
unidentified		Wow.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I mean, do you know what this was?
		This was the gift of life.
		I mean, that's Barry Gordy, right?
		You know what Barry Gordy was back in the day?
		God.
		He existed on the moon somewhere.
		You know, Hollandoja and Holland.
		These were, you know, this is out there in the moon.
		Aretha Franklin and Ahmed Erdogan and King Curtis.
		This is the moon people, man.
		Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier.
		These are moon people.
		And to have them sit in a room, not in a seminar, in their living room, saying, you know what, let me tell you a story about, whoo.
		Now there's one part of me going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
		And then there's another part of me going, holy shit, I'm sitting here listening to a freaking Barry Gordy at Sydney Poety.
		You follow me?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		How did I get in that room?
		So another title was going to be was Fly on the Wall, but I just didn't want to be a fly.
		But the point is, I mean, I had the opportunity one-on-one, not in a TED Talk, but one-on-one with some of the greatest people of our time.
		How well did you know Richard Pryor?
		Oh, my God, man.
		Richard was wonderful.
		I mean, well, I mean, Paul Mooney, Richard Pryor, and I knew Mooney real well.
		I mean, this is, again, totally out of his mind.
		Totally funny.
		But more importantly, totally in charge.
		I mean, he knew his...
		I saw his frustration because they were trying to deal with him commercially.
		They discovered that maybe he might be able to be on network television.
		Wrong answer.
		You know, but he was so gifted in presenting the street struggle and you laughed about it.
		Ms. Rudolph was Ms. Rudolph, man.
		I mean, when he said Miss Rudolph, everybody knew what you're talking about, you know.
		Or, you know, they put me in jail for shooting my car.
		I mean, you know.
		But to know him off camera, to know him off the stage, you know, what I found a lot about my comedian friends is, you know, there's a, to make things funny, you have to take dark things and make them funny.
		But they stay most of the time in darkness.
		And Richard was in darkness a lot of time, a lot of time of his life.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was surprising to people.
		You know, when you see a guy that's so funny and so loved, you assume his life must be amazing.
		But he was struggling and all that stuff.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		He struggled all the time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, he later revealed that, you know, the story from JoJo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which is like loosely based around his life, he accidentally caught on fire.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But in real life, he set himself on fire.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Of course he did.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, the book, the book that I just finished, it's the struggle.
		Everyone keeps saying, well, did you start off in the rural South?
		Forget the Rural South.
		I was struggling with myself, which is what everybody struggles with.
		So the answer is, it's not that I made it.
		It's who was I struggling with?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You were struggling with yourself.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And all of us are struggling with ourselves.
		That's what made the book, to me, so meaningful because people will walk back to me and go, Lionel, I felt the same way.
		Now, you know what that's called in my business?
		A hit record.
		When you write a song and everybody comes back to you and says, man, I was feeling the same way.
		You got to hit record.
		Well, when you can write in a book, Vulnerability, where you can write in a book, Fear, where you can write in a book, I'm not sure.
		I wasn't sure.
		I was scared.
		They go, how could you be scared and do all that?
		And the answer is, step forward.
		Yeah.
		Step forward.
		Scared to death.
		We're all scared to death.
		Are you kidding me?
		You know, we don't know what we're doing from day to day.
		It's just we work it out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But it's not where we, all this confidence and crap.
		No, no, no, no.
		And as time goes on, you kind of develop a little, oh, okay.
		And it's called filling out your skin as time goes on.
		You get a little bit more confident in the fact that I kind of know what I'm doing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Becoming a professional.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		But for the beginning stages of your life, what the hell you're doing?
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Come on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can't.
		Yeah, but it's just very valuable for people to hear that from someone that's very successful.
		Because people just look at a guy like you and go, well, he's just Lionel Ritchie.
		I mean, it's just, it is what it is.
		You know what I mean?
		Must be nice.
		That's how they look at it.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They don't think of, oh, that's a bizarre path that a human being took to superstar them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a strange.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And at any one point in the life, I could have turned around and said, I quit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's very valuable for people to hear as well.
		And people will, in the fact that you're so honest and you're so open about things, it helps so much because when people read that, they'll think of themselves and the moments where they've struggled or the moments where they've been unsure of themselves or not sure what to do or wanted to quit and didn't.
		It's like this is universal.
		It's universal.
		And the difference between Lionel Ritchie and Sandy Smith out there who's listening to this is that Sandy Smith hasn't started taking her first steps.
		And that if she keeps going down that line, she could be her.
		You know, it's just, it's just keep going.
		There's talent, there's gifts of God, there's all sorts of things.
		But one of those things that they all have in common, if you know of them, it's they kept going.
		Like Jimi Hendrix clearly obviously was godly gift.
unidentified		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Gifted.
		Just gifted.
		Something special.
		Also, worked like a motherfucker.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Like the work ethic was insane.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It has to be.
		Think about how many records Nas wrote.
		They were releasing records for years after his death.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Years after his death.
		Because he never left the studio.
		It just worked.
unidentified		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's how you get that.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		That's how you get there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I see Biggie on the streets in Brooklyn when he was 17 years old.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're like, oh, okay.
unidentified		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		With sheets of paper.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Rapping with perfect flow at 17.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're like, okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I get it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You just go.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Or you get around major corporate leaders and you say to myself, oh my God, you built this company.
		I say, I was bankrupt 12 times.
		You know what I'm saying?
		Oh, you were?
		All you remember was the smash.
		But you don't remember, what are you talking about?
		In other words, how many times can you take no?
		How many times can you take rejection?
		How many times can you go, I quit?
		And then you wake up the next morning and go, I got another idea.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Because the world is designed to make you go away.
		Right.
		It's very simple.
		Don't get psyched out.
		I tell the kids on American Island, don't get psyched out.
		Just because this person can hit every note perfectly and you have this cracky voice, but I can't remember this perfect voice, but I can remember your cracky voice.
		That means you've got a personality.
		This is a great karaoke singer over here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Perfect notes don't work.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is something authentic that resonates with you.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There we go.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There we go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I want to know what your little corp is.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		What's that thing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, Cardi B is Cardi B for a reason.
		Right.
		Do you follow what I'm saying?
		There's a lot of folks that came along.
		Right.
		Cardi B is Cardi.
		I mean, I'm just using her as one example.
		But the wonderful thing about it is she came with a personality.
		She came with a thing.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And to me, that's the quality I'm looking for, not only in the music business, but in life.
		Okay, so you're rich.
		Okay, so, but who are you?
		What's your thing?
		What's your, who are you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do I like being around you?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Do I like being around you?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Are you, tell me what you, what is it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Otherwise, you're just rich.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And you got stuff.
		Okay.
		But who are you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You have a shitty foundation in your house.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You have a beautiful house on a shitty foundation.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you got no taste at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of no taste.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, Lionel, it's been a real honor having you on here, man, and a real pleasure.
		And I really enjoy talking to you, man.
		It's a fascinating conversation, and I really applaud your honesty and your insight into your life.
		It's amazing.
		It's really awesome.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Well, I got to be honest with you.
		There's an old expression that goes, sometimes you don't want to meet the person because they may not be what you thought they were.
		You know, you're exactly who I thought.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, thank you.
unidentified		Yeah.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, because you know, you mastered this personality where you can sit down and talk to just about everybody.
		And on the days when you struggle with trying to make a communication with somebody and it doesn't work out, I go, I understand why it didn't work out.
		Because, you know, sometimes you have a block right in front of you.
		You go, okay, I'll just have to deal with the block.
		But I've enjoyed this, man.
		This is fun.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I really have fun.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		It was a lot of fun.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		And best of luck with everything.
		And you've already had best of luck.
		No, no, no.
		We know that book.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Come on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Truly, Lionel Ritchie out now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you do the audio version?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		I did not do the audio version.
		Somebody else did it?
		I did.
		I swear to you, I did not do it.
		How?
		Well, you know what it was?
		If you know Lionel Ritchie, okay, let me tell you something.
		For the time it took me to write this book took two and a half years.
unidentified		Okay, so let me just, let me be honest with you.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You don't want me to read this book because I'd go, I don't want to put that in, guys.
		Can I change that one line?
		You follow me?
		So I keep creating.
unidentified		I keep creating.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		And so it's just one of those things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you dude who read it at least sound a little like you?
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		Wait, wait.
		I'm drawing a blank.
		Why am I drawing a blank?
unidentified		Blair Underwood.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Blair.
unidentified		Jeez.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Blair Underwood.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Blair Underwood.
		I love.
		First of all, we kind of had kids in common.
		Our kids were to the same school.
		So when I say we had kids in common, no, we didn't have the same thing.
		No, no.
		But we had kids at the same time.
		And so we met back then.
		But what I love about him is he understands the, I call it the middle class approach to my life.
		In other words, he understood the fact that did we grow up in the rural South?
		Did we struggle?
		No, no, it's not that kind of struggle.
		We had a struggle of understanding our identity and how to take that forward as artists.
		And he understood the humor.
		I love his voice because it's not so identifiable that if it was a Morgan Friedman, I'm just giving that as a perfect example.
		And I love Morgan, but it's too identifiable.
		I want somebody who can tell a joke and it sounds like Lionel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You know, he had that quality.
		And so when I said, no, no, no, I want you.
		We hit it off.
		Well, his voice, you'll hear it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Understandable.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		You'll understand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you, Lionel.
unidentified		Thank you again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And best of luck again with everything.
unidentified		Really appreciate it.
lionel richie ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, man.
unidentified		It was awesome.

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