Lionel Richie has shed light on his song-writing skills, admitting that he managed to pen an absolute classic track while on the toilet.
The 73-year-old has been behind some of the biggest songs in history, including All Night Long, Hello, Endless Love and Three Times A Lady.
Discussing his huge career during an appearance on the Drew Barrymore show, the Grammy-winner revealed the wild story behind one particular song he offered country icon Kenny Rogers in 1980 – which went on to top the charts.
It turns out that he only had the first half of it figured out, before a well-timed trip to the loo.
‘I’m working with Kenny Rogers, this is back in the day, and Kenny calls and says, “I want you to write a song for me”. And, of course, I wrote Lady.
‘He said, “Write two songs”, so I wrote one song called Goin’ Back to Alabama. When we get halfway through that song, he says, “I don’t want to sing that song. I think I want to do Lady first.
‘Now, what he didn’t know was I only had written the first verse of Lady.’
Luckily, Lionel stayed calm under pressure and excused himself, rushing to the nearest bathroom to get to work.
‘I said, ‘Excuse me for a minute. Let me go to the bathroom”,’ he continued, to laughs from the audience and a stunned Drew. ‘I’m sitting in the stall writing the second verse to Lady.
‘You will do some amazing things when you’re scared to death. The idea of telling Mr Rogers that I don’t have the second verse was not going to happen in my lifetime.’
And the rest is history…
Lionel made headlines this week about another of his tracks, confessing that he can no longer go ‘All Night Long’ in the bedroom department.
Popping up on the View alongside his fellow American Idol judges Katy Perry and Luke Bryan, when talk innocently turned to the hit.
Panelist Sarah Haines questioned the ‘backstory’ to the tune, when Lionel offered up a little more information than we needed to know.
‘When I wrote All Night Long, it was truly all night long,’ he replied. ‘Now my “all night long” is down to a fierce 15 minutes.
‘But, don’t worry, we’ll talk about that later.’
That doesn’t have quite the same ring to it…
‘15 minutes? That’s long, bud,’ Katy Perry joked, to which he proudly replied: ‘And don’t you forget that, alright?’
We couldn’t even if we wanted to…
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