In ‘Truly’ Richie’s candid new memoir, out now, the Grammy winner shares a never-before-told story of his “eccentric” friend and collaborator Michael Jackson
By Janine Rubenstein
The Grammy winner and American Idol judge, 76, has released his new memoir Truly, out Sept. 30, and in it, he’s sharing fascinating never-before-told stories. “To be honest with you, I don’t know how I remembered a lot of stuff,” the star told PEOPLE exclusively of his writing process.
One memory that stood out was the bond he had with close friend Michael Jackson at the peak of his fame. In Truly, he describes how he and the King of Pop were deeply bonded over music, but differed greatly when it came to how they went about daily life.
“Michael was very close with his siblings and his mom, but once he went solo, making these monster albums, movies and videos, he was in charge of his own ship,” writes Richie. “His day-to-day life was what you could call eccentric. Like an absent-minded professor but still a kid.”
Credit: Bettmann Archive
Singer-songwriters Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie hold their Grammy Award for “We Are the World”.
For instance, Richie shares that fellow music icon Quincy Jones used to tease Jackson with the nickname “Smelly.”
“Michael would laugh too, realizing that he was oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t changed or washed his clothes for a couple of days or so,” writes Richie. “We all have our quirks.”
Richie shares in Truly that Jackson’s poor hygiene was, paradoxically, due in part to his extreme level of fame, and that he often lived on the road and couldn’t just pop into department stores to purchase things like anyone else.
“He was on tour performing in the elaborate costumes made for him by his stylists, or he was in his pajama bottoms and slippers in the studio or he was in his going-out attire. Or he was at home in something loose and comfortable so he could practice his dance moves and play with his menagerie of pets,” describes Richie.
When it was just the two of them together, he says Jackson put on no airs — or deodorant.
“Whenever Michael came to visit me, he was wearing whatever — jeans and a t-shirt. And the jeans were either falling off him or too short to even be jeans and, well, smelly,” writes Richie.
When Richie once asked about his pants, he says the superstar responded, “‘Lionel, I walked by a store in the Valley. The owner came out and gave me a free pair.'”
He shares that when Jackson was traveling he couldn’t simply send his clothes out to be cleaned because, quite often, his belongings wouldn’t be returned.
“Everybody kept something for a souvenir,” writes Richie. “He just got into the habit of wearing the same pants until they were unwearable.”
But Richie was the kind of friend to lend a helping hand. One time, when Jackson came over looking and smelling particularly unkempt, Richie writes that he gave the star a pair of jeans, clean underwear and encouraged him to shower for the first time in days.
“I drove him home, on his back streets, and he was sweet and thankful. As soon as I walked back into my house, I passed by the living room and noticed that there on the carpet was the pair of Michael Jackson’s underwear and his old ratty jeans. Just lying there like roadkill,” he writes. “What do I do but laugh? MJ was here.”
While Richie says that the singer was a musical savant who “could compare 15 different mixes of the same song and could tell them apart,” his daily life was a different story. “In his daily coming and going, that kid was winging it every minute,” he writes.
Courtesy: People
