Name: Lionel Richie On Michael Jackson, The Commodores | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-10-02T15:01:41.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Lionel Richie On Michael Jackson, The Commodores | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Lionel Richie On Michael Jackson, The Commodores | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-02. Transcript available.

nice to see you good you guys i gotta tell you the band is just incredible
great guys thank you so
much fantastic we love that thank you unbelievable half of this band and let me
just take a guess
uh and i hope to god i'm not wrong but you and i are close in age we are
probably the same age 62.
yes that's right i'm 62. what a coincidence but uh how is it you look the way
you look and i look
the way i look how did that happen you know i gotta tell you something we work
on it every day
by the way no but you know this it's my grandmother lived to be 104 103 on my
mother's side and on my
father's side uh she lived to be 98. so i'm banking on jeans jeans and more
jeans and and regular squatting
and regular squatting that's right now this is uh uh the name of the uh the new
uh uh album is
called tuskegee tuskegee is your home my hometown born and raised it's a it's a
university
there tuskegee university tuskegee institute yeah very good and i i was born
there on the campus and
it's known for the booker t washington george washington carver the tuskegee
airmen and so
those were my those are my thank you that's fantastic those are the guys that i
grew up with
so it was a very special place in the middle of the south during the civil
rights movement it was just
one of those oases where it was just the perfect spot to grow up in were your
family uh affiliated with
the institution did they my mother and my grandmother were definitely a part of
it my father was a military
guy i see so obviously with the school teaching on campus my grandmother was a
classical pianist
and so i kind of got the roots out of that yeah did they uh the classical pianist
that's fascinating
now did did they uh when did you because every kid whether it comes true or not
makes a choice at
some point what they think maybe they'd like to do in your case it came true
when did you make that choice
that choice came when i actually went as a freshman i was born and raised there
but i stayed there for
college and so instantly on the first week of college i ran into the guys known
as the commodores the
first day no yeah how does that yeah yeah no no i mean you have to you have to
understand how it works
is that there's a freshman talent show that happens on campus and basically
what the job is that the
upperclassmen come to laugh at the freshmen that's what it's supposed to be
follow me so we were known
as the mystics and we went out on stage and all of a sudden the mystics blew up
on campus in other
words everybody goes oh my god and then the senior group was called the jays
they broke up and we
merged both bands together and call ourselves the commodores oh my god so there
you go your first day
first day and and i didn't tell them they i was walking across campus with my
horn yeah and the guy
said uh you want to join a band i didn't tell them i brought the horn to school
to learn how to play
it now uh when when you uh uh broke the good news to your family guess what i
went to college i've been
there one day i'm in a band no what happened that's what it wasn't that fast
well it now we went through
the entire freshman year and we discovered whoa wait a minute we can go out
here and do this so we went to
new york and of course the sophomore year we stayed out now we meet the manager
of the jackson five this
group this new group is coming out on tour and they need a um an opening act
and uh it was us yeah you
know so we did that little thing and so about little thing how long did that
tour little thing was two
years two years but but i was still in school so we would we would play and go
on to the school and come
back and now i announced to my mom and dad that um i'm going to quit school and
so i went to my father
and i said dad of course afro you have to understand the setting we're we're
the black beetles and we're
going to take over the world so immediately i mean i can't i can't say on
camera what my father said to
me yeah but it was it was it was not a it was not a wonderful setting all right
not encouraging not
encouraging uh and when did that change when did they finally realize you know
what uh he knew exactly
what he was talking about now here we are now uh the second check came in and
and now segue we're now
sitting there my father's doing an interview and he's going you know parents
should stand behind their
children oh my god where'd you find that this is uh sometime about what you're
talking about exactly
right there the commodores and there are the jackson five oh yeah michael jackson
oh yeah right there and
and that's you right there we are you know it seems like it seems like
yesterday but i'm telling
you we had some of the greatest times together i i know everyone thinks of michael
as being this
amazingly serious guy but we had more fun trying to they we called them the jive
five and we were the
the comics and they were a basketball team or there was a pillow fight or
whatever the case may be
and they would use michael and the and and um marlon to block they would stick
so we wouldn't hit them
but jackie would knock your head off so you had to be very careful human hostages
say you say say you say me say it always that's the way it should be
i had a dream i had a dream i had an awesome dream
people in the park playing games in the dark
and what they played and what they played was a masquerade from behind the
walls of down
i said for always i said for always yeah that's the way it should be
yeah say you say me
let's say you say it together naturally
as we go down life's lonesome highway
yeah seems the hardest thing to do
the hardest thing to do is to find a friend or two
that's that helping hand that helping hand someone who understands
when you feel you've lost your way
you've got someone now to say
i'll show you
i'll show you
oh say you save me say it for always that's the way it should be yeah
yeah yeah say you say you say me
say it together naturally come on yeah so you think you know the end time oh no
well the whole of scotch is dancing that's right i'm telling you come on james
plan it's time you start believing oh yes
say you say you say me
say it for always that's the way it should be
say you say you say you say me
say it together naturally
say it together
naturally
nice going nice going nice going thank you very much final great pleasure to
have you jason good to see you
how about that it's a beautiful song very nice sounded great very nice thank
you
that was so good
and uh it's here
on a collection called tuskegee
lion o'ritchie ladies and gentlemen jason aldean that's it we gotta go good
night everybody
now stay tuned for craig ferguson