{"id":985,"date":"2019-03-24T11:22:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-24T15:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/?p=985"},"modified":"2019-03-24T11:22:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T15:22:55","slug":"its-easy-to-listen-to-lionel-richie-sing-brick-house-and-other-hits-all-night-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/its-easy-to-listen-to-lionel-richie-sing-brick-house-and-other-hits-all-night-long\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s easy to listen to Lionel Richie sing ‘Brick House’ and other hits all night long"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lionel<\/a>

Lionel Richie sings the Commodores hit “Brick House” Saturday, March 23, 2019, at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/p><\/div>\n

There was a moment in the Lionel Richie concert Saturday night at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City, just as Lionel was finishing up the final verse of \u201cEndless Love,\u201d where there was a bit of a commotion in the front row.<\/p>\n

A gent had gotten down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend while Lionel was singing the song. Now that\u2019s some pretty romantic and memorable planning by that dude, and it didn\u2019t go unnoticed by Lionel. After he finished the song, he stopped the show and made a big deal out of the moment, the happy couple was shown on the big concert screens, and it all seemed unscripted to me from my vantage point. Lionel seemed to not know about the proposal in advance and veteran performer that he is, he rolled it right into the show.<\/p>\n

He dedicated the next song to the woman who had just received the rock, which was the 1977 Commodores hit \u201cBrick House.\u201d It\u2019s a great song, and the story behind it was detailed for me by William A. King of the Commodores for \u201cThe Vinyl Dialogues Volume III: Stacks of Wax.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the mid-1970s, the Commodores had developed a routine for recording albums. Band members would get together in the middle of October and spend about two months choosing and arranging songs, take a couple of weeks off for Christmas, fly to Motown Records in Los Angeles and spend January and February recording, release the album in the spring and tour in support of the album in the summer.<\/p>\n

When the band \u2014 William A. King, Ronald LaPread, Thomas McClary, Walter Orange, Lionel Richie and Milan Williams \u2014 was getting together songs for its fifth studio album, the self-titled \u201cCommodores\u201d in late 1976, members had chosen and arranged eight songs for the album. They needed one more, though.<\/p>\n

But everybody was worn out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had done eight songs and we could not choose the ninth song. Everybody was desperate, everybody was tired, didn\u2019t want to see each other anymore, wanted to go home. We had seen each other every day, seven days a week, for two months,\u201d said William A. King, band\u2019s trumpet player. \u201cWe decided to just do something quick, because we only had two days left to get the songs prepared before we left for L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n

They all agreed to just throw something together quickly. So Walter Orange sat down at the drum kit and started tapping out a beat. Ronald LaPread added the bass, while King and Richie tried to figure out the horns part to go with it. Thomas McClary added in guitar and Milan Williams joined in on keyboards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just jamming,\u201d said King. \u201cAnd we finally got a basic track down.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were no lyrics to the riff, so it was suggested that King and Orange both head home after the session and try to write some words to go with it. But time was of the essence. The band needed the lyrics the next day if it was going to complete the ninth song for the album before heading to Los Angeles to record.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time we had cassette tapes, so I was playing it over and over and over again. I was just trying to figure out a starting point,\u201d said King. \u201cBut I knew it was going to be about a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even after getting home that evening and playing the cassette over and over, King was still stuck. It was getting late, and King\u2019s wife, Shirley Hanna-King, was running out of patience.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, \u2018Look, why don\u2019t you turn that tape off? You\u2019ve played it a thousand times; don\u2019t you have that melody in your head yet?\u2019\u201d King recalled his wife saying. \u201cI said, \u2018No, I don\u2019t, which is why I keep playing it over and over again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Shirley Hanna-King had heard enough and retired to a different part of the house where she didn\u2019t have to listen to the tape.<\/p>\n

Eventually, King himself ran out of steam.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell asleep, literally with the tape on. It just ran out,\u201d said King. \u201cWhen I woke up, I had a pad of paper and pencil on my chest. I looked at it and it had all these lyrics written on it. I was looking at it thinking, \u2018God, those are some good lyrics.\u2019 And then I looked at the handwriting and it was my wife\u2019s handwriting. So I asked her, \u201cDid you write this?\u2019 And she said,<\/p>\n

\u2018Yeah, I had to do something to keep you from playing that tape all night long because we couldn\u2019t get any sleep.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

King took the lyrics to the next day\u2019s session and presented them to the Commodores.<\/p>\n

\u201cMilan Williams said, \u2018Man, these are the best lyrics you\u2019ve ever written,\u2019\u201d said King.<\/p>\n

Orange had also done some writing the previous evening, and between the two of them, King and Orange combined their lyrics and came up with a song that would be about a woman who was built like \u201ca brick shithouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song was \u201cBrick House.\u201d But James Carmichael, who was producing the \u201cCommodores\u201d album, still wasn\u2019t sold on it being the ninth and final song for the record.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarmichael wasn\u2019t convinced,\u201d said King. \u201cHe listened to it and said, \u2018Eh, I\u2019m not too sure about this song.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Orange was. So unbeknownst to the other members of the group, he took the assistant engineer into an adjacent studio, had the track put on and then Orange started singing over the track, adding in the lead vocals. He then took the revised track back to Carmichael and the Commodores to hear the results.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd everybody went, \u2018Oh my God, this is really nice.\u2019 That\u2019s actually how the song got on the album, because Walter went in there and did a demo vocal over it, which convinced everybody that the song was worth going on the album,\u201d said King. \u201cIt probably would not have even made it onto the album. We would have just done one fewer song on the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Brick<\/a>

“Brick House” would go to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 4 on the U.S. R&B chart in 1977.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cBrick House\u201d would be released as a single and go to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 4 on the U.S. R&B chart.<\/p>\n

But it wouldn\u2019t be the only hit single from the \u201cCommodores\u201d album, which was released on March 30, 1977. There would be another single that was even bigger.<\/p>\n

Richie had a song that, according to King, he must have rewritten a dozen times once the band had gotten to Los Angeles to record. Richie would go into the bathroom at Motown Records, write the lyrics and bring them back out to the band.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither Carmichael or one of the guys would go, \u2018Eh, these suck.\u2019 And Lionel would go back into the bathroom,\u201d said King. \u201cWe had this thing we used to say: \u2018Has anybody seen Richie? Oh, he\u2019s in the bathroom.\u2019 The lyrics for that song were written in the bathroom at Motown Studios in Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song was \u201cEasy,\u201d and it would be a smash hit. It got to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart and No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we hated his first lyrics, \u2018Easy\u2019 was easy,\u201d said King. \u201cFrom the first time he played it, I thought it was a hit song. And I wasn\u2019t alone. I think everybody in the room thought it was a hit song.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cCommodores\u201d album itself was also a big hit for the group. It reached No. 1 on the U.S. R&B\/Hip-Hop albums chart and No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart.<\/p>\n

If you get a chance to see Lionel Richie, buy the ticket. Richie is still in fine voice, he\u2019s a fabulous entertainer and it\u2019s an evening of hit after hit after hit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a moment in the Lionel Richie concert Saturday night at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City, just as Lionel was finishing up the final verse of \u201cEndless Love,\u201d where there was a bit of a commotion in the front row. A gent had gotten down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[29,114,150,264],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tvdbook","tag-atlantic-city","tag-hard-rock","tag-lionel-richie","tag-the-commodores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}