After revealing behind the scenes details about how he helped bring an all-star group of musicians together to make the Grammy-winning smash hit charity single “We Are the World” in the Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” Lionel Richie recently spoke to IndieWire about which of the participants he knows have watched the movie, and are still reeling from the down-to-the-wire recording session.
“Huey Lewis sat next to me while I’m watching the premiere, and he leaned over to me, and he said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to make it,’” the “American Idol” judge said at an event celebrating the reveal of the current season’s Top 10 finalists. “I said, ‘Huey, it’s 39 years ago. It’s been a success.’ But how we set it up, he was a nervous wreck.”
Richie, who both produced the Sundance premiere directed by Bao Nguyen, and appears heavily in the film, is still in awe of what he and his collaborators, including Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, and Stevie Wonder, were able to accomplish immediately after he had hosted the 1985 American Music Awards.
“Honestly, I don’t know how we did it because you go back and look at it now, from two o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock in the morning when Springsteen walked out the door, getting all of those artists on a record with solos, it’s almost an impossibility,” he said. The film shows how it was a team effort made both by the known players like record producer Jones, and the more hidden figures like record engineer Humberto Gatica. “My job was just to make sure to put out the fires on the floor,” said Richie.
Probably the most infamous challenge the group ran into, as shown in the film, was how to compensate for Prince not showing up to record a solo. That is what put the fire under Lewis in particular. “Poor baby, Quincy turned around and said, ‘Huey can do it.’ And he said, ‘Huey can do what?’ And they said, ‘You’re going to take Prince’s part.’ He says, ‘Oh, really?’ And then he realized he’s standing there next to Michael, and he says, ‘What do you want me to do?’ Then, ‘Can you harmonize? Who are you?’ So he checked out, his brain went out,” said Richie. “And so from that point on, he was really just trying to figure out how he was going to survive it. He was so relieved after we said, ‘Huey, you got it.’ It was perfect. He was perfect.”
To be able to not only live through a night for the history books, but now share moments from it with the world through “The Greatest Night in Pop” documentary “is a godsend,” said the “All Night Long” singer, “because it all happened in one night. We couldn’t come back the next day to touch it up. And we had the divas of the divas. We had the greatest of the greatest, and everybody was chilled.” Having country legend Waylon Jennings be the only departure, because “No good old boy ever sang no Swahili,” felt like an added feat.
Now focused on judging “American Idol” Season 22 on ABC, Richie is able to apply his “The Greatest Night in Pop” experience toward developing artists of all different types of genres and ways of performing. “Everybody has their own individual take,” says the music icon. “It’s not fair to get the best guy in Country, and then the best person in R&B, and [so on] and say, ‘Ok, there’s one of y’all.’ There’s all of y’all.” Though Richie, coming off a night that saw two contestants eliminated, understands that despite being around enough talent to make another “We Are the World,” the show only has one winner each season.
“I know this at the end of the day is a contest, but the talent is so fierce, and it drives me crazy when someone goes home and you go, ‘Oh my God, we just threw the baby out with the bathwater,’” said Richie, coming off of a particularly hard double elimination after the May 22 live show. But the show is not just finding the best singer, it’s finding a new “Idol.” “That’s the point. Stage presence, emotions, how you handle yourself. Did the crowd respond? First of all, you can just win on the crowd responding,” said the Grammy winner. “All of those factors make the superstar. It is not just, ‘Did you hit the right note?’ Forget the right note. ‘Are they excited?’ Yes. You won. That’s it.”
