Lionel Richie "Lost One Of His Heroes" With The Passing Of Kenny Rogers

Lionel Richie called into The Bobby Bones Show after the passing of a country music legend and one of Richie's great friends, Kenny Rogers. Richie wanted to share his stories and friendship with Rogers from over the years.

Before getting into any stories, Richie said "I just lost one of my heroes." He continued by telling Bobby Bones that he met Rogers at a time in his life when he was trying to transition from the Commodores to pursuing a solo career. Richie and Rogers met because Rogers was looking for a song to record, and he reached out to Richie to see if he had any. Richie did have the song "Lady" started because he was planning to pitch it to the Commodores, however, they passed on it because they wanted to do something different than another love song. So Richie shared that he had a half-written song, but it would be awhile before he could finish the song because he was heading out on tour with the Commodores in 2 weeks. A few days later, the drummer got into a motorcycle accident and that put them off the road for the following 2 months.

So Richie started working on the song for Rogers. Then Richie went to one of Rogers shows and pitched his song "Lady" for Rogers backstage at the show. He said that within the first 15 seconds of meeting him, Rogers made Richie feel like they had known each other since childhood. For Richie though, Rogers was "The Gambler" and a song pitch didn't get bigger than that moment. From then on, Richie and Rogers became great friends, Richie told Bones "We lived a lot of life together."


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