I once went to interview Lionel Ritchie not entirely, but mostly, for my own amusement. I flew to Paris and made my way to the George V hotel where he was staying, knocked on the door and said: “Hello!”
His response was not what I had imagined. “Are you Tim?” he inquired. “Come in.”
I must have looked crestfallen because he asked if I was all right, and I explained that I was fine, but this was not how I had expected our encounter to begin. “Oh,” he replied. “Would you like to do it again?” I confessed that I would.
He went back into his room and closed the door, I knocked again and when he opened it I said “Hello!” And this time, to my huge joy and enormous amusement, he replied: “Is it me you’re looking for?”
Oh how I guffawed, bent over double in the aisle of a hotel corridor, slapping my thigh like a halfwit, while he waited patiently for me to finish laughing at my own joke; albeit one in which he had been a generous participant.
Anyway… he turned out to be a lovely gracious interviewee and also a very snappy dresser, attired entirely in black Prada including some cool motorcycle boots, and I can’t remember anything about our encounter except that, and our introduction. But I went home happy.
And years later, I learned that in addition to the smooth easy-listening seduction-soul of Easy and Hello, and the lively Latin knees-up of All Night Long, he had played the sax on this funk classic, which came out when I was too busy being a punk to notice.
And also, the glorious disco groove of Machine Gun.