Lionel Richie has revealed details about the late Michael Jackson’s hygiene habits, which he said led to the singer earning the unsavory nickname “Smelly.”
The 76-year-old “All Night Long” singer made the revelation in his debut memoir, Truly, published Tuesday.
In the book, Richie wrote about how Jackson was “very close with his siblings and his mom,” but once he went solo, “making these monster albums, movies and videos, he was in charge of his own ship.”
“His day-to-day life was what you could call eccentric,” he said of his friend. “Like an absent-minded professor but still a kid.”
Richie noted that fellow music icon Quincy Jones would often tease Jackson by calling him “Smelly.”
“Michael would laugh too, realizing that he was oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t changed or washed his clothes for a couple of days or so,” the Grammy winner added. “We all have our quirks.”
Richie suggested that Jackson’s poor hygiene was a byproduct of his significant level of fame, as the King of Pop was constantly touring and had little time to run errands like visiting a department store.
“He was on tour performing in the elaborate costumes made for him by his stylists, or he was in his pajama bottoms and slippers in the studio or he was in his going-out attire,” he penned. “Or he was at home in something loose and comfortable so he could practice his dance moves and play with his menagerie of pets.”
Whenever Jackson “came to visit me, he was wearing whatever — jeans and a t-shirt,” Richie recalled. “And the jeans were either falling off him or too short to even be jeans and, well, smelly.”
Richie once asked the superstar about his pants, only to have him respond: “Lionel, I walked by a store in the Valley. The owner came out and gave me a free pair.”
The “Endless Love” singer further explained that Jackson couldn’t simply send his clothes to get drycleaned, because more often than not, his items wouldn’t be returned.
“Everybody kept something for a souvenir,” Richie said. “He just got into the habit of wearing the same pants until they were unwearable.”
Jackson has previously been described as “the dirtiest, most unsanitary person in Hollywood” by five of his former housekeepers.
In a 2014 interview with the New York Post, they claimed the singer “lived in a house of filth and urinated on the floor.”
“Michael sometimes ran around where the animals were, and he’d track... Poop throughout the house and think nothing of it,” Anonymous Maid 1 alleged. “Then, if you said something, he’d threaten to make doo-doo snowballs and throw it at you.”
Truly is out now.
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