Lionel Richie revealed that Michael Jackson was nicknamed “Smelly” because of poor hygiene.
In his newly released memoir, Truly, Richie shared his relationships with Jackson.
“Michael 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,” writes Richie. “His day-to-day life was what you could call eccentric. Like an absent-minded professor but still a kid.”
Richie shared that Quincy Jones teased Jackson with the nickname “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,” writes Richie. “We all have our quirks.”
Richie said that Jackson was so famous that he couldn’t just go into a store and purchase products.
‘He was on tour performing in the elaborate costumes made for him by his stylists,” Richie wrote. “Or he was in his pajama bottoms and slippers in the studio or he was in his going-out attire. He was at home in something loose and comfortable so he could practice his dance moves and play with his menagerie of pets.”
“Whenever Michael came to visit me, he was wearing whatever — jeans and a t-shirt,” Richie continued. “And the jeans were either falling off him or too short to even be jeans and, well, smelly.”
When Richie inquired about his pants, Jackson responded, “Lionel, I walked by a store in the Valley. The owner came out and gave me a free pair.”
Richie described Jackson as a musical savant who “could compare 15 different mixes of the same song and could tell them apart.” But his daily life was something else
“In his daily coming and going, that kid was winging it every minute,” Richie writes.