Lionel Richie Recalls Michael Jackson’s “Smelly” Nickname and Eccentric Habits in New Memoir

Lionel Richie is offering a candid portrait of his late friend Michael Jackson, including the pop icon’s lapses in personal hygiene, in his new memoir, Truly.

Reflecting on Jackson’s life after going solo, Richie writes that the star’s routine could be “eccentric—like an absent-minded professor but still a kid.” Richie says producer Quincy Jones nicknamed Jackson “Smelly,” and that Jackson “would laugh, realizing he was oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t changed or washed his clothes for a couple of days.”

According to Richie, the pop superstar oscillated between elaborate stage costumes, pajama bottoms and slippers in the studio, low-key “going-out attire,” or loose clothing at home to rehearse and play with his pets. Constant touring and the risk of items disappearing at the dry cleaner, Richie adds, meant Jackson often wore “the same pants until they were unwearable.”

Richie recalls hosting Jackson so he could shower and borrow fresh clothes—then discovering “a pair of Michael Jackson’s underwear and his old ratty jeans” left behind on his living room carpet. “What do I do but laugh? MJ was here,” he writes.

“I drove him home, on his back streets, and he was sweet and thankful. As soon as I walked back into my house, I passed by the living room and noticed that there on the carpet was the pair of Michael Jackson’s underwear and his old ratty jeans. Just lying there like roadkill,” Richie recalled. “What do I do but laugh? MJ was here.”

Richie frames the anecdotes as affectionate, noting, “We all have our quirks,” and attributing Jackson’s habits to an intense work life that began in childhood under the guidance of his parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson.