Celebrity Testimony: Little Richard

The Life and Times of Little Richard From Chapter 6 Dont Knock the Rock:Richard was ready both spiritually and economically to make the break with the world of shows business. Misuesed ripped off and cheated by racists, promoters and companies, he was also hassled by the International Revenue Service for an accounting of his huge earnings. He was becoming very tired of the heavy traveling schedules and of the business of being a star in general. The spiritual pressures were such that he needed only a sign that he could interpret as divine to clinch the decision. Richard announced his retirement in the middle of a tour of Australia. Headlining a package of artists that included Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and the Bluecaps, and Ali Lesley "the female Elvis" Richard found himself at the center of scenes of frenzied and riotous adulation from the Rock and Roll-starved Australian teenagers. I had never liked flying and I had never been so far on a plane before. It worked on my mind. When it got dark I coul see the engines on the wings glowing red hot, I thought the plane was on fire. My mother had a religious book called The Great Controversy from Ellen White, which showed angels with yellow hair flying. In my mind I pictured these angels flying up under the plane holding it up. It was like a sign to me. It came to me later that the plane wasnt on fire-it was just that I had never been that far away before. It was very strange to me. Then on our fifth date of the two week tour we had left Melbourne for Sydney and fourty thousand people came to see me at the municipal outdoor arena. That night Russia set off the first Sputnik. It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads. It shook my mind. It really shook mind. I got up from the piano and said," This is it. I am through. I am leaving show business to go back to God." The very next day we were leaving Sydney on the ferry, and I had told the fellows in the band that I was quitting. Clifford didnt believe me. So I said, "Would you believe it if I throw this ring in the water?" Clifford tried to grab it and nearly fell into the water behind the boat. There were ten days of the tour left to run, but I would not work anymore. Our tickets home were bought on the basis of a two week tour, but I demanded passage back to the states for the total entourage ten days early. The incredible thing is that the plane we were originally scheduled to return on crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Thats when I felt that God really had inspired me to do the things I did at the time. My frineds and fans all over the world couldnt understand a guy at the height of his career quitting with the world in his hands. One reason was Art Rupe. It seemed that he wanted to buy me body and soul with my own money. Bought things for me, then took it out of my money and said he had bought it. Can you imagine that? Begining in 1959 although I had settled my dispute with Rupe for the recording royalties on my biggest hits, he took the position that this release also covered songwriters royalties and refused to pay me any song writers royalties from that day to this one. Consequently I was forced to institute a federal lawsuit against him and his companies for the millions of dollars I say he owes. The very thought of it is sickening to me now. He's made millions and he should owe me millions. But this was not the only reason I left show business. I wanted to work for the Lord and find that peace of mind. I had always wanted to be a preacher and dedicate my life to God. I knew I had a message to say to the world outside of show business.When I knew I came to God. From Chapter 12 Call My Name: Richard allowed his life to be taken over by drugs and alcohol. They completely dominated and altered his personality. His work was seriously affected and his life threatend. "I spent thousands and thousands of dollars getting high. I got behind financially. I got behind in my life I got so heavily into drugs that for a year I never went to Riverside to see my mother. I didn't want her to see some of the ways my life had come into. I had deteriorated. I came so low that I only weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds. All I was interested in was getting high. I'd be riding all over the city of Los Angles looking for cocaine. They should have called me Little Cocaine, I was sniffing so much of that stuff! My nose got big enough to back a diesel truck in, unload it, and drive it right out again. Every time I blew my nose there was flesh and blood on my hankerchief, where it had eaten out my membranes. I was smoking marijuana and angel dust and I was mixing it with heroin and coke. It was costing me a thouseand dollars a day and there was always trouble with the dealers. Larry Williams, a guy I started in show business, came to my house with a gun to shoot me. I had got some cocaine from him, arranged to pay later, and didn't show up because I wss high. Larry and I were good friends. He had been with me at Specialty Records. I brought him to fame. We were very good friends but he came to shoot me! That was probably the most fearful moment in my life. That is what drugs can do to you. He said," Richard, I'm gonna kill you. Ain't no one gonna mess around with my money." I knew he loved me I hoped he did! But he had this pistol right there and he would have shot me if I hadn't paid him. I became very nasty, which I never use to be. Cocaine made me paranoid. It made me think evil. It made me feel sorry for myself. When I got high I couldn't sleep. I couldn't get tired enough to sleep. With everybody else asleep I couldn't find nothing to do. It was so boring I started drinking as well. See, I had bodyguards around me constantly. There were so many people around me that when I wanted to raise my hand there was someone there to raise it for me. They would bring me cocaine and I'd take it all the time. I spent my time locked up in a hotel. I'd go to New York City, get a suite in the Waldorf Astoria,and stay there for days, just sitting in a room with the television on all the time. The drugs brought me to realize what homosexuality had made me. When I felt that I wanted to hurt. I wanted to kill. I had never been like that before. I wanted to fight those boys who didn't want to do what I wanted them to do. I had guys working for me who were scared to come into the room to get paid! They were scared of me because my homosexuality was so heavy they could see it in my eyes. Homosexuality takes over your whole mind, but it's an illusion. It's not really any excitement. It's like masturbation it's false. It's not a completeness. When you hug and kiss a man you feel like something is missing afterward. I started to get so demanding that the cats working for me, Ken Dahanna and Keith Winslow, were getting me whiskey. They were getting me drunk so that they could be free. They didn't have no time for themselves. So I became an alchoholic. I would drink everyday, drinking without eating. Now when you're like this, high all the time, you don't really know what's going on. I lost alot of money because people stole from me. A lot of tragedies happened around that time. The first was when a very close friend of mine, a very very close personal friend, who had traveled with me as a valet, called. He wanted to hear me sing and play at Magic Mountain, in L.A. I fixed it up for him to come. My brothers and sisters and my mother were coming but he never did arrive. He got shot in the head that very night at the heroin man's house. Another close friend of mine, called Curly Knight, was coming out of an apartment building one night and some fifteen year old boys beat him and put him in the trunk of his car. Fifteen year old boys. They drove him around the city, then they cut him up with a butcher knife. They broke the knife off his body, put him between two houses, and called the police to say they had found a dead man. They had killed him! When they asked those boys why they had killed him, they said,"We thought he was white." He was a light complexioned man. But isn't that pitiful. He was a man God made and died for. What happened next happened to my brother Tony. Tony and his wife,Nita, were both school teachers. They had a little boy also called Tony. Well, my brother called me and asked me to let him have two hundred dollars to get a station wagon. I was just about to leave for Miami, Florida, to appear at the Americana Hotel in place of Tina Turner, who was sick. I told him I would let him have the money when I got back. Well, when I got back to Los Angeles, instead of going to see Tony, I picked up some people. We checked into a little hotel out in Hollywood and got high and had a good time and let it all hang out because I had made alot of money. The next morning everybody was looking for me. My brother had got up and watered his lawn and took little Tony for a walk. Then he felt a pain in his chest. He went to lie down for a few moments. He died. He died of a heart attack. I never did get over there to see him. Then I knew that God was no respector of persons. God had permitted all these things-maybe to save Little Richard- to open my eyes, to let me know that it could have been me, to let people know that the Rock of Ages is present and the world is getting ready to end. I knew then I was called to be an evangelist for his Gospel. Then something happened that really shook my mind. Ricky, Deanies little boy, who I loved just like I would have loved my own son, got shot dead. He was fooling around with some friends in the street. One of them had a gun and he got shot in the head. It nearly killed Deanie. She was a sister to our family. It shook my mind even more than it was already shook. I thought it might be my turn to die next. I was afraid I was going to die. I always did believe I would die before I was forty and though I was still at the top nothing would satisfy me. Tony's death was the saddest moment of my life. But it was also one of the happiest. I knew after Tony died that I was going to come out of show business. I felt it would be a joy to come out. Tony's death was a door that I didn't want to be opened, but it was opened. And I walked through it. To come out of show business and take my stand on God's side. To be an evangelist for all denominations, for all races, creeds and colors. I had heard God speaking to me to go out and tell the people of the goodness and how he had snatched me from the burning. And gave me a peace, a serenity, a tranquility that I never knew existed. It was as if something came over my whole being. I didn't care about money. I didn't care about popularity. I didn't care about fame or fortune or any of those things. All I wanted was God in my life. I knew that I needed to tell and to share that with everybody. I wanted people to know that the only rock they needed was the Rock, Jesus Christ. The only roll they needed was the Roll of Glory, the Roll of Heaven. That's the only rock and roll they needed. All the other can rock and roll away.