Lionel Richie says he ‘tried to bribe the pilot’ before missing his sold-out MSG show
Lionel Richie has endless love for his fans — so much so that he apparently “tried to bribe the pilot” of a plane to get him to his sold-out Madison Square Garden show on time.
The “Hello” musician apologized Monday to concertgoers for missing his sold-out show at MSG last week. He was unable to perform there Saturday due to severe weather that prevented his flight from landing in New York and forced him to push the concert to Monday.
“I had two nos come at the same time,” Richie told the crowd on the rescheduled date, “and when those two decide it’s a no — when God says no and when the pilot says no...”
The veteran singer-songwriter trailed off before adding that he “tried to bribe the pilot” to land the plane in the Big Apple during an extreme thunderstorm that blew through New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Saturday evening.
“The pilot said, ‘I do wanna see my wife tomorrow,’” Richie recalled. “So tonight we are going to make up for that. I apologize a thousand times.”
Lionel Richie postponed his sold-out Madison Square Garden performance about an hour after it was supposed to start Saturday. Fans were not happy.
Fans expressed outrage over the weekend after the “All Night Long” hitmaker announced that his MSG concert had been postponed — an hour after the show was scheduled to start. His co-headliner, Earth, Wind & Fire, also canceled due to weather problems.
As frustration mounted on social media, Richie posted on Saturday that he was “so bummed” he couldn’t make it to the arena that night and said he couldn’t “wait to perform” on Monday instead.
MSG was the latest stop on Richie and Earth, Wind & Fire’s Sing a Song All Night Long tour, which is coming Sept. 8 to Chase Center in San Francisco before concluding Sept. 15 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood.
Don’t let the easy-listening ballads and pastel sweaters fool you: Lionel Richie, starting his fifth season on ‘American Idol,’ is a true Black music pioneer.
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