Little Richard - Interview

Interview, August, 1994 by Peter Galvin

LR: That's all right. I'd be very glad to. I'm gonna give you one of my books.

FF: Oh, great!

LR: What's your name? [starts to sign book]

FF: Suzi. S-u-z-i. You look great.

LR: [hands her the book] Thank you so much. God bless you. Thanks for coming over. [to PG] Now what was the question again?

PG: I was asking you about being mischievous as a child, and how you translated that energy and wildness into your stage presence.

LR: I was really kind of shy as a child. But I would do things for attention. Like, my mother would have company over, and I would sing so they'd pay attention to me.

PG: Do you think the reason kids were so attracted to your music in the '50s was because it offered them a release--a release that was ultimately very sexual--from the restrictive values of that era? It was as if they projected onto you things they felt inside but weren't able to express in their everyday lives.

LR: Yes, but I won't say that it was sexual. I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't. I'm not speaking about sexuality because I wasn't an expression of such a thing. But I was singing loud, and most singers weren't singing loud. I would wear flamboyant clothes and long hair, and most singers at the time didn't. I let people know that it was all right to do the kinds of things I did.

PG: But weren't there people who criticized you for the way you were?

LR: I was always my own person. I never accepted the idea that I had to be guided by some pattern or blueprint. I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.

PG: I want to refer to your biography again, in which you said that some people called you "freak," "sissy," and "faggot" for the way you dressed and acted onstage.

LR: I never heard nobody in my audience call me any kind of names. I've heard people in the audience screaming, "We love you," or "Long live Little Richard." I've heard people call me the Quasar, the Architect, the Originator, but I never heard nobody in the audience saying such a thing. I don't carry myself that way, never have. I'm very much a gentleman in what I do. And I don't get down on nobody else for doing whatever else they do. To each his own. I try to be a guide for people, to make their darkness bright and to make the pathway light, and never to condemn or control or criticize. I've tried to let my life be an example. I'll be sixty-two this year, and I've lived too long, come too far, to be considered a misfit.

PG: In terms of the makeup, the long hair, and the flamboyant clothes, you were very much a pioneer of an androgynous look.

LR: I don't understand what that word means.

PG: Androgynous means having both masculine and feminine characteristics.

LR: I only wore makeup when I went onstage. I didn't get up in the morning and say, I'm going to put on a pound of eyebrow pencil. But when I went on the stage to do a show, I would put on makeup because I felt that it enhanced my act; it drew attention to what I was doing. I tried to look presentable for a show, but not for sexual attraction. It was strictly for show business. When I got through with my act, I was through with it. I always knew I was a man, always felt that I was a man, always wanted to be a man. I thank God for making me a man. If I had my life to live over, I would want to be a man. And I think a woman should find it a joy to be female because God made both male and female.