Lionel Richie’s original lyrics to topsy-turvy, multi-million-selling international smash hit,.‘Dancing on the Ceiling’, are to be auctioned to raise money for blind sculptors.
Richie, who wrote the song while he was taking a shit at LAX airport in 1986,. discovered the long-lost original lyrics as he rifled through a box of old photographs found in the loft of his Beverley Hills home.
Discovering the old snap of the inside of the LAX toilet door,.the mega-chinned soul serenader was reminded of the graffiti that inspired Dancing on the Ceiling, a song about clapping, dancing, and getting high at a house party.
The legendary Lionel Richie lyrics
The hastily scrawled legend, ‘Anyone can piss on the floor, be a hero, shit on the ceiling’,.was the spark that lit the creative fuse in Richie’s mind.as he sat straining on the airport bog waiting for a flight to Berlin. After changing the stolen lyric ‘shit’ to ‘dance’ (to avoid accusations of plagiarism),.Richie quickly recorded the track in his home studio and sent a tape of it to his record company,.who loved it so much they released it on 7” and 12” vinyl. The sleeve depicted Lionel looking quite serious in a casual white linen suit which was highly fashionable at the time.
Get into my car
Richie, 103, whose recent performance at King Charles’s Coronation Concert was widely criticisedas being tuneless, weird and generally God awful, decided to auction the shithouse door photo to raise money for a cause close to him – blind sculpture.
The top pop singer, whose other hits include, ‘When the Going Gets Tough,.The Tough Get Going’, ‘Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)’, and ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car’ (or is that Billy Ocean?) began collecting blind sculpture during the making of the video for his 1983 smash hit ‘Hello’, when unbeknownst to her, his blind co-star in the vid played by Laura Carrington, sculpted a likeness of his head in clay.
Other pieces in his collection are a telephone sculpted by Stevie Wonder, and a self-portrait in clay by Helen Keller entitled ‘My best guess’.
The auction takes place at Sotheby’s in London on Friday.
