LIONEL RICHIE & THE COMMODORES: TOGETHER ALONE (NATURALLY)

LIONEL RICHIE & THE COMMODORES: TOGETHER ALONE (NATURALLY)

DREW WHEELER

With a fiercely funkified beat, sinister guitar licks and an ebullient YAOWWWW!, the Commodores have remained one of the top names in black popular music.

Guitarist Thomas McClary was a freshman at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute when he formed a party band called the Mystics. Their change-of-name to the Commodores (if it isn't a product of some press agent's imagination) came when the word "commodore" was pulled at random from a dictionary. Joining McClary were drummer Walter "Clyde" Orange, pianist Milan Williams, bassist Ronald La Pread, pianist William King and vocalist Lionel Richie. As an extremely young band with sharp tunes and slick choreography, the Commodores would come to owe their surge in popularity to their first and longtime manager, the late Benjamin Ashburn.

In the year 1972, the Commodores were awarded a contract to Motown Records and filled the warm-up spot for the Jackson Five on three world tours. As a headlining band, the Commodores toured internationally, drawing record audiences in the Phillipines, among other far-flung places. In 1978, they even took part in the ill-fated movie "Thank God It's Friday" with Donna Summer.

The Commodores found their first hit in "Machine Gun," a bouncy instrumental propelled by a snappy electric piano and rapid-fire synthesizer volleys. "Slippery When Wet" boasted a wickedly funky guitar-and-soprano sax figure the likes of which would characterize hard R&B in the '70s. A top-five single and possibly the Commodores' greatest song was "Brick House," a monstrous groove-thang which, with the recurring lyric "she's a briiick...howwse," contained one of the most potent unspoken words in pop music. "Lady (You Bring Me Up)/' which features a clever string arrangement and driving vocal line, also reached the top five. Of their IPs, top-five status was achieved by Commodores, Commodores Live, Natural High, Midnight Magic, Heroes and In The Pocket.

Still, the single greatest hitmaker for the group was Lionel Richie. "Just To Be Close To You," "Easy," "Sweet Love" and "Sail On” were all written or co-written by Richie, and reached the top five on the national charts. Richie has an innate gift for the ballad, and with chord changes gracefully dropping one under the other, you can hear the influence of gospel music in his songwriting. (And sometimes out-andout gospel-pop, as a tune like "Jesus Is Love' would evidence.) The mellifluity of Richie tunes could range from the heartbreakingly powerful "This Is Your Life" to the treacly-sweet "Three Times A Lady," the Commodores' only number one single.

The popularity of Richie's downtempo tunes eventually led him away from the Commodores to a career as a solo Motown artist. His duet with Diana Ross on "Endless Love" was one of the top songs of 1981, and can be held at least partially responsible for the spate of sappy "couples" duets that currently crowd the airwaves. His debut LP, Lionel Richie, was one of the best selling records of 1983, yielding such hits as "Truly" and "My Love," both of such maudlin inconsequentiality that one gets the impression that these are just more "couples" duets in which Richie sings both parts himself. Only the midtempo "You Are" retained the punch of Richie's original work with the Commodores.

From the beginning, Richie and his fellow Commodores have been astute businessmen who were not about to watch their fortunes rise and fall as did so many others in pop music. Under the helmsmanship of Ben Washburn, and most recently new manager Chuck Smiley, the Commodores' income has been accumulated and invested in such ! diverse areas as stocks and bonds, real estate, American coins and African art. The Commodores Entertainment Corporation is now a Fortune 500 company and was even the subject of an installment of Wall Street Week on public television. Believe it or not, the Commodores are simply following a plan they designed for themselves when they were still six Tuskegee students (three of whom were business majors). As Thomas McClary told the NY Daily News: "The Commodores are set up so they will continue long after we aren't singing any more. We'll be involved—maybe writing songs, or producing, or in film or some other part of the business. But it might be our kids, or our grandkids out on the stage. That's always been the plan."

Although Lionel Richie and the Commodores could retire for life tomorrow, none are likely to sit back on their portfolios. Richie has become a producer-in-demand, with Kenny Rogers among his credits, and will release a second solo LP (still untitled at press time) in the fall of '83. The Commodores have released the 1 3 LP this past September, and plan arr ongoing itinerary of solo and production projects. +