thank you very much uh my next guest is one of the most popular musicians in the world
his album street songs has sold over four million copies and he fills arenas all over the country
his latest album entitled throwing down please welcome the creator of punk funk mr rick james
so a little something off the christmas album huh i thought it was i oh my god we're talking about
very nice very nice uh we have to go away for a commercial we'll be back to continue discussing
things with rick james back rick james is here very nice nice meeting you thank you for being
here sir this is incredible success for you isn't it yeah and a long time coming i mean uh didn't
happen overnight like the no it kind of happened overnight it did happen overnight congratulations
about 10 years in the making yeah you you have a a wonderful image uh you know um just like women
hanging and clawing and so on and so forth is i mean is that really you no it's really him no i um
i don't know uh it's yeah it's me i mean what now are you uh when you relax i think i think what
you mean is rick james uh james johnson my real name is james right yeah rick james my stage name
now what's james johnson james johnson's kind of laid back and he likes one woman at a time
rick james give me give me give me now where now when you when you're yourself and when you're not
performing what do you do where do you live i'll live upstate in buffalo new york outside of park
yeah and uh have a ranch and breed horses and stuff like that yeah yeah uh tell me about the
there was a you performed in dallas recently was in dallas texas right and there was a
i read about a lawsuit and it had something to do with equipment and also with your hair
well what that was uh there were some people there trying to um get through to a promoter
and you know usually uh when people try to do that they go through to the artist
you know and uh these sheriffs have the whole place surrounded they want to give me the subpoena
what do you mean they wanted to get through they they wanted to give me um
uh they wanted to give me subpoena me to court as far as this promoter was concerned
so they attached some of my equipment unlawfully this was like an unlawful thing that they did
so what they did they had the whole dallas coliseum surrounded by police and
there was one guy back there he'll never get out we got this bar right now you know and
they were mad at me anyway i think i but you really didn't do anything no i didn't i didn't
do anything i didn't do anything at all and uh what happened we were on stage and um before the
encore they put this i put my hair up in this hat and uh they put me these raggedy clothes and these
glasses and escorted me out through the people so they were real mad about that so they wrote
the papers and actually rick williams was bald head the only way he could have got away was to
take off his wig and i mean you know got we i'm right i'm gonna take all this off and like walk
out you know it's really crazy so we're suing them so the uh the thing that upset you most was that
they said that the man well the thing upset me no that didn't upset me because people in their right
minds know i'm not bald anybody with eyesight knows i'm not bald i mean you know um what it
was was that um they attached our equipment and it was um unlawful what they did was wrong
and it's a whole chain of events and we're selling them for 450 million dollars
you get some equipment with that 450 million looking good yeah well again
congratulations on everything and thank you very much for being here and come back any time
i just want to say hello to my mother and i want to say hello to uh someone else a good friend of
mine veto scaleitis a good friend i just saw my song say hello and my mom everybody in buffalo
we'll be right back thank you very much we're out of time i want to thank my guest rick james
of course dr ruth westheimer also larry bud mellman tomorrow night kevin nealon
and today show weatherman willard scott good night folks thank you very much
you