Rick James On His Onstage Vs. Offstage Persona | Letterman

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

Channel: Letterman

Views: 44,605

Keywords: letterman, david letterman, dave letterman, interview, letterman interview, letterman official, letterman late show, letterman late night, late night, stupid pet tricks, stupid human tricks, top ten, late show, top ten list

Id: E3DMu9YJlPY

Length: 4min 1sec (241 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022