![]() Though the reverend in him wants to change your future, the rocker in him is not about to let anybody mess with his past. It doesn't matter that Little Richard is an evangelist preaching against the sins of rock 'n' roll, because what we are talking about now is history. My life has changed and developed into another direction." Little Richard may record again (he'd been in the studio with his longtime friend and producer Bumps Blackwell), but it will be "gospel only. He has no desire to perform in concert again, even though he did just that on a recent David Letterman show, rehashing "Joy, Joy, Joy," the gospel song he performed on the Grammy show two years ago with Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles and Count Basie. It's less devilish now, because Little Richard is, after all, a man of God, an evangelist, a preacher against his own past. What's left intact after a quarter of a century is the neon grin, the nearly painful smile that sometimes flashes irony. They just didn't know what to do with it." Even before 'Tutti Frutti,' I was singing rock. When I came out, Chuck Berry was playing low-down blues, Fats, too. I couldn't swing and I couldn't sway, so I rocked. You got to remember that when I came on the scene, it was swing and sway with Sammy Kaye. "They had something to do with the building of rock, but I was the architect. "Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, Eskerita, Otis Redding, Roy Brown, Ruth Brown, Brother Joe May - they was builders," he says. ![]() The voice, once raspy in its sly fury, is deeper, huskier, though the native southern exuberance and the decades-old homosexual mannerisms make even casual conversation fly. The eyes, once devil-fired, are merely restless. The extraordinary eccentricity is quieted, too. The Day-Glo mirrored costumes, now too small at the waist, are packed away, at least those that survived the old days when rock 'n' roll fans would swarm at the foot of the stage for the shreds of his discarded outfits. The mascara has run off with the last of the sweat. The foot-high, pound-of-oil pompadour is gone. In his striped three-piece suit, he looks much more the preacher that he is now than the wild-eyed raver he was back then. Little Richard, who established the salability of a bizarre image, who in fact cut the mold years before Prince had his first diaper changed. Little Richard, whose progeny ranged from James Brown and Otis Redding to Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. Yes, Little Richard, whose outrageousness and frenetic energy snagged a nation's attention starting back in 1955 with "Tutti Frutti," "Lucille," "Rip It Up," "Long Tall Sally," "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "Slippin' and Slidin'." "It's for Little Richard, thank you." He says his own name quite reverently. Just now, the King, at 51, is ordering steak and eggs from room service, with instruction to burn the steak and send up bottles of ketchup, steak sauce and tabasco sauce.
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