Sarfraz Manzoor

I am in Los Angeles for a BBC Radio 4 documentary on Little Richard. He had promised us an interview so I will flew out on Saturday for the interview which was scheduled for Wednesday evening. Little Richard is, without hyperbole, one of the most influential musicians who have ever lived- the architect of rock and roll who laid the foundations and set out the road along which everyone from Elvis to James Brown to Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles to the Stones to Prince and Michael Jackson have followed. That he is still alive and performing is almost miraculous which was why when Radio 4 asked me to suggest programmes I wanted to do I suggested one on Little Richard. He hasn’t done any major radio or television interviews in the UK for ages and according to reports is famous for leaving journalists waiting anything up to six hours for interviews. The location was the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Seven o’clock. We get there a few minutes late, call his lawyere and he says go to the eighth floor. We take the lift and are greeted by a large man in shades saying ‘are you from the BBC?’ we nod our heads and are taken into the room. I meet his lawyer who shakes my hand and then there he is. LIttle Richard. Sitting on the sofa in dark shades, trademark pompadour wig, powdered face with suspiciously unlied skin, in purple sparkly shirt, red kerchief round his neck, bejewelled shoes. I shake his hand and tell him its an honour to meet him and within seconds we are recording; from walking on the street to entering the hotel and then there I am sitting in a room with the man who started rock and roll and I am asking him questions. I dont open my notebook and so for the next half hour fly by the seat of my pants; in the room are two security men and his lawyer. Richard is in an evangelical mood and almost any enquiry eventually ends with a comment about the wonder of God. He is in good voice, he taps out Tutti Frutti on my leg, he talks about his childhood, the revolutionary sound he formed, his move into gospel, music today, whether he got paid in full. And all the time I am looking at him thinking: this is the guy that has seen and done it all, what IS going on in the mind of LIttle Richard? There are so many questions I dont ask- about his tortured sexuality, about what it was like being a screaming homosexual in fifties Georgia, about the industrial quantities of drugs he consumed in the lost years of the 70s, of his battle between the sacred and profane, between rock and roll and gospel. I dont ask him any of those questions as i fear it will the last question i ever ask and i dont ask because in the end the man doesnt need to apologise for anything or to anyone. There are times when i feel nervous, like I am in a locked room with a Bible bashing madman who doesnt play by any rules most of us understand and other times I think i wish i had another hour to talk, i wish it was just me and him and not the security guys and the lawyer. But most of all i think of how fortunate i am, sometimes in my life, to have had a chance to meet Mr Little Richard, the man present at the creation whose music was the Big Bang that shaped the sounds that the world has been listening to for the past 50 years. Frequently imitated but in the end there is only one LIttle Richard.