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Unbelievable. Little Richard was actually going to play the piano during our interview. We were
talking in the hotel bar at the Hyatt West Hollywood when his fingers began playing air piano. He
looked around for the piano.
“It’s gone for real?” Richard Wayne Penniman asked his brother Robert.
“I was going to show you something,” Little Richard told me.
And I really wanted to hear it—all of it—I told the rock ’n’ roll legend from
Macon, Georgia, who is in his 60s.
“Tutti Frutti.” “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” “Long Tall Sally”—and
someone removed that piano? Unbelievable.
Question: You mean to tell me they had a piano here and just took it out?
Answer: Yeah, [it was] right down that corner.
Q: I cannot believe this. Well, no piano, so we may as well jump into diet.
A: You know I’m a vegetarian. They have vegetarian bacon and sausages. And vegetarian
eggs are good. I like whole-wheat toast. I never could fix the vegetarian bacon right. My mother
could, but I couldn’t. Now, I can fix the sausages and everything else. I can take them on the
road with me and eat them. But the vegetarian bacon, it’s like paper—almost, anyway. You
couldn’t fry it like you do regular bacon and make it crisp. And when it gets crispy,
it’d be just like Robert—black, just like a piece of charcoal or something, you
know.
Q: So, do you doctor up the food?
A: I love garlic. Oh, when I smell garlic, it just makes me want to eat. It’s a
healer for the body. You know, a lot of sickness that we have, we’re digging our graves with
our teeth. If we would just eat right. You know, all this pork, and you know pork is nothing but a
bunch of salt. I don’t use salt. I don’t even pick up a salt shaker. And—bam!—high blood pressure. And we just love that pig. We eat him from his tail to his snout, through in and out.
Q: What do you like for a snack?
A: What I really like, I like peanut butter. And when I was younger, I liked peanut butter
and honey, but sometimes honey gets too sweet for me.
Q: Which peanut butter are we talking about?
A: We have the vegetarian, and I must be very honest and truthful, I don’t like it.
The vegetarian peanut butter to me was just terrible. I’d rather just eat the peanuts. But
I like regular peanut butter and natural peach preserves over that. And I could eat that for
every meal. I like peanut butter that much. Have you ever had it fried?
Q: Not fried, no.
A: That’s what Elvis Presley used to eat. But he would take peanut butter and put over
toast and he would slice bananas and then you put them in the deep fryer.
Q: The whole sandwich?
A: Yeah. And when it come up the sandwich is crisp. It’s really something. I have my
own deep fryer. And when you get to the hotel and somebody fixes it, it don’t be right. You
know, they bring it to you after they done cooked it—the bread—and the bananas are still
just regular bananas.
Q: You won’t get something like that done right in a hotel.
A: No, you have to do it yourself.
Q: Any other snack foods for you? Any sweet stuff?
A: A doughnut just like what you all eating there now. I’m enjoying watching you eat
with your leg swinging just like my mama used to eat.
Q: What’s your favorite kind of doughnut?
A: Coconut. My mother used to make coconut cake with lemon. And she used to make one for my
Aunt Ethel in Philadelphia. I used to like to get the pan that she made it out of and just scrape
the pan. Now, I’ll tell you what I don’t like that most people like. I don’t care
for chocolate. To me, it’s nasty.
Q: Do you eat lunch?
A: No, I don’t. I don’t eat like that. You know, it may sound strange, sometimes
I forget I haven’t eaten. You ever do that?
Q: Oh, yeah.
A: And then I’ll take just a little pinch of a banana. I’m not a big eater. I sit
around and I eat by spells. I just pick. I can just take a piece of bread and piece of cheese and I
feel like I’ve had dinner. I like vegetarian chili or vegetarian spaghetti and meatballs. It
don’t have to be nothing special like some people have to have.
Q: Where’s all your energy coming from?
A: I’ll tell you what gives me energy. It’s strange. I get energy when I’m
around people. There’s something about people that electrifies me. If I had to live without
people, I’d die.
Q: What about exercise? Do you do anything?
A: I’ve been riding a bike because my leg was bothering me.
Q: What’s wrong with your leg?
A: Almost arthritis. I talked to the doctor, and he told me that I need to ride the bike
about 30 minutes a day for my leg and the pain. He told me it will take a while because I
hadn’t been exercising. He told me it wasn’t going to be in one day. He told me I have
to get in the habit of doing it. I was doing it at 2:30.
Q: 2:30 this morning?
A: I don’t sleep much. Most people think I sleep all the time, but I don’t. I
think when you get this age, you only need about four or five hours.
Q: Do you have to do anything special to maintain that energy level when you perform?
A: No. I walk in on the stage—it electrifies me. So the audience, I give them
something, but they give me more. It makes you want to give them what you don’t have.
Q: Gives me goose pimples.
A: Yeah, it send chills through your body. And you say, “Lord, I was doing this when I
was 13 and now I’m still sitting at this piano and look at these people still out here
listening.” At a concert the other night, a bunch of little white girls sitting there
and...one little girl got on the piano and it really did something to me because I was playing and
she looked down in my eyes, and she said, “Hooooo-weeeee!” And when she said that,
boy, it send chills through ya.
I says, this little child—and she tell her mother, she said, “Mama, that’s Little
Richard.” Like she telling her mama it’s a new entertainer. Her mama said, “Honey,
I danced by this. Your grandmama did, too.”
Q: Richard, just now while you were talking, I was trying to picture you in heaven.
A: Oh, Lord, I can’t picture myself that [way]. I just hope that they have room for
somebody that looks like me.
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