Lionel Richie looking back on a “disastrous” moment in his love life.
In his new memoir, “Truly,” the 76-year-old singer finally opened up about the June 1988 fight between his first wife, Brenda Harvey-Richie, and his second wife, Diane Alexander, an incident he called “the scandal of my century.”
“What very few people knew was that Brenda and I were separated,” Richie wrote in his book, per People. “I got a place at the beach, and I was hiding out there, trying to be alone, trying to decompress somehow, because it was killing everyone.”
Richie recalled that he went back to LA to visit Alexander at her Beverly Hills home, and the then-dating couple were shocked by Harvey’s arrival.
“When the door opens, Brenda is standing there,” he said. “There is a massive confrontation. Diane is in total shock and I’m trying to leave, to draw Brenda away. It’s the most awful screaming match of life, and it’s all in this small entryway.”
Richie wrote that he left during the fight and tried to take Harvey with him, but she went back and kept fighting Alexander.
“The neighbors called the police. Charges were brought and then dropped,” he said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Harvey was booked on suspicion of corporal injury to a spouse, resisting arrest and battery. Lionel reportedly told police at the time that he was “kicked in the stomach area” by Harvey.
In his book, the “All Night Long” singer called the incident “just raw and ugly and disastrous,” adding that “the most painful part, the tragedy of our lives” was that “Brenda was heartbroken.”
“That’s the saddest day in the life of a marriage,” he admitted. “When you know you may love each other, still, and you have a history that you will always have, but it’s over. And you know it.”
Richie and Harvey adopted daughter Nicole Richie, 44, together before they officially divorced in 1993, five years after the fight.
The Grammy Award winner married Alexander in 1995, and they welcomed son Miles Richie, 31, and daughter Sofia Richie, 27, together, before the couple got divorced in 2004.
Richie has been Swiss model Lisa Parigi since 2014.
“I will forever give it up to both of my exes for being strong, loving, and devoted moms,” Richie wrote in his memoir. “Nicole and Brenda were two peas in a pod from the start. Miles and Sofia adore Diane, as she adores them both.”
Speaking to People about his memoir, Richie said: “There are certain things you realize in your life that you got through them because you tried to forget. That’s where the book took many a turn because it started getting deeper into the emotions of my life.”
“There were some moments when I definitely wanted to remember,” he added, “but there were also others that I had tried to forget and had to dig up.”
“Truly” is out now.
