“For the first time in my life they were saying don’t worry about the budget and just do the song. “I basically just re-enacted the entire All Night Long video and brought it to life on stage,” Richie said. He would do “All Night Long.” And he did it almost all night long, singing for 9 minutes as athletes danced on the field and people rocked in their seats. Richie’s new solo album had several hits, but he knew there was only one song to end the celebration that was the successful Los Angeles games. Some 92,000 people had tickets to the LA Coliseum that night, and an estimated 2.6 billion more would tune into the closing ceremony on television. The audience would be vast, so the song had to be good. I think I had done a couple Vegas shows just to warm up, but nothing like this.” “I was just getting my feet wet after the Commodores. “Next thing I know is I’m on a football field out in the (San Fernando) valley somewhere rehearsing with all these people diving and dancing all over,” Richie recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press. So it was left to Richie to bring the curtain down on the first Olympics in the United States in 52 years. Frank Sinatra wasn’t available, and neither were other artists whose managers didn’t want them appearing in an ensemble act. Michael Jackson was out because he was a Pepsi spokesman and this was a Coca Cola Olympics.

He wanted to put on an all-star singing finale to close out the games, but the stars weren’t cooperating.

The Los Angeles Olympics were just a few months away and closing ceremony producer David L.

Lionel richie all night long