The Commodores were founded in 1968, but they really hit their stride as a band in the late 1970s. They managed to effortlessly toe the line between funk, pop and R&B, and scored massive hits that played with seemingly every audience.
Lionel Richie was crucial to the band's versatility. He was the secret weapon when it came to ballads and crossover hits, and by the early 1980s, he was seen by many as the face of the Commodores. It didn't last. Richie left the band in 1982.
Lionel Richie left the Commodores in 1982
It was not a decision that was made lightly. Richie admitted he didn't want to leave the band, as he had developed around band members William King, Walter Orange, Milan Williams and Thomas McClary. It was all he had known. Richie's increasing success as a songwriter for other artists, coupled with the label's desire for a solo album, however, superseded the Commodores.
Richie recounted a lunch with Motown founder Berry Gordy that afforded him clarity. He told the boss he was torn as to what to do with his career, and Gordy assured him that several stars had been in his position before. "It became clear to me that a path [like this] was already set," the singer recalled in a New York Times interview. "'Don’t think it hasn’t happened before,' he said."
Richie went solo and became one of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s. The Commodores, on the other hand, scored one 1985 hit, "Nightshift," before becoming something of an oldies band. They never broke up, but they never again reached the commercial heights they did with Richie.
Richie has never reunited with the band
Richie never reconnected with the Commodores for an album, but he remains extremely proud of the work they did together. The band was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and Vocal Group Hall of Fame, but have yet to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
This is something that has perplexed most of the members. "It’s a thing where you have to be voted in by the writers," Thomas McClary told Smashing Interviews. "Sometimes if you don’t have the various infrastructure of people there blowing your horn for you, nobody else will."
Today, William King and Walter Orange continue to tour as the Commodores alongside J.D. Nicholas. Lionel Richie, meanwhile, serves as a judge on American Idol. He was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2022.