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Henley Festival: Day 2

Source: Ian Gavan / Getty

Lionel Richie was doing an interview with Pierce Morgan when he opened up about how Nichole became his and his ex-wife’s adopted daughter.
Remembering back to the 1980’s when Lionel tells us when he first saw Nicole, “I went to the Prince concert and there on the stage in the middle of the concert was this four-year old kid playing the tambourine.

So I went backstage and I knew the other and I knew the father and of course, they were having difficulties with their relationship.
I said, While you are having the difficulty with kid is sitting out here in limbo so I’ll tell you what I’ll do, just put the kid in my house until the tour is over with and then we weill sort this out later.”
Lionel continues to tell us, “And so it took about maybe a year for me to just fall in love and she was a little button, and of course by that time I was Dad and so I said, ‘OK here is what we are going to do, you’re going to make every wish that they had adopted you. You are going to make everyone in your family wish they actually had a chance to et your back, and that’s when I said, ‘Let’s adopt her.'”
How touching is that?
Yeah, very because his job as “Dad” only grew stronger over there years, esp in 2003 when Nicole was arrested for possession of heroin.
Lionel heard his little girl’s problems and made the choice to cancel his tour so that he could help her into rehab.
Lionel says, “I sound like my father now, but I went to her and I said, ‘When I was growing up I lost three friends, they were the hippest friends I ever knew in life… I said, ‘It’s going to happen to your generation. I don’t want you to be in that list of three because after that you’ll be just fine’.
“Three months later her friend died of an overdose and I went back to her and very quietly, I was very shocked, and I said, ‘I am sorry to hear that, that’s one.’
“And sure enough, one year later the second one died and I said, ‘That’s two’ and I got a phone call and she said, ‘Dad I need help, I don’t want to be the third one.’
“And I said, ‘I am with you’ and I cancelled the tour. I said, ‘Me and your mother’, who didn’t get along that well, ‘Me and your mother are checking into rehab with you,'”
That’s what he did, he joined his baby girl to help her through her difficult time of recovery.
Now, Nicole is the married to Good Charlotte frontman Joel Madde and they have two children together, Harlow and Sparrow.