A Conversation with Richard Marx

Iwas 14 when I first fell in love. It was 1988, and the long school holidays had just begun. The freedom of unstructured days and endless summer nights was overwhelming. My parents were going through a divorce at the time which created a new angst and confusion that threatened to overshadow the sense of fun and reckless abandonment that long days and warm nights bring. Luckily, I had some good friends that I leaned on, and one in particular, a beautiful red-haired girl who had unexpectedly entered into my life. We ended up spending almost every day of that summer together. It was magical.

The music was fabulous in 1988. Tracy Chapman, Def Leppard, Eric Carmen, Breathe, and of course, Richard Marx, dominated the radio, intensifying everything. Fast forward many years later, and while the girl has long disappeared from my life, every time I remember that summer, it is the music that resonates the most. It created the tapestry on which my adolescence was weaved during that turbulent period. “Endless Summer Nights,” “Hold on to the Nights,” “Should have Known Better”… these unforgettable tracks became the musical soundtrack of that season for me and everyone that I knew back then.

However, Richard Marx, unlike so many others from that marvelous decade, did not disappear into the annals of great music, no. Marx has continued to release hit record after hit record over the years and has landed himself 14 number one singles and sold well over 30 million albums. He has been nominated for five Grammy awards and written hit songs for a wide variety of artists from Kenny Rogers and Keith Urban to N’Sync. Marx is the only male artist in history to have his first seven singles reach the top five of the Billboard music charts. There is longevity in his music.

Growing up is an exciting, confusing time, but every generation is influenced by one thing, perhaps more than any other, and that is the music. In this conversation with the iconic Richard Marx, we are blessed to take a trip back in time and to get to know an artist whose songs continue to be a vital part of many of our life stories.

You grew up in a musical home. Your dad was a jazz pianist and composer, and your mom was a singer. Do you think that you were destined for a career in music?

There’s no way to know, obviously, whether it was nature or nurture. I definitely know that while it’s not consistent necessarily, or 100%, there’s a likelihood that if two parents have a particular talent, there’s a good chance that they might pass some of that off onto at least one of their spawn. I was their only child, so it’s interesting that I got my mother’s voice and my father’s melody, business, and composition sense. Neither of them wrote lyrics, interestingly, but my mother was a good writer, and a voracious reader, so I think that I definitely got genetic stuff from them for sure. But I think that what sealed the deal was growing up in a house where not only was there a tremendous love of music — music was the most important thing to all three of us, individually and collectively — but to grow up in a house where your parents are making music, creating music. Now, mind you, not making records or making songs, but making art that happens to be something, art to sell a product. Before he went into the jingle business my father was a jazz pianist. And then when he ventured into the… he just found that he had this knack for coming up with catchy melodies, so he went with it, and then he embraced pop music and all music. So, I grew up in a circumstance where my parents exposed me to not only the music of the day that they thought I would get off on and that they loved, but the music that they were making.

Do you remember how old you were when you wrote your first song?

I think I was 14.

Ballad or a rock song?

Ballad. I was in love with Lynne Harwich, but I couldn’t get her attention. I used to watch Elvis movies anytime that they were on. And the theme was, Elvis meets girl, girl’s not interested in Elvis until Elvis sings her a song, then she falls madly in love with Elvis. So, I’m thinking, “That’s what I gotta do!” It didn’t work out for me that way, though. But it did start the process of writing a song to convey something to a specific person, even though I failed to go out with her. It lit the fuse. There was something about having accomplished that. I remember at 14, the feeling of, a minute ago there was nothing, and now there’s something. It was mystifying to me and magical.

By the time you were in high school, you had a collection of songs you had written and a demo tape that got into the hands of Lionel Richie. How did that happen?

I had probably written eight or ten songs, but four songs that I thought were worth recording, and my father agreed. Over the years of his success in the jingle business, he had built his own studio in Chicago, in the city. And it was actually designed by his first house engineer who was Bruce Swedien, who became Quincy Jones’ engineer. Bruce recorded and mixed “Thriller” among hundreds of other records. And Bruce originally started in Chicago with my dad. So, there was a pool of musicians who played on all the jingles… they weren’t record caliber, but they were good. So, my father said to me, “You can go in and use my studio, but you’re going to have to pay the musicians out of your own allowance money.”

Did you have that money?

I had just enough, just enough. I think that these guys cut me a little bit of a deal, so, if the standard, you know, union scale was $400 an hour, they probably charged me $200 an hour, just because I was a kid, and they were being nice. But I had to pay the musicians, and I had to make the best use of the time, because I remember my dad said, “You want to record four songs? I’ll give you three hours in the studio, that’s it.”

Luckily, the engineer was really knowledgeable and helpful, and we scrambled our way through it, and we had four decent demos of these songs. I was very proud of it, my dad and my mom were very supportive of it, too. So, I sent it out to some record companies, got nothing; one or two letters came back, literally like, “We’re not interested in your submission at this time.”

But then — I’m starting my senior year now — my best friend, prior a couple of years, was a year older than me, so he was a freshman in college. His roommate in Atlanta, at Emory University, was a guy who grew up with a guy who became a photographer, moved to LA, and was working with the

That’s insane.

Three weeks later my parent’s phone rings and it’s Lionel Richie asking for me. It was Lionel Richie on the phone! He must have talked to me for half an hour. He was so gracious and so nice and complimentary. He was like, “These are your first four songs? Man, you should have heard my first four songs! You’re way ahead of where I was. What’s your plan?” I said, “Well, I’m just starting my senior year and, you know, I’m obviously thinking about going to college.” And he goes, “Well, depends on what you want to do, like, I don’t want your parents to come and hunt me down and kill me but, you know, you’ve got the goods man, you got your voice.” And he’s like, “If these are your first four songs, you totally understand structure and hooks... I don’t know man; you might want to try it out here.” Meaning LA. And it was like wind beneath wings, it was such a wonderful gift that he gave to this complete stranger. It says everything that you need to know about Lionel Richie, what kind of person he is, cause at this time he was like, next to Michael Jackson, probably the biggest star in the music business.

That’s crazy. What was your plan after that call?

I went to my parents and fortunately they said, “You know what, you have time to go to college if something doesn’t work out, you’re 18.” As soon as I graduated from high school, my dad and I flew to LA, and found me an apartment. So, this is almost ten months later. Now Lionel’s left the Commodores, he’s starting his first solo album, he invites me and my dad to the studio. We get to the studio and he’s working on this song called, “You Are,” which became a huge hit from his first album. And when… you gotta question the timing, is there any such thing as coincidence? The day that I go and meet Lionel Richie, what’s he working on? Background vocals. It’s him and two other singers, and they’re working, and my dad and I overhear them, they’ve been working on this song for two days.

I could see that Lionel was getting a little frustrated, but he was very gracious to me and my dad, and we’re just sitting in the control room, watching. And all of a sudden, Lionel looks through the glass and points to me and says, “Come here.” I got up and went in and he says, “You’ve been listening, right?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “So you know the part I’m singing?” And I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “Okay, you sing my part, and you, you switch parts with her, and let’s try this.” He goes into the control room, they roll the tape, we sing a chorus, and he hits the talkback and says, “That’s the sound.” And I had a job.

He said, “Come back tomorrow, I got another one for you to sing on.” And then he gave me the greatest gift, which was, like after that second or third day, he said, “Look, I don’t necessarily have any more work for you on this, but you’re welcome to be here. If I’m in this room, you’re welcome to be in this room.”

To learn.

horn players, I watched him work with orchestra, I watched him interact with other musicians. It was like going to hit record college. Then he recommended me to his buddy Kenny Rogers, who hired me as a background singer, which led to me writing songs for Kenny Rogers. This is a year later, I’m 19, and I’m off, I’m out of the gate. My first songs are cut by Kenny Rogers! But it all traces back to Lionel Richie making that phone call.

What was that like for you as a young guy? Were you starstruck?

I was starstruck for sure, but I feel like I kind of knew instinctively how to, as someone told me back then, they said, “You know how to hang.” So, I would be in a room with superstars, but to me, I was probably even more impressed with the musicians [playing] on the sessions. I kind of knew

when to be quiet, and when to tell a joke that would lighten everything up for everybody.

I got caught up in… you’re 18 or 19 years old, and now you start going, “Yeah, my buddy Lionel Richie and I went to lunch the other day,” and, “Yeah, I’m working with Kenny Rogers.” I think that it’s a rare person who doesn’t get caught up in that a little bit. So, some of my friends would be like, “Dude, you’re turning into a total douche. Don’t do that.” But it was a heady time. It was exciting. I remember once doing a session with Kenny Rogers at his studio called Lion Share, and in one studio down the hallway was Rod Stewart and down another hallway was David Lee Roth, and passing these guys in the hallway, and just being part of that scene. Being able to work within the industry as a songwriter, as a musician, as a background singer, I wouldn’t trade it. It was really fun and exciting, going studio to studio.

Your first record finally came out in 1987. Did you just keep writing songs and doing back up singing before a label finally said, “Hey, this guy could be a solo artist?”

No, every round of new demo tapes would get rejected. There was a point where I started to think, “This may be just not in the cards for me.” To be an artist. But at that point, I knew I could make a living in the music business, that I could become a songwriter, producer. I was frustrated, but I was still enjoying the work. I was enjoying being part of the business.

I met a guy in early 1986 named Bobby Colomby, who was the drummer in Blood, Sweat & Tears, and became a record executive. I met him at a charity event or something socially, and we just hit it off. He’s a lot older than me, but we liked each other, we had the same sense of humor. We became pals and I started playing him my music and he was like, “You’re really good man, like, really good.” And he said, “I can see why some of these major labels don’t get it, cause they’re just, these guys that make these decisions are just clueless.” But he said, “I know a guy named Bruce Lundvall, he’s the President of Blue Note.” And he was launching a pop version of it called Manhattan Records.

Bobby was pals with Bruce Lundvall and said, “I’m setting up a meeting at my house.” Bruce lived in New York, but he said, “Bruce is going to be in LA in a couple of weeks, he’s gonna come over to my house, you’re gonna come over to my house, and we’re gonna see if we can get him to sign you.” So, the whole plan is, and Bobby had this incredible music room where everything sounded amazing, right? I got my demo tape; I got my four killer songs. The first song on the demo tape was “Should’ve Known Better,” which became a top five single for me, which was rejected by every label. The second song on the tape? “Endless Summer Nights.” Number two single, rejected by every label. So, I’m like, I’m pumped, but I’m also fearful, because I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m gonna play my demo. This isn’t some A&R guy; this is the head of the label. If he rejects me, I’m not gonna have this kind of opportunity again. I’ll probably just give up and I’ll just be a writer and producer.” Right?

I remember going that night to Bobby’s house and driving around the block ten times, I was so nervous. I go inside, Bruce Lundvall’s immediately gracious, he was a big fan of my dad’s, because he was a jazz guy, so he was like, “Dude, I saw your dad play, I’ve seen your dad play in clubs back in the day. He was amazing.” So, we’re sitting and we’re about to go up to Bobby’s music room to listen to my demo. Bobby says, “You know, there is a beautiful piano right here. Richard, why don’t you just play him a couple of songs?” I’m looking, like, I had no performing experience by the way, I look at him like, “What the f*ck are you doing? I can’t play “Don’t Mean Nothing” or “Should’ve Known Better” on the piano! They’re rock songs! What are you doing?” Bruce says, “Yeah, I’d love to hear it.” Somehow, I go over, and I muddle my way through “Should’ve Known Better” and “Endless Summer Nights” and Bruce is like, “Wow, great voice!” And now my hands are shaking. And then Bobby says, “Alright, that’s enough, let’s go upstairs.” And then he plays him the demo. And at the end of the four songs, Bruce Lundvall turned to me, and he said, “You should be making records, and you should be making records for me.”

I don’t think any artist could even dream that their first album would hit as hard as yours did. I mean, four songs on one album are in the top three, two of them go number one, you sell millions of copies. You suddenly start playing arenas. What was it like hearing yourself on the radio for the first time?

I remember distinctly, because all my friends had heard [“Don’t Mean Nothing”], it was blowing up the charts fast, but it wasn’t getting pop radio play yet, it broke on rock radio. It crossed over to the pop charts a couple of months later, but it went to number one on the rock chart. The week that “Don’t Mean Nothing” came out, it got added to more radio rock stations than any debut artist in history. So, we knew we were onto something. First of all, I had Joe Walsh playing on the guitar solo… it sounded kind of like a new Eagles record, which there hadn’t been one in seven or nine years. Randy Meisner and Timothy Schmit sang background vocals; I lucked into that, just connecting with those guys and writing that song, and Walsh hearing the demo and going, “Oh yeah, I want to play on that.” Huge, huge help. It made such a difference.

The first time I heard “Don’t Mean Nothing,” I was driving to an interview at one of the TV stations. I was searching for [the song] on the radio; every time I’d get in my car, I’d dial switch through all the rock stations, trying to find it. I was dying to hear my own song. Finally, I hear it play. I pulled the car over, it was euphoric, but I was like, I just wanted to get to the end, I wanted him to say my name. So, the fade comes, Walsh’s guitar solo, the background vocals, and the fade starts to come, and the DJ came on and he went, “And now a word from Kraft.” [He] didn’t back announce my song! But I was elated to hear it. And from that point on, things accelerated so fast that it was a blur. It was hard to catch my breath.

I think the single came out in May or June. On my birthday, my 24th birthday, I remember that there was a picture, there’s

a Polaroid picture of me blowing out a candle in Tokyo. It was on my first overseas promotional tour, because the record started to blow up around the world.

Your music has really been an important part of the soundtrack of many people’s lives. The summer of 1988, when “Endless Summer Nights” and “Hold on to the Nights” were high on the charts, radio was truly blessed with a plethora of amazing artists. Were you listening to any of the music that was hitting the charts?

Everything. I’m still that way. I’ve always listened to everything. Currently I’m fanboying over Bruno Mars. That summer on my first tour, I was telling my kids this story the other day, I started making a little bit of money, right? Doing big shows. But we’re still living meagerly, and it’s me and my band, and we’re mostly staying in crappy motels. I was so fried, but I would just get up and do it. We had graduated to CDs and [we] had a CD Walkman. That summer, some company, I think it was Sony, made little speakers to go with it, that would plug in to where the headphone jack was. I remember, we played a gig and then we went back to the motel, and I had my band and crew all come to my room, which was just as crappy as their room. So, three of us were sitting on my bed, there’s one chair, everyone else is sitting on the floor, and I put the CD Walkman and the speakers on the desk, and we listened to Def Leppard’s Hysteria from beginning to end. I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget that excitement.

Your second album, Repeat Offender, went six times platinum. That is almost unheard of. “Right Here Waiting” was a global phenomenon. What’s the story behind the song?

I was touring… the tour for the first album was 15 months straight. I got to open for REO Speedwagon, who I loved, and I’m still great friends with Kevin Cronin to this day. And they were so gracious to me, and welcoming. We did a whole summer tour together with me opening for them. But I never stopped touring, the following summer I was playing the exact same venues, but as the headliner.

So, I’m towards the end of that tour, my girlfriend at the time who became my wife, now my ex-wife, Cynthia, was making a film in Africa. I told my agent, “I got to have two weeks to go see my girlfriend.” There was no FaceTime back then.

And right before, a week before my trip, the South African government denied my visa, thinking that I was coming to protest the Apartheid, which I certainly would have, but that’s not what I was going for. I just wanted to see my girlfriend. So, it meant that I had two weeks off, which wasn’t a good thing for me, because I was alone, missing her, and not working. And three months away from somebody in an early part of your relationship is really tough.

So I went to my friend, Bruce Gaitsch, who I co-wrote “Don’t Mean Nothing” with, and said, “I need to come over and we need to write the angriest rock song I’ve ever written.” So, I go over to his house, and we write this song that’s so arena rock, like hard rock. And I’m still miserable. We finished the song, we’re gonna do a little demo of it, and he had a studio in his garage. He went into the house to make a phone call and he had a little electric piano. I sat down and I wrote “Right Here Waiting” as if I had rehearsed it. Lyrics were coming, the melody came like (snaps fingers) that fast. I just started singing it. Bruce poked his head in and goes, “What is that?” I said, “I don’t know.” He goes, “Get a tape recorder!”

It didn’t fit the Repeat Offender album in my mind, and it was also way too personal. The whole point of “Right Here Waiting” was for me to say to Cynthia, “I miss you; I’ll be here. This is a hard time for us, but I want you to know that I’m here.” Right? I mailed the cassette, snail mail. It got to her two weeks later and she started playing it for all her friends and the people on set. She was very moved by it. By the time she gets home, I’m off the road, I’m starting to make the new album, the Repeat Offender album, and I’ve got “Nothin’ You Can Do About It.” I’ve got “Satisfied.” It’s a rock album. But my friends, who had heard the demo of “Right Here Waiting,” came to me and they were like, “You’re an idiot if you don’t put this on the record. It’s a one listen, it’s like an anthem.” I was like, “It’s too soft.”

I tried to give it to Barbra Streisand, because she had asked me for a song at that time. And she… I still have the voicemail, I’m friends with her to this day. Barbra Streisand is like one of the coolest people you could ever meet, and we’ve become dear friends and I love her so much. But she rejected “Right Here Waiting” because she said to me, “I loved the music, but I’m not gonna be right here waiting for anybody!” (Laughs) So, I reluctantly agreed to record it. And then the next thing I knew… I didn’t think it would be a single, or if it was a single, that it’d be like the fourth single, you know, because we had songs on the Repeat Offender album that I felt really good about, some of which never saw the light of day as a single. But “Right Here Waiting” came out and just obliterated everything in its path. The only downside to it was that it really did solidify this whole balladeer thing.

It’s a compliment, actually.

On the Repeat Offender tour, I went to Australia, and I had a morning off, a rare morning off where I didn’t have press and radio to do, and I took a walk around the neighborhood of my hotel, just outside of Melbourne. And I went down this little side street and there was a woman opening up a flower shop. And as I passed her, she was putting stuff in her window, so her back was to me, and as I passed her, she was singing, “Right Here Waiting.” To herself as I passed her. And I stopped, she never saw me, but I stopped, and I went, “What the hell?” I’m on the other side of the world and this random person is singing the song that I wrote strictly for my own selfish reasons. Pretty mind blowing, pretty humbling.

Another number one hit and a very evocative story within a song was “Hazard.” What motivated you to tell that story?

I was doing the Repeat Offender tour, I was going through the Midwest, it was three o’clock in the morning, I was sound asleep in the back lounge of my bus and that song, I think it’s the only song I really ever dreamed, like McCartney dreamed “Yesterday.” I dreamed “Hazard,” the music to [it]. I could hear the whole record, it wasn’t just like a linear melody, it was like I could hear the instrumentation, it sounded like a movie score. I mean, at first of course I thought, “Oh, this is something else, this already exists.” And I was like, “No, I dreamed this. I’m making this up as I go.”

So, I grabbed my cassette recorder and started singing all the parts so that I wouldn’t forget it. It took a while for me to let the music tell me that it needed to not be a love song. I was always fascinated with the idea of trying to write a fictional story and I turned it into a murder mystery. Now, I’ve got to be honest with you, the last thing in the world I thought was that that song would be a hit or even a single. It was just going to be an album cut. I was proud of it as a songwriter, but I didn’t think anybody would give a shit. And then the label put it out as a single and the thing just blew up, all over the world. I couldn’t believe it.

For much of your career, you led a pretty low-key life and stayed quite private. But in 2021 you released your memoir Stories to Tell. Why was that the right time to get candid and tell your story?

The impetus for the book and the origin of the book really started years ago as a sort of fantasy of someday writing a book on the life story of my songs. I don’t have a lot of stories about the writing of the songs, but I have countless interesting and funny stories surrounding the making or recording of songs in the studio. And I’ve found that… like, we’re sitting around having a tequila or a martini, something will prompt me to go, “I got a funny story for you, when I was doing this thing...” So, I started telling those stories when I started doing a solo acoustic show in 2010, and then it became arguably as important as the songs. After a couple years of doing that, there were enough people who said, “You know, you should write a book with these stories.” And then I started, “Oh, that could be kind of cool.”

It was a fantasy idea until my manager showed a few of the pages and stories to someone at Simon & Schuster, who really liked it, and the next thing I knew I had an offer to write the book. I dove into it. As I worked on it, my editor at the publisher said, “You’re a notoriously private guy, but I think that people really are going to want whatever you’re willing to give them, so maybe, is there room for you to be a little bit more personal? Talk about your childhood, talk about your divorce, about being a father...” My initial reaction was, “I’m not writing about any of that.” You know? (Laughs) But then I took the approach as a reader, what would I want?

When you were around 12 years old, you and your dad began to develop a deeper, more intimate relationship. What happened?

I’ll preface this by saying that my father was always loving and very affectionate to me. So, I grew up with a loving father, but I grew up with a father who was obsessed with his work, loved every second, couldn’t wait to get to the office. He made music; it was really wonderful to grow up watching a father who couldn’t wait to go to work. It inspired me. But because he was committed to his work and because he was so successful at the time when I was growing up, I took a backseat. I wasn’t aware of it, I didn’t feel neglected by him,

but I was aware that all my friends were out with their dads, playing catch with their dads. And I would play catch with my dad once every six weeks, maybe. We had dinner together as a family, the three of us most of the time, but I was really raised by my mother and my grandparents. But I adored him. I knew that I loved him, but I didn’t feel close to him, because he didn’t really have the opportunity for us to get close. So, when I was about 10 or 11, he was driving home from the city and listening to the radio and “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin came on. It’s a song about a man who realizes that he had put his family and his son on the back burner for so long that now his son has grown up and was gone, and all he wants in life now is to be close to his son, but his son doesn’t have time for him now. It’s the circle of life, it’s a powerful song.

My dad listened to it, he was a pretty stoic guy, I mean, he was very loving and affectionate, but not a crier particularly. But he was sobbing in the car, listening to these lyrics. And he came home, I remember him coming home and he had composed himself at this point, but he came in and went right to my room and just put his arms around me and held me and hugged me and said, “I love you. I love you.” And I was like, “What’s going on? Is there bad news?” I didn’t know what was going on. And then he told me, he said, “I heard this song.” And he played it for me, and he said, “I don’t want this to happen to us.” I was too young to sort of feel the emotional impact of it in the moment, you know, but looking back, I could cry about it right now. So that set a tone. But it wasn’t like a 180 overnight, but we did start to spend more time together.

By the time I was in high school, our relationship was solidified, we were best, best friends. And then we started working together as my career started to take off. You know, when I moved out to LA at 18 it was my dad who flew me out to help me find an apartment. I’ll never forget, we spent about four or five days together. He was there when I sang on the first Lionel Richie record. When I took him to the airport, he was leaving me in LA, and he completely fell apart, he had a complete breakdown in front of me. And it’s indelible, I’ve never seen my father crumble like that, and it was just a testament to how much we loved each other, and how much we were gonna miss each other. And then the greatest thing was two years later when they called me and said, “We’re moving to LA.”

So yeah, the path that my father’s and my relationship took was not typical or normal, but it became… all my friends would say, “You have something with your father that no one has.” We did, and my father, for years and years, would say to me, “God forbid one of us gets hit by a bus tomorrow or something happens, we have said it all. You know how proud of you I am. You know how much I love you. I know how much you love me. We’ve said it, there’s nothing left that we haven’t said, there’s no unfinished business.” And he said that to me so many times that when he was tragically taken from me when I was 33, I ultimately fell back and leaned on that a little bit.

You are a father of three grown boys now. How did your upbringing with your dad impact the type of father you were?

can’t replicate necessarily, even the best of it if the dynamic is different, because your partner is different than your mother was, you know? So, the way that Cynthia and her family were raised was an influence on how we raised our boys, it was a push and pull. For the most part, it was smooth sailing in that we agreed, we were a united front as parents. Cynthia was and is a really wonderful mother. I think what I brought to the table was a willingness to be soft. Between the two of us, I was probably the stricter disciplinarian, but… I think the most consistent criticism or complaints I hear from guys is that their father just wasn’t as affectionate with them as they would have liked. My sons can’t say that. To this day, we hug and kiss each other, we are really, really demonstrative. And every single day there is a “I love you” text between me and all three of my sons, every day, at some point. So, I think that I learned that from my parents.

Out of all the songs you’ve written, do you have a song that you’re most proud of?

It’s a tie. One is the song I wrote for myself, “Through My Veins.”

The other one that I’m really proud of I didn’t sing. I wrote it with Kenny Loggins, and it’s called, “The One That Got Away.” It was a song that Kenny needed to write. When I was a kid, I worshiped him.

“Through My Veins” is a deeply moving and emotional song that you wrote about the loss of your dad?

It was so hard for me, I feared writing about losing my dad because it was so massive an emotion. I thought, “There’s no way.” I remember thinking to myself, “Just don’t even think about it.” Maybe four nights later, I was working on some stuff in my studio, and all of a sudden, I just heard this thing in my head, and I ran, it was two o’clock in the morning, everybody was asleep. I ran to the piano; I had this beautiful Yamaha, and I started playing the whole instrumental bit. I was playing those chords and I was moved by it, and I was like, “What is this?” And then it hit me, what it was, I needed to write this about missing my dad. And I wrote, and I stayed up till six in the morning and I wrote the whole song that night.

What do you want people to remember when they think about Richard Marx? What do you want your legacy to be?

That I was a loving, loyal friend and as good a father as I could possibly be. Nothing musical, nothing creative. I mean, if people remember me as like, “Oh, he wrote good songs,” that’s wonderful. But that’s not on my list, my list is all personal. I hope that for decades after I’m gone, people go, “Oh man, let me tell you a story about Richard Marx.”

Check out Richard’s new album Songwriter. The record is a great blend of pop, rock, ballads, and country, and will be released in 2022. The album is a great blend of pop, rock, ballads, and country.