How Little Richard went from sex fiend to repentant Bible thumper
nypost.com“Good Golly, Miss Molly,” Little Richard wailed about a bad girl who “sure like to ball.”But no doubt — it was the late rock legend who was a sex fiend himself.“I had all these orgies going on,” he reveals in the new documentary “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” which has a special one-night-only opening in theaters on Tuesday before hitting additional cinemas and pay-per-view on April 21.He was thirsty for both men and women: “I just loved whatever came.
You know, I didn’t refuse nothin’ if you knocked on my door and I wanted more. Fo sho.”But the artist known as the architect of rock and roll — who left his eyelinered imprint on everyone from Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Elton John, David Bowie and Prince — was as deeply religious as he was raunchy.
Just as his music — and hits such as “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Lucille” — was by turns R&B and pop, Little Richard himself vacillated from gender-bending to God-fearing.“You know, he’s on a roller coaster,” director Lisa Cortés, who started working on “Little Richard” shortly after his 2020 death, told The Post.“He loves God, but he doesn’t think that God can love him as a queer rock-and-roller.
And so throughout his life, he is trying to navigate how to be in those two spaces — the sacred and the profane.”Born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Georgia, in 1932, Little Richard had a slight deformity that left one leg and arm shorter than the other.As a teenager, he was kicked out of his father’s house for being gay, and another queer black artist — Esquerita — taught him how to play the piano.
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