Lionel Richie is headed to Las Vegas: ‘It’s just time,’ he says

There’s a great line that I use all the time,” Lionel Richie said the other day. “I’m in a business where you work so hard for the red light to turn green, so when it does, you have to do as much as you can before it turns red again.”

Richie, the veteran pop-soul singer and songwriter, was explaining why, at 66, he’s hustling as hard as he ever has: playing massive festival gigs at Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, working on new music and, as he announced Wednesday morning on the “Today” show, preparing for a residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas that will launch in April. (He’ll also receive the MusiCares Foundation’s prestigious Person of the Year award at its annual benefit gala before the Grammy Awards in February.)

FOLLOW CLASSIC ROCK ON Facebook

Set to take place on the same Axis Theater stage as Britney Spears’ “Piece of Me,” Richie’s show will join a growing number of Sin City productions by singers such as Celine Dion, Elton John and Mariah Carey. He spoke about the project by phone from New York.

What made you decide that now is the right time to do Las Vegas?

I’ll tell you what it was. When I got into the picture, Vegas was where the Rat Pack was. It was a secluded place where you had to be a high roller to even get there in the first place.

Then we went through the downsizing. Frank Sinatra left, Dean Martin left, Sammy Davis left and basically it just fell apart. In that period Las Vegas was the place not to be; it didn’t have a cool factor. Then, all of a sudden, something happened that made me go, “Wow.”

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour >>

And that was?

I started talking to Steve Wynn and a couple of the other guys, and they said, “I’m bringing some DJs in.”

Dance music has remade the Strip to some degree. It’s certainly attracted a younger audience.

Vegas is on fire now as far as being a destination. My 21-year-old son, I said to him, “Miles, what do you think about me playing Vegas?” He said, “Oh, my God, Dad, that’d be the coolest thing in the world!” So it’s just time. And it’s a perfect place to try out new material, to get close to what’s going on in the business.

Do you envision spending a lot of time there or will you fly back home to L.A. every night?

Well, if I want to be the selfie king of all time, then I’ll just walk around the halls of Las Vegas. I think what will probably happen is I’ll have a bungalow or something in case I want to enjoy my friends there for a couple of nights. Or maybe I’ll fly back every night.

I’ve got the flexibility, that’s what’s so beautiful. But I doubt you’ll ever see me at the casino. Overall, I won’t be doing the spraying bottles of champagne.

You’ve toured extensively for years. How will staying in one place differ from being on the road?

It allows you to do everything you can’t pull off on the road because of the costs: the loading, the unloading, the shipping, the trucks. Anything that has to do with hydraulics? Forget about it because it costs a bloody fortune.

The whole concept of the road is to bring the money home, not leave it out on the road. So everything you ever wanted to imagine as far as spectacle and adventure, it can be put in because it never moves. It stays in Vegas.

Have you looked at what other entertainers are doing there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. First of all, when you go see Tiësto and all these guys, I want to know what that is. I love the DJ thing — that’s someone, believe it or not, pulling off a fabulous show without singing one note; that’s just strictly production.

So you go see that, then you go see the main shows: Celine, Elton, Rod [Stewart]. Those are my contemporaries. I want to see what they’re doing, figure out what they’re about. And then you hit everything in between. I’m going to see Britney soon because I want to see what she does.

Do you have a concept for your show yet?

I want my crowd to feel like they’re in it as opposed to just coming to watch it. At Glastonbury, it was almost like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — people were coming dressed as Lionel Richie!

If I could show you pictures of my fans, here’s my Afro, my mustache, my green sweater. My show is karaoke night on steroids. So what this is going to be is an opportunity where the show is not only going on onstage but also in the audience.

That’s the idea, more or less, in the EDM scene that Vegas has fostered.

Yeah.

Are you borrowing from that?

I won’t give away my secrets, young man! What are you trying to do? But the answer is: kind of.

It’s been three years since your album “Tuskegee,” where you remade your old hits with various country stars. What’s the status on a follow-up?

I’m actually in it right now. I’m trying to finish up at least four or five songs that will hopefully come out before I start the Vegas show. That’s what I want. Not that I need any more songs, since I can’t even get to all the ones I have. But it’s always good to have something fresh.

And of course the fabulous thing that happens is when the new generation — I’m saying it like my dad — comes out and says, “Lionel, I’d love to write with you.” I’m finding out that the old sound is now the new sound. Everybody goes, “Oh man, we need to do another ‘Zoom.’ ” I say, “Well, I did ‘Zoom,’ ” and they say, “Let’s do it again!”

I’d imagine you could find the willing partners to do a second album of remakes in some other style.

I’m finding that every genre has respect for the songs. What’s happening now is that I started hanging out with Pharrell [Williams] and Bruno [Mars] and all the guys. You say, “Hey man, let’s go in the studio and do something.” And the answer is, “OK!”

The way things are going right now, I’m probably going to be finished with the music business when I’m 96 years old. We’ve got things to do.

The light is still green.

How ’bout that?

Twitter: @mikaelwood