Lionel Richie Explains Last-Minute Madison Square Garden Cancellation: ‘I Tried to Bribe the Pilot’

Lionel Richie and Earth, Wind & Fire canceled their sold-out Madison Square Garden show last Saturday after the R&B star announced that he could not fly in for the concert approximately one hour before its start "due to severe weather."

"I'm unable to make it to the show tonight. I'm so bummed," Richie wrote at 7:31 p.m. (The show was scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m.)

Although the singer promised to make it right to the 20,000 or so fans with tickets by rescheduling the show to Monday, several had made special travel plans to see the music icons in the Big Apple. Also, the rescheduling appeared to inconvenience Earth, Wind, & Fire, too, who were scheduled to play a show in Bridgeport, Conn., without Richie on Monday, but switched that date to Wednesday instead.

Many fans were frustrated with Richie and confused by his inability to make it to New York, relegating it to a lame excuse. "Hope you're OK, but you should have taken a limo for your fans for four hours," a pediatric nurse, who spent $170 on seats at MSG, told the New York Post in an interview, addressing Richie. "He's loaded … take a f---ing limo."

Others thought that perhaps something else was going on with Richie and that the last-minute cancellation was a cover-up for a more concerning issue. "You can't sell out Madison Square Garden and [cancel due to] a weather issue. I'm frustrated and I'm concerned — I think it might be something else. I'm worried that it's something else and that [the weather] was an excuse," another woman told the Post.

Richie has finally cleared the air. In footage captured by fans at his make-up show on Monday night (along with the "September" singers), Richie joked that he "tried to bribe the pilot" to make it Saturday night, but that it was a no-go from both the pilot and God.

"I had two 'no's' to come at the same time," Richie said. "And when those two decided it's a no — when God says no, and when the pilot says no... And the pilot said, 'I do want to see my wife tomorrow.' So tonight we are going to make up for that. I apologize for that a thousand times."