Country music star Kenny Rodgers has spoken about a phone sex scandal that threatened to ruin his career.
He joked that every celebrity had to have one sex scandal in their life – but denied he had done anything wrong.
The 74-year-old star admitted setting up a 1800 number for women to call so he could indulge in phone sex with them.
Three women later filed a lawsuit against the star claiming he had coaxed them into playing kinky phone sex games.
An aspiring actress Lisa Applewhite also claimed Rogers used his fame to lure her to a hotel where he made sexual advances to her.
Rogers settled the lawsuit before it ever came to court in 1990.
But now speaking about the phone sex he said:’I thought that (phone sex) was the safest sex there was, only to get hammered by it.’
‘Here I was, it’s between friends. We can’t be together, so let’s talk about it. It was great, it was exciting, it was fun.’
Rogers, best known for hits like Lucille and The Gambler, said he would have won the legal battle had he chosen to take it through the courts.
He told Fox News: ‘If I’d fought the lawsuit I could have won that battle. It was a phone number they had to call and pick up the message. ‘
‘They didn’t have to call if they didn’t want to, but they did and recorded it.’
‘I thought that it was going to cost me more to fight it then to pay it so I paid it and left it alone. What hurt me the most was I thought they were friends.’
Rogers, who has sold over 175 million records, revisits the sex scandal in his autobiography Luck or Something Like It.
The book details Rogers’ personal life including his rough childhood in the Houston projects, his five marriages and his close friendships with Lionel Richie, Dolly Parton.
Rogers admits in the book the first time he had sex he got his girlfriend pregnant and they ended up marrying.
He said: You know what? I loved her. At 19 I thought, ‘This is ok with me.’ That was a thing where her parents thought I’d ruined her life and were determined to break me.
It didn’t work, and it’s really sad because I think it could have worked. You can’t say I’m afraid of commitment. I’ve been married five times!
