A scandal was not what Lionel Richie was looking for during the late '80s.

But it was what he got when the "Hello" singer's first wife Brenda Harvey-Richie was arrested in 1988 for confronting Diane Alexander —the star of his 1986 "Dancing on the Ceiling" music video—when she found her estranged husband at Diane's Beverly Hills apartment.

Now, Lionel is breaking his silence about the drama, calling it "the scandal of my century."

"What very few people knew was that Brenda and I were separated," the 76-year-old wrote in his memoir Truly , released on Sept. 30. "I got a place at the beach, and I was hiding out there, trying to be alone, trying to decompress somehow, because it was killing everyone."

According to Lionel, he was driving into town that morning and happened to "sto

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