10 THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT RANDY JACKSON
AMERICAN Idol’s longest-serving judge, Randy Jackson, 66, spent most of his career as a behindthe-scenes session musician before joining the singing contest in 2002 and becoming a household name! He ended his 12-season stint on the reality show in 2014, and for the last two years, he’s been the bandleader on FOX’s revival of Name That Tune, where he stars alongside host Jane Krakowski. Here are ten things you don’t know about the Baton Rouge– born TV personality.
1
His middle name is Darius.
2
He graduated from Southern University in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in music.
3
He was the bass guitarist on the Divinyls’ 1991 self-titled album, which features the band’s Top 10 tune I Touch Myself.
4
He calls his 2002 type 2 diabetes diagnosis a “huge wake-up call.”
5
He wrote the 2004 book What’s Up, Dawg? How to Become a Superstar in the
Music Business.
6
He once crushed the scales at 355 — but dropped 114 pounds of flab in 2003 after undergoing gastric bypass surgery.
7
He was married to second wife Erika Riker from 1995 to 2019 — but they had no prenuptial agreement and it took nearly four years for them to hammer out their divorce.
8
Spinal surgery in 2019 left him relying on a cane, which he’s trying to ditch so he can “walk better.”
9
He offered advice to former American Idol colleague Simon Cowell after the 63-yearold entertainment mogul broke his back in an e-bike accident in 2020. He recalls telling the brash Brit, “Look, we’re getting a little bit older. We’re 36 now, internally, but we ain’t 30 no more, dawg. We gotta like respect the body, yo!”
10
He shot the second season of Name That Tune in Dublin, which made it the first major U.S. prime-time entertainment series to be produced in Ireland’s capital.