Little Richard scared my grandmother in 1957. I was 11 years old, on the way to her house for dinner with my parents, and had just shoplifted a record in the five-and-dime. Mom and Dad hadn't even noticed. Easy pickings – the 45rpm of "Lucille" on the Specialty label. My favourite tune. I felt happily defiant in the back seat of the car with the sharp edge of the single jabbing my stomach beneath the sweater. Once inside Mama's (as we called Stella Whitaker, my mother's mother), I made a beeline to her out-of-date hi-fi and let it roll. "Lu-CILLE! You won't do your sister's will!" came blaring through the house like a pack of rabid dogs. It was as if a Martian had landed. My grandmother stopped in her tracks, face ashen, beyond comprehension. The antiques rattled. My parents looked stunned. In one magical moment, every fear of my white family had been laid bare: an uninvited, screaming, flamboyant black man was in the living room. Even Dr Spock hadn't warned them about this.

Ever since, I've wished I could somehow climb into Little Richard's body, hook up his heart and vocal cords to my own, and switch identities. Admiring his processed pompadour on my own head in the mirror, feeling his blood pulsating in my veins as I looked down at the twitching pencil-thin moustache, I'd stomp through the world screaming: "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!" and finally feel happy! Strangers would shriek: "Good Lord, it's the Bronze Liberace – Show Business Personified!" while others genuflected to the inventor of rock'n'roll, and for once, just once, there'd be a real reason to live.

But are there some role models you should never meet? When Playboy sent me to interview the then 54-year-old Richard Penniman in 1987, it turned into kind of a disaster. At first all went fine. When I called him to try to set up our meeting, Little Richard was receptive but would have none of the gushed compliments. "No, no, no, John," he cried in mock indignation over my flattery, still sounding as hysterical as his early recordings. "That will get you nowhere!" I knew His Highness was foaming at the mouth over the recent Jet magazine cover story on him headlined "Little Richard tells why he quit being a minister". Yes, he'd recently made another Hollywood comeback in the film Down and Out in Beverly Hills; had recorded his first all-new-material album in eight years, Lifetime Friend, with a video to match; had made guest appearances on Johnny Carson and Hollywood Squares; had been honoured by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and was planning another world tour, but he had definitely not left God! "Why would Jet do this?" he wondered, genuinely upset. "Little Richard has never quit the ministry! I believe in God! My music itself is the ministry." As he complained about telephone calls from his concerned religious constituency all over the country, I tried to calm him down with the information that writers usually don't do their own headlines and it was possibly an innocent mistake. "OK, baby," he purred wearily, agreeing to the time of our interview, "my bodyguards will get you. God bless you."

Little Richard preaching in Oakland, California, while on tour in 1981. Photograph: George Rose/Getty Images

Little Richard, at the time, was living in a surprisingly ordinary hotel room in Los Angeles, while recovering from a 1985 Santa Monica Boulevard car accident that almost killed him. He was a king without a castle. The first home he bought at the height of his fame, next door to Joe Louis in West Los Angeles, was long gone. His household possessions from his last estate in Riverside were in storage or had been given to relatives. His dog, Fluffy, was staying with his sister. The piano his grandfather gave him was at his brother's. God, fame, family and a small staff, including a physical therapist named Madison, were enough right now. Little Richard was thankful to be among the living.

Mark, who looks like a younger version of his boss, comes down to the hotel lobby to escort me up to the room. He had met Richard in his studio while they recorded "Great Gosh A'Mighty" and has been working for him, both privately and in his backup band, the CIA, for about a year. We wait outside while Richard finishes a phone conversation with one of his sisters. Hotel guests pass in the hall, unaware that a legend lurks on their floor.

Finally, the door opens and I feel as if the Supreme One of Colour has appeared before me. Looking trim and healthy (he has recently taken up bodybuilding) and, as always, a little frantic, he ushers us in, dressed in a red open shirt, pleated brocade trousers and red ankle boots. He doesn't look his age ("Lord, when the time comes, I'm gonna have a face-lift, jaw lift, eye lift; everything that is falling will be lifted and the things that can't be lifted will be moved!"). His hair, once raised to new heights by "Willie Brown in Atlanta, Georgia – my beautician at the time" is more conservative now, and he does it himself. The pencil-thin moustache has mysteriously widened with the years.

One wishes that Little Richard were still crowned and bejewelled as sweating flunkies carried him about on an ornate throne, but unfortunately there is only a couch to sit on in this very generic modern hotel room. File cabinets are in one corner and the family snapshots have been tucked into the frames of the "art" on the walls, but otherwise there are few personal touches. I take my rightful place on the floor at his feet and turn on the tape recorder, resisting the urge to kiss his boots, as fans once did in Germany. Mark sits in front of the TV, watching with the volume turned off for the rest of the evening.

I tell Richard of the pilgrimage I had made that evening to the house he had bought for his mother. A very nice Christian lady named Mrs Wilson now lives there, and she invited me in and told me that fans still come around at all hours searching for their idol. "She's probably getting my cheques," Richard roars, then laughs so hard one can notice his perspiration rising. "I wondered where they was going. I'm goin' by there and get them: 'Sister Wilson, where did my cheque go?'"

Little Richard remembers his palace fondly. "I had velvet and silk in the living room, green and gold – I had all this gold hanging down. In the bedroom, I had blue silk coming out of the wall with my bed in the middle. I had dreamed of that as a little boy – it was my design for my mother." He plans on getting another house soon but feels "better here now in the hotel, around people. Mark is one of my main people. I need two more. My niece is my secretary; I have two bodyguards I travel with, and a 24-hour limo. I need to get over my mother's death. I don't want to be by myself in no house. Everybody is gone at night; that's lonely. You need responsibility, someone to take care of. My mother died and I couldn't stand to look at her bedroom any more. I'd get sick. I've always been a momma's boy. My father was a bootlegger; he sold stump whiskey in Macon, Georgia. He hid it under the peppers and corn and the collard greens. There was a black lady who used to watch me named Ma Sweetie; she would let him know when the police were coming – he would leap the fence in a single bound."

As Richard was beginning his career, his father was murdered. "I was appearing at the VFW club and I came home… It was pouring down rain, and those houses with the tin tops and you could hear the rain. This guy had killed my daddy and I saw his coat lying on the porch. A raincoat with all this blood on it. It was just… something. I walked in the door, seein' my mother. I looked at this beautiful woman and she said: 'Bru?' My mother called me Bru and I called her Mu. She said: 'Bru?' and I said: 'What is it, Mu?' She said: 'You don't have no more dad,' and I just cried. 'Oh, no! Lord!' Everything inside me just broke. 'Cause my mother, that's my heart. When my mother cried, boy, that shakes my mind! I can do some drastic things behind Mu! I ain't scared of lions, tigers, snakes, puppy-dog tail, or chickens! It [segregation] was so hard then. But you still had a peace, a serenity: that joy, that hope, that determination, that perseverance that some day, somehow, I will make it!"

Resisting the urge to leap up and scream a honky hallelujah, I just sit there listening, a one-man congregation in the Church of Little Richard. I half expect Mark to pass a collection plate, but he's still glued to the TV; maybe he's heard it all before. On the other hand, when Richard's on a roll, he's not easily interrupted. "I look back on my life, comin' out of Macon, Georgia – I never thought I'd be a superstar, a living legend. I never heard of no rock and roll in my life. Black people lived right by the railroad tracks and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy and I thought: I'm gonna make a song that sounds like that. In the studio, we got low-down and they said: 'We ain't never heard anything like this.' I would sing and scream and make those high notes and low notes. Oh, I was a wild child! I sent a tape to Specialty Records and they didn't get back in touch with me. I was in this hotel and I had a Chrysler my mother had mortgaged her home to get me. I went into the studio anyway, and they had me singing like Ray Charles, BB King. They wanted me to sing the blues and that was not me. I got on the piano and started singing: 'Woooooo!' They said: 'Oh boy, where did you get that voice?' 'A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!' and they said: 'That's a hit'… and the rest is history."

The fame came, all right, like burning lava, and today Little Richard seems a happy prisoner of it, resting on his laurels, fretting and planning, unable to go out – even for a walk. "I'm afraid to. I might meet somebody who will try to take me away. My chauffeur picks me up in the limo and we pass the girls and they start screaming. I'm talkin' 14 or 15 years old. They scream: 'Aaaaaghh! Aaaaaghh!' and I say: 'Oh thank you, Lord.' It's such a good feelin'. It's a blessing sometimes and a lesson. It makes you feel good you're a living legend and not a dead one. People expect so much from you; you got to live so much down. The burden of all this falls on you. It's hard to have a friend when your name's a household word."

He's quite well aware of his place in history, thank you. When I quiz him on the best reviews he ever received, his voice shoots up like a tape recorder on fast forward. "'There's only one originator, there's only one architect: Little Richard' – I love that. I saw that in so many write-ups. And when the people say my music inspired them – the Beatles, when James Brown was my vocalist, when Jimi Hendrix was my guitarist, when Joe Tex was singing with me, Otis Redding, when Billy Preston was my organist at 13 – it makes me feel good!"

Little Richard will admit to being hurt by bad press, especially by a caricature that once offended his vanity. "They called me big-headed with a little body. I didn't like that. In New York, they had this great big heeeeeaaad in the paper and a little bitty piano and a little body like Humpty Dumpty on a wall." But he's not complaining. "I believe a star is living a lie if he doesn't want his picture taken. Be a dishwasher. Take my old job at the bus station! It's a joy when people holler. Mark will tell you. I go down to the slums. I go to poor people's houses; they don't even know I'm coming. I buy food and go around and hug them. I get out of the car and hug the winos. This is a joy to me because I came from the slums – you can't forget!"

The Magnificent One: "I go to poor people's houses. I buy food. I get out of the car and hug the winos". Photograph: Jesse Frohman/Corbis Outline

As I ponder the mental picture of a welfare family of six eating their last food-stamp dinner as a hyper Little Richard followed by squealing fans bursts through the door, uninvited, thrusting bags of groceries at the hungry, I bring up the book – The Life and Times of Little Richard, perhaps the best and most shocking celebrity tell-all book ever written. Penned by Charles White with Little Richard's full co-operation and published in 1984, it is copyrighted in the names of the author, the star and his longtime, now-deceased manager, Robert "Bumps" Blackwell. It's a real lulu. Detailing his early life, in which he travelled with a minstrel show, sold snake oil in Doctor Hudson's Medicine Show and performed in drag as Princess Lavonne, it touchingly includes early childhood anecdotes, such as the time Richard gave an old lady neighbour a bowel movement in a box for her birthday. (What a coincidence! Divine was on the receiving end of this exact same gift in Pink Flamingos.) Halfway through the book, you realise that you are in a stratosphere of lunacy. The bizarre lifestyle you'd fantasised for Little Richard is small potatoes compared with the truth. His onetime drug addictions and alcoholism, his hilarious threesome with Buddy Holly and his longtime stripper friend Lee Angel (with a "50-inch bust"), and his obsessions with voyeurism ("Richard the Watcher") and masturbation ("six or seven times a day") are all topped off with truly staggering photographs of his many fashion statements. Just when you start thinking Nobel Prize, you get to the final chapter, a compilation of Richard's religious testimony that seems to sour the entire volume and turn off the very audience for whom the book was written. He seems to want it both ways.

"Some things that is said in the book are not really accurate in certain ways." He falters when I bring up some of his quotes about religion, rock'n'roll, the Devil, homosexuality and his then-current view on sex in general. Does he regret telling all? "No, I think it's time for people to be truthful. I got so much publicity – the book is bigger overseas than here. It's a great book, the best I've ever written; it's the truth about my life and thinking. I don't know how you put this, 'cause I don't want to hurt Dr Rock [Charles White]. Some of the things accredited to me I didn't say. I never fought it. I appreciate it… This man left his business [to do the book]; he's a foot doctor. Travelled all over the world."

Richard tries to set the record straight. "I love gay people. I believe I was the founder of gay. I'm the one who started to be so bold tellin' the world! You got to remember my dad put me out of the house because of that. I used to take my mother's curtains and put them on my shoulders. And I used to call myself at the time the Magnificent One. I was wearing make-up and eyelashes when no men were wearing that. I was very beautiful; I had hair hanging everywhere. If you let anybody know you was gay, you was in trouble; so when I came out I didn't care what nobody thought. A lot of people were scared to be with me."

Politically relieved, I wonder aloud: "Is the 'good' Little Richard battling it out spiritually with the 'bad' Little Richard? Has he turned umpteen times from rock'n'roll to God only to be lured back by Devil fame and worship?" "No, I don't think that way," he states emphatically, admitting that he's "amazed most people don't believe me. My God, I haven't grouped in so long. It's been almost 20 years since I've been out to have a good time. Life has changed for me now. I'm older; that's not my interest any more – but at the time it was. I was young, never had enough of nothing. When I was first started in the business, I used to look for that in every city so we could have a ball, do it all, in the hall, even on the wall! When I was in Baltimore [at the Royal Theatre] the girls would take off their – people didn't call them panties then, they called them drawers – and throw them on the stage. It was terrible, but at the time we didn't know better. All the girls would want to come in the room and you'd let them in and they'd never leave! I was shocked! Girl groupies, boy groupies, dog groupies, cat groupies! She would say: 'Give me a pillow' and I'd say: 'My God, ain't she going home?' And they'd stay for a week!"

"I was very beautiful": Little Richard in his prime. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives

Maybe I'll stay, too. As much as I believe Richard's wild days are over, I can't help thinking his onetime lunatic libido can't lie low forever. "Is sex out completely?" I finally ask point blank. "Well… uh… uh…" he stammers, "at this age, you don't have a lot of choice. I'll say this much. We still see a lot of cake in the showcase, but we closed the bakery." Sex? Drugs? Rock'n'roll? He's not buying any of it. "I'm not into drugs at all. God is the only cure for crack; He is the only one can bring you back. You can get over 'herrone'. Once somebody slipped LSD in my food. My chauffeur and bodyguard kept me. I cried. I was afraid, like a little boy. I didn't take speed. I was going too fast. I needed to take some breaks and I did. God gave me a break. Do you know what I enjoy now? Tellin' people the right way to go, the pitfalls, how to love people."

And I believe him. But deep down, selfishly, I wish somebody could tempt him to fall from grace just one more time. Imagine that demon style rearing its ugly head in maturity! I still want him rippin' it up, screeching, scaring all the white folks. Getting a hold of myself, I resist the urge to whisper conspiratorially: "Come on, Richard, let's put on some false eyelashes, take some pep pills and call Lee Angel, your onetime sex magnet, and see what's cookin'!"

Richard looks distractedly at the silent late-1980s news show on TV. "Excuse me; didn't the Ayatollah get killed today?" "He did?" I ask, alarmed (he didn't). "Didn't Iraq bomb his home?" he asks, before blithely getting back to our conversation. The thought enters my mind that maybe the Third World War has broken out and I don't even know it. I'll spend the end of the world with Little Richard in a hotel room. Religion might come in handy after all. Preach to me, Richard! The best of Reverend Ike and Marjoe rolled into one.

"I came from the slums - you can't forget!": Little Richard on stage in 1957. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives

"I only came out of show business one time," he states, unaware of my inner turmoil. "I was in Australia and I saw Sputnik and I got afraid. When I was quitting, I was admitting I was scared of Sputnik. You know I came from the country; I'm not from the city – what a pity. I was scared to death to get back on the plane to come home. I was scared Sputnik would run into our plane –Russia done set this thing up. I had read about the Tower of Babel; you have to remember my people are Seventh-day Adventists, my people go to church on Saturdays…"

"Are you Jewish now?" I inquire, repeating published reports that Richard had followed in the footsteps of Sammy Davis Jr. "There's something I prefer not saying," he teases mysteriously. "I will say this. I'm a believer in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I believe the seventh-day Sabbath is God's way. I believe we should eat kosher. I was invited to a party night before last. Rod Stewart's. I didn't go, because I open the Sabbath on Friday."

"How about the rumour that it was Bob Dylan who converted you to Judaism on your deathbed following your accident?"

"Bob Dylan is my brother. I love him same as Bobby Darin [deceased] is my baby. I feel Bob Dylan is my blood brother. I believe if I didn't have a place to stay, Bob Dylan would buy me a house. He sat by my bed; he didn't move for hours. I was in pain that medicine couldn't stop. My tongue was cut out, leg all tore up, bladder punctured. I was supposed to be dead. Six feet under. God resurrected me; that's the reason I have to tell the world about it."

"I wish you had been Pope," I blurt out, all whipped up in a religious frenzy, throwing caution to the wind. Richard doesn't miss a beat, and I wonder if he has already considered the possibility.

"I idolised the Pope when I was a little boy," he says reverently. "I liked the pumps he wore. I think the Pope really dresses!" But there were other, more low-down ecclesiastical fashion casualties who seemed a bigger influence. "There was Prophet Jones of Detroit – he used to walk on this carpet. They would spread this carpet out of the limo and he would walk on it. When I got famous, I had the guys just spreading carpet for me to walk on, and they would kiss my hand… and I used to like to live like that." How about one of my personal favourites, Father Divine, the black messiah who ruled his fanatic flock of millions with an iron fist and blatantly proclaimed: "I am God"? "I [tried] to have dinner in one of his kingdoms in Philadelphia, but the lady put me out… I just had on one of my typical outfits, my hair hanging down, and she said: 'The Father don't allow nothing like that in here.' I felt bad, 'cause I went there to eat, they had a good dinner, you could eat all you wanted for a dollar. I'll never forget it."

It Is time to go. The phone is ringing. The Grand Ole Opry. The Joan Rivers show. Richard is getting a headache. "What about the future?" I lamely ask, hoping for a few more minutes. "I was just offered a role with Gary Coleman. They wanted me to be his father. And they wanted me to weigh 300lb. He was to be a bad little boy, like a demon. My management people thought it was not a good idea, 'cause there wasn't no other name people in the cast. I'd like to play a detective. I can see myself playing something really rugged – macho!" Little Richard starts growling, and this tears Mark away from his silent TV programme. He laughs out loud. "Mark, that ain't funny! He always laughs when I say 'macho'. I can't be macho? Shoot, I'll be macho if I want."

Vainly trying to picture him calmed down, alone, reflecting or, God forbid, falling asleep, I ask: "What kind of music do you listen to?" "I like classical music," he answers bashfully, "something quiet. Strings. It just makes me think, relaxes me. I've been doing that for years, but I was afraid to tell anyone. They might not like my music any more."

Suddenly all business, Richard rises and hands me a typed release. "This is something we give everybody. I'd appreciate it if you'd sign this here." Good Lord, what is this, I wonder, reading: "We agree that you [Little Richard] shall have approval of the content of any article written hereunder predicated in whole or in part upon the interview." "But Richard," I sputter, mentally cursing Jet for causing his press paranoia. "I can't sign this; all freedom of the press is gone. If you had shown me this first, Playboy would never have sent me." "Why not?" he asks. "I don't want people to hate me. I saw Elizabeth Taylor do this. I've seen Michael [Jackson] do this."

I call information and get my editor's home phone number in Chicago and wake him up. I explain. Richard is adamant. "Can't you just leave?" my editor quizzes. "Is somebody going to pull a gun?" "Who knows?" I say, eyeing Mark, who has politely backed up his boss, and wondering if maybe even I could beat him up. "I'd rather you not publish it at all. Just leave the tapes; I'll pay you," announces Richard. Church is definitely out. I feel as if I've been excommunicated. Oh great, I think, I'm going to be in the first fistfight of my life with my favourite role model over some goddamn tapes! Richard then debates my baffled editor. "John asked me about my peeping! I'm so old I can't even see through the hole!" Suddenly I'm afraid I'll start laughing hysterically. Why is Little Richard so worried? All his fans love him for his outrageousness. The book has just been published in the United States; of course reporters will ask about the content. As for his religious followers, what are they doing reading Playboy anyway?

By now an hour or so has passed. Are all celebrity interviews this hellish? Would Barbara Walters bolt? I then argue with Little Richard's lawyer on the phone. Talk about putting a damper on things! Being over budget and behind schedule on a film shoot would be a picnic compared with this. Finally, under extreme duress, we make up. Richard explains his worries. I explain my job. We hug. He signs his book to me: "God Always Cares, Little Richard". I think about how I used to sign mine: "See You In Hell, John Waters" and realise the miles we're apart.

I rush out of the room and realise my own world did end today in its own peculiar way. Maybe I don't want to switch identities after all. A few days later a press representative calls me at home, announcing that Little Richard is threatening to call the NAACP. Later I hear he's calmed down. He is still the undisputed king in my book. The man can't help it. But I learned one thing that day. Not all role models turn out the way you want. Pssssst, Richard? More than 20 years have passed – wanna come over to my house this time and try again?

John Waters is an American filmmaker, actor, writer and journalist. Photograph: George Rose

Role Models by John Waters (Beautiful Books, £15.99) is published on 2 December. On 3 December, John is in conversation with Philip Hoare at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (southbankcentre.co.uk)