Nile Rodgers

Benji B

All I can say simply is that it gives me absolutely great pleasure to welcome Mr. Nile Rodgers. (applause)

Nile Rodgers

Thank you, Benji.

Benji B

So my thanks on behalf of everybody in this room for taking the time out to talk to us today, we all really appreciate it. And we all had a great time at the gig last night, right? (Subdued response)

Nile Rodgers

Er, what was that? Ha, ha. (Applause) I had a fantastic time last night, it was amazing. I played the night before in Manchester and literally one hour after the gig we were at the airport. So we had no sleep. Well, I slept on the plane. But to come out and play for the audience was fantastic. It was exhilarating and exactly what we needed.

Benji B

I’m pretty sure there can be no one that’s kind of musically aware who hasn’t come into contact with one of your productions, one of your songs, one of your records. So, with that said we have a great deal to cover today and we’re going to fit as much as we can into two hours. Having read your book and having been a fan of your music for so long, I think in this case it is relevant to start at the beginning. As much as I like to weave my way around, in this case it’d be good to start from an early age. You didn’t have what we think of as a conventional upbringing, did you?

Nile Rodgers

It depends who you hang out with. In my world it was completely normal. My family, everybody in my immediate area, all the adults, were all heroin addicts. My biological father, my stepfather, my mother eventually became one, friends, just everybody. That’s just the environment. What happened in America in the ‘50s, heroin became some sort of chic drug in the ghetto. Prior to that people were just getting booze and marijuana – marijuana was sort of sexy – but heroin put you on another level, I guess socially maybe. So the concept of being a junkie must have been pretty cool, because my parents are pretty cool and they wouldn’t do shit that wasn’t cool (laughs). So I guess they chose heroin because it was the thing to do. I don’t really judge them for their drug usage, but the only problem is that heroin eventually made them a little more self-centred than normal parents, because the act of procuring the drugs took so much time, it wasn’t like running down to the liquor store and buying booze. You got to go cop, cook it up, prepare it. The ritual of drug use was serious.

Benji B

And the reason that dovetails into our conversation about music so significantly is because of the sort of people who’d be around that scene and the kind of music they’d be into and bring into your life. Do you want to talk about that and the beatnik scene that was around in the late ‘50s in America?

Nile Rodgers

My mom and dad, eventually, to supply themselves, wound up dealing drugs. Once you’re a dealer you start getting interesting clients. A lot of famous jazz musicians would come to our house on a regular basis. I saw very famous people, which I didn’t know were famous at that time. I thought they were just coming to cop. But our house was a hotbed of artistic activity. A lot of artists, a lot writers, a lot of musicians and everybody was cool. Everybody spoke like, (affects hip accent) “Hey my man, what’s happening? Dig yourself. Well, look here baby, everything is not copasetic, you know what I’m sayin’? My man, little Nile, come here for a minute.” I’m like four years old, that’s how they’d talk to me. I was four years old and they’d never say, “Don’t do that.” It was, “My man, come here young blood. Dig yourself.” That meant, “We’re not going to discipline you. You need to look into yourself, be introspective.” Oh, right.

Benji B

What kind of music was surrounding you at this point?

Nile Rodgers

Jazz, modern jazz. It was interesting. There was a difference between commercial jazz and modern jazz, especially in my household. My parents like the commercial stuff. They were into that and loved to go to the theatre. But they also loved bebop and avant-garde. I guess it depended on the time of day. Daytime they’d listen to Mel Tormé, stuff like that, but at night it turned into [Thelonious] Monk, Miles [Davis], Bird [Charlie Parker] and Dizz[ie Gillespie], hard bebop. So at night on the nod it was (imitates jazz solo, swaying). That’s just how it was and it was not peculiar. When you read my book, the reason I’m very romantic about them is because they were great, they really were great. From the standpoint of regular Americana, what you saw on TV, they were definitely not like that. But it was the only existence I knew and it was wonderful and interesting and inspirational, totally inspiring.

Benji B

Do you want to talk a bit about your stepfather, the man who raised you? He would go on to have quite an effect in your interpretation of the world, and in many ways he was an OG hipster.

Nile Rodgers

My stepfather is white and uh – (gesturing) woo! – in those days that was a big deal. I didn’t know it was a big deal because he was just Bobby to me. The reason I called my father Bobby is that I called my mother Beverly. I called every adult that I knew by their first name. He was my friend, even though he was my stepfather; all the adults around me were my buddies. We knew lots of Bobbys, but because my father was white they called him White Bobby, so I called him White Bobby (laughter). But I didn’t think of it as, “Hey, Bobby the white man, moving into my crib, fucking up my…” It was just White Bobby, like there was Black Bobby, Gay Bobby and so-and-so Bobby.

One day I went to school, eight years old, and I’m in a classroom, a big classroom, and we lived in a part of New York City called Alphabet City. When my parents couldn’t afford the West Village we moved to the East Village. I heard all the kids in the classroom going, “Oh, shit! His father’s white. Oh, shit! His father’s white.” I didn’t know that was a bad thing until I felt the kids, who were predominantly Puerto Rican, finding it uncomfortable. I didn’t know what the problem was, but there was clearly a problem at that point for them.

That was around the time my book starts to pick up. That’s when my father had his first overdose, Thanksgiving Day, which is a holiday. I don’t know what the hell it represents, but what they tell us is the Americans, the English settlers, made friends with the Native American people and they all ate dinner together. I was like, yeah, right. Half the people were dead from flu and stuff. Whatever, it’s a very jovial, celebratory American holiday. But in my life, Thanksgiving wound up being tragic, and from that first overdose our lives spiralled out of control. I basically became an adult. I became responsible for my… sometimes everything. Responsible for my own food, my own education, travel.

Let me just say one thing that predates this event. I was born very sickly, so I was put in a convalescent home when I was young, because I used to live in oxygen tents. I had asthma. When I moved to this children’s home for about five or six months, they had a very robust early childhood development program. So I learned to read at an eighth-grade level, far above children at my level. When I got home I could navigate through the waters of adulthood. Does everybody understand what I’m talking about? Does everybody speak English in here? OK, cool. So I was not vulnerable to the things that a lot of other six-year-olds were vulnerable to, because I could read. I could understand complicated polysyllabic words and I could understand compound thoughts. It wasn’t just, “Don’t do that.” It was, “Why not? I saw you do it.” “Well, we’re an adult.” “Really? So you mean to tell me it’s less dangerous for you than it is for me?” Uh-oh! So that was my childhood. People took that as me being rebellious but in fact I was just trying to learn. If I see you doing something, why can’t I do it? This is to help you get to the fact that I started doing drugs myself at 11 years old. It worked for them, I thought it would work for me too.

Benji B

So as the sort of “kidult” that you become, you’re a native New Yorker, right? But is it fair to say you lived a kind of bi-coastal existence when you were young, so you had experience of both New York and the West Coast?

Nile Rodgers

Correcto! My mother, when she had her second child… my mom had three coathanger abortions, which were very dangerous. She almost died twice. I guess she decided to have a child finally, so she had my brother six years later. She started suffering from post-partum depression where she threatened to kill my little brother every day because he couldn’t stop crying. The doctor told her that she wasn’t fit to raise children, so I was shipped off to California to live with her mother, while she went to a mental hospital. She wasn’t incarcerated, but she went to a psychiatrist every day. That was my first trip to Los Angeles.

Benji B

This is early ‘60s, right?

Nile Rodgers

That was even older than that. That was 1959, just.

Benji B

Could you paint us a picture of what New York, what Manhattan and LA felt like that at that time, culturally, musically, anything really?

Nile Rodgers

He did read the book! The deal is that when we left New York, we took the bus all the way to Los Angeles, about 3,000 miles, long trip. And when we arrived we were in downtown LA, which looks very much like New York. In my child’s mind I thought we just drove around for a long time and wound up in the same place. Maybe we just came in through the back door or something, the stage entrance to the bus terminal. Once we left the bus terminal, I noticed it was very different to New York in that we had a very powerful Latin American, Mexican influence. Everything was (adopts Hispanic accent), “Overa, Figeruoa, blah-blah-blah.” I was like, “Damn!” In New York we have Puerto Ricans but they were only in the movie West Side Story or in my family. They didn’t have things named – now it’s Munoz Boulevard and blah, blah, blah, but then nothing was named after Puerto Rican or Latin American things in New York City. But in Los Angeles, everything was. We even had a place called Santa Ana. In my childhood memory he was the villain of America, he fought Davy Crockett, but in LA…! So in my childhood analytical brain, I was like, wow, California is cool. They celebrate criminals, it’s fantastic, they name streets and towns after them. When you’re a child and you’re analyzing things, they’re very black and white – not to make a joke, but it’s, “This is this and that is that,” and the grey areas are not that clear yet.

So LA felt like you could just do whatever you wanted to do because they sanctioned it. I went pretty crazy because that year I’d just turned seven. So at that point it was, still 1959. So at seven years old I set the national truancy record for the United States. I went to a Catholic school because my grandmother was super Catholic, and I cut school 75 days in a row. I thought they were going to give me a plaque because I figured out how to do it. We used to have derelicts, winos, who’d hang out, and in Los Angeles they have liquor stores, a special store to buy liquor, and it was right across the street from my house. The winos would sit outside and ask for money. And when you go a Catholic school, every day you have money to give to the church. I gave the money to the winos and they would write letters for me, “Please excuse Nile because his asthma…” For 75 days I got away with this.

Benji B

Did you fall in love with music during those 75 days or had that romance already started for you?

Nile Rodgers

The music love had already started, but the real love was with cinema, with movies and television. I found I could learn at a much faster rate by watching films, much faster than in a classroom, which was sizeable, probably half the number of people in this room. Our classrooms were really big and we only had one teacher. But you go to the movies and you’re seeing [Federico] Fellini. There were no ratings then so a child could see any film they wanted to see. If you didn’t understand it, too bad. But if you stayed there, because they didn’t turn the movies over in those days, you could sit there and watch the same movies all the time. In Los Angeles they had what they called the grindhouse format, which was four or five [movies], so I could sit there all day long and finally you’d learn a little Italian, Spanish, French, because they had the subtitles. So you had a film called La Dolce Vita. “OK cool, let me go and see that.” You learned about [Marcello] Mastroianni, [Michelangelo] Antonioni]. The next thing I knew I was kind of smart, I guess. I was only eight years old and knew everything – or at least a lot about varied subjects.

When it came to music, I just adored it. My father was a professional percussionist and as a result of the Latin music boom in America, he played with a lot of the big bands, because they started having a Latin influence. If you couple that with the beatnik culture, that was the beginning of the beat poetry, and they always had someone playing bongos. I like to think they were super-intellectual, but a lot of the time it just sounded ridiculous to me. So the great thing about early beat poetry, the profundity of absurd subject matter was so interesting. Like, they could say, (affects beatnik voice) “My man with the red shoes. Oh, red, like a bed.” And my dad would be going (mimics playing bongos). “Red is dead, the shoes, the bed.” It didn’t rhyme like that but you know what I’m saying. More like, “Re-e-e-e-e-ed.” (Mimics bongo playing) “The color of my be-e-e-e-e-ed. What I said, the people, the thing.” And I’d be looking at them going, “Are you kidding me? You can get a job doing that?” (Laughter) But that was my world and that was life and it was wonderful to me.

Benji B

It seems like you can talk about the beatniks, beat poet generation, the Motown ‘60s generation – obviously, we’ll get to the ‘70s and ‘80s – but it feels that your existence in New York and in LA as a young person gave you the launchpad to be able to throw yourself into show business in such a rounded way. Is that a fair thing to say?

Nile Rodgers

Let me try and speed up. After I ditched school for 75 days they shipped me back to my mother. At that point she had been cool. The doctor says, “OK, you can have kids now.” So my mom had a third child, but instead of raising that child she gave that child to her aunt. So I have a brother that’s really never been raised in our family. When I came back to New York I just became completely inundated with culture, with music, with learning, and I started playing in the school orchestras. And because I was always the last kid to enrol, the school orchestras would just assign you whatever instrument was lacking because no one could really play. Can you remember what eight-year-old bands used to sound like? What difference does it make? “Give this dude a tuba.” “But I’m all skinny.” “That’s it, you’re playing the sousaphone.” And it’s just (makes horrible noise) Everything was quarter notes and then a rest or something. Really simple stuff. But it was fun. I loved the camaraderie of playing in bands and orchestras, moving from place to place. That was the one thing that allowed me to fit in, no matter where I went. We all stank together and it was very inspiring.

But then I moved back to Los Angeles and that’s when things started to change for me dramatically. At that point my mom had yet another kid, so I moved back to LA with her because she was a heroin addict at that point, full day user, and she tried to kick. So she kicked on the bus, we get to LA, she moves back, now I’m by myself with her, with my grandparents. My grandmother had a boyfriend who worked at a very high-end airport. At that airport was Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley. These are the kind of people who’d fly in every day, and because I was the only kid working there – I don’t know what the child labor laws were like, but kids had jobs when I was a kid. You couldn’t live without a job. And the cool thing about a kid’s job was you got to keep all your money (laughs). I worked at the airport, which was fantastic and all these people in showbusiness were generous as hell. This was probably the first time that being black had a huge advantage, because I stood out. I walked up to people and everybody was cool to me. “Hey kid, here’s five dollars. Wash the plane, clean the windshield.” And everybody was generous. Frank Sinatra was an incredible tipper. He’d (reaches into pocket), pfff! $50, I could go buy the world.

Benji B

So was this your first encounter with celebrity?

Nile Rodgers

No, because they were around me all during my childhood when my parents were drug dealing. But this was my first encounter when I knew that they were stars. When I was younger, they were just people coming over to buy drugs or something. Or trade, barter. But when I worked at the airport I was 11, 12, 13 years old. I had seen all these people in movies. Imagine Ginger Rogers coming up to you and you’re like, “Damn, do that song.” They used to love the fact that I knew all their stuff. It’s not in the book, because I didn’t have time to go into it, but I remember having a conversation with Dean Martin and we were singing songs, lyrics from some obscure film. He was happy that I knew it. It’s funny, big movie stars are just as fragile. You see them getting off a jet and you say, “I loved that movie, Three Sailors and a Girl.” “Wow, you saw Three Sailors and a Girl?!”

Benji B

What was Frank’s jet like?

Nile Rodgers

Frank’s jet was a Learjet, and this was the early age of the private jet age. It was called the Christina II. I didn’t even figure it out until I wrote this book – actually, truth is bro, I didn’t figure it out until a couple of days ago when I was talking to a person. At the airport I was always, “Where the hell is Christina I?” Christina I was his daughter! Damn it Nile, you idiot. The plane was called Christina II, but his daughter was Christina Sinatra, duh – Christina I. So I used to clean the Christina II and the tail number almost looked like my name, which was cool. I’d stand to the side and pretend it was my jet. Nile on the Christina II. Fast-forward into the future and Quincy Jones was producing a Frank Sinatra record, and this was the early age of the Sony digital tape recorder and I was the only person in New York who owned one, and they had to rent it from me. I was like, “I got to go protect my machine,” but really I wanted to hang with Q and Frank. And I still called him Mr. Sinatra even though they were renting my shit. (Laughter) So I walked into the room and I’m like, ”Mr. Sinatra.” “Yes?” “I’m Pud,” which was my nickname. “Pud?” “Yeah, Pud from Van Nuys airport.” And he went, “Oh my god!”

It was the most cool thing that’s probably ever happened to me since I’ve been in the music business. They were just sitting there. When Frank Sinatra’s recording, everything has to be perfect. He’s got to sing it right, the band’s got to play it right. So the musicians loved it because if he made one mistake, they’d get paid to do it again and again and again. There was no such thing as an overdub. I was watching Q going, “Hey Frank, we’ll just punch it in.” “Punch it in? I’ll punch you out.” (Laughter) He took pride in seeing that I grew up to be that guy who’s in charge. And also to show how my life was really, really weird, it followed a pattern. I’d have something really good happen, then something really bad would happen. Everything seems to be connected. So Christina Sinatra is the person who named the first band I was in with Bernard Edwards, called New York City, because she was married to the dude who owned the record label. She was looking at New York magazine or something like that, and even though it was a Philly-sounding band, she says, “Hey, let’s call the group New York City.” And that’s how we became the “Big Apple Band” which went on to become Chic.

Benji B

So we’re in the ‘60s and you’ve cleaned Frank’s jet and you’ve spent some time in New York and LA and been around music. But tell me about developing your own musical tastes and getting into music that you loved yourself.

Nile Rodgers

I have to say primarily, I think of myself as a jazz person. That’s what I still play in my spare time. Rich will tell you, when I’m around the house, you’ll never hear me practising [Jimi] Hendrix or funk. I don’t have to practise that, it’s in me now. I’m a funk guy, I think like a funk guy. But what I’d always practice – what we used to call woodshedding – because we’d sit around and go (pretends to play jazz). Sometimes I can get it that fast. But still I’m a bebop guy and that’s all what I want to play. A couple of weeks ago Rich and I were transcribing Eric Dolphy. Still, at this age! But when I met Bernard Edwards, that’s when my life shifted. He and I were polar opposites. But from the first day we played together, we were never apart, ever. Even when we broke up and were all pissed off with each other, the way people get pissed off in Chic – at least me and Bernard – is (adopting angry voice) “Motherfucker, rah, rah, rah.” Then you call him: “Hey man, you feel like going out?” “OK, cool.” And if Bernard heard somebody say something disparaging about me, he’d be, “I can say that shit, but you can’t.” So we were always like this (holds fingers close).

Anyway, when I met him we were on a pick-up gig, and in those days you basically did what was on the jukebox, whatever was hot. And in those days a lot of jazz records were popular in R&B settings. Freddie Hubbard had “Red Clay,” the Headhunters with Herbie Hancock. It was jazz artists on the R&B and dance charts. So we learned those songs. It would be, “We’re doing “Song for My Father.” And right behind it would be “Cissy Strut” and right behind it would be “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight.” Oops.(Takes phone out of pocket) Disregard my cell phone, I’ll turn it off after it stops.

So anyway I started to learn to love R&B because many of the gigs we did were primarily R&B gigs. Unfortunately all the jazz dudes, myself included, used to look on those gigs with a certain amount of disdain. We used to call them boogaloo gigs and boogaloo gigs were… (looks at phone) Oh, come on already! It’s my mom.

Benji B

Her ears were burning.

Nile Rodgers

I was hit by cancer about a year ago and now my mom calls me every day. I’m like, “Mom, alright already. They don’t give you a test every day.” So what happened was we were doing a bunch of boogaloo gigs, the main one was with New York City, and somehow the opening act before us had lost all their equipment. The kid who was playing in the band before us played on my amplifier because his was stolen. Something miraculous happened that night. All along Bernard had been telling me to sell my big jazz guitar, which was feeding back and I had to play at low volumes. We didn’t have the great soundmen that we have now. Usually, the sound onstage was what people heard in the audience. So I had to play quietly because my guitar was feeding back through these big amps, because we wanted to look like Sly and the Family Stone. Meanwhile I couldn’t play at that volume. So this kid borrowed my amp and he was playing a Fender Strat and, damn, all of a sudden my amplifier sounded like the most incredible amplifier I’d ever heard. And Bernard looked at me and said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Buy a Strat!” So I buy the Stratocaster and now it feels weird. The strings were light compared to my big, fat jazz guitar. But I got $300 back too – I traded my jazz guitar and got three bills. Man, this is cool.

Then Bernard showed me the style of guitar playing that kid was playing, because we were playing some of the same songs but his playing sounded better than mine. And Bernard picked up the guitar and started chucking, playing the same songs we’d been playing, but now he showed me how to play them. I was like, “Wow! Really?” Bernard was a regular guitar player – he was a good guitar player, but nothing spectacular – but he sounded better than me. The reason why was because he would hold the chord. Guitar players, usually when they know a chord, that’s the chord. They know the E chord, they hold the E chord. Maybe they know another way of playing it, but that’s it. And whenever they play a song it’s just the same thing over and over again, and that’s what they call playing a song. When I play a song I’m moving the chords all around and inverting it and voice leading and all this stuff. And when Bernard did that, just playing the song, it sounded more interesting. I noticed he was jumping around the strings – he would hold the position but then move all across the fingerboard (gesturing with right hand). I was, “Damn, if you can do that with one position, what would I be able to do? I can go anywhere up and down the neck and pick out random notes and just play the extensions, never touch the root or the fifth. What would I be able to do?” So I moved into the bathroom for about four or five days. The guy who was on the road with me had about a million girls coming in and out, so I’d just stay in the bathroom and practice. And then about a week later I emerged as the guy that I am now, which is the funk guy who can play a bunch of chords and melodies at the same time.

Benji B

We should make it clear that Bernard, your long-time musical partner, was a bass player.

Nile Rodgers

A genius bass player.

Benji B

And of course we all know that guitar is your weapon of choice. As a jazz person, when did you decide on the guitar?

Nile Rodgers

The last time I moved back to New York was after my grandmother had died, I was about 15, 16 years old. I was playing the clarinet with the school orchestra. We sucked, but we played OK. We were just in junior high school. So I had gone out with my friends – we were still big glue sniffers. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned that, but that was my drug of choice. I was a glue sniffer and we used to sniff amyl nitrate – that was heaven to us. The glue we paid for. The amyl nitrate we’d break into the school and get free. One day we were going to the skating rink in Los Angeles and we ran into these guys that were what people wound up calling hippies. But when we saw them we were like, “Man, we’ve never seen guys look like you.” They had hair down in their faces. And they said that they were freaks. I was, “Wow, freaks, cool. I’m down with that.” And the freaks asked me and my boy… Now imagine this, we were 15-year-old kids and you know how when you’re kids you dress like the artist you idolize? I remember when Madonna hit, all these little girls were there with the rubber bracelets and they were like 10 years old. So we were that. We idolized the Temptations. We were 15 years old and we had sharkskin suits with ruffle shirts and French collars going to the skating rink. Fifteen years old and we were the shit. Then we met these freaks and we thought they looked weird and we can just imagine what they thought of us because we were clean.

And they asked us if we wanted to take a trip. We said, “Absolutely!” We had no idea they meant LSD, we thought they meant joyriding or something – that’s what we did when we took a trip, went to the beach. So we went up to the Hollywood Hills and they gave us LSD. Woah! We didn’t even know what LSD was. I didn’t return home for two days. My sharkskin suit was all dirty and tattered and my rollerskates were all psychedelic and shit where girls had painted [on us], they were all, “Ooh, spade cats with rollerskates and suits.” And they painted all over us and we were into it.

So I’d left being completely into nothing but Motown and R&B and the deepest soul you could hear on the radio. When I came home I said to my grandmother – I was talking completely different in just two days, I was like (affects hippie accent), “Oh Granny, wow, you’re hassling my head, man. Must you play the Mighty Sparrow again?” I don’t think Mighty Sparrow was around, but she was into Caribbean music and gospel. “Oh no, I must hear the Monkees. I have to hear Them and the Troggs.”

My grandmother died shortly after and I went back to New York to live with my mom. But before I got there I lived with my uncle and his girlfriend had a daughter who was the finest woman who ever walked this earth. And she had a band and the band didn’t have a guitar player. So she says to me, “Nile, we need a guitar player in our band. Do you think you could play it?” “Of course!” I had never touched a guitar in my life. But in the old school orchestra they just give you the instruments and say, “Here, play this.” And within a couple of weeks you’re... (makes horrible brass noise) But this band was actually pretty good and they wanted me to play guitar on that level. At the time I had been playing clarinet in the school orchestra and it has the same written range as the guitar, like a low E on the clarinet. I looked at the music and was, “I’ve got this guitar shit covered!” So I looked at the music – I don’t remember what song it was – but I couldn’t figure it out to save my life. I embarrassed myself and the girl said something harsh to me, so I moved in with my mom. I couldn’t even face her anymore. Then I kept practising. I bought a Beatles songbook. I couldn’t get my clarinet etudes to speak properly. I was trying but it just didn’t make sense. I looked at the fingering, wasn’t working, something was wrong, so I bought a Beatles songbook, because (affects hippie voice) you know man, I was into the Beatles. And my favorite song was “A Day in the Life”, and I kept playing it over and over again, and I had the fingering down, I memorized it, but it never sounded quite like a “Day in the Life,” it was weird.

So my mother’s boyfriend came over and he realized I had the guitar out of tune. I guess I missed that part – I went right to the songs, I tuned it to sound like a violin or something. So the dude tuned the guitar and after he tuned it, I played the exact same fingering I’d been playing and it was heaven. It was euphoria. It was like the first time I ever got high or had sex. It was that level of unbelievable magic. And I played the chord and it was perfect. Then I attempted to sing because the lyrics were in the songbook, (sings) “I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade.” And I was like (bobs from side to side) – I was so high. Obviously, it was really slow, like (sings slowly) “I read…” But I got through the song and at that point I decided I’d never play another instrument seriously again but the guitar. I’m going to concentrate, stick to this thing, get it down, get it down. And that’s when I became the jazz guy and blah blah, meet Bernard Edwards, blah, blah, buy a Strat, blah, blah, we get a record deal, first song we write…

Benji B

Hold up, hold up. (Laughter) One thing we should talk about, you went to LA and you won’t be offended if I say you came back a bit of a hippie, right?

Nile Rodgers

Offended? I wear that like a big badge of courage.

Benji B

And what’s interesting, you talk about the jazz heritage, being a big Temptations fan, being obsessed with that whole era. But when you met Bernard, you were actually the hippie and he was the R&B guy, is that right?

Nile Rodgers

Completely, 100%. Bernard was so old-school R&B, he really fit in. I did not fit in. My first real job, where you get a paycheck and they take taxes out, was with Sesame Street. I got that gig because I just auditioned and got the gig. They didn’t pay attention to the fact that I had green hair and cornrows and stuff like that, so when I undid the green cornrows I had this big green afro. It wasn’t green like that (points to someone in the audience) because we didn’t have green like that – we used food color, like something that would make your cupcakes green. Like on St. Patrick’s Day, (affects Irish accent), “Ah, the cupcakes are green.” So we’d take that and put it in our hair for hours and hours and then it would be green. But my hair looked really black, but when you get in the light, “Holy shit, he’s got green hair.” So on Sesame Street that was sorta cool, they liked it. That was fantastic.

And I only did that gig for a year because the guy who vacated it was Carlos Alomar and he went to play in the Apollo Theater house band. Then David Bowie hired him with my other buddies, Luther Vandross and those guys, and they became the Young Americans and there was an opening at the Apollo and I auditioned for that. Wasn’t much of an audition. I was recommended by the woman from Sesame Street, whose husband was the manager of the Apollo Theater at that time. And I got the gig with the house band. It was Reuben Phillips and King Curtis would switch as the directors. And she told them that I was a really great guitarist and a fantastic reader. In those days at the Apollo Theater, you had to do two shows for certain and it may have even been [inaudible] and it would turn over like that. It was a revue format. Every now and then they’d have one band that would do a bunch of songs, but typically, R&B, you have one-hit wonders, so a person would come out and do their one or two songs that were hits. All that the audience got were songs that were pretty familiar. Everybody had their little routine and shtick, but the band had to be ready for anything that was performed.

Benji B

At this point had James Brown already recorded the Live at the Apollo record?

Nile Rodgers

Oh, yeah.

Benji B

So when you’re walking into the Apollo on 125th Street, were you walking in with the pressure on your shoulders, knowing what amazing stuff had already been recorded there?

Nile Rodgers

Not only that. I had heard about Jimi Hendrix winning the talent show. First of all, don’t get me wrong – even though I was a jazzy guy, everybody went to the Apollo every now and then. A lot of the bands I was playing with, that I subbed with, would wind up playing at the Apollo. So it wasn’t like when I got the gig as the house band guy that I’d never been to the Apollo. Luther Vandross was my friend and he took us there to see Patti LaBelle and The Bluebelles and I never saw anything like that. So it was our place to hang.

Benji B

So you’d been in the audience section. It was famously a very unforgiving crowd that would go to the Apollo, they would not suffer fools gladly. So how did it feel when you walked out onstage and saw the unforgiving R&B thumbs-up, thumbs-down audience?

Nile Rodgers

I was lucky. The very first show I was onstage in the band, this is what happened to me. I get recommended by the woman from Sesame Street who says, “This kid’s amazing, he can read anything that’s put in front of him, blah, blah, blah.” So I go and do the audition and the audition was Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman”, which is in F-sharp and it’s at least 15 or 16 pages long. You have to have three music stands taped together, keep pulling that shit. And it’s just vamping (sings a swung melody), but of course I play (sings same melody without the swing), because I didn’t understand the R&B thing yet.

But you get the chart and they go, “Alright, two, three–” (repeats the melody), and we’re jamming this. So the bandleader tells me I don’t have to make the rest of the audition because, “Wow, that’s so incredible, you played ‘Clean Up Woman’ for 13 pages – you’re the man!” So they let me go walking around Harlem and they told me to be back an hour before show time. At the Apollo – I don’t know if they still do this, but they’d go, “The half is in.” Do they still do that? No, OK, that’s old school. But they’d go, “The half is in,” and there was this klaxon (makes klaxon sound). “The half is in, the half is in,” and we’d all run round, getting ready to play. There’s a couple of guitar players, I’m sitting there and we’re waiting to go onstage and I’m so focused because I want to do a great job. I know this is the Apollo. I don’t want to lose this job, I’m getting $375 a week, I need to do this.

I didn’t pay attention that they’d rolled in a coffin on the side of the stage. I’m looking at the conductor, he goes, “Bang!” and as soon as he does that, this coffin opens and it’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. (Laughter) I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his routine, but he looks like a skeleton, he’s got this rattle in his hand. I’m terrified. It happens on the downbeat. And we’re playing in 6/8, and then we’ve got the pickup (screams). And I jump up and grab my guitar, take the cable out, and I’m running around with my big jazz guitar across stage, and Screamin’ is running after me (gets up to run across the stage). And I run stage right but now they’re blocking me, because all the people waiting to go on are standing there. And I run to the other side and the audience is crying because they know it’s totally real. (laughter) Meanwhile, the thing that made it funny to my friends is, at that time, I was a kung fu master, I was studying kung fu. And I’m running across the stage like a total chump. The audience at the Apollo is crying with laughter when I come back. Screamin’ Jay just nailed the performance that night and at that point the old school guys in the band decided, “Let’s teach this young blood what it’s all about.” That was my first day. (Applause) Everybody had planned it, everybody was in on it. They couldn’t have done it without a rehearsal, they just wanted to show me what the Apollo was like. Trial by fire.

Benji B

So how do we go from that initiation experience to you starting your own band?

Nile Rodgers

At that point, I’d already been with Bernard Edwards and another guy named Harold Alexander and a guy named Gylan Kain who was in the Last Poets. So I was already gigging in New York and I had lots of other gigs, but I always tried to bring Bernard in. It just sounded better and he did the same thing.

Benji B

Why was that? What was it about your relationship that made you click?

Nile Rodgers

We wanted to be professional. In those days a lot of bands were sloppy and even though we were playing in the hood at dives, what we used to call the chitlin’ circuit, people expected a good show. We had to show up in a bar in the hood with uniforms and people had capes, like you see those people who jump off mountains and fly? I was in a band called the Metaphors and we had them back then, flying like bats. We did that because we’d get a little black light and these things were white underneath and you do the choreography (dances). And you went like that and the white things would be... That’s what they expected in the hood, in the ghetto. We were getting $15 a night and we had to do four or five sets. But they expected a show. Bernard and I always wanted to be good. A lot of the guys would just get through the show because they figured they’d never be back, but Bernard and I had a powerful work ethic and we always wanted the shows to be great. If he didn’t know something, I would tell him, and if I didn’t know it… We were bandleaders and we didn’t know it.

Benji B

It’s interesting because often the rhythm section, i.e. the drums and the bass, can be the heartbeat of the band. But it’s interesting for us to hear you talk about the relationship between lead guitar and bass and why that was such a solid relationship.

Nile Rodgers

It’s funny, I recently posted on my blog. I talk about it like everyone knows everything, but a year ago I was stricken with cancer and I didn’t really know what to do. I was all paranoid. I tried to reach out to people but no one wanted to talk about it. So I started a daily blog, I figured if they were anonymous they would open up. It wound up becoming [about] everything I do every day. So a few weeks ago, a friend of mine I haven’t seen for years found an early videotape of me and Bernard and the band that eventually became Chic. You could tell from that tape how we clicked. We carried this thing. We could’ve just been a trio. This other cat was really great, but there were five of us – two guitars, bass and drums and a lead singer. And when you hear the songs, I defy anyone to tell me it does not sound like Earth Wind & Fire, “Getaway” with the horns and that. We didn’t need horns, we had it in the parts and that’s what people were used to in the hood. If it didn’t sound like the record, you would get booed. It would have to go (imitates music) and everybody would learn the records and we’d do that, we were tight. Bernard and I were responsible for the melodic, the harmonic and the bass part. The drummers we figured would learn the grooves. We thought about everything as a duo, because if Bernard and I showed up, we got it covered. We’ve got the songs covered, the licks covered, all that stuff. And that’s basically why we were so tight.

Benji B

And it’s interesting. Obviously, that will go on to be important with the grooves of Chic. You talking about performing just like the record, it’s sort of in conflict with your jazz roots of improvising and that freeness. It’s interesting having the discipline to perform it exactly like it is on the record.

Nile Rodgers

The truth is, yes, we perform exactly like the record, but not exactly, exactly, exactly. Enough that the people in the audience feel like they’re hearing the song and they’re not disappointed. Nowadays, when you go to a live show – I hate to say it – but in almost every case it’s exactly the record because they’re just playing the damn record, and lip-synching and dancing and stuff, because that’s what people have become accustomed to and hearing the thing sound exactly the same. So what we do, yeah, it’s the song, but we’re musicians so we want to have a good time. It’s not like a symphony orchestra where they have to play the same thing. We do make it feel like the record, we fool around. But it’s not about us, it’s about you guys. We want to make you happy, but we can’t make you happy over and over again if we don’t feel good too.

Benji B

So describe the scene, Bernard and how he looked and how you looked.

Nile Rodgers

When?

Benji B

When you met, when he was leaning to the slick R&B side and you were more to the hippie side.

Nile Rodgers

The night we met I was wearing hand-embroidered jeans with patches on them – which I’d done myself, I was all thrilled about it – gigantic bell-bottoms – I was the skinniest guy in the world – with a hip hugger so the zipper was just that long (makes tiny hand gesture), riding way low. Huge platform shoes because at that point I had done a bunch of gigs, I was making money, so I went out and bought these snakeskin platform shoes. I was like 6 foot 5. And Bernard on the other hand was wearing these knit shirts they used to wear back in the hood and silk trousers with flaps on the back from a joint in Harlem called Mr. Tony’s, probably not open anymore, and wearing shoes called Playboys that looked like Hush Puppies, but with an extra-thick soul. The shirts were called Blye’s, so he wore Blye’s and Plays and sharkskin pants from Mr. Tony’s flapped up, as they would say. “Flap ‘em up for me, Mr. Tony.”

Benji B

And you were saying earlier he was trying to get you to loosen up and you were talking about chucking on the guitar. Can you show us what you mean by chucking?

Nile Rodgers

Oh, I’d be happy to...!

Benji B

Good. (Applause, Rodgers demonstrates on guitar)

Nile Rodgers

(Continuing) This is going on for eight and a half minutes. We walk into this club, and my boy is playing this. Those are the only vocals on the record, that chorus, and everyone is losing their minds. As soon as the opening drum hits, swear to God, everyone went (screams) and ran out to the dancefloor. I don’t remember what dance they were doing in those days, probably the rock or something (dances). The people in the audience were playing air bass and stuff. This went on for an hour. I’d never seen anything like that and I realized the power of a groove, the power of the DJ to talk to the audience just through your groove record, and it had nothing to do with the radio. It had something to do with being in the environment and hitting you with something that moved you in the soul, moved your heart, moved you in the feet, and all of a sudden we really believed in ourselves. We thought, “Damn, if they like that, what if we develop more stuff?”

And after “Everybody Dance” it took almost a year, or a long time, to get record companies to believe in us. Even though we took A&R people down and showed them the reaction, like look, this was not staged, this was real. And the DJ would play the record for an hour at a time. He took two acetates and played them back and forth. Crazy! But the A&R people didn’t quite understand it, they didn’t understand the repetitive breakdowns and basically just an instrumental track.

A few months later, Bernard was hired to do a record and they had to have a B-side to sell it commercially. And the B-side, a lot of the time producers would just say, “OK, here’s some money, I’ll finish the song later.” And they’d write the song and become the writers. You’d do your track and they’d finish it later because it was a filler song. There are a lot of filler songs that have become huge, like “I Will Survive” was a B-side. Gloria Gaynor’s biggest song was a B-side and she hated it. So Bernard – I wasn’t on this session – cut this B-side and it was basically what would become “Dance, Dance, Dance.” Since I was the only writer with Chic at the time, the guy who produced the session called me up to write it with him.

Benji B

Before we go there, I think we should listen to the $10 record. I want to hear what you did that day, but please say thank you to Mr. Rodgers for the guitar demonstration. (Applause) I’ve only got the vocal version, but this is the tune that you heard in the club, “Everybody Dance.” And the B-side would be “Dance, Dance, Dance,” right?

Nile Rodgers

No, you didn’t let me get there. We didn’t get a record deal from this. They didn’t understand it. We got the deal from “Dance, Dance, Dance.” So the reason this song now has lyrics, after we got the single deal for “Dance, Dance, Dance” it was a hit, so they said, “OK, we’ll exercise your option and give you an album deal.” So we wrote an album in three days and recorded it and put lyrics on “Everybody Dance,” which is how it became a full vocal song.

(music: Chic – “Everybody Dance”)

Everything is exactly what they heard in the club until we got our friends to play on it.

Benji B

So there was an instrumental of that?

Nile Rodgers

Yeah, we never changed the music, we just put lyrics on top of it. The girl whose voice you hear singing the lead vocal is very distinctive. You notice when the chorus comes in, that girl goes away. We hired her after we had the hit record. We didn’t even know Norma Jean Wright yet. Matter of fact she wasn’t even called that, she was called Norma Wright. We thought that sounds like the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, so we had her put her middle name in, make it sound more sophisticated, more like Marilyn Monroe. Who actually I had actually seen many times because she got her first job working at Van Nuys airport like me. (Laughs) She got her first job at that airport for Lockheed as a riveter or something like that.

Benji B

You were about to say, before I interrupted you, that in order to make your record a hit for the record company people, you needed to come up with a B-side.

Nile Rodgers

I think I’m telling it wrong or you misunderstood. “Everybody Dance” did not get us the record deal. That was just happening in the nightclubs and it was jamming and no matter what I did they just didn’t get it. So Kenny Lehman, the guy who also found the videotapes of us playing that you can see on my website, was a record producer, and he hired Bernard to play on the B-side of a record he had performed. Kenny then came to me to write that song as an A-side. That song was called “Dance, Dance, Dance.” And remember Bernard had never written a song yet, so Kenny brought it to me and I heard the bassline. I thought, “Wait a minute, that’s Bernard playing. There’s no one else in the world who plays like that.” And he said, “Yeah, it’s just this thing I did for this record.” And at that point I thought we should bring Bernard back in because there was nothing there but bass and drums and, I think, one keyboard player. Bass, drums and a keyboard player, that’s all that was there. I played guitar on it, I wrote the song, or so I thought. (plays riff)

So when he brought it to me it was just a bassline and what I put on top of it. Also, when I’m in the studio I play it very differently. The way I play now is the way I play live, but when I’m in the studio I just go (plays), all tight and shit. Live I play (plays louder), so that became (sings melody), but that’s not what I wrote. I wrote (sings slightly more complicated melody) Bernard came in and went, “Yo my man, why’s that so complicated?” “What do you mean?” “Why are you saying all that? Just say, ‘Dance, dance, dance.’” Now, Bernard had never written a song before, but he’d heard what I had written, so the song was just all the extensions, it never went to the root, never went to F. So Bernard stayed in that mood, he’d just go (demonstrates) I was like, “Wow, OK, that sounds pretty good.”

So now when you listen to the record, the part I wrote as the hook is relegated to a secondary role on a Micromoog, which is my man going (sings), a counterpoint across the melody. I’m just a complicated guy. But when Bernard did that, it was so precise and so right on the money, I made him my songwriting partner. From that moment on, we never had to be equal as far as the amount of words. We never sat around and went, “Well, I wrote 30% of that.” That was it, it was done. It doesn’t make any difference whether he started the song, because him changing the hook just to that changed my whole song. I don’t think we’d have got a record deal with the complicated thing I wrote. Maybe we would have, but that’s the record we finished and that’s the record we submitted. You should play that, it just shows you the genius of Bernard Edwards’ power to arrange. (Applause)

(music: Chic – “Dance, Dance, Dance”)

That’s why these songs never get boring to us, we play them all over the map. But it still sounds like “Dance, Dance, Dance.” It’s that jazziness, that freedom that’s built into the composition, it’s on the record like that. When I’m listening to it I can remember where they are, but when I play it I have no idea where all those inversions go. And it’s not even fun for me to remember, it’s more fun to do it the way I do it.

Benji B

For those who aren’t sure, what do you mean when you say inversions, can you describe them?

Nile Rodgers

Typically – and this is no disrespect – but when I was a kid and a person taught me a chord, that was the chord. So “Dance, Dance, Dance” is F-minor 7 to B-flat 7 (plays guitar), it’s a basic thing but that already doesn’t sound cool, right? So I make it a B-flat 13 and it sounds more like “Dance, Dance, Dance.” The difference between going (demonstrates chords), that’s fucking lame. Wow! That kills me to do it. So it’s B-flat 7, B-flat 13. Sorry, F-minor 7 to B-flat 13. So when I say inversion, (demonstrating up and down the fretboard) that’s an F-minor 7, that’s an F-minor 7, that’s an F-minor 7. My favorite. So that’s also an F-minor 7, there’s just no fifth in it, it’s just one, three and a seven. If you’re a guitar player and you learn a song, that’s what you play the whole record, but I only do that in the intro to establish the harmony. When I start playing the song I go... (demonstrates) I just do anything I want that’s harmonically reflective of F-minor 7, F-minor 11. I’ll even go weird like that every now and then and go… (demonstrates) Which is cool, you can get away with that in Chic. I do it all the time. And that’s what makes it Chic. (Applause)

Benji B

So the record we just listened to finally got released by Atlantic?

Nile Rodgers

Yes, and it became a big hit so they picked up our option and said, “OK, do an album.” And being smart marketers they knew we had to follow this record really quickly. We’d already had “Everybody Dance” recorded the way it was played in the disco, so then we went out to hire people because we didn’t have anybody hired, because this was all studio friends. We met Norma Jean, had her change her name – well, we didn’t have her change her name to make the record – we made the record really fast and came up with this concept for the album. It’s a long story, but we came up with this concept of a combination between Roxy Music and Kiss.

Benji B

And what year are we talking about?

Nile Rodgers

Ooh, 1977.

Benji B

The reason it’s relevant to talk about Atlantic Records is that pretty much everyone in this room is involved or looking to be involved with the music industry and the music industry that they’re entering in 2011 is pretty different to the one of 1977. Can you describe the process of the money and the power they had at their disposal to get these 12” records out?

Nile Rodgers

The interesting thing about our record, when we came in with “Dance, Dance, Dance,” we had already got signed to another record label, believe it or not. We were in Billboard, signing, wearing suits. But what happened is the label we signed to was fundamentally bankrupt. They were notorious for not paying royalties, not paying their accounts. I’m not giving you news here, this is well documented. Contractually, we had them bound to get our record on the streets by a certain date because we had this Billboard Disco Convention coming up and we thought that’d be the best way to break our record, because we’d be in a room full of DJs. That was the only people we trusted. We didn’t trust radio people because we didn’t know anything about radio. But we knew DJs had the power to at least make a few hundred people a night go “whoo!” And that was fine with us. We figured if we can go to this disco convention and get our record played, we can get 20 or 30 DJs to play it and replicate what happened in that club.

So the company we were signed to was called Buddah. Buddah didn’t meet their commitment, so we went to Atlantic and Atlantic had to have the record done… check this out. We met with the head of Atlantic on a Friday and we said you have to have the record out by Monday. In America, records typically go out on a Tuesday. We said, “You have to have the record out by Monday so the other guys can’t beat you.” So Atlantic Records had the record pressed over the weekend, had a helicopter fly the records back to New York and then have a fleet of limos delivering them to all the hot clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. So they could say, “We didn’t just bring it to the disco convention, we’ve actually serviced the record already.” All the top DJs had this record, they showed up at the convention with it in their hand with our name on it and the label of Atlantic.

In those days Studio 54 was the top club in the world, so we got one of their DJs to put his name on the record saying he mixed it. He didn’t mix it. He didn’t know how to mix, he’d never been in a recording studio in his life. But it was cool, it was fun, it was marketing, it was guerrilla. We’d figured out what we had to do to get noticed. Every DJ wanted to be the DJ at Studio 54 and they couldn’t believe that he’s mixing records too? Damn, Studio 54 is hip. They saw his name, they saw this group called Chick or something and they started pumping it and it came in with that bassline, and as soon as they heard that bassline they were hooked. (Sings it)

Now it doesn’t sound heavy like records now, with [Roland] 808s and tone generators and subsonic bass, because no one had subwoofers in those days. Back then we typically rolled off everything that was under 60 cycles. Now you add that shit. But this sounded heavy back in those days, because this was relatively mono, so the clubs were all left right, left right, and we knew that the clubs were going to be the places that broke us, and when you fold that down to mono it sounds almost the same because it’s not very stereo. And that was our edge. So you played that record and our record sounded heavy to people (sings bass) and all the DJs go, “I want that record with all that bass,” because it was a new phenomenon to them.

It was the hit of the convention and within a matter of weeks it hit radio. One radio station, called WDAS, broke that record, one guy. What happened was New York had this powerful dude called Frankie Crocker who never wanted to be behind anybody. This one station broke us and the following week we got on the secondary R&B/dance station, which was brand spanking new, it was called 99X. And this woman was the second person to go on us, so you have this woman in New York City playing this new group called Chic and Frankie Crocker’s not on it? He had to go on it, we forced him on it. And from that moment on, we realized we could be in control of our own destiny by making certain moves with the public or programmers or DJs. And you create a buzz. At that point the corporate powers would have to listen to you.

So the difference between those days is not that different now, because now you have the tools available that you can create a buzz. We really only created a buzz with a few hundred people and then that turned to a few thousand, then tens of thousands, then literally millions. “Dance, Dance, Dance,” our first single, was a platinum single. Most people don’t realize this because we went gold on both labels. We sold a million copies on Atlantic and a million copies on Buddah. We didn’t get paid for Buddah, because they didn’t pay anyway. But our agreement was we allowed them to not pay us so they wouldn’t sue us, because we were literally signed to them first.

Benji B

So much of what you’re talking about is a precursor to the dance music that everyone in this room is familiar with, whether it be the importance of the DJ, the labels, the 12” edit. But one thing that’s synonymous with Chic and your productions and has had a huge effect all down the line is the breakdown. Talk to me about the breakdown and why that was so infectious in club culture.

Nile Rodgers

We knew it because even in live R&B the breakdown is important. If you see us play, we’re loud and then boom! When the singer comes in we try and break it down. And in certain settings we have to break it down even further, just because of the dynamics of the house. That’s an integral part of R&B and groove music, to us at least. That’s the culture I grew up in. That first night at the Apollo, where Betty Wright’s sheet music took up 13 pages, it’s not because she was singing for 13 pages, but because the band was breaking down and she was talking: “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a lot of clean-up women in the audience but I know some clean-up men out there, blah, blah.” While she was talking it went on and on and on and on, but it was that breakdown and then the band would come in and it was those different levels of groove, and that’s the Chic formula.

What we do is we break it down to almost nothing and then we rebuild the track in the listeners’ ears. You hear one instrument coming in at a time. You hear it on “Dance, Dance, Dance,” our first single, but you really hear us take it to a higher artform in the song “Good Times.” In “Dance, Dance, Dance,” obviously the two stars are me and Bernard because it’s our band. We didn’t know anyone except for Luther and those guys in those days. Me, Bernard and Rob [Sabino], the keyboard player, we’re the guys, so we’re the three people who solo.

Later on, when we become more of a unit, we start to feature more of the people. And in “Good Times,” that’s when we really have more of a solid footing. We get the breakdown, we develop it to a real artform. We believe the listeners will be able to take that long development of the groove. Here, I’m the leader of the band and it takes me forever before we get to my part. We start to realize that all of those layers are beautiful to people. That’s when hip-hop was in its infancy and we realize we have the perfect record for MCs, because the breakdown took so long to develop that they could have rhymes that would go on forever. And by coming in with different parts of the grooves, it would add dynamics to their raps. So they could just go on and on, and the next thing you know the band behind them would start to grow and they’d have different flows for different parts of the breakdown. The Chic motto was: A song is an excuse to go to a chorus. That’s all we cared about. That’s why our songs start with the chorus, that’s the hook, that’s what gets you. So the song is just an excuse to go to the chorus and the chorus is just an excuse to go to the breakdown. That’s all we want to do, we just want to get to the part where we’re playing. Can you play “Good Times”?

(music: Chic – “Good Times”)

But anyway, what’s interesting is that that was the single version, and even that, to go out instrumentally like that was revolutionary in the world of pop and R&B. You didn’t just go out and let the band play! But Chic is all about letting the band play, the interplay between the vocals and the unit, it’s all about the unit and the space. This song came out in the summer of ‘79, and a really powerful incident called “disco sucks” hit America. It scorched our careers. Chic never had a hit record after that. The industry just shut us down. However, a year after this record went to number one, the two records that were running up the charts at the same time were “My Sharona” by the Knack – that was a brand-new band with their first single – and “Good Times.” “My Sharona,” the entire music industry in America carried it on their backs to number one. Don’t get me wrong, “My Sharona” was a great song, a really good ditty, but it was a quirky individual thing. It was almost like when Devo hit with – actually, it wasn’t as clever, sorry, Devo is genius. But when Devo redid “Satisfaction,” whoosh! You can’t do that, only Devo can do that. When “My Sharona” came out, it was like this quirky ditty, almost a novelty record. You never heard another record go (sings riff). But a year after the industry said we sucked, one year to the day, the number one record on Billboard was Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” And it sounds remarkably like “Good Times.”

(music: “Queen – Another One Bites the Dust”)

[Queen bass player] John Deacon was in [the studio when we wrote “Good Times.” People don’t realize that musicians never have a problem with other musicians. Unfortunately it’s the fans who go, “Oh no, I’m only into punk rock, I’m only into…” The other day we played with Johnny Marr up in Manchester. He named his son Nile, he was so into my style of playing. But no one would think of Chic and the Smiths in the same category, people who are into Chic are not into the Smiths, usually. But the truth is, musicians, we all get along.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep as usual, and after looking at the photos everyone had posted of us playing with Johnny Marr, I kept thinking to myself, “Damn, what would the world look like if in order to run for public office or to be a world leader it was mandatory that you had to be able to play an instrument, at least sing or play an instrument?” And then in order to have any kind of relevant public policy meeting, you had to jam first. (Laughter) Seriously. I’m dead serious. You all had to get into a room with your axe and make music. What do you think would happen after that session? Everyone’s being cynical and saying, “Well, so and so would be fighting and…”

Let me tell you something: I have been with musicians who we were playing with for the first time in our lives, and it becomes like Chic, we become a unit. Every record I’ve ever produced, I join the band. We’re in it together. It’s not Duran Duran produced by Nile Rodgers, it’s Nile Rodgers who’s in Duran Duran for a few months and we’re in it together. It’s just my job to make sure a record is delivered, but if you’ve ever seen me in the studio, we’re down together, we’re in it together. And I know when musicians have a mission to accomplish, you become like a sports team. You become like soldiers. It’s that spirit of camaraderie. It’s the same thing I felt that day those dudes said (in hippie voice), “Oh wow, look at those spade dudes with the rollerskates.” We became like a family, we became comrades, so me and the hippies, we all became one family, we were together. Once we dropped acid, it was, “Hey man, what records are you into?” “I’m into ‘The Hunter Only Gets Captured By The Game.’ What records are you into?” “I’m into ‘Gloria.’” Next thing you know we’re down together. I know if people were forced to play together, as I was in all of my different school orchestras, people used to have to carry you because the orchestra had to sound good. You don’t want somebody to sound band. That’s my observation, my soapbox routine for the day. (Applause)

Benji B

So Queen were not the only band to be influenced by “Good Times,” were they? There was a whole swathe of records that seemed to tip their hat to the “Good Times” groove.

Nile Rodgers

It’s funny because the industry said disco, meaning Chic, because at that time we were really the band selling the most records… Atlantic Records, in the entire illustrious history of that label – and I know you all knew who Atlantic Records is, it’s a major tour de force when it comes to bands and originality and changing the way the world listens to music – has never had a triple platinum other than “Le Freak.” That’s it, the only one in their history. Everybody used to make fun of us and say, “You guys are paying the rent while Ahmet [Ertegun, label founder] is signing all these other bands who aren’t doing anything.” He can go out to dinner with the Rolling Stones, but meanwhile we’re the ones selling all the records. The Stones, I think at that time released “Miss You” and it sold three million units. Man, our single sold six million units!

The thing that was great about the disco era is it allowed all of these baby bands to compete with these people at the top of the food chain because it was just all about what you felt like. There was no any politics involved. Then when The Knack dropped “My Sharona,” all of a sudden it became political and people had to choose sides. Once they had to choose sides, it was, “Well, we’re going to choose sides with the guys who look more like us instead of those freaky dudes singing about freaks and disco.” And it was weird because the guys in The Knack actually became good friends and I even knew Sharona well. Well, shit, we’ve had fun. (Laughter) A year later a whole slew of records that paid homage to “Good Times” came out one after the next. Also, the beginning of hip-hop – “Rapper’s Delight” was huge.

(music: The Sugarhill Gang – “Rapper’s Delight”)

Benji B

We all know that record.

Nile Rodgers

No kidding.

Benji B

Apart from being one of the first examples of hip-hop recorded onto vinyl and without question the most famous record that Sugarhill ever released, it was probably the first high-profile example of sampling and the lawsuit that followed. Tell us about that.

Nile Rodgers

What’s interesting is they put the sample right up front like that, right out in the open. Remember we’re part of the culture, so at this point we’re hanging in the clubs and know all the DJs. We knew when a DJ puts on a song that’s really, really long, that was when the DJ went to the bathroom. So he had either a reel-to-reel tape recorder playing the song or some apprentice in there playing the song, so he can go to the bathroom or talk to some girls or get a drink. So when I heard this song, obviously I knew that’s not Bernard playing the bass or me on guitar. And I was cool with that because we all did this. There’s still a famous remix of “Love Is the Message,” a two- track edit, that me and my partner did. It’s had like 30 different lives, because that sample, that loop (sings), we created that loop in the studio. We had a tape going outdoors and it was a bunch of mic stands going around and around and around. And that two-track keeps getting added to over and over again and that’s our loop. It’s funny, when we created that loop, we had it running outdoors and it started raining and it was going (sings), then all of a sudden it went (slows down) What the fuck is that? It had rained outside and the tape loop went all the way outside and back into the studio, because you had to keep the tension on the tape so the tape recorder would keep at the same speed. It was all wet.

Anyway, sorry about that. So we were accustomed to people re-recording the exact groove or something that sounded like that and then you’d do an insert into the two-track and sell it to DJs because everyone wanted breakdowns. So we were cool. But when I heard that sample right at the front of the record, I knew that was our song because I’m the producer, I know what my records sound like, I know what the strings sound like and I know what the Power Station, the studio where we recorded it sounds like. And I know those echo chambers – we used to call it the women’s bathroom. You know what it sounds like and it’s so distinctive. And I heard it and I thought he had our record but I looked over and he was standing at the bar. I thought it was some magical trick. How did he do that? And he admitted he’d bought it in Harlem that afternoon and he showed me the album and it had Sugar Hill Records and had all these names on it and one of them wasn’t mine or Bernard’s. I was like, “Woah! What’s up with that?”

We tracked them down, and it’s so funny how everything in my life is so damned ironic. When you get to the end of the Sugarhill chain, you wind up with one guy, Morris Levy. When you get to the end of the Buddah chain, you wind up with one guy… So now we have to sue probably the most terrifying, powerful person in the record business. And we had to do it all by ourselves because our own record label would not go up against him. Morris Levy was so bad – how bad was he? He was so powerful that he sued John Lennon and won. Nobody wanted to go up against Morris Levy because he didn’t even went into court. Probably people figured he had the judge paid off.

But anyway, we sued by ourselves and at the end of the day – I really truly believe this, I talk in my book about where guys come in with guns and threaten us and all sorts of stuff, but we still stand our ground and in the end we sued, and if you look at “Rapper’s Delight” now, our names are on it, a 50/50 split – we established that precedent in hip-hop and in sampling, because they’re sampling rock records, too. Don’t get it twisted, there are samples all over the place.

But what happened was we were like, “Man, you can’t do that to a film.” At the time we got signed, Star Wars was the big movie. Imagine I’m doing a music video and if I snatched a piece of Star Wars and stuck it in my music video, you can’t do that. You can’t snatch a piece of my record and stick it on your record because you don’t want to pay for the string players that we had to pay for, you don’t want to pay for Bob Clearmountain, you don’t want to pay for Bernard Edwards. That’s it. Those copyright laws were already in effect, but somebody needed to challenge it and we challenged it. And eventually they acquiesced and we settled. It was pretty incredible because – I don’t know if you guys have ever seen it, I’ve only ever seen it once in my life – but a half-million dollars in cash is unbelievable to look at (laughter). Especially when it’s all street money. It’s all different sizes, not all neatly packed. So after we finished our lawsuit, which wound up not going to court and we settled, Morris Levy actually, even though he’s really tough and everybody’s afraid of him, cooler heads prevailed. “Rapper’s Delight” was only available as a 12” for a very long time. I don’t even know the 7” version of it. That means the suggested retail price was three times that of the normal single and it went multiple platinum. Can you imagine the royalties from that one record? It was unheard of. So I guess at the time it was, “Yes, it’s a lot of money, but is it worth it?”

The unsung hero in this story is our attorney at the time, who used to work for Morris Levy in the early days. He probably knew where all the bodies were buried, literally, and he said, “Look Morris, these are great guys, they’re super fair, you need to be fair with them.” So after we settled and established this new precedent, which actually already existed, everything wound up fine. And from that moment on, my life changed. I’ve had a number of records go number one, songs that I made years and years ago, that I never thought would have a secondary life. A song that we recorded that we loved, but it was after the “disco sucks” thing happened and, as I said, Chic never had another hit single again – meaning the band Chic. The Chic Organization did great, but the band never had another hit – but we did a song called “Soup For One,” which was sampled by Modjo and they made a hit record out of it called “Lady.” And it was amazing to me that someone could make a hit out of “Soup For One.” We thought it was a great record at the time, but you know when you do a record and it’s not having it and you think it’s your fault. But then Modjo did “Lady” and it was the bomb. And then, of course, Will Smith did “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It”. The joke in America for a while was when Puff [Daddy] – who’s my boy, so I can say this – when Puff wanted another number one record he’d just sample a Nile Rodgers song. (Laughter)

Benji B

It’s true, it’s true. Can you list them for a second?

Nile Rodgers

Faith Evans, “Love Like This”.

Benji B

“Notorious,” Duran Duran.

Nile Rodgers

Yes, Notorious B.I.G., that was Duran Duran even, right? Then Ma$e, “Been Around the World”. And the famous one, Diana Ross, “I’m Coming Out” for “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems.” All of those records, when you come to my house, you can see that I have the BMI list for one million plays. When a song hits one million plays on the radio, you get a special certificate. So I have a million plays for the original one and then a million plays for “Getting Jiggy Wit It” and a million plays for the other songs. (applause)

(music: Chic – “Soup for One”)

It makes me really proud when new musicians find tracks like that, which I love. I understand it may not be commercial on the same level as something like “Le Freak” or “I Want Your Love,”]but it has a certain je ne sais quoi. It’s Chic and arty, got those cool chord changes. It’s wow!

Benji B

The fact you are so sampled obviously indicates you are the master of that groove. I was always interested to know when you’re songwriting, does the groove or the song come first?

Nile Rodgers

It changes depending upon the mood, the time of day, the job. If I’m hired to write an album, a song, it’s all over the map. I did a film called Coming to America with my partner over there, Rich (points to Rich sitting in the audience) for the first time when we were working together. Give it up for Rich. (Applause) The first time we worked together he came – did you audition? How did I hire you? (Inaudible) And then brought your ass to LA. (Inaudible response) So now I’m hired to do this film Coming to America and what happened was – this is the way the story was told to me – John Landis, the director of the film, said Eddie Murphy had seen this film called The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, about the quatrains of Nostradamus, and he predicted the exact day of the big earthquake where California was going to fall into the ocean, so we had to have principal photography wrapped by a certain day.

So we moved to California, basically we moved in on the Paramount lot. Rich and I were there 17 hours a day, some days would be even longer than that. The way I composed for that film, they would give us dailies because they didn’t know what part was going to be scored. Normally you finish the movie, they edit it all together and then you stand with the director and do what they call spotting, and he goes, “OK, right here the villains are doing it…” Or, “Here they fall in love.” So they’d give me dailies and I’d have to watch the film and sort of understand emotionally what was going on and write to that right on the spot, take those thumbnails home and work on it. I’d get together with Rich the next day because I had a Synclavier, and we’d do mock orchestrations of it and then we’d have to present it for the director. So in that case I was being an artistic technocrat. I had a job to do and I had to fulfil that gig on the spot. I couldn’t say, (hippie voice) “Oh man, I’m not feeling it today, let me drop a little acid.” I was hired to do something and I had to do it and in my opinion it had to be great. At the end of the day Coming to America turned out amazing and I don’t think it would have been that great had it not been voluntary indentured slavery or whatever. It was a tough job but we did it and it came out wonderful, as opposed to sometimes with Chic records, which are at my leisure, I’d get a collection of songs and I’d go, “Oh, I think maybe I’m supposed to do an album now.” I’m not being evasive, it just changes and I love being put under pressure.

Actually now I think about it, almost every Chic record was done under pressure because we put ourselves under pressure. I think we work better that way. So grooves come first. In the case of “Le Freak,” we had been denied access to Studio 54, even though Grace Jones had told us that we were her personal guests. So we wrote a song called “Ah Fuck Off.” It was great to us. Maybe if we broadcast this I’ll say it was “Ah Eff Off” and it was totally based on a groove. We just sat around doing (plays guitar), and what is great is that when I did this Bernard was sitting there and letting me groove. He was laughing and making up words. I was (plays guitar, sings), “Eff off! At Studio 54.” We got into it and started writing a bridge and he was saying... (sings example lyrics) He got really into it and said, “Wow, that’s really happening, man.” We used to groove all the time for fun. We had a blast just jamming and we turned that groove into a song, so we reverse engineered it, from something that felt good and groovy we wrote a song. Like “Everybody Dance,” that was written from a groove and then hip chord changes afterwards.

(music: Chic – “Le Freak”)

You know what’s really funny is when I listen to it – when I’m playing onstage I don’t think about this – but now when I listen to it, we were very conscious of the fact we were making a record. When you hear the transitions, when we go from a verse to a chorus, it’s those simple nuances that let you know, as a band, as a unit, we’re switching to the chorus. So the part becomes modified, there are transition fills that let you know we’re going to the next section. It’s not like a loop record where the thing comes and then dramatically shifts. The thing I’ve noticed about some of the great producers who make records from other people’s live performances is they’re so conscious of that, they get the only part of the record that’s viable to loop. When you watch Timbaland, he already knows to get to the bit at four and a half minutes because that’s the part that’s loopable, because we’re playing it differently all the time. Especially when I play those 16-note accents – and I don’t play it going to the verse – if you loop that part, it’s going to be different than if you loop another part.

As I said earlier, we sang and performed every bit of it, from the first note to the end, the claps and everything. There’s nothing that has the benefit of a loop. The very first time that I superimposed something we made as a uniform group and then put it into a record, I was doing a record with Hall & Oates called “Adult Education.” I had my Synclavier and I told Daryl and John that all we had to do is get it right once. “What do you mean?” “Yeah, we just have to really get it right once, the exact way we want it to be.” “Then what happens?” “I’m going to sample it on my Synclavier and then fly it in.” “You’re kidding me. We don’t have to sing this all day long?” “No.” I went out onto 8th Street and grabbed a bunch of girls who were just walking around and said, “I just want you to go ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah.’” And they said, “But we’re not really singers.” And I said, “Exactly! You’re supposed to sound like students in a classroom, the way we sounded when we were kids.” And I think that’s changed our records to a huge extent. The randomness of this type of thing is its own wonderful R&B old-school thing. That’s not to say other stuff isn’t valid, it’s just a different artform.

The thing, I think there’s something a little different when you listen to random events and when people are performing at random events. When I did the album with Madonna, Like A Virgin, she came in and all of the demos were all sequenced. I said to her, “What if we played most of this stuff?” She said, “But how can you play that?” I said, “No, we can actually do that.” And the first thing I showed her was this song “Dress You Up.” And the demo of “Dress You Up” is sequenced, the bass was (sings). I had my guys come in and I said, “Watch this shit.” I had Robbie go (sings bass riff) So most of that record is played. There’s a couple of tracks that do use drum machine because it’s an integral part of the sound of the demo and the sound of the song. But almost everything on that record is basically just Chic playing the record. The reason it doesn’t sound like a Chic record, so to speak, is because we see to that artist – we’re not trying to make a Chic record, we’re making a Madonna record.

The reason I tried to insist upon it is I wanted her to be seen as an artist on a higher level. And unfortunately when she gave me those demos – and you’ve got to remember, you’ve gotta go back in time and remember it was different, like today the singer is basically just beating you up – there’s no part where Shakira ain’t singing. Singing, singing, singing, singing. But that was not what we did in those days. A dance record was eight or nine minutes long. How you going to sing for eight or nine minutes? It’s not interesting. Whereas now I’ll go to a club and I’m amazed at how short a dance record is. It’s like, damn, three minutes? Where’s the rest of the record? And the breakdown and the whole of the record is inside of three and a half, four minutes, and it’s done. And they’ll play a massive amount of songs in a night. But in the old days you could hear 60, 70 songs in the entire night, because songs would have long breakdowns and the DJ would groove forever.

So I wanted Madonna to be thought of more as an artist, where there’s an interplay with the band. And I know that artists sing differently when the track is moving around. You interpret differently, you can’t help it, if you’re a real artist. And I wanted her to become that real thing, because by the time we made that record she had proven to me that she had the work ethic. She was that magical thing. I’ve never made a record as successful as Like A Virgin and neither has she. So there’s something to be said for that combination of old school and new school. There’s a marriage that does something very unique and I think that’s why so many sampled records are phenomenal because they capture the essence of the thing and they catch it in a moment of time and they keep whipping it back on you. It’s like you can’t resist that thing. That’s just an opinion, but that’s what it feels like to me.

Benji B

So we’ve just listened to “Le Freak” and that really sums up Chic at their hottest, when it was really jumping off in the quote-unquote disco era. I just wanted to ask you what your relationship is like with the word disco, because you’ve talked about “disco sucks” and being associated with it. What did that do for you and how did it hinder you being directly associated with that time and that movement?

Nile Rodgers

At the time I was really hurt. Not because I was anti-disco. I loved disco. I was the first one to go to discos, hanging out, dancing all the time. But I thought it was disingenuous, because Chic wasn’t a disco band. We had a couple of disco hits, but if you buy a Chic album, we were just a regular R&B band. We were doing the same thing Kool & the Gang were doing, we had instrumentals, ballads. If you compare the first Chic record to the first Village People record or Cerrone, Silver Convention, all of these really hot disco acts happening at the time, our records were nothing like theirs. We always had an instrumental, the band played, nothing was sequenced. I didn’t even know what a sequencer was, I swear.

When I first heard Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder doing that stuff, I thought the guy was God – I still think he’s God. But I thought he was God from a groove point of view. I couldn’t believe how anyone could play like that. I was like, “Damn, I can’t wait to meet this dude and make records.” That’s how I developed “I Want Your Love.” If you listen to that, that’s me imitating a sequencer. I didn’t know you could buy something that goes (imitates sequencer), I didn’t know you could buy that. Damn, I needed to learn that. I wanted to learn that so bad. I actually dreamt that song, I wanted to be that guy so much, wanted that precise (imitates sequencer). I just thought it was the funkiest thing I could imagine. And when I wrote “I Want Your Love” I was literally trying to do that. And it wasn’t until a month later that I found out there was something called a sequencer. I thought it was just the name of a synthesiser, just a cool name. I didn’t know it had a clock function.

We used to achieve that same effect by using a device called a Keypex that would basically open and close the audible signal. We did this on our very first record, “Everybody Dance.” The keyboard player I used, one of my jazz friends, and I loved the dude and wanted him on my record, but he couldn’t play funky. So he played the best he could and Bob Clearmountain had me key his rhythm from my guitar playing. I’m (sings) and he’s doing whatever he’s doing, but when you hear it on the record you’ll hear all sorts of mistakes, he can’t play the chord changes. I’m thinking, “Wow, this guy used to be my hero. Now he’s on my record and he can’t hang with Chic.” It was incredible. But when you hear that 12” and that funky clavinet, that’s actually me playing the rhythm and he’s holding the chord changes.

So we did that on a number of records. If you listen to Diana Ross’ “Upside Down,” the strings are going (imitates stabbing sequencer rhythm) That’s how much I wanted to be Giorgio. We didn’t know how to do it. We had the strings playing half notes and Tony [Thompson’s] hi-hat going (imitates sequencer), bring the gates in. I’m not sure everybody knows this, but when we turned that album in, Motown hated the record and weren’t going to release it. They tried to remix it and at some point they called us up and they were furious. “Why did you erase those strings?” “What are you talking about?” “The strings you gave us on the demo” – which wasn’t a demo, we actually mixed the record – “the strings you gave us on the mix are all gone. Are you that pissed off at us? It’s our property!” “Tch! What kind of engineers do you have? You can’t even figure out we did this on our first record. So, all you have to do is this, this and that and you’ll have the strings.” So they did that, they copied it, and the next thing you know, even on what I call their lame mix – although it was still a huge record, the biggest of our career – did that technique.

So I was always influenced by some of the disco innovations, but we just didn’t know how to do it. So we pulled if off our way. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t have a sequencer, because it forced me to do that thing. I probably would never have done “I Want Your Love” like that.

Benji B

Before we step into the ‘80s and Chic in the production realm, indulge us and let us know what New York was like at that time. I know you were a regular at some of the most famous club nights of all time and you paint a vivid picture of what it was like to hang out at Studio 54 and all of those classic spots.

Nile Rodgers

It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had. If you took that chunk out of life, you boys and girls wouldn’t be who you are. That era was so powerful and so bohemian, so revolutionary and so open, it gave us probably a false sense of power, a false sense of what we could do. In fact, the big companies were still in control, but we felt like we were able to push against the boundaries. I don’t know if they still have record pools, because I don’t know if they still service DJs with vinyl, but in my day every record came out on vinyl. Everything. I think the big record companies used the record pools to co-opt the power that the artists had. Because when we could go to the DJ with our own pressing and give it to them, we had an edge. But when the company says, “We’ll give you all the records free,” and all you had to do was report. Uh-oh! They took away our power because now they had a tool. The DJs didn’t have to buy all those records, they could get them free. And I’m pretty sure they’d say, “Report on our records.” I can’t swear to it, but why not, if you have that kind of financial power over people?

So what went from this great bohemian, people-propelled, ground-up movement – because we really were in control – it shifted. You had the whole “disco sucks” thing and they had to circle the wagons, protect the industry and the money. The money was massive. You think it’s big now – yeah, it’s big if you’re Gaga or Jay-Z or Rihanna, it’s ridiculous – but in the old days you didn’t have to be anywhere near that and you were still generating millions and millions of dollars. How many artists were signed to Atlantic Records when we went triple platinum? Dozens and dozens and dozens. And they would get second and third albums because they were making money. They were still part of this gigantic food chain. They only got dropped when they stopped making money for the label. You could have a flop, relatively speaking, and still be pretty successful.

One thing a lot of people don’t understand is that the great thing about music, unlike the other electronic arts, or some of the other arts, it doesn’t have to be translated. We can all understand it. I can go and play “Le Freak” in Russia and we sing it just like that and everyone sings the songs. A few years ago we did a gig in Vegas and it was all Pacific Rim, what they call “mini- dragons,” all Asian millionaires and billionaires and the hotel had paid for them to come there. Nobody could speak English. Man, we go into a song and next thing you know it’s perfect English in the room. (Sings) “Have you heard about the new dance craze?” Song’s over and it’s Mandarin or Cantonese. Then the next record comes in and it’s like, (sings) “My forbidden lover.” The record’s over and it’s boom, back to Chinese. Think about it, how profitable is that? If you do a film, you’ve got to put in subtitles. You do a book – I have a book out now – in Spain no one can read it unless it’s translated. A record, super-profitable. I remember we did the album with “Good Times” and the company was so greedy that they over- pressed with the stamp. There’s only a certain amount you can get out of one vinyl stamp to press vinyl. They were so greedy they were like, “Push the limits here, let’s do double the amount.” When Bernard and I went into quality control it, we saw that half the records didn’t play – they just shipped them to Indonesia. I couldn’t believe it, I was so embarrassed. But in Indonesia it was just fine, they’d put it on and went (sings) “Good times.”

It’s a highly profitable business because once you make it and you hit that number, just ship it out the door. You don’t have to do any more work. Obviously, the powers that be really want to protect that business. I understand why that type of greed, it probably is very seductive. People who are in the business or want to get in to the business, the first thing you have to do is you better to make sure you love this. Chances are you will never make it to the level of Jay-Z and Rihanna. I never believed I’d make it to the level I made it to, but I always believed I’d be a working musician and I’d be able to pay my bills and live the type of life I wanted to live. And that I’d be able to play music for a living. And if you want to do that, that’s absolutely achievable. You can do it, be you a DJ, singer, musician, whatever. It’s great to set your sights on the brass ring, but make sure you love what you’re doing, that even if you don’t get paid you still show up for work. (Applause)

Benji B

So we’ve spoken about your experiences as an artist, in the band, as a songwriter, I think it’s really important we dedicate a portion of this talk to the art of producing because that’s dominated so much.

Nile Rodgers

Yeah, do we get a break so I can go to the bathroom?

Benji B

Absolutely, you can get a bathroom break at any time, I need to as well.

Nile Rodgers

Bathroom breaks are an essential part of record production.

Benji B

Here we go.

Nile Rodgers

That’s three.

Benji B

Five-minute bathroom break.

(music: Chic – “I Want Your Love”)

(music: Sister Sledge – Unknown)

Benji B

We were just listening to a song [by Sister Sledge], I’m pretty sure there’s no one on the planet who hasn’t heard that record. Would it be fair to say that was the first time you were asked to produce an artist other than your own band?

Nile Rodgers

Yes, that would be fair.

Benji B

And that was Sister Sledge, of course. Tell us how it came about and how you approached it.

Nile Rodgers

When we finally got signed to Atlantic Records, the gentleman who signed us, who did the whole helicopter routine with the limos, for some reason he really believed in us. We were brand-new kids on the block. In the old days – in the old days, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the troglodytes... Back in the old days, the record companies were really dependent upon artists. They wanted to know what artists thought and what they felt. Certain artists could really feel the pulse of the record-buying public. Because if you didn’t sell records, what difference did it make if you were a recording artist? Right from our first record, the head of the company believed we had something that connected to the radio and record-buying public, even though it wasn’t quite apparent to the rest of the people at the label. He asked us if we wanted to record the Rolling Stones (laughs). We were brand new. “And you want us to record the Rolling Stones?” “Yeah, it’ll be great.” Basically, he thought we had the key to the Studio 54. You go to Studio 54 you’d hear both of our singles playing, and he just thought maybe we could give some of that magic to other artists.

So when we backed off the Rolling Stones he offered us Bette Midler – he actually offered us the entire roster. We were nervous about it because we thought it was our sound and our songs that were the hits. It didn’t necessarily have to be artist-oriented, but if it were artist-oriented you’d have to craft it for those artists. So how can you go to Mick Jagger and tell him, “Don’t worry, Mick, we’ve got this”? (Laughs) We were smart enough, having worked for stars all our lives, to know that stars see the world in a different way, whereas we were just ordinary working musicians, we just do our job.

So we said to the head of the record company – not in an egotistical way, we were just trying to give an example of what we did – that in our lives, music is the star, not the people. That was the Chic concept, music is the star. He says, “What do you mean by that exactly?” I said, “I could turn your secretary into a star.” “Really?” “Absolutely.” “How would you do that?” “I would write a song about what it’s like to be the secretary at this big record company that’s got all these recording stars and she’s sitting there undiscovered.” He said, “Wow, that’s genius.” Think about it, wouldn’t that be a great song? Imagine sitting there all day long, watching all these people come in and out and meanwhile you’re better than they are and you can’t get your shot. “And I’d go write that song for her.” And he said, “Well, we’ve got this group, they’re all sisters and they’re signed to the label and blah, blah, blah.” And he starts telling us about this group called Sister Sledge.

Now, I had heard of Sister Sledge because of “Love Don’t You Go Through No Changes On Me,” which is a great record, but it didn’t propel them to the top of the pop charts. It was an R&B record, it did OK. So he suggested Sister Sledge to us. He told us about them and we were writing it down on legal pads, trying to act like we were pros. Anyway, we got home and looked at our notes and the words were literally the foundation to the song, “We Are Family.” And that was the first song we wrote for Sister Sledge. Somehow he had tuned into what we were talking about, the secretary sitting there. So we talked about this group of girls that “flock like birds,” that thing. We actually conceived the whole Sister Sledge concept, all the songs, everything, and we’d never met them. We never spoke to them, we never met them. The day we met Sister Sledge was the day that Kathy sang that song you just heard. They walked into the studio, we were still writing it, but we knew what it was all about. It was this thing we have between us called D.H.M., which basically stands for “deep hidden meaning” to us, but really it means to understand a song’s DNA, its essential truth. Once we understood the essential truth of Sister Sledge as we had conceived them, then we knew everything we needed to make a hit record.

Benji B

So what’s the fundamental difference between songwriting for an artist and producing an artist?

Nile Rodgers

You have to look at it from my point of view because I can only speak for me. I don’t know what other producers do and I don’t know what they think. All I know is what I think, and my job as a producer is, I live to serve the project. That’s it, that’s my job. Quincy Jones described the record producer as basically like the director of a film, except our roles are a little bit more expanded because we’re responsible for everything: the budget, the food – which is very important when it comes to rock and roll. I have to have my artists well fed and I have to know all the great restaurants.

Before I did the album Notorious with [Duran] Duran), I did a song called “Wild Boys”. I moved to England for a while and this was back in the day and they didn’t have restaurants that delivered food in England. I was like, “No, no, no, no. We’re going to change that right now.” So I walked around and checked out all the restaurants near the studio and I gave all the managers £100 a piece. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but back then it was a lot of money for nothing. I just gave it to them, they didn’t have to do anything. But I said to them, and this is going to sound like the mafia... (affects mafia-style voice) “One day, you’re going to get a phone call and they’re going to say there’s this guy Nile Rodgers calling and he’s going to want you to deliver food. Whatever you do, deliver that food.” (Laughter) So I walked back and said to the guys, “Don’t worry, bring your own plates, we’ll wash them and send them back to you. But I want to be able to keep my artists happy, to create that atmosphere so they don’t have to worry about anything but making a great record.”

So in my position, producers are really responsible for the food, the atmosphere, the vibe. You have to be able to be part psychologist, and in my case I’m an arranger, so I do the arrangements, the orchestration. And I always want to play on your record. I don’t like the record that much if I’m not playing on it. That’s not quite true, but almost completely true (laughs). And I help you conceive it. I help you come up with the vision for what it is. Sometimes artists don’t realize that the record you’re putting out now is your next record. It’s not your last record or your first record, it’s your current record that’s going to happen. The day we finish it is not the day the record’s coming out, at least in the world I came up in. The day we finish it, it may not come out for months, so you better make sure you’re ahead of the curve. So my job is always this – and it doesn’t matter who it is – I become a fan, I study them, and I make their next record. I become what I think is the next logical step. In order for you to get in that chair you had to walk in and sit down. If you hire me, I’m trying to do the thing that you’re going to do after you get up and leave that chair. So that’s my job. I have to figure out what you’re going to. That’s what I call a producer.

Benji B

I think we should introduce the next crucial relationship in your production time by playing…

Nile Rodgers

Diana Ross?

Benji B

Yeah. Do you want to play the version you made or the…

Nile Rodgers

No, play the version that came out because this is what’s great about this. When we finished this record, Motown told us in no uncertain terms that this was not a Diana Ross record. I said to them exactly what I’m saying to you now. “Yeah, you’re right, this isn’t an old Diana Ross record. It’s her next record.” The way we formulated it, we sat her down for days and days and days and we interviewed her, because we wanted it to be about this star’s life. We wanted to make a biographical record for Diana Ross, something that was a holistic version of what this superstar’s life would be like.

Remember, this was our first star. I’m not trying to be saying anything derogatory here. We knew we had to placate her ego on some level, but also it was our responsibility to know where she was heading. So let’s deal with subject matters that are relevant to her life. Why make something that’s a Motown cookie-cutter? “OK, come in here and sing this and whoever sings it the best gets the record.” You’re Diana Ross, you’re a superstar, you’re beyond that now. Now we should be crafting things exactly for you. This is your record. But the problem is we do things our way. You may not agree with us, but we’ve done a lot of research and we’re on the outside looking in. And sometimes, as we all well know, other people can see us better than we can see ourselves. I can only see a reflection of me, but you can really see me. So that’s what we were trying to show, Diana, that we really respect you and this is where you should be going. Even though you may not agree yet, you will when this record comes out.

Benji B

Motown certainly didn’t agree at first, did they?

Nile Rodgers

They did not agree at all. Remember how I said earlier that records are very profitable, if you get one that connects. At some point in time, after all the fighting – and we threatened to sue them because we had an iron-clad contract. By the time we did the Diana Ross record we already had – I can’t count now, but in the book I counted because I could actually sit back and look – we had had so many platinum-plus records, one triple platinum record under our belt, and not many people had ever had a triple platinum single in America, even to this day. So we had one triple platinum, a few double platinum – Diana Ross never had a double platinum single – many platinum singles and a shitload of gold singles. We had only been in business two and a half years and we had all that stuff behind us.

So we said to Motown, “If we take time out of our lives to do this with your valuable superstar, we could do this with anyone, so you’ve got to put our record out.” Even though we didn’t have creative control on paper, because they owned it and they were paying us. Man, that’s a couple of months out of our lives when we could be doing other double and triple platinum records. So we had a pretty good case. We went to court, lawsuits and all that bull. At a certain point in time they put the record out. It shot to number one, biggest record of her entire career. We were like, “Why is this always so hard? Why is it that no one understands what we’re trying to do? Is it that difficult?” Now when you hear these records they just sound like pop songs, but at the time it was very revolutionary. Her record company had never heard anything like this and we’d never written anything like it. And we’ve never done anything like it since because we’ve never worked with Diana [again]. Well, I did work with her many years later, but at the point they were trying to chase something. Whereas we weren’t chasing anything, we were pushing

(music: Diana Ross – “I’m Coming Out”)

Even now it does sound sort of radical to me. It’s not like any other Diana Ross record and we’ve never done any Chic records like that, really. But you’ve got to remember, this is artist-specific. That’s Diana Ross, who we consider the queen of pop R&B. If you listen to that intro, when we tried to explain it, no one got it. We said, “She’s the queen, it’s a fanfare.” “What do you mean it’s a fanfare?” And my exact words were, “Alright, you’ve got the President of the United States. When the President of the United States walks into the room, they go, ‘Ladies and gentleman, the president of the United States.’ (sings “Hail to the Chief”) That’s the President of the United States. How about the queen of R&B/pop/soul? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Diana Ross.’ (Sings riff) Yeah! Here she comes!’” Is that hard? Nobody got it. I was like, man. If you listen to the intro, that’s all it is, a fanfare.

This is us writing the beginning of Diana Ross’ show. And the double entendre, the “D.H.M.” of this song, was we were very aware of Diana Ross’ iconic status with the gay community. “I’m Coming Out” was a very powerful slogan and catchphrase at the time. Ba-ba-ba, he’s coming out of the closet, she’s coming out of the closet, I’m coming out. Wow! We get to say, “I’m coming out,” we get to start her show, we get to play a fanfare for this pop R&B diva. All this in one song. How clever is that? Well, obviously not very to some people. (Laughter)

But it wasn’t that hard, especially if you ask us the question and we explain it to you. It could be, “OK, I get that you may not get it right away.” But to me it’s weird because it’s their job to get that stuff. This is that high-level thinking that makes you qualified to be a record executive. You’ve got to be able to understand, artists are developing and growing. If you touch the edge, if you tap into somebody’s soul and you get it right – and you don’t always get it right – that’s the stuff you should take a chance on. You can’t always copy David Guetta records. Come on already! Let David Guetta do David Guetta records. It’s cool, let him do that, he’s got it down.

It’s like everybody’s afraid to take a chance. It’s a highly profitable industry when you get that record that is making all that money. You don’t have to translate it, you don’t have to do anything, just put it out, put it out. I just wasn’t raised like that. You’ve seen where my parents were coming from. It was always push the envelope, push the envelope. Speak with your own voice and if somebody hears you, you create your own market. Since I’ve never been a star, I let the music speak for myself. Parliament-Funkadelic used to have this great saying that I loved: “Let’s just take it to the stage, sucka!” We don’t even have to have all this bull, just get on the stage and I’ll show you what I’m talking about. This was us taking it to the stage and we thought it was clear as a bell. “Do we have to explain it anymore? Here it is.” Oops, lawsuit, wind up in court.

Benji B

And now that Diana Ross does use that as her opening song in every single show and seeing as it was a number one record, did you ever get that call where they say, “Uh, sorry boys, you were right”?

Nile Rodgers

How about this? This is even funnier. I’m finished writing my book. Diana and I are still really good friends, so I say, “Hey, Diana, let’s go to the theatre tonight.” “OK, cool.” So we go to see Elton John’s Billy Elliot. We’re in the car, she and I and the security dude. The security guy ain’t gonna say anything, it’s cool, so it’s just me and Diana. I’m writing my book and I want to get her opinion on what was the deal. So I say, “Yo, D.” (Laughter) Well, I call her “D,” that’s what I do. “D, what exactly about ‘I’m Coming Out’ did you not like? Because I remember the drama, it was crazy. Just me and you now, no problem.”

She looks at me, “What are you talking about, Nile? I love that song!” I said, “No, no, I know you love it now, I’ve been to your shows, I sit in the audience and you go, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Nile Rodgers, come on up and play.’ I get it now, but what about then?” “I always loved it.” “No, Diana, we went to court, it’s a matter of public record. We sued each other, we were fighting. You can’t rewrite history, we were in court.” (Affects judge’s voice) Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… Nile Rodgers, Chic Organization, Diana Ross. It’s there. “I loved it.”

So I don’t think she remembers not liking it or us going to court or anything. (Laughter) She loves it. So I will never understand why they had a problem with it. But she really loves it now and I love it and I knew it was the right thing. This is the beginning of the Diana Ross show for the rest of her life and I’m really proud. It was always supposed to be – not for the rest of her life but just for that one album, but that’s what we expected.

In the old days, when you went to see a live show, you basically heard songs you didn’t know, then you waited for the end and you’d hear the four or five hits that you knew. But the cool thing is that in the old days, we went to see live music to learn about new stuff. That was the place to deliver new music to the audience, and if it got over with the crowd, that was the song you were going to put on your new record, or you’d change the arrangements and see which version they responded to. My old band, we were on tour with the Jackson 5 when they were working out “Dancing Machine” on the road. We were like, woo – you knew that was going to be a monster. That’s how it was back in the day. When we wrote this song for Diana, her new show would’ve begun with “I’m Coming Out,” she’d play almost everything she wanted to play from the new album, and then the rest of the show would’ve been “Baby Love”, “Come See About Me” and all the Supremes stuff. She’d probably hit with “Love Hangover,” whatever. That’s how we envisioned that album. (Applause)

Benji B

I’m under really strict orders. I could do this all day, but we’ve got a maximum of another 15 or 20. So the best way to introduce the next musical relationship I want to talk about is by playing undoubtedly one of the greatest grooves in popular music and certainly one of the best pop records ever recorded.

(music: David Bowie – “Let’s Dance”)

David Bowie famously once said, “Nile Rodgers is the only person who could get me to sing a chorus straight away in a record.”

Nile Rodgers

It’s funny he said that. He’s right, I guess. “Rebel Rebel” just starts with a lick, but he doesn’t start off singing “Rebel Rebel.” Sorry, I started tearing there when I heard Stevie Ray [Vaughan]. When we did this record, a lot of people don’t understand that David Bowie didn’t even have a record deal. He was between record labels. I had just finished my first solo album, which I knew was not going to be a hit. I didn’t think that when I was making it – I thought it was great and innovative – but David came to my apartment one day and we listened to a test pressing. Just to show you how the two different minds think and how his world is one way and my world’s another. After we sat down and listened to my solo record – 100% true and I’m saying it and I’m on tape now, so I’m stuck like Diana Ross. David would say, “But you said it on tape!” The truth is that after we played my solo album – because the test pressings came in while we were conceiving Let’s Dance – as soon as it finished playing, I got really depressed because I knew I didn’t have a hit.

In America, the only avenue open to me is black radio and my record was so not black radio. By then the DJ culture had really been co-opted into the industry. I didn‘t even have any DJs. There were a few guys, Larry Levan played my stuff and actually wound up getting a few people on the dancefloor playing my stuff, which was amazing to me because I was trying to get away from the disco thing, which I didn’t even understand because Chic wasn’t a disco group, we were an R&B group. So I kept thinking if I do anything like me I’m going to be considered disco, so I have to do something drastically different. But when I played David Bowie the test pressing, here’s the exact thing he said when we finished playing the record. He said, “Nile, darling, if you make a record for me half as good as that I’ll be the happiest man in the world.” I was shocked. Because it was clear to me on the spot that I’d messed up and had not make a commercial black record and was not going to be able to take that to the rock stations.

When we finished the song called “Why” by Carly Simon, the rock stations showed me exactly what I wasn’t going to be able to do. I tried to play that record on the most popular rock station in America. I was the guest DJ and they wouldn’t allow me to play it, because it was a dancehall reggae kind of record before dancehall reggae was dancehall reggae. The only song I’d heard before was “Pass the Dutchie” and we tried to imitate something like that in our own way. I bought a drum machine and was like, “Hey, check this out.” (Sings riff) “Uh uh, we don’t play that on our rock station.” So I became aware of the politics slowly but surely and it started to sting.

But when Bowie heard my record he thought it was amazing. He thought, “Wow, this is great stuff.” It was clear to me that the black world and the white world, no matter what I had achieved, I was still fighting the exact same battle the day I walked into the record company. So now that I was with Bowie, I had the chance to go from being a disco producer to just being a producer, which is all I wanted to be. When David and I agreed to do this record and agreed on the direction – the DNA, the “D.H.M.”, of this album – David can talk in very abstract terms, but that abstract language was the same language my parents spoke. It’s the same language all cool jazz people speak, all artists, they can just talk about stuff, like I’m doing now, and you know what the person means.

So when David and I were doing tons and tons of pre-promotion on the album that would become Let’s Dance, after we did all this research, David summed up rock & roll, or what this album was going to be, by a picture he found of Little Richard getting into a Cadillac. Little Richard was getting into his red drop-top Cadillac with his ‘do like that and he had a red suit, red Cadillac, bam, had the pomp, and David held it up and said (adopting an English accent), “Nile, that’s rock & roll.” And he showed me the picture and I said (laughing), “I’ve got it, I’ve got it man.” And we started making this record, which believe it or not, it took 17 days from start to mix, done. After the 18th day there was a bunch of people sitting in the recording studio listening to it like this. The 19th day, Nile was out getting drunk, the 20th day, Nile was out getting drunk, the 21st day… We never touched this record again. It was done in 17 days, mixed, delivered. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bowie, all those solos, everything done.

And I think that this record almost more than any other captures that thing, that enigmatic thing called rock & roll. It’s R&B at its roots – it’s R&B, it’s black music, that’s what rock & roll was. It changed and all of a sudden it became different. That’s what the picture of Little Richard was. It starts with the Isley Brothers singing “Twist & Shout”, that (sings) singing the dominant 7th chord. Even the Beatles copied it, that was it, it gave us everything. The horn lick is a direct rip-off from another record. I get passionate about this stuff because I feel this world going away. And maybe it should go away, that’s what we call progress. But this is what I grew up with and when I got with Bowie, he allowed me to be that dude. Before that I hadn’t had that. Just like with the Diana Ross record, as revolutionary as it sounded to Motown, I understand why they thought it was revolutionary, because we were pushing the boundaries because – shit – we had Diana Ross. We could do that with Diana Ross. We couldn’t do it with Chic, but we could do it with Diana. I could do this with Bowie. I couldn’t do it with Chic.

When you think about this record and you talk about rock & roll and musicians are anti-this and that, I was like, “Guys, what are you talking about?” Everybody on that record, the rhythm section, it’s all black and Puerto Rican people playing Bowie’s biggest rock & roll record. Bowie was so keen on that Little Richard thing and the essence of rock, it was, this is natural, this is the world I want to live in. That’s the world I always thought I would join when I signed a record deal. It’s like the UN, we’re all cool. That’s why I had that revelation last night, I thought, “Man, if every world leader had to play an instrument or sing and then was forced to jam before you had a meeting, think about how much respect there’d be.” You’d have all these little affinity groups going, “How’d you do that solo? Who’s your favorite person? We’ll get to the budget later. But do you dig the Supremes? Tell the truth – do you really like the first Village People record?” All that stuff gets revealed, when you start jamming with people and you hear their influences, who they love and who they copy. Who’d have known Johnny Marr was this serious Chic fan? I knew because he named his kid. I’m sorry bro, I know we have a limited time but I just wanted to point that out.

Benji B

We do have to open it up to the floor in a second. We should of course mention that you went on to work with Duran Duran, Madonna. Those records, like “Wild Boys,” “Notorious” is a record you should definitely hear. I don’t know if we’ve got time to play them right now.

Nile Rodgers

We probably don’t and I love to hear from these people. When I used to go to these things I always wanted to learn something. I’m just rambling, you can hit me on my website or Twitter. I can ramble on Twitter. Boy, I use those 140 characters. So we can do that. So do we have some personal questions?

Benji B

I’ve been told by the bosses that we are allowed three questions only because Nile has to leave us.

Nile Rodgers

Five, he just upped it to five.

Benji B

It’s participants only. Or, of course, Nile’s band.

Nile Rodgers

He’s in my band, he can ask me anytime. OK. You could ask me this back in the room.

Nile Rodgers band member

But I want to ask you this. You mentioned earlier when you were doing “Everybody Dance,” you said you were chucking, and Bernard came up with the idea. But then we never came back. The bassline – did you give it to him? What did he change that was genius?

Nile Rodgers

The original bassline that I wrote, if you will, he was playing… my original chuck, was sort of the clavinet part that comes up later in the song. When I originally wrote “Everybody Dance” I was playing (sings guitar parts), like what we do in the live show. After we break down we go to my original chuck, because I want to play it after all these years. So Bernard’s bassline was going (sings bassline) and I knew he could play it, so we were just hanging. Just to give you guys a little history, which some of you may not get or even care, but there was a really big record in the early disco days called “Sugar Pie Guy” by a band called The Joneses, and the record used to start off with (sings).

So all the basslines we did in the old days would go (sings). In between we’d always make fun and go (sings), so that’s what it was. My original thing (sings), so when we started playing that, we both loved it. And then he went against me and made it really crowded. I was doing that chuck, which was ridiculous, then he went against me and I ceded to his bassline because it was so genius compared to the original thing I wrote. That’s why I came out into that thing. We were showing off. It was hard for us to get record producers when we first started. Whenever a producer came into the studio with us, once Bernard and I started chucking… usually those record producers were keyboard players and, man, it would sound like a fusion battle. And everybody – I won’t mention any names ‘cause they’re my boys now – but they would start competing with us. Chucking it here. The next thing you know, where the hell’s the song? Everybody’s… (imitates jazz fusion) So that’s why Chic records famously, unfortunately, restrict the keyboard players and they’re just... (sings simple keyboard parts) That’s what worked for us and that was the sound of our group. (Applause)

Audience Member

Coming up you worked with a lot of artists. Was there anyone in the ‘80s you wanted to work with but didn’t get a chance to record?

Nile Rodgers

The only person I regret not working with was Miles Davis. We became really good friends for a minute, we did a photo session together. And now I believe in retrospect I know he was telling the truth. Miles and I became friends and he asked me to write some songs for him. The songs I wrote were these avant-garde new-agey jazz songs he does all the time. And he always said, (imitates Miles Davis) “Damn, Nile, I could do that. Marcus could do that. I want you to write a motherfucking ‘Good Times’. Give me a motherfucking ‘Good Times.’” And I felt so uncomfortable because I thought he was just making fun of me, that he was just setting me up for a joke. I thought I’d sit there and write it and then he’d go, “You think Miles Davis should play that?” But he was serious – dead, dead serious. It’s only now when I think back to some of the records he was trying to do that didn’t work. He was looking for a motherfucking “Good Times.” But I felt weird.

After Miles and I became buddies – we hung out and partied, never made any music together – I realized he was like David [Bowie], in that he could speak in abstract terms, but I didn’t believe he was telling the truth. That’s one thing I’ll go to my grave regretting, that I never did that record. It would’ve been amazing, once he’d made me believe – just like Bowie made me believe after that whole process we went through when he showed me the Little Richard picture. If Miles had come in and slapped down the “Good Times” 12” and said, “Man, give me that.” Of course, I wouldn’t have done that, I would’ve done Miles Davis’ version of that. Of course, we didn’t do Little Richard, we did Bowie’s version of Little Richard.

But I just didn’t believe it, man. I don’t lament many things, but I actually feel bad about that. It’s not that I want to have another notch on my belt – “Yo, I got a hit with Miles” – it’s artistically there’s something missing from my life. That would’ve filled that one thing in, to have a viable jazz artist, a revolutionary jazz artist. As a matter of fact, what if I could’ve given Miles his biggest record? That would’ve been unbelievable to me. That’s it.

A person like Prince, I love him and he’s my friend and we’ve played together live and stuff, that’s good enough for me. I would like to make a record with Prince but I’m not sure what it would be. I don’t know how we would do that. I certainly know – like the thing with the world leaders – I know how to pick up a guitar with them and go jam, I know how to do that. (Applause)

Benji B

Any more very short questions?

Nile Rodgers

Come on somebody. Somebody in the back. Can we give him a mic or just speak up?

Nile Rodgers band member

Can you talk about Stevie Ray Vaughan?

Nile Rodgers

Yeah, I really go over this in more depth in my book, which everyone should get by the way. (Laughs) It’s a great book, hold it up. (Benji B holds up the book) The first time I met Stevie Ray Vaughan was like Sister Sledge, in the studio. Remember how I said I’m responsible for the food as a record producer? So Stevie Ray Vaughan comes in the studio, David is paying on his dime, he’s paying for everything. So that we don’t waste time and take too long over a break, all of the musicians order their food at the beginning of the day so that when we take a break we can eat our food and go straight back to recording. So the first day Stevie Ray walks in, we’re just putting in our orders and Stevie Ray says, “No, I’ll treat everybody to food tomorrow.” He calls a barbecue joint down in Texas and has the food Fedexed and sent to the recording studio the next day. I thought, “Man, this dude is the real deal.” I think it was called Sam’s Barbecue and it came from Texas, and for many years to come we had the calendar hung up on the wall in the Power Station.

Stevie was incredible, he was so real. For a person of his virtuosity, you never met a more humble person. And this guy was ridiculous. There’s only a handful of people who can play like him. I don’t know if you remember, Rich, but Stevie Ray had to go and play a gig with the Isley Brothers, and he was terrified. At that time they had “Who’s That Lady” out and he was like, “Oh, man, I’ve gotta go play with them.” “Trust me, Stevie, you’ll be fine. You’re gonna be cool, you can hang, you can hang.” And he was not being fake humble, he was like that. When we made the album Family Style, which was his only recording with his brother, which he never got to hear because he died before we finished, I cannot tell you how charming, how sweet, how genuinely magnanimous and giving he was. He was so open to learning. When we were doing songs like “Long, Long Way From Home,” remember that with the flash cards, and he was going in different keys, he was just so amazed we’d recorded his guitar track and we’d sampled it into the Synclavier. And then either Rich or I played a note, and he was like, “What was that?” “That’s your guitar.” “Holy cow, I can play a note and move it from here to here?” He was like a child who was a genius. I can’t say enough great stuff about him. There’s only a handful of people I’ve ever met in my life who’ve been that incredible and that cool.

Audience Member

I’m curious about your tracking process with Chic. You sound like you’re all in a room when you hear it back. Was it all one take? I feel like I’m sitting in a room with you guys.

Nile Rodgers

That’s why there are very few alternate Chic takes. There’s a famous quote from Madonna saying, “Time is money and the money is mine.” In those days tape cost money, so we were always concerned about stuff. When we’d get the song right, that was it, it was done. Usually, it was right the first or second time, maybe the third time. Later on in our career I retrieved all the tapes, I have every Chic recording now, more or less. There are only a handful of alternate takes, because we didn’t need them, we played it right. Also we didn’t use metronomes, everything is free-played. The only time we used anything like a metronome or a clocking device is when I did that first record with Carly Simon, but that was after the whole “disco sucks” thing. It’s funny, after they said we were a disco band and that we sucked, that’s when we started to use a drum machine.

Audience Member

The digital recording, you can’t get that thickness like you guys had with analog. Do you think that’s why some of the stuff’s been lost?

Nile Rodgers

Well, things are different because as artists – and probably as human beings – we always strive to do what feels natural. The thing that tastes like sugar is the thing you like the best. So, no matter how many artificial sweeteners you have, what you’re trying to do is get back to sugar. Whatever sounds like natural music in our ears, that’s what you’re trying to get back to. The very first digital recording that I did, let’s say the first big digital recording, was Madonna, and we were trying to get back to the analog sound. We loved the convenience of using the Sony, but our ears wouldn’t allow us to accept that. So we kept working with different outboard gear.

I discovered early on that the D/A converters in the Sony consumer stuff sounded better than the professional stuff. I actually recorded my first solo album on a bunch of consumer digital products. Then there was all this crazy stuff because we’re just trying to get back to the world that we naturally live in, to sound that sounds the way we’re accustomed to hearing. Everything else feels like an irritant. We’re cool, because it’s still something organic and grooving and fundamentally hip. Now we’ve gotten accustomed to hearing tone-generated bass, so it’s starting to feel natural. Even though it hurts you, you can feel it. I walk into a club and it’s the same thing right away. I won’t say there’s anything lost – if anything there’s just more.

The old doesn’t go away. If anything there’s just more stuff. I believe in progress. When Rich and I did Coming to America, we went into the vault and they played us Elvis recordings on three tracks. You never heard anything like that! The heads were like that big (holds fingers about two inches apart) and it sounded incredible. But no one wants to go back to that. But it sounds better than anything I ever heard. (Applause) Did everybody say something? Like I say, I want you to learn something. (Inaudible question) What do you mean about my video game stuff? What about it? I don’t understand the question. OK, this dude.

Audience Member

I want to talk about the “disco sucks” thing. I know you didn’t consider Chic a disco band, but the population largely did associate you directly with it. How did that make you feel as an artist? And having these huge hits under your belt afterwards, was that a form of retribution?

Nile Rodgers

I don’t know if I thought about it that clinically. The great thing about Bowie is that he righted the ship. He put me back on the course. What David said that I didn’t get a chance to tell you, David said after we fooled around with some different stuff – actually no, it was the same day when we played my solo record and he told me that if I did a record half as good, not better, but half as good, that he’d the happiest man in the world – he told me in that same session that he wanted me to do what I did best. I said, “Really? What’s that?” He said, “I want you to do hits.” “You think that’s what I do best?” I thought I probably have more flops than hits, which proves that I do flops better than hits. But I hoped David would help me achieve the status of being considered a producer and hopefully a good producer. So when he said he wanted me to do hits, here’s what David did for me.

As I said, when I’m a producer my job is to serve the project. He told me, make hits. “That’s what your job is – make hits, Nile Rodgers, because that’s what you do best.” We had four hit records on that album. (Applause) And some of those were remakes. Imagine making a hit out of a song that wasn’t a hit and people looking at it like, (affects voice) “You’re defiling the gods of rock. You did an Iggy Pop song and it’s corny.” Yeah, but we sold two million of those corny records. (Laughs)

Benji B

So there’s a lot of aspiring producers, singers, instrumentalists in the room. If there’s one thing you can leave them from all that experience, what would it be?

Nile Rodgers

I think I said it earlier and I’ll reiterate. If you want to be in this business, make sure the first thing you commit to – it’s almost like a mantra – make sure that you really love it. That’s the biggest reward you can get. Like when we were listening back to those songs, I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s the Hammond B3 that we wheeled in for ‘Let’s Dance.’” At first we weren’t going to add it, but Bowie said, “Is that a B3 over there?” And we wheeled it in and put it on it. Make sure you love doing it just for the sake of doing it. That’s your greatest reward. If you have a blast doing it, then if you get a record deal and have a hit, oh my god, that’s incredible. Because that ain’t the real world. Chances are you’re not going to sign to a real label and you’re not going to get a hit record. But if you do happen to get one, all the more fantastic and wonderful.

The truth is I have just as much fun playing my little Epiphone in my bed every night than I do being in the studio with Bowie. It’s a different experience but it feels exactly the same to me to toil over some jazz songs that I used to play with my eyes closed 35 years ago. It feels exactly the same to me today and I love it. And it’s not just because of having close calls with death. I’ve never changed, I’ve been like this since the moment I became what I call a musician.

To put a finer point on it, a few weeks ago we had Valerie Simpson perform with us. This was just a few days after her husband Nick Ashford had died. Valerie was one of the first to recognize Bernard and I as viable producers. She says a girl had come over to her nightclub, which she has in New York, she has these open- mic things and it’s really popular – and a girl cornered her the other day and said, “Valerie, I really want to become a singer.” She says, “Oh great, sweetie, that’s fantastic. Can you sing, can you carry a tune?” “Oh yeah, I can sing pretty well.” “Oh, wait a minute, I thought you wanted to become a singer.” “I do, I want to become a singer.” “Well, sing for me.” And the girl sang and she sounded good. Valerie says, “Wow, but you are a singer.” “No, but I want to be a real singer.” And Valerie stops her and says, “Oh, you want to become famous.” And she says, “Yeah.” “Oh, well, that’s different. I don’t know how to do that. I know how to be a singer, I know how you can become a singer, and you already are a singer. Go home and sing and sing and sing and if you want to be famous, try, keep trying and figure out a way of making it, because you sound great.”

She was trying to explain to this girl, you have a gift, be happy, because not many people can sing and not many people sound great. But she could see this woman had it distorted. She was defining a singer as being famous and that’s not the case. So I agree with Valerie. Make sure you love it. I love it. Why do you think I still do this? I don’t need to do this. I’m out there because I love doing it. Last night was one of the funnest nights I’ve had... in 30 hours, because I loved the night before. And two nights before that was fun and tomorrow’s going to be fun. (Applause)

Benji B

Well, on that note I’d like to say it’s been a great privilege, and on behalf of everyone in the room, please join me in thanking Mr. Nile Rodgers.

Nile Rodgers

Thank you.