Nile Rodgers and the Hits Keep Coming
Legendary musician, songwriter, and producer Nile Rodgers is one of the most influential figures in music. After founding the funk/disco band Chic in the 70’s, (known for great hit songs likeLe Freak, I Want Your Love and Good Times.) he went on to write and produce for and collaborate with some of the most talented names in the music business. Names like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Grace Jones, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and Daft Punk are just some of the artists he’s collaborated. He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about his career so far, and his book, “Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny.” Excerpts from the Interview appear below.
* * *
Nile Rodgers Talks About Having Another Big Hit With Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”
Ron Bennington: How great is it to find another monster hit like you’re able to do?
Nile Rodgers: It’s great. I’m not pissed off.
Ron Bennington: Is it something you get used to or is it every time, feel like – oh, this is cool?
Nile Rodgers: No. Every time it feels…(starts singing) “It feels like the first time”. No, it does. It feels really exciting because when you’re lucky enough to make a hit record or a record that goes to number one, it’s special. You guys are in the business. You’re in a special club. It’s not like you can just do that all the time. So when it happens and it’s record setting and it’s big, humongous – it sort of takes you back. It knocks you down a peg because you realize that you were going by instinct and somehow it paid off.
* * *
Nile Rodgers Talks About His First Hit
Ron Bennington: One of my favorite parts of your book is going into the club and the place being crazy, and you showing up and not knowing that this thing was a club hit already. And the thrill of that actual first time.
Nile Rodgers: Amazing. It was the most amazing thing. So, you’re talking about the very first Chic song I ever wrote, which was called “Everybody Dance”. We were so poor that we couldn’t even pay for the record. “Everybody Dance” actually cost $10 to record and we didn’t even have $10. So my friend, back in those days – the only way that you could take the song home from the recording studio, was you had to cut an acetate – which is a record that will basically deteriorate over time. It was just to see where it was coming from. You do a rough mix or you could cut a reel-to-reel, but that meant you had to have a reel-to-reel tape recorder to play it on at home. So, we didn’t have enough money to do either, so that was it. The last time I heard “Everybody Dance” was when we recorded it. Little did I know, my friend who was the engineer on the session, made 2 acetates and he was a deejay. And he took those 2 copies down to his club and had been playing them for 3 weeks. And after 3 weeks, the place had gone crazy. And to these people, this was now a big hit record.
* * *
Nile Rodgers Talks About The Happiness In His Music
Ron Bennington: There’s something joyful about your style of playing. We were even trying to figure it out, like how could someone put people in a happy state with their music? Do you do that with purpose?
Nile Rodgers: I sure hope so. (laughs) I don’t think…and I really do say this with no ego, I mean you don’t do it for 30-something years over and over and over and over again by accident. It’s calculating. I’m trying to make myself feel good. And I hope that after the music makes me feel good – I’m hoping that it just has a spill over effect into other people’s lives and makes them feel good too. It’s all a calculated guess, but I certainly wouldn’t play something that I think is…that makes me feel sort of down and (groaning noises). I mean I have enough things in my life that do that. The music is the one thing that I always can depend on to make me feel good. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t write sad music and that I don’t love sad music. I would say that at least once or twice a week, I will listen to a composition that either I wrote or someone else wrote that brings me to tears. And it’s not necessarily tears of joy. It could be sadness and cerebral heartfelt stuff that just makes you cry. But I seek to do the music that makes you feel good. That’s what I purposely try and do.
* * *
Nile Rodgers’ Producing Style.
Ron Bennington: I think one of the interesting things or mysteries is – we don’t really know what producers do. I think because so many of you guys work so differently, the way you approach it. When you’re doing Madonna, David Bowie – are you leading them? Are you following them?
Nile Rodgers: You see, the good thing about my life is that I am so old school and even old. (laughs) Some kid tweeted the other day – what’s the difference between old school and old? Hey, Nile Rodgers. (laughs) I thought that was actually pretty cute. So, I’m really old school in that I learned music back in the day. So, I’m a classical jazz musician. So, I do everything. I write everything. I write the song. I do the arrangement. I do the string parts, the horn parts, the whole nine. So, when I’m working with an artist, I can do as much or as little as they would like me to do. I typically like to work with solo artists, so I can do all that stuff. I mean if you know it all, you want to do it all. You’ve never heard a record produced by me that I can think of that was a hit that I didn’t play on, even if it was a band that has a guitar player. I mean Duran Duran has a great guitar player in Duran Duran and I’m playing on all the records that I do with them. INXS had great…I played with them…Hall and Oates….I become part of the band and I want to do all those things that I can do. So, I’m not avoiding the answer. So, I can’t say that I’m leading or following – I’m joining. And if the situation calls for me to follow if you will, if that’s the proper term – then I do that. Basically, the way I describe making records is I make the records the same way you drive a car. You drive a car looking down the road. If you look right in front of you, you’re probably going to have an accident, so you look down the road. And if the car is going straight, you don’t have to steer. So, I’m there sort of along for the ride, but you already know that I do everything, so I can’t be passive. But I sure make it look like I’m not doing anything. If you walk in the studio and you see me, most of the time it looks like I’m just sort of sitting there being the rah-rah section, but that’s because I’ve already written everything and recorded it all.
* * *
The Great Artists Nile Rodgers Has Worked With.
Ron Bennington: It’s amazing when you look over the amount of people that you’ve played with and the life that you got out of that, rather than just being in one band. By being a producer, you’ve now almost got to play with most of the legends. How much would this have baffled you at 17, 18 years old if you could go back in time and tell that kid – look at all the stuff you’re going to get to do?
Nile Rodgers: I would have never believed it in a million years. To think that right now, people sort of are aware of “Get Lucky” and whatever, that’s great. Believe me. I think it’s amazing, but truth is I have played with everyone from Eric Clapton, to Jeff Beck, won Grammies with Jeff Beck, Stevie Nicks, Chaka Khan, Grace Jones, Diana Ross, Sister Sledge – I mean on and on and on. It’s staggering to me. And the thing that’s even more staggering is that this is my normal life. (laughs) It’s so cool to wake up and think like – wow, I can call Diana Ross. Like – hey Diana, what’s up?
Ron Bennington: And you seem like you can do that and still be able to walk down the street without the same kind of hassle that Diana Ross has walking down the street or Prince.
Nile Rodgers: Well, because they’re stars. The great thing about my life is that most people don’t know what composers and producers and the behind-the-scenes people look like, which is great. I mean when we devised our band Chic, when we created Chic, our whole concept was to be faceless. Probably the reason why I get along with Daft Punk so well. The concept was – we wanted our music to be stars because we knew we didn’t look like stars. I’m born here in New York. I know every club owner. I mean when I walk into a club, everybody goes – hey, how you doing Nile? When I walked into a club with Madonna, everybody would go – oh my God. Who’s that girl with Nile? Because she looked like a star before she was even famous. So, stars look and feel like stars. I feel like Nile. Hey Nile. Hey man, how you doing? What are we doing tonight? I don’t know. I’ll take a corned beef sandwich. You walk into a place with Bowie, Madonna, Prince…the first time I met Prince, it was unbelievable. We were on 14th Street at the Palladium. We walked in together and I just happened to be standing next to him. And I was like – wow. There’s Prince. Now meanwhile, we had just played a show. It was our show. We were the stars in a way, but Prince felt like a star. And we knew that we never had that, so we came up with a concept of creating music that could be famous if you will. Like the song was the thing. And it wasn’t cult of personality. It was about the music. And that’s why half of the time, I can walk into a place and the song will play and I’m sitting there listening to the song and no one knows that I did it.
The best story like that was – in 1978 I believe it was, we were at a BMI Music Awards dinner. And we had written “We Are Family”, “He’s The Greatest Dancer”, “Le Freak”, “I Want Your Love”, as well as our whole first Chic album which came out in a weird period of time. So, we were getting credit for all of these singles. And we’re in the bathroom with the Bee Gees and the year before, the Bee Gees had “Saturday Night Fever”. So, they had “Night Fever”, “You Should Be Dancing”, all this stuff. So, they’re in the bathroom going – who the hell are those guys that wrote all those songs? (laughs) And we’re standing right next to them. And we were cracking up – uh, it’s us.
Ron Bennington: And those guys, the Bee Gees at that time, they couldn’t go anywhere.
Nile Rodgers: No. They were superstars.
Ron Bennington: Yeah. If they went anywhere, it made the paper. And that’s really a tough thing. Once you get past the initial great feeling of – oh, people appreciate me, it doesn’t take long before that becomes a pain in the ass and starts to drain your life out.
Nile Rodgers: See, I wouldn’t know that because I don’t have that life. My life is pretty much exactly the same. I mean this year…so for the last two years, I’ve been doing more records and more concerts than I’ve ever done in my life in a calendar year or two. And that’s because after I was notified by my doctor that I had extremely aggressive cancer and he kept telling me that it was so severe that it was like Frank Zappa had. And of course, me being the guy that I am – I made a joke out of it. I said – Oh, so you mean like I’m going to be playing like really cool guitar and writing songs like “Peaches En Regalia”? And he said – uh, I don’t know what that means, but no. What I mean is that from the time he was diagnosed until the time he passed away was a relatively short period of time. This is what you have and you need to make some important decisions. Because you’re going to have to live or die with those decisions. I was like going – dude, don’t be so serious. I have a job in Rome. Act as if I missed that phone call and tell me this when I get back from Rome. And that’s exactly what I told him. I mean I just couldn’t take it that seriously because I had a job to do. And if I focus on the cancer, it would knock be me off my game and I believed that the people didn’t care. I wasn’t going to walk out on stage in Rome and go – (crying voice) “I just heard…” I went out and played the show. I came home and I said – now Doc, what was that you were saying? And then he explained to me the severity of my particular malady. And then I thought to myself – what I just did was the best therapy that I could do for myself. I acted as if everything was fine. I went and did the show. And said – you know what? I’m going to listen to my doctors. I’m going to do everything that they say, but what’s my part of the therapy that I can control? I’m going to do more music than I’ve ever done because that makes me feel good. When I went to Rome, I felt great. I wasn’t sitting…you can look on my website. You’ll see me in pictures. I’m having the time of my life. And since then, we’ve played for…I would have to say, millions of people. I mean this Summer alone, we played next to the Stones. We did 60,000 people one day. The day before that we had 45,000. The day before that we had 30,000. So, if you add up those numbers, we were averaging 30 – 40,000 people per show. And we did 30 one-nighters. I mean it was ridiculous. And I’m just talking last month. (laughs) I’m talking June and July.
Ron Bennington: But you really do see that as part of the recovery. Because…first of all, you look fantastic.
Nile Rodgers: I don’t know about the recovery, but it’s part of my therapy. It’s what makes me feel good, so if that helped me recover – wow, fabulous. Then that would be great. So, I don’t give advice or any of that stuff. I don’t know what. All I know is that’s what I’m doing and this is the result. I don’t know if it’s cause and effect or anything like that. I just know that that’s what I chose to do because that’s all I can do. Well, I could mope. (laughs)
* * *
Ron Bennington: Here’s what I love. I was just about to congratulate you for having like the song of the Summer at this point in your career and you’re already 15 projects ahead of that. It’s amazing. (Nile laughs) Nile, so great to see you, man. And thank you for all the great music, seriously. I hope you come back and do this with us again, man.
Nile Rodgers: Thank you man.
======================================================
Follow Nile Rodgers on Twitter @NileRodgers and order his book Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny
on Amazon.com
.
You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Not yet a subscriber? Click here for a free trial subscription.
.
You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.
* * *
