Making musical magic – CHIC’s Nile Rodgers

Date Published: 06-Jun-2012

Get ready for an evening of hits when CHIC play the Galway Arts Festival Big Top on Thursday, July 19th. Band leader Nile Rodgers has been behind hits like Le Freak and Good Times, as well as David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, Diana Ross’s I’m Coming Out, Madonna’s Like A Virgin, and We Are Family by Sister Sledge. Punters at the Galway show would be advised to bring their dancing shoes.

“Our show encompasses the breath of my work; at least I try as much as possible,” says Nile Rodgers. “So we play a Bowie song, a Madonna song, a Duran Duran song, an INXS song, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, obviously a lot of CHIC songs.”

In his autobiography, Le Freak, which was published last year, Nile recalls his tempestuous childhood with a mother and stepfather who were drug-users. The television was often a baby-sitter, and Nile became fascinated with music-oriented programmes like The Lucille Ball Show.

“If I didn’t have music in my life, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” he says. “It’s been my saviour since I was a child; I was bullied, I was an introvert. Music was always playing in my head, as it is right now. I can’t even talk to you without hearing songs in the background in my head; I can’t turn it off and I don’t even try anymore.”

In 1970, at the age of 18, Nile met bassist Bernard Edwards. Seven years later they formed the band CHIC, whose songs would become iconic in the nascent disco movement. Yet Nile and Bernard had been working musicians for the guts of a decade, and neither had the swagger or desire to be a front man.

“Well, we weren’t stars,” says Nile. “We had worked for stars, we were backup musicians. So that’s what we knew how to do. I’m certainly not putting anybody down, because I work with stars all the time – but stars are stars because they think they’re stars. They know it, they feel it.

“We knew we didn’t have that thing, but we knew that our music could be the star,” Nile continues. “I mean, talk about arriving on the scene at a completely opportunistic, propitious moment. With the disco movement, you didn’t have to be star and it couldn’t have been more perfect for guys like us. Our music could compete on the dance floor.”

And compete they did. When you hear Le Freak’s opening lyrics, ‘aw freak out, le freak, c’est chic’, you know it’s time to start moving. CHIC also penned gems like Good Times and Everybody Dance. Nile and Bernard found themselves in demand, working on Diana Ross’s hit album, Diana. Nile also went on to collaborate with Bowie, Mick Jagger and Duran Duran.

In 1996, Bernard and Nile went to Japan to perform at a concert celebrating their work. Three sold-out nights in Tokyo saw them joined by collaborators like Slash, Simon Le Bon and Sister Sledge.

Tragically, it was to be Bernard Edwards’s last concert – after the final show, he died from pneumonia in his hotel room. Nile recalls the events of that night.

“It was a packed house; we were playing at the Budokan,” he says. “And before we walked out on stage, he looked from behind the curtain and he says – these are his exact words – ‘wow, we did it. The music is bigger than we are’.

“Now, maybe he knew something I didn’t know. Obviously, I didn’t think he was going to die that night. But he got very philosophical, and I’m a jokester and I’m like ‘man, why are coming up with this? All of a sudden you became Sophocles and we’re going on stage’. And he said ‘no, look at this man. They didn’t come to see us; they came to hear our music’.”

The music Bernard and Nile made obviously looms large in Rodgers’s acclaimed autobiography, which is a real story of ups and downs. As a child, he witnessed drug addiction first hand, but he also writes about his mother and stepfather with great affection. There’s no bitterness, and he’s keen to praise them as essentially good people.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.