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Music

Legendary Producer and Chic Co-Founder Nile Rodgers is Still the Coolest Cat in the Universe

The superstar producer and disco king is back with a new collection of vintage tracks.

All photos courtesy of Nile Rodgers Productions What makes producer/musician/songwriter Nile Rodgers the “coolest cat in the universe”? Let us count the ways. A resume that includes working with David Bowie on “Let’s Dance” and with Daft Punk on “Get Lucky” definitely makes him an instant contender. He co-founded Chic, one of the most successful disco bands of all time. As the composer of their song, “Le Freak,” he can walk into Grand Central Station and go, “One, two, ah…” and have everyone yell back, “Freak out.” He calls Madonna, Quincy Jones and Eric Clapton friends. While getting a pedicure, he gets texts from Sir Paul McCartney.

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“The woman is painting my toenails and I got Paul McCartney texting me, going, ‘Hey, Nile, can we hook up?’” Rodgers says. “The first song I ever learned to play on guitar was ‘A Day In The Life,’ and now we’re texting. It’s insane.”

Based on that incredible resume and the company he keeps, Rodgers will be honored by the Grammy Producers And Engineers wing next week at a ceremony at L.A’s iconic Village Studios. For a guy who was diagnosed with cancer and given a death sentence four years ago, this latest honor from his peers is just another incredible scene in his second act.

Rodgers spoke to Noisey about revisiting his Chic past, the secret to his success as a producer, and how his battle with cancer led to “Get Lucky.”

Noisey: When you think of taking Chic on the road, how does the youthful energy of these fans, who know every word, inspire you?

For me, it’s never changed. You can just go on Youtube right now and look at any concert or any review it’s the same every night; we sell out huge numbers, we’re finally getting paid what I would consider really respectable numbers because otherwise, I just wouldn’t do it. I said, “Look guys, what we do is important and if I can’t treat my band and my musicians a certain way, I’ll just stay home—I make an amazing living because I’ve written so many hit records.” I do this because I love it. This is my art form, this is the way that I’ve chosen to express myself musically, through songs that make people feel good and it was just an artistic thing that happened magically one day. I was a jazz freak, and my girlfriend and I walked into a club one night and heard Donna Summer's “Love To Love You, Baby.” From that moment on I went, “There’s a world out there that would accept a guy like me who doesn’t fit in, who’s not some super-handsome guy, who doesn’t have a lot of charisma, but, boy, I can write a song that can be a little more intellectual and still get people on the dancefloor.” So when you see our concerts. sometimes you'll see a person that can't be over seventeen years old, and they know every single song. We were playing in Manchester and it’s the hippest of the hip, with it’s all these hardcore cool DJs, and it was packed with all these young kids. I was like, “What’s up with this? Are they just here waiting for the DJ to come on after us?” So we started playing songs, and they were singing everything! We felt like the Beatles.

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Given the whole “disco sucks” backlash, do you feel satisfaction today to see all these kids embracing the music of that era?
I can understand how they would know every word to “Le Freak.” In fact I always say, “How does this feel? To know no matter where I stand on this earth I can go, ‘One, two, ah,’ and everybody around me is gonna go, ‘Freak out.’” “Le Freak” is one thing, but when it gets to the obscure stuff, that’s what blows me away.

Have you ever tried that experiment?
When we do concerts, it happens every time. Think about that, you’re a composer and there’s a preponderance of people that would recognize that phrase, or you sing “We Are Family,” and a five-year-old girl sings it along with you. It’s amazing, and what’s really unreal in my life is now is that I’m being honored by what I would consider to be almost a secret society, because if you think of the few people that have gotten this honor, it’s amazing to me. And it’s the exact same year that “Le Freak” was entered into the Grammy Music Hall Of Fame, and then what’s really weird is I’m coming out with a Chic album now in a couple of months days. I don’t know if you know anything about the lost Chic tapes, but when we were dropped from Atlantic Records, we were working on an album. I make music every day of my life, so we cut like seven or eight songs before they decided to let us go. So I was sitting there with an album’s worth of material that was not gonna come out, but it didn’t stop me from going to the studio the next day because I was already working every single day. II just made “Let’s Dance,” and the day after I did INXS “Original Sin,” as soon as I finished that I did Duran Duran, then “Like A Virgin.” So, my life didn’t change, and I just forgot all this music existed. Then four years ago, this huge amount of analog tapes that I made eight gazillion years ago shows up at my house—Warner Bros. had returned the music, saying, “We don’t believe this belongs to us.” It was Johnny Mathis, Diana Ross, other artists we had made records for, film scores and things like that, that were not Warner Bros property.

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So when you go back and hear these tapes after so many years, how do the songs hold up for you?
It was amazing, because it’s what I call convergence. One of the biggest things that’s happened to me lately is making records with Daft Punk, which were made in the same studio that I made the very first Chic single, which flipped them out when I told them that because they'd had no idea. They asked me how we did it, and we used the same approach. Now I’m working with Mark Ronson, producing Duran Duran together, and we’re doing it the same way; we’re making records the same way I’ve always made records, analog. I open these boxes, and it’s a treasure trove of one recording after the next that’s been recorded that way, and it all sounds amazing. That’s why I think that Daft Punk intrinsically felt something was gonna work, because this kind of music just sounds different: that maybe they’ll feel what we felt when we were kids, because they grew up around disco. There was no “disco sucks” campaign in France, disco was always really cool, and Thomas Bangalter’s father is a famous disco producer in France. So, at this point in my life, to be coming out with a new album of songs that I wrote thirty-two years ago is just amazing. A few weeks ago, I played our first single (which has everybody on it from our very first recording in 1977) for Pharrell on a plane heading into Dubai. He looked at me and said, “Nile, put that shit out right now.” I said, “Pharrell, do you know we did this track in 1977?” He was like, “I can’t believe that.”

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On a personal level, what does it mean to release this music and keep the legacy alive of the original Chic members?

I don’t want to sound corny, but I feel like I opened a time capsule. I get to appreciate what we did and how hard it was to do it, and it feels like I get to bring my band back to life. Whenever I put up the songs, even though they’re not in the room, I get to hear the banter between tracks and it reminds me of how much fun we always had making records. If you talk to anyone who’s made a record with me—and that’s quite a lot of people—everybody always wonders, “How the hell does he get anything done because he’s laughing and joking and we’re making fun of each other?” And that’s because I want to become their best friend and show them that I have nothing but their best interests at heart. So, when it inevitably comes to that time where we’re gonna have a disagreement, they know that I’m not doing it out of ego, I’m doing it out of love. That’s how we were in Chic. Bernard Edwards would say to me, “My man, that’s your part?” I’d say, “Yeah.” “So you think that shit is happening, right? Let me tell you something, it’s almost happening. Why don’t you try this?” I’d try it and he was right, it was much better. We were always very open when it came to making records and that’s how I treat people to this very day. Why does Sam Smith love me so much? Why do I love Sam Smith so much? Because when we got in the studio the first day, it went from being people who’ve never even met each other to, at the end of the day, being like in love with each other because, as a producer, that’s the first thing I do. It’s like being a psychologist—you gotta let people know that you’re making the record for them. And of course I’m gonna have a good time, because every single record I produce, I play on. If you look at my discography and you see that there’s thousands of songs I’ve played on, every session is the same. I know statistically that most records fail and don’t even recoup, let alone go number one, so I go into the studio saying to myself, “Most records fail, so this record is probably gonna fail, but it won’t be a personal, spiritual and artistic failure because we’re gonna be friends for life.” That’s what happened with Daft Punk. I met them twenty years ago or something, and the first night it was total love affair and we didn’t get to make a record until years and years later. We had always remained close and if you look at our relationship now it’s basically the same as it was before “Get Lucky”: admiration, respect, love and are you free tomorrow night? It’s like that whether it’s Chris Cornell, Avicii or David Bowie or Madonna, it’s all the same, we’re just one big happy family.

Who are the dance artists today you really admire and think will have longevity?
I can’t ever predict stuff like that because a lot of things can derail us. You can have all the talent in the world, but other things can happen. Let me give you a real life example. Four years ago, all these tapes were delivered to me that I thought were lost, and I‘m the happiest guy in the world; every day is like Christmas because I put up a new tape and I hear us talking about Bobby Brown, it’s like whatever was happening in 1982. And then I say to myself, “I’ve had this love affair listening to these tapes, now I’m gonna finish some of these unfinished songs.” And then, bam, I’m blindsided with cancer—very severe, aggressive cancer. So now I’m going from a man who’s thinking I’ve just gotten a chance to relive this chapter of my life that was unfinished and derailed by "disco sucks," to now being told that I’m gonna die in a few weeks. That’s the yin-yang of life; you get this one great gift, and then the next thing you know, you get this tragic information. I was depressed, and then I said while I was getting my cancer treatment, “I’m gonna do the one thing that makes me feel good and whatever the outcome is so fucking be it.” What makes me feel better than anything in the world? Writing and playing music, so I decided I was gonna write more songs and play more concerts than I’ve ever done in any period of my life. The first song was “Get Lucky,” that was the beginning of that new period. I just started writing like crazy, I have so many records coming out and so many records that I’ve done, and I've been cancer free for four years now. In the last three years I’ve performed for millions of people, because we’re one of the few live bands that can play at electronic concerts. I say we’re the Grateful Dead of dance music. Any night, I can stand on that stage and play for four hours and not ever play a song that I didn’t write or produce. When you go to a Chic concert ,we have so many hit records and so many songs, it’s ridiculous. As a producer and a composer, it’s a dream come true. I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world.