You might not own a single record by Chic (which is insane, by the way, since they remain purveyors of some of the world’s slinkiest, dancingest singles ever released), but as a performer, writer, arranger and/or producer Nile Rodgers has been the power behind a whole lot of your favourite artists. Doubt us? How about the likes of…
…INXS!
“‘Original Sin’ was the rehearsal. I could tell the band was a little bit nervous and I was like ‘man, I can’t get a good track out of these guys with them being that nervous’ so I went and plugged my guitar in, like I joined the band. I told the engineer ‘as soon as we start playing, record the song’ – we had a little conspiracy going. Then I said ‘OK, let’s practice’. That one take was the record, because as soon as we finished the drummer [Jon Farris] broke the drumhead. I said ‘ah, don’t worry about it, let’s go inside and take a listen’, and it was brilliant. By the time they replaced the head the guys had lost the vibe: it never grooved like it did that first time. So there is no second take of ‘Original Sin’. We got it right the first time.”
…Bowie!
“I was terrified when I played my arrangement of ‘China Girl’ for him, I thought he was going to kick me out of the studio. But when he said that was fantastic and I was like ‘well listen to this, and the whole band played ding-ding-dingding-dingding-ding…” Let’s Dance, I made that album and delivered it the final mix, start to finish, in 17 days. Bowie did all of his vocals in two days, Stevie Ray Vaughan played his solos in one day, the rhythm section was maybe three days tops. The rest of the time was spent doing little overdubs, background vocals and then mixing for the last couple of days. That was it, done.”
…Madonna!
"There are no outtakes from [Like a Virgin]. If it wasn’t perfect we would record over the tape, ‘cause it was expensive in those days and Madonna would say, 'Time is money, and the money is mine – so let’s go!’
…Will Smith, via Sister Sledge!
Thanks to sampling, many of your old songs have had a second, third, even fourth life as the basis of others peoples’ stuff.
“That’s absolutely true. And we have fun with it: when we play [the Chic-written Sister Sledge hit] ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’ these days we start off with the ‘na na na na na na, gettin’ jiggy wit’ it’ [laughs]. It rocks the crowd, they get it and then we do the song we actually wrote.”
…Duran Duran!
“[When I remixed] ‘The Reflex’ no one thought that would be Duran’s biggest single. The record company thought the album [Seven & the Ragged Tiger] was dead and I breathed new life into it. So we get back together and we do ‘The Wild Boys’, which was also very successful. Then we get together and we do [the underperforming album] Notorious. Now I’m really proud of Notorious because the band basically was on the skids: it’s not like their popularity had waned, but two guys had left the band and I had to pull it together and make a hit record in the midst of all of that chaos. Obviously there were all sorts of politics going on and in and out. And you know we were doing a lot of drugs, let’s be real about it. We were drinking and partying a lot."
Do you consciously set out to make an album a hit?
“Ultimately we want our voices to be heard, and the best way our voices can be heard is through a commercial medium. We want to touch more people, not fewer. Every one of us knows how to not sell. I know how to put out records that don’t sell [laughs]. That’s easy. I’ve done my fair share of those.”
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