Nile Rodgers

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:46

In 2013, this week's castaway left his guitar, a 1959 Fender Stratocaster, affectionately known as the Hitmaker, on a train. Happily, the Hitmaker was returned safe and well by a ticket agent called Bob, who was completely unaware of the fact that, according to the NME, it had been used to produce $2 billion worth of music. The Hitmaker's owner is Niall Rogers. Disco, hip-hop, new wave, RB, electronic. Over the past 40 years, if you've been on a dance floor, the chances are his work got you up there. He first enjoyed a chart success with his own ensemble Chic before going on to produce and collaborate with artists from a mix of genres and eras, from Diana Ross to David Bowie, Madonna to Michael Jackson, Duranduran to Daft Punk. High-octane glamour and towering success might be his metier, but they weren't his starting point. Born to teenage parents in New York City, he got his first break touring with the Sesame Street Stage Show before cutting his teeth playing backup guitar in the Harlem Apollo house band. He survived cancer, drug and alcohol addiction, not to mention a backlash against disco music so fierce it threatened to kill his career. Music, he says, is the gift that keeps me going. It's the turbocharger in my engine. If I'm faced with any sort of malady, I always revert back to music because I know it will make me feel good. Niel Rogers, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Oh, that made me want to cry. That was fabulous. You got it perfect.

Nile Rodgers2:14

It's fabulous. You got

Presenter2:16

Well, thank you very much for joining us. So, you've helped to create some of the biggest hits in chart history, and I've always wondered what it's like to sit back on the couch in the studio and listen to the very first mix, finished mix, of a track like Let's Dance or Like a Virgin or Get Lucky for the first time. And happily, you are the only person who was there for all three. So, I will ask you, what's it like?

Nile Rodgers2:33

The virgin or

Presenter2:41

It's pretty extraordinary because when you make a record that you feel in your heart is great, you know that at some point in time you have to stop thinking and you just have to give it away to the people because we could just keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and going on and on and on and finally we have to just look at each other and go stop.

Presenter3:04

It's done, it's in the grooves, or it's not. So it's a moment of release.

Presenter3:09

It's strange. I mean, I know some people, you know, like Bob Dylan. I don't want to mention names, but some people will worry about things that. You almost said the whole of Bob Dylan now, so I wouldn't make you say it. Right, Bob Dylan. Some people will worry about, or I don't know about worry.

Speaker 23:17

Ding them.

Nile Rodgers3:19

I couldn't make

Nile Rodgers3:21

All right, Bob Dylan.

Presenter3:26

But that felt like worrying. Call me up like ten times a night, like, Nah, do you think we should change that part to this? And I'm like, Bob, it's cool You know. I don't worry that much because I know that

Presenter3:41

Once I've done my best, there's not much more I can do because some of those little things that you think are amazing, most people may not get them. And some of the things that you think are mundane, people think are fantastic. So you can't really tell how people are going to perceive your art.

Presenter4:00

You've said that every song you've ever written has a DHM. Can you enlighten us? So DHM means deep hidden meaning. DHM basically sort of our own personal musical way of talking about a song's DNA. It's core truth. What is the core truth that this song is trying to tell us? What is it talking about? And we really need to know that. It's easy to do songs.

Presenter4:28

that are sort of like childlike in rhyme and things like that, but those childlike rhymes have to actually have a secondary, if not a tertiary, meaning to us. I honestly, I I really don't know how to do it any other way.

Presenter4:45

And what about producing? I think every producer that I've ever interviewed sees their job in a slightly different way. What defines that role for you? Well, long ago I read a couple of articles because back in the day we didn't have internet and it was difficult for my family to even tune into the radio. So we would pick up literature and I'd read magazine articles about people that I sort of idolized. And I remember reading an early interview with Quincy Jones saying that

Presenter5:18

The maker of a

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Record a producer of a record is m very much like

Presenter5:25

A film director, except the budgets aren't that high.

Presenter5:29

So we really are in charge of the entire movie, if you will. So you've got to lead from the front, presumably. Absolutely.

Nile Rodgers5:35

Absolutely.

Presenter5:38

Are you asking me, is that my personality? No, I'm saying if you have to lead from the front, somebody has to be in charge, right? Right, but I look at it the same way I walk my dog. My dog knows that I'm in charge and he heals, but I don't have to act like a wackle.

Nile Rodgers5:39

Yeah, yeah.

Nile Rodgers5:40

Blue.

Nile Rodgers5:45

Right.

Presenter5:55

Don't you dare walk in front of me!

Presenter5:59

I trained my dog, he knows to walk by me. So no, there was just something I posted a couple of days ago, and you saw me with a lot of players from London Philharmonic, all these great, great, great musicians. And I was doing a symphonic session. And I was conducting this group of people that I had never met in my life. And I went out and I shook everyone's hand and I told them that, guess what? Today you're not the boss. I have these teenagers that I'm bringing from Liverpool, from Lippa, from Paul McCartney's place. And I said, I want to make this girl the concert master. And I want them to sit first chair. And I want them to... And they were like, what?

Nile Rodgers6:31

And I said, I want to

Presenter6:37

And instead of them being offended,

Presenter6:40

They applauded these kids and they were great. They gave them the Boeing instructions. I feel like every time I make a record now, I want all those people on my records. They were wonderful. Time for some music now. Tell me about your first piece today. What's it going to be?

Presenter6:56

I think I want to start with the freak, because that's the sort of record that super, super changed my life. This is a perfect example of DHM, to have a concept and understand it so well that you can turn it into something that seemingly appears to be something else.

Speaker 37:15

Yeah.

Presenter7:16

Hey.

Presenter7:16

I'll do that's crazy.

Speaker 37:18

Uh

Presenter7:19

Listen to ah

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I'm sure you'll be amazed.

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Big fun to me. Uh

Speaker 37:25

Yeah.

Presenter7:25

Bye everyone.

Speaker 37:25

I

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Uh

Speaker 37:27

It's up to you.

Speaker 37:28

Sure that yeah,

Speaker 37:33

Do what if I chose.

Presenter7:36

And you too well besides.

Presenter7:39

It's called a freak, they're doing it night and day.

Presenter7:43

Allow us, we'll show you the home, Africa. Chic and Lefrique.

Presenter7:50

Niel Rogers, you were born in New York City in nineteen fifty two and brought up by your mother Beverly and stepfather Bobby. And Beverly was just fourteen when you were born. What was life like back then? Um, it was actually um

Presenter8:06

I would say a series of up and downs, but I don't stay down very long. Um so in my head it was quite romantic. I um

Presenter8:16

I was around really great intellectual people. My stepfather is Jewish, but he was a beatening. My uncle was of that ilk, as was my aunt.

Nile Rodgers8:22

It was a b

Presenter8:27

And they were on the cutting edge of hip music, hip games, all of this sort of alternative culture that seemed to be outside the norm, but it was so cool in the 50s and 60s because we were just starting to explore these things, you know, women's lib and things like that. They were bohemian with a capital B. I mean, when I say capital B, I mean it. The most severe punishment I ever got was because I started a fire in the house totally by accident. Sometimes you don't realize that the fire, once it ignites, it also will carbonize the stuff underneath it too. You know, it's not just going to rise.

Speaker 39:13

Boom.

Presenter9:14

I think

Presenter9:15

Set a little fire and my stepfather came home and he just stared at me for about ten minutes. And this was heavy. This is the worst thing he ever did. Stared at me for ten minutes and he said, My my nickname is Pud. And finally, after about ten minutes, he says, Pud?

Presenter9:31

Dig yourself, man. Dig yourself. Like, look into yourself, man. See what you're doing. You know, be responsible. It was great. That's how cool my parents were.

Presenter9:40

You describe your parents and say that you were like their little groupie. You know, you just followed them around. Your mom and your stepdad just absolutely loved them. They were awesome. They were amazing. I mean, they were heroin addicts. And I didn't understand that heroin was a bad thing. But they had so much style and flair. And if you see pictures of my mom and my stepfather and the way they dressed, I mean, they look like they just came off of a Hollywood set. And to have a white man with a black woman back in those days, this guy had to be ultra cool. He was a habitasher. So, you know, he dressed the part. Oh, and the other thing was he was a numerical genius and could remember long sequences of numbers that were not connected, that there was no way to connect the numbers. And it was just brilliant to watch him do magic tricks and stuff. So it was an amazing childhood. When you were five, you were sent to a convalescent home because of the asthma that you suffered from. What was that experience like and how did it change things for you? That was pretty horrible, but I always made the best of everything. So it was a difficult place to be, to be separated from my mom. It's funny when you hear my mother tell the story, it cracks you up. Because the day that she was leaving me, she says I was clinging to her legs and I threw a word that we never use. You hear the word a lot, but you never use it in a sentence. She says, you actually threw a conniption.

Presenter11:21

You were holding onto my leg, screaming. Every single doctor had to come and pry you from my leg, and you're this skinny little kid because you threw a conniption. And then she said, but the second time that I came to visit you, it was almost like you didn't care if I was there because you had now made friends and everybody was great and it was cool. So the biggest takeaway I got from that place was that we were all in a one-room classroom. So me being the youngest, about five and a half, and the eldest being somewhere around 13, 14, 15, maybe even 16, I learned what the 16-year-olds learned. I was reading Treasure Island was the first book I ever read. The second book I ever read was Moby Dick by Melville. I mean, you're an adult. Read Moby Dick. Check it out now. I'm surprised you could lift it up. Tell me about it. That is a big book. Tell me about it.

Speaker 211:24

Every

Nile Rodgers12:07

Strong stop strong stop.

Nile Rodgers12:11

Tell me about it.

Nile Rodgers12:13

Uh

Presenter12:14

You describe yourself in your memoir as the oldest eight-year-old on earth. And it does sound like you were pretty kind of self-starting and looking after yourself by that age. Yeah. A very fortunate thing happened to me. So I was a voracious reader. Read, read, read, read. Because I was lonely with no kids around. Beatniks tended to live in more industrial type of neighborhoods where there weren't really children around. So I just read every day and

Nile Rodgers12:41

Red every day.

Presenter12:42

I lived in a sort of fantasy kind of dream world, and I would create my world. I create the score, which is why I guess probably I became a musician, because I would score my life. I'd walk down the street, and it was dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. You know, and it was great and it was fun. So my mom would say, What did you do today? And I'd report to her the adventure. My mom used to say, This kid is crazy. You know, we took a pirate ship and we did so and so and so, and we've got pieces of it, and we got the bounty, you know, whatever. Time for music, Nell Rogers. Tell me about your second disc today.

Presenter13:18

So I was a classical musician. I was classically trained. And though I love pop music, the school that I went to had dances and we danced the pop music. I never tried to play a pop song on a classical instrument. Don't even ask me why. It just never dawned on me. But around 14 or so, 15, something like that, you know, it's all cloudy. I went to a party. I met this guy named Dr. Timothy Leary. Didn't know who he was, never heard of him, didn't know what LSD was, never heard of that. This is Timothy Leary, the radical psychologist who was famous for his psychedelic experiments. Yeah. And took acid. Oops. Blew my mind. And next thing you know, I picked up the guitar. Never touched the guitar in my life. And I learned a song by the Beatles called A Day in the Life. First thing I ever played on guitar.

Presenter14:15

I read the news today, oh boy.

Nile Rodgers14:19

Uh

Presenter14:21

About a lucky man who made the grave

Presenter14:28

And though the news was rather sad

Presenter14:34

Well I just have to laugh.

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I saw the photograph.

Presenter14:46

The Beatles and A Day in the Life. Niall Rogers, your biological father, Niall Rogers Senior, was a musician too, and though he wasn't in the house where you were growing up, you did see him semi regularly as a kid.

Nile Rodgers14:58

Yeah.

Presenter14:59

Tell me about him. Yeah, he was an incredible musician, and so much so that he played with this gentleman named Paul Whiteman. And Paul Whiteman, if you look at American music history, believe it or not, is called the King of Jazz, which is somewhat funny. But that was his moniker. And his manager would never allow Paul to use black musicians. But Paul loved jazz, so you had to love black musicians. So my father was the only black musician that would play with Paul Whiteman on a regular basis because he was a percussionist. And the music that was coming up from South America was starting to happen. Everybody was starting to do the rhamba, the rumba, the tango, samba, and all that kind of stuff. My father was an expert at it. You know, in New York City, we called it Afro-Cuban music. So Paul Whiteman was the band leader on a television show called something like Philly Teen Time or something like that. And the announcer was this guy named Dick Clark. And it turned into a really huge early American television show that still has credibility to this day called American Bandstand. And Dick Clark, as a TV producer, is Legend.

Speaker 316:01

Dude.

Presenter16:12

You and your dad you would see him regularly and like your mum and your step dad, he had drug problems too. He was an addict, but but the relationship between the two of you it sounds like there was a lot of love there. Yeah. My mother says that

Presenter16:26

You know, Pood, your dad Niall is the absolute nicest person I've ever met on this earth. He is the nicest man and and I remember when I was a child, my mom used to always drill into me.

Presenter16:40

Be nice, be nice, be nice. She says, you know, it takes just as I now know scientifically she was wrong. She said it takes just as much energy to be mean as it does to be nice. Why not choose to be nice? That's just how I was raised. You know, people ask me how do I produce records with artists that have like really big egos. And so I say, great. I love egotistical artists because they make me feel comfortable, because it makes me feel like they're so positive as to what they'd like to do, then it makes my job easier because either they're really right or they're really wrong.

Presenter17:19

You saved your dad's life once, didn't you? What happened? Yeah, I've actually saved his life twice. And it was in similar situations in two totally different parts of town. If the time you're talking about is when I was walking home from school and I found him on the fire escape, it looked like my dad was trying to kill himself. He was naked. And the cops were trying to either get some kind of tether on him or grab him or something like that. He was acting...

Nile Rodgers17:39

Do we

Speaker 317:39

Uh

Presenter17:48

Not violently, but it was incoherent. He was sort of like crazy. So I talked to the officer and I said, Look, that's my father. He's a really nice, like my mom. He's a really nice guy. I said, I think I can talk him down. And the police let me talk him down. I was all of seven or eight years old. And they did. They let me talk him down. And not only did they not arrest him for indecent exposure or anything like that, it was just another day in New York. It was fine. And then the other time was when I found him lying in the gutter on Broadway and 94th Street in front of a movie theater. We had just come from the Marx Brothers Film Festival. And I was with my girlfriend at the time, who to me had the most incredible nuclear family ever. Like they were just the perfect American white picket fence family, except we lived in New York City where we don't have white picket fences. But it was different because now I was older. I was in the Black Panther Party. I called myself a servant of the people. So I helped this, you know, poor indigent gentleman laying in the gutter wet. And I stayed with him until the ambulance arrived. He didn't really recognize me because he was suffering from the delirium tremors.

Presenter19:02

But I kept hearing him talk about my mom, and of course we looked alike, so I knew it was my father. Did he live to see your success?

Presenter19:11

No, no, no. He he he lived to see me um

Presenter19:18

Do well in his eyes because I was always a hard worker. What you probably don't know, I got my first job. I read this book by Harpo Marx, and it was called Harpo Speaks. And I remember him getting a job at nine years old. And when I read that, I was like, wow, I gotta go get a job. So my father always loved the fact that I had a job at nine years old. I was a hard worker. I worked for Gus the Pickle King.

Presenter19:52

When his motto was, you can turn a cucumber into a pickle, but you can't turn a pickle back into a cucumber. I was like, all right, guys, I know I've heard you said it a thousand times already. But yeah, I was a diligent worker and that ethic has stayed in my life up until now, you know. 66 years old, man, I go out and I there's no band, and I say this with zero ego, there's no band that will smoke me.

Nile Rodgers19:54

Turn a g

Presenter20:17

And if they do, that means they are playing their butts off.

Presenter20:24

Time for some more music, what's it going to be next? Disc 3.

Presenter20:28

Oh my god, let's do the thing that really changed my life. You know, I talked about a day in the life and having dropping acid with Timothy Leary, whom I didn't know was Timothy Leary at the time. And I went up to this house in the Hollywood Hills because these guys who had really long hair, and we lived in the ghetto in Los Angeles at this time, I never saw guys with hair that seemed to cover their eyes. They looked like shaggy dogs. And I walked over to the guys and I said, Phew, who are you dudes? And they went, well, man, you know, we're freaks, man. And I went, freaks. You mean like that movie, Freaks? We accept him, we accept him. One of us, one of us. And they started laughing. They went, wow, cool. Spade cats, cool spade cats. And they said, You want to take a trip? And I said, Sure. And they took us up into the Hollywood Hills and there's this house that was mainly made out of glass. And they gave us acid, which we didn't know what it was. And they kept playing this record that had just been either released that morning or the night before. And it was the doors. And they kept playing this song called The End over and over and over for about a day and a half.

Presenter21:42

This is the end

Presenter21:45

Beautiful

Speaker 321:46

Friend

Speaker 321:52

This is the end.

Speaker 321:54

My only friend the M

Nile Rodgers21:59

Yeah.

Speaker 321:59

Uh

Nile Rodgers21:59

Oh my lovely flowers the L

Nile Rodgers22:05

Of everything that stands the end.

Nile Rodgers22:11

Uh

Speaker 322:11

No saggy or surprise the end.

Speaker 322:17

I'll never look into your eyes.

Speaker 322:23

Okay

Presenter22:26

The Doors and the End Nal Rogers, by the time you were fifteen you were back in New York from LA and you would regularly spend your nights riding the subway. How come?

Presenter22:37

Because

Presenter22:40

I always had insomnia since I was five and a half because when I went away to that convalescent home, the gentleman who was in charge of the kids was a child molester and he was huge. I mean, so we were all skinny, frail kids, and this guy was big, like really big. So certain types of adults terrified me and other types of adults, the bohemian, hip kind, were the coolest people in the world to me. And I always gravitated towards them. So I rode the subway all the time. I met fascinating people, never felt in danger ever. And my house felt more dangerous than the subway because

Presenter23:28

You know, m my mom having a drug habit like that, there were a lot of nefarious characters in and out and you have little kids and you know, my mom wound up having five kids and they were all younger than myself, so I I I just didn't, you know, just felt not

Presenter23:45

Cool to me to be around them. Even though my mom is loving, I've seen too many junkies completely inebriated. Like some one of these random guys wanted to do something to my entire family. It could have murdered us all in one fell swoop. My mom wouldn't even have a clue. So the subway felt safe? Subway was fantastic.

Presenter24:06

You ended up living at a place called Woody's Commune. What was it like there? Woody's on Avenue Sea. Woody was incredible. Woody ran this commune.

Nile Rodgers24:08

What was it like there?

Presenter24:15

like a real business. So we were squatters in these buildings on the Lower East Side on Avenue C. It's funny. Now I go over there, those buildings you buy an apartment, it's twenty five million dollars.

Presenter24:29

It's not like that back then. It's hysterical. It's like a couple of my friends are famous artists and I go, you know, dude, I used to live in this building like free. What did you pay? Oh, $17.5 million.

Speaker 224:29

It's not like

Speaker 224:31

Yeah.

Presenter24:41

So when you lived at Woody's commune, the only thing you had to do was pay $2 a day. And for that money, you'd be able to spend the night there, sleep in a comfortable bed, and you would get a gourmet meal because Woody's partner was like a Michelin quality chef. It was like, it was amazing. And with the money they had left over, they went out and bought pot, and we'd all smoke pot all night and listen to whatever new record came out. While you were there, you joined the Harlem unit of the Black Panthers. How would you describe the organization? The organization is sort of the wrong word because, you know, it's like being in the Army. You're really describing your platoon.

Presenter25:21

I was in the most colorful, unique section in the entire Black Panther Party called the Lower Manhattan section of the Harlem Branch. The Lower Manhattan Panthers were almost all biracial because everybody in the village was hip. It was all bohemian. So we were this very colorful bunch. And every time we went marching into Harlem, people looked at us like, whoa, what Black Panthers are those guys? And because we were so peculiar looking, we worked doubly hard. So people loved us. I mean, they adored us in the village. I mean, that's how we became friends with Hendrix. And I mean, we couldn't go down the street in Greenwich Village without somebody offering us free pizza and stuff like that. We weren't intimidating at all. We were intellectual. We went to Stuyvesant High School and places like that. And how old were you at this point?

Speaker 326:16

Bang!

Presenter26:18

16. So still incredibly young. I want you to tell me about New World Rising. You mentioned Hendrix.

Presenter26:24

Yeah, well New World Rising was my band at the time. We played with Stooges, Fog Hat bands like that. We were 16 years old and we used to smoke. People would come to see us sometime instead of the Stooges. Let's have some more music now, Rogers. This is your fourth disc. What's it gonna be?

Presenter26:43

I gotta tell you, man, this is so cool to hear these songs and it really taking me back. I remember when I first heard Hendrix play the album, Are You Experienced? It was just the most important piece of music to me of all time for about two or three weeks. But it's still cool. The lyrics and the way he played and this really made me who I am.

Presenter27:10

If you can just get your mind together, then come on across to me.

Presenter27:22

We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise.

Presenter27:28

From the bottom of the sea.

Presenter27:33

But first, are you experienced?

Presenter27:41

Have you ever been experienced? Well, I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter27:49

Jimi Hendrix and Are You Experienced? Nile Rogers, I have to say playing awesome air guitar to that as well. Like you know, you it's it's not often that I see you without a guitar in your hand. So to actually see the air guitar skills is a wonderful thing.

Speaker 327:55

As well that you know you

Speaker 328:01

This is a wonderful thing.

Presenter28:03

Nile, I mentioned earlier that your first professional job as a musician was touring with Sesame Street. What was it like getting that first paycheck? Can you remember what you spent it on? Yeah, I'm embarrassed. Yeah. I went out and bought a pair of platform shoes that were like really high because that was a big three and a half.

Speaker 228:19

That's a good 3.5 inch platform initially.

Presenter28:21

Yeah, that was the real deal. Not quite as nutty as Kiss. My hair, I couldn't find someone who could dye it the color that I wanted, but I sort of figured that I could make my hair have a greenish hue by using vegetable dye. It was ridiculous then. But anyway. No, I'm going with it. And the next day, even though my hair was dark brown, which was almost black, when the sun hit it, whoosh, it was like.

Nile Rodgers28:39

Yeah.

Nile Rodgers28:41

I hear now.

Nile Rodgers28:42

Yeah.

Presenter28:51

And I had a big afro, and I was like that dude. So, big platforms, big afro, green hair. I used to wear a Chinese garment called a happy coat all the time. I was like a super hippie. But what was interesting about my life, there weren't like hippie gigs necessarily. The gigs were mainly like in RB establishments. So I worked at the Apollo Theater, of course, and then I worked in local bands playing in different bars just around town.

Nile Rodgers29:13

Hmm.

Presenter29:22

Sooner or later I wrote my first hit record and uh

Presenter29:28

It went up the charts so fast and it was so powerful to the New York City dance disco community that the head of my record label thought, Jesus

Presenter29:39

This kid, if he could do this for unknowns, because we were completely unknown.

Speaker 229:44

Hmm.

Presenter29:45

He said, I wonder if he could sprinkle this disco fairy does on the Rolling Stones or Bette Midler. So now, the we that you're talking about is you and your lifelong collaborator and friend Bernard Edwards, the other half of Chic. And you met while you were playing in the house band of Harlem's Apollo Theatre in New York. Correct. How would you describe your partnership? It was amazing. So I am the wacky hippie. I always want the music to be as intricate as possible. And Bernard had this incredible gift of making things simple. He was fantastic. It was like the perfect combination. And Chic are an ensemble rather than a group. And you and Bernard deliberately remained anonymous back then. You alluded to Kiss and how important they would be. Tell me about that decision to take the step back out of the spotlight and to kind of not to foreground yourselves. It wasn't.

Presenter30:44

A difficult decision at all. What happened was I got stranded here in London.

Presenter30:50

And the girl I was going out with at the time was working at a club, and she said she wanted me to go see her favorite group. I said, cool. What are they called? She says, Roxy Music. I said, all right, great. Let's go check them out. So we went to see Roxy Music. And I had been in rock and roll bands for some time now. And I never saw anything like the Roxy Music experience. Like, they were all beautiful in couture clothing. And I was laughing to her. And she was like, what are you laughing at? I said, let me explain something to you. Do you know that rock and roll bands, whatever we wake up and put on in the morning, that's what we wear at the show? I said, I always make fun, you know, like you two are my really good friends. And I always say to Edge, I said, when they go out and do a show, I said, so that's what you put on this morning, huh?

Presenter31:38

But Roxy weren't, I mean, obviously, weren't they? Roxy got like they were in couture clothes. I mean, it looked amazing. I never saw anything like that. And I remember I was so excited about Roxy Museum that I remember getting home, and my girlfriend and I, we didn't even have sex. I got on the phone, like, instantly. Sorry, baby, hold on. Let me call my boy. Hey, Bernard, I just saw something you won't believe. What are you talking about? Look, these guys call it Roxy Music. What? I said, I'm telling you, we got to do the black version of this. And so, Sheik is actually like a.

Speaker 231:39

But

Presenter32:11

Cross between Roxy Music and Kiss. Because when I got home and I explained to him and I brought these album covers, all of them had these models and famous Playboy bunnies on the cover. It's a whole aesthetic world to replace it. Exactly, exactly. It was amazing to me. And I even made up a term. I said, let me see if I can remember it properly. I said, it was a wholly submersive artistic experience in music.

Speaker 332:22

Yeah.

Nile Rodgers32:22

Cool S

Nile Rodgers32:24

Exactly, exactly.

Presenter32:37

On that note, let's have some more music. What's your fifth disc going to be today, Nell Rogers? I think it's got to be we are family because, you know, when the head of the company told us we could do the stones or Bet Medura or something like that, that was just, that seemed so ridiculous because we knew we had our own way of working, which was do what we say. We say it nicely, but we're the composers and the conductors, and that's it. I couldn't imagine me going in and telling Keith Richards what to play. You know, just that doesn't make sense to me. So he talked to us about these girls that were like family to them, like family to the record label.

Presenter33:13

And I says, yeah, well, what are they called? He said, Sister Sledge. They're like family to us. They stick together like birds of a feather. And we were trying to act like we were professionals, but we were total journeymen. Had out yellow legal pads. And we went home, we looked at the libretto, and the next thing you know, we were like, hey, these are the lyrics to this song called We Are Family.

Presenter33:34

We are family.

Presenter33:38

I got all my sisters with me.

Presenter33:41

We are family.

Presenter33:47

Get up everybody and say

Presenter33:51

We are family.

Presenter33:55

I got all my sisters with me.

Presenter33:59

We are fair

Speaker 334:01

Yeah.

Presenter34:01

Uh

Speaker 334:03

Get up everybody and say

Presenter34:08

Sister Sledge and We Are Family. Niall Rogers, during that music, you told me that you recently found out exactly how many records you've played on? Yes. How many? How many recordings? Yeah.

Nile Rodgers34:17

How many?

Nile Rodgers34:19

Yeah.

Presenter34:20

They said uh that it was eighteen thousand five hundred eighty five. And I said, Wow, that sounds like a lot. When did you start counting? And they said, When you guys started chic I said, I made records before she

Presenter34:36

You mean we got to go back and look for more items? They're out. That is an astonishing body of work.

Nile Rodgers34:37

Girl.

Speaker 234:37

Bracket.

Nile Rodgers34:37

The

Speaker 234:38

They're out.

Presenter34:41

Yeah, it's pretty it's a lot.

Presenter34:44

So We Are Family was released in January 1979 and it was just six months later that disco was was somewhat deemed out of fashion. The disco socks movement reached a a really ugly zenith when a create of disco records was blown up on the field between games in a Chicago baseball stadium. What was the impact of that on you?

Presenter35:04

It was strange because we were in London at the time when that happened. So we didn't feel the impact of it right away. But we didn't consider Chic a disco band. I mean, we're simple. We're a bunch of jazz guys who learned how to write pop music. That's basically what we are. But we didn't realize because our records were so big in discos that we now became the face of that movement. So after that, you began to focus more on producing. I want to ask you about Bowie and what he was looking for for the album that would become Let's Dance. So when David and I met, I would have to say that it was really maybe the greatest.

Presenter35:51

coming together of two personalities

Presenter35:54

That were

Presenter35:56

In a strange way, polar opposites.

Presenter36:00

And honestly

Presenter36:03

David being white had a hell of a lot to do with it.

Presenter36:07

He could not only be artistic and creative and clever and all of those wonderful things that he was, but he had the benefit of being white and having tons and tons and tons of outlets. We only had one outlet. Either you were popular on this station in this format or you're done.

Presenter36:27

So when David would talk to me, I would get caught up in his idealism. I would like, go, wow, I want my life to be like that too. So we never talked about rock and roll. We never talked about pop music. All we talked about was jazz. Boy, he hit my soft spot right away because I'm raised by beep opposite. I mean, there was no record he could bring up that I didn't know. I could sit there and play what we call in jazz the head. I could play the head of anything that he would bring up. And I'd say, how fast you want it, brother? What key you want? And we just had this great relationship. And David was sort of in awe of me because most of the rock and roll guys that he knew.

Presenter37:15

Some of them were good jazz players, but they didn't have the depth of knowledge because of my classical background and stuff like that. I mean, he was sort of like, wow, this guy who wrote Aw Freak Out can do this. So it's interesting that that hinterland was there and that connection between the two of you was instant. But then the record that you made, it sounds like it was lightning fast, extremely quick to make Let's Dance. I found out things about Let's Dance that I had completely forgotten.

Nile Rodgers37:29

It's a

Nile Rodgers37:39

Life stance

Presenter37:45

I didn't know that I did the entire album of Let's Dance in Switzerland in two days. The entire thing. I had no idea. The way that I found out was I was doing the Montreux Jazz Festival and Queen had a studio called Mountain Studios in that part of Switzerland. And the engineer who was our engineer for the Let's Dance sessions said, Niel, he just passed away. He said to me, he said, Niel, I could send you a disc. You do the whole thing in two days. Every single song, Modern Love, the whole thing in two days. I was like, really? He said, yeah. And I always thought it was just Let's Dance because I knew it was fast. I had these jazz musicians and I just wrote out the charts of them and they just played it. Proof. We took it home. Let's dance, the basis of Let's Dance, was recorded in two days. Everything else, the other 15 days was Stevie Rayvon punching in and fixing a little thing in a solo or David who sang all of his vocals, by the way, in two days, the whole thing. And then Bob Clearmount mixed the album, the whole thing, in like two days.

Presenter39:01

Put on your red shoes and dance the clothes.

Presenter39:09

To the song and playing on the radio

Presenter39:17

Wow colour lights up your face

Presenter39:24

Yeah.

Speaker 339:27

Way through the crowd.

Speaker 239:28

To an empty taste

Speaker 339:29

Space.

Presenter39:33

David Bowie and Let's Dance. Nile Rogers, many years of your success ran alongside drug taking and drinking. How bad did those problems become for you?

Presenter39:46

Um uh I would say really bad. Um my heart stopped a number of times uh one night.

Presenter39:59

I did drive all the way home, though, and passed out in the elevator. And thank God I was right across the street from the hospital. And thank God.

Presenter40:08

The janitors who were collecting the garbage happened just happened to be on the floor that I had passed out on, which was not my floor. I lived on the 28th floor and I pushed the button 14. I don't know why, but I pushed 14, boom, fell out dead, and they were collecting the garbage on 14. So had I gotten to my apartment floor, they would have already done the trash, and there'd be no Niles sitting here talking to you.

Nile Rodgers40:19

I live

Presenter40:37

Is it true that it was a bad gig rather than experiences like that that actually eventually was the turning point for you? Yeah. So I was down in Miami Beach producing a Cuban musician named Nil Lara.

Presenter40:52

And Madonna had a place down there. And I was just walking down the street and I ran into Madonna.

Presenter40:57

And she said, Now, I'm having a birthday party tomorrow. You want to come over? I was like, Sure, cool. And I went out on a date'cause I had just met this woman.

Presenter41:09

Sometimes you feel so bad about things you really wish you could take them back. I had just done the score to Beverly Hills Cop 3 and I was doing three films back to back to back and she and I met and she says, my God, she sounded like my mom. She said, man, you're the nicest person I've ever met in my life. And we went to dinner and this is all I remember. I had nine sakes.

Nile Rodgers41:30

And

Presenter41:35

Like like instantly and she was like whoa

Presenter41:40

I think she was thinking to herself, I might have to take that back. So I said, I'm going to take you over to Mo's Crib. And I'm sorry. Mo's crib. Is this Madonna's house? Okay, just in case I have a go, I want to know I'm calling it the right thing. Well, I'm probably the only one who called her Mo, but everybody else called her Madge or something, which sounds like an old woman. But anyway, so I said, Yeah, I'm going to take you to Mo's Crib later on. It's her birthday party. But before that, I'm going to go play with my man that I'm down here working with, Nil Lara. So I go to play with Nil, and he's a musical genius. So I thought, wow, what am I going to play with this guy to get over with his crowd? So I started doing my Jimi Hendrix tricks, you know, playing with my teeth and behind my back and behind my head and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I hadn't done that since I was like 16. You feel stupid afterwards. But I did it. The crowd went bananas. So I thought it was amazing. And the next day, oh, and I'm so sorry because the actress that I was with, I don't know how she got home. I've never seen her again in my life. I've tried to apologize to her. I've never spoken to her. I just don't know. But I also found out I was the last person to leave Madonna's house that they carried me out.

Speaker 241:48

Mo's crib. Is this Madonna's house? Okay.

Speaker 241:52

Yeah.

Nile Rodgers41:52

No.

Speaker 241:54

Yeah.

Presenter42:56

But um the next day when the gentleman played uh the demo, because I didn't know that he recorded everything he did, he played it for me. He said, Hey man, you want to hear what you played last night? I said, Sure, it'd be great. He played it and I was like the look on my face, I was so embarrassed. I was like, Whoa.

Presenter43:15

I now really feel officially crazy because my brain said I was amazing.

Presenter43:22

My

Presenter43:24

Performance, it was pretty lousy. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't what I thought. So, the difference between the reality and the imagined reality was just too strong for me to take. And I knew that the only thing that was responsible for that was me doing drugs. That my drugs made me think it was amazing. The people freaking out made me think it was amazing. My awesomely beautiful date made me think it was amazing. But the tapes don't lie, it was not amazing. And that was the last time I ever had a drink or a drug, and that's more than 24 years.

Nile Rodgers43:48

Uh

Presenter44:03

Now, Roger, time for another piece of music. Tell me about your seventh disc to day.

Presenter44:07

Um, yes, so I gotta kick this one, man, because this is so, so super important because this is really how the music business works. You know, you work, you work, you work, you work, you do your best, you do your best, you

Presenter44:21

Think you got everything right.

Presenter44:23

You think you are the best plan in the world and

Presenter44:28

Sometimes you're right, but most of the time you're wrong.

Presenter44:32

But this time we were right and we were really right and

Presenter44:36

I had been trying to work with these guys for about 18 or 19 years. They called me up, they were in New York.

Presenter44:46

And they said, hey, Nihil, what are you doing? Now, they didn't know that I was actually in my recovery period from cancer. And I was, you know, doing my five-mile walk a day, and I was into it. It was an adventure. It was wonderful in a strange way. That's going to sound crazy, that having cancer, but it made me walk up and down all over New York. And I know every street. There's not a house. There's not a building I can go by. And like, I said, oh, you know, you used to live there with so-and-so. Oh, God damn, remember when Joey Ramon and I got carried out of there? And, you know, like every building. It was just amazing. So.

Presenter45:27

Uh they called me up.

Presenter45:29

And they said, now we want to come over and play you some demos. We like to do an album. We now want to make a daft punk record with other people. And I was like,

Presenter45:41

That's all I do, is make records with other people. Sure, come on up. They said to me, and this is pretty much a quote.

Presenter45:49

We want to

Presenter45:52

Act

Presenter45:53

As if

Presenter45:55

The Internet never existed.

Presenter45:59

And when artists talk to me in that type of cryptic language, I understand perfectly. So it was like

Presenter46:09

Okay, you want to make a record as if the internet didn't exist. That means you want a record with real players. You want a record that, you know, we're not playing the click track. And then we were recording at Hendricks' studio, Electric Lady. So they get there, and I said to Tama, I said, dude, do you know that you're standing in the exact same spot that Bernard was standing in when we recorded our very first chic record?

Presenter46:35

They almost lost their minds. They said, How did you make chic records? Exactly what he said. How did you make chic records? I said, Well, like this.

Presenter46:45

He played the song for me. I says, you know what, man? Turn all that stuff off except for the drums. And the result was get lucky. And the result was get lucky.

Nile Rodgers46:51

And the result

Presenter46:56

She's up all night to the sun, I'm up all night to get some She's up all night for good fun I'm up all night to get lucky We're up all night to the sun We're up all night to get some We're up all night for good fun We're up all night to get lucky We're up all night to get lucky We're up all night to get lucky We're up all night to get lucky We're up all night to get lucky

Presenter47:27

Daftpunk and Get Lucky. Now Rogers, you've twice been diagnosed with two different types of cancer, I think. How have you coped?

Presenter47:36

Fantastic.

Presenter47:38

Look at me. I feel great. We gig more than you can imagine. Music is the thing that keeps me going. I love it. And I mean, pop music has lost some of its biggest icons in recent years, and I know many of them have been friends and collaborators of yours. We talked about Bowie. You know, Prince obviously comes to mind as well. Has that made you think about the idea of legacy? Is that something that you are concerned with?

Presenter48:05

Yeah, in in a really strange way, and it's not necessarily because of them, it's because of my dad. My dad was really uh a genius, a super genius I mean so much so where a white man who's considered the king of jazz

Presenter48:21

Would only allow one black man to play with him. It was because my dad knew all this stuff these other guys didn't know. But there's no record of my father. So it's sort of romantic to me. You know, Bernard died right after we played a show. He almost died on stage, but I didn't even know that he had passed out. I actually thought he was just being the genius he was. He stopped playing in the middle of that stance and came back in the right spot. I was like, wow, that was so cool. And because of our work ethic, he came back in playing. And then only a few weeks after that, Johnny Guitar Watson, I believe, died right on stage. It may sound a bit morbid, but to me, that is the most romantic thing possible. Me, you know, dive playing.

Presenter49:12

I don't know, we are family or get lucky or something like that. It's not only ironic and stuff, but it's it's beautiful because.

Presenter49:20

You get to do what you love to the very last. That's amazing to me. That's here at your eighth desk now. What's it going to be?

Presenter49:28

This is good times. This is really what we stand for. We want people to have good times when they come see us. Like we say, leave your cares behind.

Nile Rodgers49:42

Uh

Presenter49:42

Uh

Nile Rodgers49:42

Uh

Presenter49:45

Uh

Nile Rodgers49:45

Uh Come chance behind

Nile Rodgers49:49

Be a child!

Nile Rodgers49:57

We have a good time.

Presenter50:02

Are you staying a bad?

Presenter50:09

Chic and good times. Now, Rogers, I'm sending you to our desert island now, and you're going to be in complete isolation. How will you cope? I'm a loner anyway, so I'm cool.

Presenter50:21

Now I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you, but you will be allowed to choose another book of your own. What would you like that to be? Have to be the second book I've ever read, which would be Moby Dick.

Presenter50:33

Herman Melville, you may have it. And what about a luxury item, something to make your time on the island more enjoyable? Ah, it would have to be a guitar.

Presenter50:43

One of my jazz guitars because if I take the hit maker I don't have an amplifier or do I get an amp with it?

Presenter50:50

I think I could do you a guitar amplifier combo. That's fair enough. If it's not a semi-acoustic, you're gonna need an amp, right? So yeah, okay. Any particular amp?

Nile Rodgers50:50

I think I could do you a guitar.

Nile Rodgers50:56

So yeah.

Presenter50:59

Yeah, I'll take any amp with um ten inch speakers in it. Stevie Ray Vaughan, after he and I met, he gave me a couple of amps that I just loved and I played on them for years and once again they had ten inch speakers. He said, Now, I had a feeling you were a ten inch kind of guy.

Presenter51:19

10 inches, it is. Finally, if you had to save just one of the eight disks that you've chosen today, which would it be?

Presenter51:28

Wow, that's hard.

Presenter51:30

I I would have to probably say the door is the end.

Presenter51:34

I

Presenter51:35

Now, Rogers, thank you so very much for sharing your desert island discs with us. No problem. Thank you for having me.

Presenter51:51

I hope you enjoyed listening to Niall and his music and even had a bit of a dance. Niall brought the hit maker with him to the recording. We did make sure he remembered to take it with him though. Niall chose A Day in the Life by the Beatles as one of his tracks today. The Beatles producer George Martin was cast away twice, first by Roy Plumley in 1982 and again by Sue Lawley in 1995.

Presenter52:16

How would it work with you and the Beatles, George? W w w would one of them come to you, John, say, with a with an idea for Strawberry Fields, or would they present as a group, or would he come along and have it completed? Or, you know?

Speaker 352:28

Well, we worked together for almost a decade and it it the the rule changed somewhat. I mean to begin with I was the master and they were the pupils. At the end I think I was the pupil and they were the masters. During the Pepper period it was m my function was really was to

Speaker 352:45

Try and extract from them the maximum of their talent and try and find out what they wanted to hear. In the case of Paul, he was very articulate and always had a very good idea of what he wanted, and had very good ideas too. In John's case, he had marvellous ideas, but they were a little bit difficult to realize. He wasn't a very practical man, he couldn't change a fuse, you know, and he certainly didn't know the the the instruments that could be used, so he would come to me and describe the sound that he would want, and I would then try and give him what he wanted.

Presenter53:16

But how would he he have described strawberry fields, for example?

Speaker 353:20

Well, in the case of Strawberry Fields, we started off with just the Beatles doing it. And then he came back to me and said, I it's not quite what I imagined. He said, you know, I'd like to do it again. Could you write a score? I'd like to use some locellos and some brass, maybe some trumpets and things. So I said, okay. And I spent some time with him. I talked through with him what we could do, and then went away and wrote a score. But in other cases, he would say, this to me is an orange sound, or something of that sort. You say he would be very poetic, but not terribly accurate in his description.

Presenter53:55

But then you would deliver something, and maybe he wouldn't like it, so you'd have to go and find a different way of doing that.

Speaker 353:59

Absolutely. Well in fact, you know, before he died I spent an evening with him in New York and we were chatting about old times. And he came up with a remark which shook me. He said, you know, I'd love to re re-record everything.

Speaker 354:10

I said, John, you can't really mean that. Everything we've ever done, you'd like to re-re-record. Come on. He said, No, I really I mean it.

Speaker 354:17

And I said, What about strawberry fields? And we said, Oh, especially strawberry fields.

Speaker 354:21

And he I realized he was never really satisfied with anything he'd done, because his dream world was always better. Real life wasn't half as much fun.

Presenter54:32

Fascinating. George Martin talking to Sue Lawley in nineteen ninety five. Robin Miller, best known for his work with Sharday, was Kirstie's guest in twenty fifteen.

Presenter54:43

You were sixteen when you had an appointment at Moorfield's Eye Hospital uh in London, and at that appointment they concluded that um you would go blind and they said in twenty or thir

Speaker 354:54

Thirty years. What what do you remember about the rest of that day, having heard that as an absolute diagnosis?

Presenter54:57

Uh

Speaker 254:57

Mm-hmm.

Presenter54:59

Uh

Speaker 354:59

Uh

Speaker 255:00

Mm.

Speaker 255:01

My memory of it is this very

Speaker 255:05

Pompous man just going, you know, well, we can confirm your diagnosis, and it'll take 25 or 30 years. And it's possible there'll be a cure. It depends how many youngsters are run over by buses, and we can get at their eyes to take a look. But anyway, don't think about that. Just think about what's going by. Pop down the corridor and go and see the nurse, and she'll give you a pair of dark glasses and a white stick, and then you can go. And I got the bus home.

Speaker 255:32

And I actually missed my stop. I took the bus right to the end of the line and missed my stop, I think in a state of shock, I suppose.

Presenter55:40

Your your parents had known this was an inherited condition. They knew that from the get-go, did they, that this was a little boy whose prognosis was not good.

Speaker 255:45

This was a little boy who's who

Speaker 255:48

They did, and my mum took me to every uh faith healer, which uh I've got very little time for that stuff now. I mean, and that was really a series of build ups and letdowns. So

Speaker 256:00

I I'd rather wish she hadn't done that. But she believed it, so I suppose she wasn't about to sit down and tell me you're going to go blind, because in her view

Speaker 256:10

That wasn't gonna happen.

Presenter56:12

And so a year later then, you were seventeen, I think it was nineteen sixty eight, and you find yourself Backs

Speaker 256:18

stage.

Presenter56:19

There you go.

Presenter56:21

Uh

Speaker 256:21

Uh

Presenter56:21

Yeah.

Speaker 256:21

And your eyes were good enough to stand there and watch the Rolling Stones. Yeah, you were watching the Rolling Stones. How come you were at the side of the stage watching them?

Presenter56:24

In the daytime they were fine, yeah.

Speaker 256:30

My sister got in with that crowd.

Speaker 256:34

and she met a young guitarist, Mick Taylor, and she started going out with him, and we were sitting in his flat in Paddington, and he came back through the door and said, Well, that was quite a day. I've just had a what I think was an audition with the Rolling Stones. Anyway, they said you've got the job. So from then on

Speaker 256:53

I was in the inner sanctum.

Presenter56:54

Can you take me to that moment then, the moment when this 17-year-old boy stands at the side of the stage in 1960?

Speaker 256:59

Very important moment. Nebworth. Sun's going down.

Speaker 257:04

I'm standing, I've got Jack Nicholson on my left and Paul McCartney on my right, and I'm peering over Bill Wyman's base stack.

Speaker 257:12

Now I had already known I wanted to do music, but that was an orgasmic experience for me. And it was like that's what I want to do. I want to have sixty thousand people and make music that they all

Speaker 257:31

Love.

Presenter57:32

The remarkable Robin Miller. As ever, both those programmes and so many more musicians and songwriters can be downloaded from the Desert Island Discs back catalogue. Just search for them in your usual podcast provider and please do rate us. It helps others find additions they might like too. Next time, my guest will be Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society and a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry. His music selection is really eclectic, and by the end of the programme, you'll be able to stun your friends with your knowledge of the ribosome. I know. Hope you can join us.

Nile Rodgers58:13

Hello, I'm Elvin Bragg, and just before you go, I wanted to let you know about another podcast from the BBC that I think you might like. It's called In Our Time. And each week, three expert academics join me to discuss ideas from culture, science, history, philosophy, religion. At the end of each podcast, there's more discussion we couldn't fit into the live programme. To subscribe to In Our Time, go to your usual podcast provider, search for In Our Time, click subscribe, and you can enjoy the programme and that extra content every week.