September 6, 2022 • 34 mins
Today we are revisiting one of our favorite early episodes of Broken Record with the legendary producer, Nile Rodgers. Over the course of his five decade-long career, Nile Rodgers has performed on, written, and produced some of the greatest dance songs of all time, including Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out,” Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and Madonna’s “Like A Virgin.”
Back in Fall of 2018, Nile met up with Bruce Headlam at the same New York City recording studio where 35 years earlier, Nile recorded the Let’s Dance album with David Bowie. This time around, Nile brought his famed disco funk band Chic to the interview to perform live renditions of their classic hits including, “Le Freak,” “Good Times,” and “Everybody Dance.” So all the music you will hear in today’s episode was recorded live, just for us.
In between performances, Nile shares exhilarating stories from his life, including how he found salvation as a young jazz guitarist whose teenage mom struggled with heroin addiction. Nile also talks about the night he played old James Brown tunes with Prince and Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood at a small club in London. And he explains what it was like going clubbing with Madonna as her star was starting to explode in the mid-’80s.
You can listen to a playlist of some of our favorite songs produced by Nile Rodgers HERE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey everyone, Today we're revisiting one of the early
great episodes of Broken Record with legendary producer Nile Rogers.
Over the course of me more than half a century
long career, Nile Rogers has played his signature guitar on, written,
(00:35):
or produced some of the greatest dance songs of all time,
including Dana ross As I'm Coming Out, Daft Punks, Get Lucky,
and Madonna's Like a Virgin. Back in fall of twenty eighteen,
now I met up with Bruce Hellum at the same
New York City recording studio where thirty five years earlier,
Now recorded the Let's Dance Album with David Bowie. But
this time around, Nile brought his famed disco funk band
(00:59):
Chic to the interview to perform live renditions of their
classic hits, including Lafreak, Good Times and Everybody Dance. So
all the music you will hear in today episode was
recorded live one take, just for us. In between performances,
Nile shares exhilarating stories from his life, including how he
found salvation as a young jazz guitarist whose teenage mom
(01:22):
struggled with heroin addiction. Nil also talks about the night
he played old James Brown tunes with Prince and Rolling
Stones guitarist Ron Wood at a small club in London,
and Nile explains what it was like going out clubbing
with Madonna as her star was exploding in the mid eighties.
(01:42):
This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Bruce Edlam and Nile Rodgers from
New York City's Power Station studio in twenty eighteen. That's
the original guitar. Yeah, this is it. You still only
use one guitar? This is it? I only use one guitar.
Do you only have one? Now? I have two hundred? Okay?
(02:02):
Do you have nice hollow bodies? Mainly I have. I's
going to make sure de Angelico d Pristos L five
Super four hundreds. But this one was when did you
buy that nineteen seventy three? Wasn't it wasn't an expensive one?
You put on a no, it's cheap. I didn't, actually,
So I traded my jazz guitar and they gave me
(02:25):
this and three hundred dollars. So if in nineteen seventy
to be imagine giving me three hundred dollars plus a strat,
like what was the jazz guitar worth in those days?
Who I mean, even though it's a strat, it's not
like any other strat. Yeah, it's light, it's a feather.
It's thinner than anything you've ever seen. It's the nineteenth
(02:46):
strat that they made in nineteen fifty nine. Look at
Look at the difference, and just look at look at
the thickness. So the head stock there, just check it
out at that, you can see it all the way
from there. Look at this, Yeah, this one. You can
big hands though you don't need a you don't need
a thin Wow, No, I got small hands? You do?
Oh man, Jesus, you ever see real guitar players like
(03:08):
these guys like Steve Vy and Ship and Hendrix. Like
for me when I'm when I'm playing classical guitar, I
really have to to get this stretch in certain pieces
that that's a big deal for me. I have my
finger way down here. Most classical guitar players can still
you can still see some of their thumb. But me,
(03:28):
you still practice classical. Not really, there's no point. But
I just did an orchestral version Let's dance, And I
had an idea of playing classical guitar, but it felt
better to have Bully singing with the strings. Was amazing.
Oh yeah, it's unbelievable. I want to ask you about
(03:49):
all the songs, but let's start with Let's Dance. I
want you to tell me about the first time you
heard the song. Yeah, the very first time David played
Let's Dance for me. He walked into my bedroom. We
were in Switzerland, and I believe that he had said
(04:09):
he had just written it the night before, and he
um walked into the studio and he played something, um,
something that sounded like that. You know. I was like,
and I was like, that was and he was into it,
um and um. He had the lyrics as well well.
(04:33):
He just he was singing very um, true to it,
like he knew what it was. He was singing, Um,
it's almost hard for me to do it. Um. What
was he doing? No, I did that. That's what he said.
(04:56):
He's going, let's stand on the radio nothing something like that.
Way that's up your face. And then I asked him
(05:18):
if I could do an arrangement. So I fooled around
with it and I was going and I knew that
he liked jazz, so I could put in the jazzy
chord and I could tell that he would like it
right away. But then when I moved it from A
minor up to B flat, it actually had a different vibe.
(05:39):
It got it got brighter in like and funkier sounding.
So I started going, you can already hear it like.
Oh and by the way, when I started playing it,
I only imitated his just for a few bars. I
started going, but that still sounded dark. So then I
(06:07):
moved it up and oct him when I went. But
(06:30):
because of the whole disco sucks back backlash, I didn't
want to do chucking on David Poley's album, So you
ended up slowing it down after that, Um yeah, and
only playing like So, if you hear the demo that
I did in Switzerland, I'm chucking. I'm actually playing, you know.
(06:54):
When you hear the original demo, I'm doing then Rogers thing.
But when we got to America, I made a conscious
decision not to do that and had the horns sort
of doubling me and giving it some punch. And when
Bow and I walked into the studio, Um, Bob Clearmontain
was getting the different delays that he was going to
(07:16):
use on the various instruments on the drums, so we
wound up having a multi tap delay happening on the guitar.
So even though all I played was the rhythm that
you here, winds up sounding something like what the song now,
(07:48):
Let's Dance. As many fans, it has one very famous
fan who always wanted to play with you. Um, oh
my god, Prince is that? Oh my god? Yeah? So
um for years, I mean, I can't even tell you
how many years, maybe since the first time I met
Prince Um. He had asked me to play Let's Dance
(08:12):
live together somewhere. So we had played live together in
London at a little club in Camden, and we did
not play Let's Dance that night, I'm positive of that.
We played a bunch of James Brown's songs and maybe
the Ohio Players and some funk songs. When I walked
(08:33):
into the club, he was playing with Ron Wood and
I don't know what they were playing. I don't remember.
I was really pretty high in those days, but they
were probably playing the blues or jamming on a popular
rock song Sunshine or Your Love or something like that.
And then when I walked in, Prince said, whoa, now, Rogers, not,
this man has the funk. And he gave me his
(08:55):
guitar and he sat down on the keyboards and we
just jammed for like I don't even know how long,
but that felt like one of the most amazing nights
of my life. And I remember calling the concierge at
my hotel and asked him if they had purple roses.
I didn't know if there was, if there was anything
as a purple rose, if they existed, So I said,
(09:16):
figure out a way to make them purple, either spray
paint them or put food coloring in them and send
I don't know, I was pretty absurd in those days.
I may have sent like a hundred purple roses to
Prince's room. Nice. That's crazy, But you ended up playing
the song, yeah, eventually. So years later he tricked me
(09:37):
a couple of times. We both were living sort of
in Turks and Cacos a bit. He bought a house
down there and I was part of a resort project,
and one New Year's Eve we played and oh it
was cool, and John bon Jovie came when John got
his start here, so John bon Jovi and Prince came
(09:59):
to the show, and Prince said to me, oh, wow,
tonight is the night. Now I'll get the play Let's
stance with you in the band. So we set up
to set up his amp and everything, did the whole
sound check. We're ready for Prince to come out and
play New Year's Eve. The places crowded, everybody's having a
good time, and we're doing our thing. And I get
into the middle of the setting. I say, ladies and gentlemen,
we have a special guest coming out tonight. I think
(10:21):
you're gonna love this, Prince, and I introduced him and
the band. We're just standing there, no print. He doesn't
come out, and I keep introducing him. I go, Prince.
I don't know if I started screaming press because I
knew it was there, and someone told me that he
actually ran and hid because he wouldn't come out. So
(10:43):
after a while we just said to hell with him.
We played the song, and then at the end of
the night, I didn't even ask him. Maybe I asked
him why he didn't come out or something I don't
even remember, but we wound up playing. It was great,
everybody had a good time, but I was embarrassed as hell.
So now fast forward a year or two later and
we're playing a show with him at the Superdome in
(11:04):
Louisiana in New Orleans, and he told us that he
was going to come out. Now we're in front of
like seventy thousand people, and I'm not going to be
this idiot and make the same mistake again. And ladies
and gentlemen, we have a special guest for you tonight, Prince.
And then he doesn't come out. And I'm standing in
front of seventy thousand people and he doesn't come out.
At least at the resort was only about two hundred,
(11:26):
so I didn't I didn't introduce him, even though we
went through the same steps we did sound check. He
had his am there in the whole bit. So when
we get into the part of the song where Ralph
tells the whole crowd to jump, Jump, Jump, I'm standing
on the stage and I'm jumping up and down, and
then I hear this crowd like, give this loud roar wow,
And I look to my left and there's Print jumping
(11:50):
with me, jumping up and holding his hand up in
the air, and the crowd freaks out. And then we
go into the next bit and he takes over and
starts sewing and it's just killing. It's so good. So
he did a little bit of like the sort of
Stevie ay Vaughan kind of thing, but then he went
into like just chucking with me, and that's what I
got nuts. And you can go online and see it.
(12:11):
It's on YouTube. It's so great. We'll have more with
Bruce Headlam and Nile Rodgers after the break. We're back
with Bruce Headlam, Nile Rodgers and Cheek. Now. I looked up,
(12:49):
and this is for the music nerds out there. I
looked up the chords to Everybody Dance, and it's a
C minor seventh, B flat eleven, B flat eleven. I
should let you tell the chords. You know, the chords
C minus seven, B flat eleven to C eleven A
flat major seven. Now this chord, you can spell it
(13:09):
a number of ways. I like to think of it
as a minor seven with a raise five, or a
minor a minor seven flat thirteen, but most people would
probably call it a D minor eleven with an A
in the base. UM to a B flat eleven, And
(13:29):
the reason for that is because um, I wanted to
have this chromatic movement. So right, so it goes to
everybody dances, do do do do? Clap your hands. Okay,
(14:24):
you're a serious jazz guy. Yeah, nobody else would do
it that way. I don't do do do? You do
all your songs that way? It is it that kind
of chording I like to think. So, I mean, look
at Let's dance? How cool that is? I mean that's
um that. I guess that's somewhat of a trademark of mine,
putting different types of jazzy chords and cool voicings. Um
(14:45):
in pop songs, you know, look at Diana Ross and
I'm Coming Out and all that stuff. And you also,
was everybody dance the first time? You used to break down?
And um, no, breakdowns were actually quite common in our
live shows. Um, it was just the first time I
did it when I was recording and I was the boss.
(15:09):
Every other time that I recorded, I was not the boss,
so I didn't have any control of it. Yeah, And
was that from jazz? Like breaking it down like that
head kind of rebuilding? That's an R and B thing.
It's a it's an R and B disco thing. It's
a common R and B move. You would hear a
lot of R and B bands breakdown and go now
I want to talk to ladies for me, or I
want to talk to you, or like Earth when and
Fire when you hear them say pop, I want to
(15:31):
talk to you about things I see every day, you know,
and they break down on the record. It's all about
So it was very common in R and B to
do that. I want to talk a bit about good times.
(16:24):
You said in an interview once that all your songs
are nonfiction, absolutely, and they're often about things that you
want to see happen. Can you tell me what good times? Yes?
So when we wrote Good Times in America, at the time,
we were in the midst of the greatest financial recession
(16:46):
since the Great Depression. We had gas rationing, you know,
I mean if you lived in New York State, I remember,
if you're a license plate ended with an even number,
you can get gas on a certain day or an
odd number a different day. So times were sort of hard,
and we thought, well, what other period in American history
(17:09):
seemed to feel like that? And we went wow, you know,
the Roaring twenties and the you know, the the Great
Depression and that sort of jazz era and the whole
thing about dance marathons, and that's why we came up
with the whole yas y'alls the thing on dance, dance dance.
The whole concept of the first few Chic albums was
all jazz era stuff and h on risque. When we
(17:33):
finally did Good Times, we were confident enough in our
band to now sort of expose our formula to the world.
So the lyrics to Good Times were sort of ripped
off from Al Jolson and the song that they used
to sing after Prohibition when they were happy Day and
(17:58):
then time and any dang about quarter to night. So
we go, happy, happy Days are here again. Right, that
was we start right with it. So we are obvious
again times. Right, let's get together, Let's do it again.
(18:30):
Because Good Times came out at a particular political time
because the Disco Sucks movement had come they had the
riot in Chicago. Yeah, um, summer of seventy nine. What
did that feel like for you? Well, it was really
(18:52):
interesting because it was sort of like a biphasic kind
of feeling because when we found out about it, we
were on an airplane flying from Europe back to America.
So it happened while we were away, and we didn't
think of ourselves as a disco band. I mean, listen
to every chic album. We have ballads, everyone has an instrumental.
(19:15):
It's always a jazzy, you know type of thing. The
Diana Ross album is incredibly As far as the composers,
I gotta say that that's really unique. There's nothing I've
ever written that sounds like that before or after. That
was purely written for Diana Ross. I mean, you listen
to a song like I'm coming Out, and I mean
(19:36):
I have a fanfare in there. I mean, we're When
we first saw Diana Ross, Bernard walked with me and said, wow,
look at that. She's like our black queen. So I
kept that in my head and when I wrote that fanfare,
I said to Diana, I said, look, you know, like
when the President of the United States walked walks in
(19:57):
the room, they go dad, Hail to the Chief. I said,
this is your fanfare. And I told her, I says,
you will never start a show without this song ever
the rest of your life. And now we see thirty
five years later, I was right. She would never start
to show without playing out Coming Out at the beginning
of her show. Although one of your most famous songs,
(20:18):
the Freak, is actually about being rejected at a disco. Correct,
Can you tell that story quick? Yeah? So our first song,
Everybody Dance, was the real sort of super cool club
song on our first album. Even though Dance Dance Dance
was popular and was big on the radio and was
(20:39):
platinum twelve inch, I mean it was huge, it was
Everybody Dance that really secured our vibe as a cool, hip,
underground dance group. And so Grace Jones had heard Everybody
Dance and she was a fan of that song, and
she was thinking about having these two young new producers
(21:00):
do what would then be her next album. She said
that the only way we could truly understand her artistically
is to see her live show. Then we really would
understand who Grace Jones is. But the problem was we
had only spoken to her that one time. We never
met her. We were on the phone. So Grace has
a very unique accent. She's the only one on earth
(21:22):
that sounds like that, and she says, so darling. But
you go to the back door and you tell them
your personal friends of miss Grace Jones, and they would
let you in so we did that with that accent,
and the guy slams the door in our faces. And
while he's slamming the door, he's going, oh, fuck off,
and we said no, no, no, no no, no, we're kicking
the door again because now we had to be above
(21:43):
the level of the music. Now once we finally got
his attention, so we wanted to get him before he
walked away from the door. So we kicked really hard
and he said, you know, he reiterated what he had said,
I told you the f off, so we knew we
weren't going to get in. It was New Year's Eve
seventy seven going into seventy eight, and we were walking
(22:05):
back to my apartment, which is on fifty second Street
between eight and nine, and to get there we had
to pass a liquor store, so we bought two bottles
of damper On, which in those days we called it
rock and roll mouthwash. We bought two bottles of DP
and went to my house and we downed them so
fast we got really light headed, and we turned his
(22:26):
rejection phrase f off into shriek out. We went, oh, well,
when we first wrote it, we wrote a whole song
(22:48):
using the original lyric and thinking of every situation where
the appropriate response would be fuck up. So we're playing no, no,
if a cab driver cuts you off, don't, don't fuck up.
And I remember saying, if your mother asked you to
do homework, fuck up. And we were into, were laughing,
(23:09):
feeling great, and then finally my partner Bernard's I'm a man,
you notice is happening and I'm like a Bernard. You know,
this is two years before hip hop. We can't get
you know, a radio record on the radio that's got
the F bomb in it. But somehow we wound up
with freak up. We have to take a quick break
(23:57):
right here, but we'll be right back with Bruce Headlam
and Nil Rogers. We're back with Bruce Headlam, Nil Rogers
and Chic. You mentioned that you and Bernard didn't see
yourselves as stars as frontman and you saw a chic
very much as this organization. Yes, you've built this incredible career,
(24:19):
You've had hits literally in every decade since you started
by being this great collaborator. Why does collaboration seem to
mean more to you than being the front man? Because
as a composer, I write for ensembles. That's what I hear.
The only time I could ever think of writing a
(24:39):
composition that was actually recorded and performed for either a soloist,
a solo instrument, or maybe a duet. It's just for films.
I can coming to America write this queue where they
go the Royal Penis is clean, your Highness, and it's
just like a pan flute, you know, pan flute and harp.
(25:03):
And then in the movie called Soup for One, I
do this thing called Tavern on the Green and it's
just me playing classical guitar along with a Yamaha CSAD
synthesizer with my keyboard player. But those are the only
duets that I've ever really recorded. Everything else is for
a bunch of a room full of people. But in
(25:25):
your autobiography, which I'm going to recommend everybody because it's
it really is this incredible life story and it is
it's sort of James Baldwin and Charles Dickens wrote a
book together. It may start to approach your You know,
you had a very you come back to this a
very lonely life. Yeah, you're around your parents or your
(25:48):
stepfather and your mother, whom you love dearly, but who
would send you on bus rides across the country by yourself,
who often left you alone. And they were heroin attics.
I mean they were in pursuit of their number one love.
And when when someone first tuned your guitar and you
played I think a day Day life, right, and you
thought I'm going to be Were you thinking I want
(26:09):
to be a star? I want to be up on
snow No, no, no no. Prior to that, I had
only really played classical music, so I just wanted to
be part of a symphony orchestra. I used to play
the clarinet, which is funny now because if I tried
to play the clarinet it would probably sound hysterical. But
my dream when I was a kid was to be
a part of Maybe that's what it's all about it
(26:31):
because I've always wanted to be part of an orchestra,
to be part of an organization, and because in a
big symphony orchestra, basically you could hide, but you know
every now and you might get a great solo, you know.
So that was sort of my dream growing up. I
wanted to emulate my biological father, who was always just
a percussionist with bands. He was never like the guy
(26:54):
out front, like Tito point there or something. But you
like that sense of anonymity, yeah, because it was the
way that I never felt attractive or anything like that.
And when you looked at stars, stars were always like
you know, they walk into the room. You know. I
remember I used to walk into a club with Madonna.
(27:15):
Now I'm born in New York, knew every club owner
in town, and I'd walk into a club with Madonna
and she was relatively unknown, and people go, hey, who's
that girl with Now who's that girl? You hear it
then like who's that girl? Who's that girl? Now? Who's
that girl? And she was unknown, but that's because she
was a star. She felt like a star from the
(27:35):
moment you met her. She you know, they just have
that thing, Bowie, it's a star. He walks in the
room and like wow, they just you know, you could
feel it, so I knew. I never It's funny. I
always laugh. I say, you know, if I walk into
a room with Lady Gaga, people go, oh my God,
there's Lady God. Then he go wow God, Then he go,
hey Nile, you want to be the Hey Nile guy.
(28:00):
I like being here now, so like I've done, you know,
maybe almost like uh, I mean I heard the other
day they said like fifteen thousand, eight hundred and eight
recording something insane but still like walking through. Hey, n man,
are you doing? I think think Fran might beat me
(28:21):
up if you guys go any farther. Um and I
would stay here all day. We only have one more
song to talk about that Daft Punk. But I think
we're okay. All right. That was unplugged. That was just fantastic.
Thank you. Bruce and Nile didn't have time to talk
about the Daft Punk song Get Lucky that Nile played
(28:41):
on and co wrote, but Chic did perform it for us.
So here it is in its entirety, like the legend
(29:03):
the fan all lives with beginning, what keeps the planet spinning,
(29:27):
the fall from the beginning because came to far to
(29:48):
give star right by and come to die. She's I'm
(30:09):
back to the Sun. I'm a fun back to get home.
She's a fun night fun, I'm a mom dage. We're
a found night to the sun. Were mount again down
night Mine run night together, Lucky, We're up fun nice again. Up,
We're up fum nice again. Luck, We're ubout Night get
(30:31):
lucky night together, Lucky bag and no river my shucket
(30:53):
keep funking man, Yeah, what is the time to la?
If you want to leave my wet come by to
give far And I'm a fun song. She's a fun
(31:28):
fun from a fun fun light of the sun. I'm
a fun night to get song with a fun night
for the fun or up fun night to get lucky
from my fun night to get lucky. We're up fun
night to get lucky. We're up one night to get lucky,
grow up on lack to get lucky. Ship she to
(32:24):
get back the sun from a pumack. So she's a
funda for the fun about sometime lucky. We're up that
(32:47):
of the sun, were up the son. We're up back
of the fun. We're upun back together. We're un night
to gel lucky. We're up lucky. We're upun back to
get lucky. We're up gel lucky. We're up night to
get lay sure up night to get lovey for a
full night to get laughing my lucky. We're fun to
(33:11):
get lucky. We're a fun time to get lucky. We're
up fun time to get lucky. We're up found time
to get lucky. We're U found time to get lucky.
We're found time to get lucky. We're a found night
to get lucky. We're fun time to geen, come too
far to get up who we are? So let's raise
(33:36):
the bar in the car to start. Thanks to now
Rogers for the incredible stories and Too Chic for the
performances we heard now Rogers on guitar and vocals, Ralph
(33:59):
Roll on drums, Kim Davis and Flami on vocals, Rich
Hilton and Russell Graham on keyboards, and Steve Janowski and
Brendan Wright on horns. Than You Year all of our
favorite Chic and now Rogers produced songs on a playlist
at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe
to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken
Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes.
(34:22):
You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambre, Ben Holiday,
Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee.
Our executive producer is Mia Lobet. Broken Record is a
production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and
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(34:44):
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us on your podcast app Our theme mus Expect Kenny Beats.
I'm justin Richmond,
Pushkin. Hey everyone, Today we're revisiting one of the early
great episodes of Broken Record with legendary producer Nile Rogers.
Over the course of me more than half a century
long career, Nile Rogers has played his signature guitar on, written,
(00:35):
or produced some of the greatest dance songs of all time,
including Dana ross As I'm Coming Out, Daft Punks, Get Lucky,
and Madonna's Like a Virgin. Back in fall of twenty eighteen,
now I met up with Bruce Hellum at the same
New York City recording studio where thirty five years earlier,
Now recorded the Let's Dance Album with David Bowie. But
this time around, Nile brought his famed disco funk band
(00:59):
Chic to the interview to perform live renditions of their
classic hits, including Lafreak, Good Times and Everybody Dance. So
all the music you will hear in today episode was
recorded live one take, just for us. In between performances,
Nile shares exhilarating stories from his life, including how he
found salvation as a young jazz guitarist whose teenage mom
(01:22):
struggled with heroin addiction. Nil also talks about the night
he played old James Brown tunes with Prince and Rolling
Stones guitarist Ron Wood at a small club in London,
and Nile explains what it was like going out clubbing
with Madonna as her star was exploding in the mid eighties.
(01:42):
This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Bruce Edlam and Nile Rodgers from
New York City's Power Station studio in twenty eighteen. That's
the original guitar. Yeah, this is it. You still only
use one guitar? This is it? I only use one guitar.
Do you only have one? Now? I have two hundred? Okay?
(02:02):
Do you have nice hollow bodies? Mainly I have. I's
going to make sure de Angelico d Pristos L five
Super four hundreds. But this one was when did you
buy that nineteen seventy three? Wasn't it wasn't an expensive one?
You put on a no, it's cheap. I didn't, actually,
So I traded my jazz guitar and they gave me
(02:25):
this and three hundred dollars. So if in nineteen seventy
to be imagine giving me three hundred dollars plus a strat,
like what was the jazz guitar worth in those days?
Who I mean, even though it's a strat, it's not
like any other strat. Yeah, it's light, it's a feather.
It's thinner than anything you've ever seen. It's the nineteenth
(02:46):
strat that they made in nineteen fifty nine. Look at
Look at the difference, and just look at look at
the thickness. So the head stock there, just check it
out at that, you can see it all the way
from there. Look at this, Yeah, this one. You can
big hands though you don't need a you don't need
a thin Wow, No, I got small hands? You do?
Oh man, Jesus, you ever see real guitar players like
(03:08):
these guys like Steve Vy and Ship and Hendrix. Like
for me when I'm when I'm playing classical guitar, I
really have to to get this stretch in certain pieces
that that's a big deal for me. I have my
finger way down here. Most classical guitar players can still
you can still see some of their thumb. But me,
(03:28):
you still practice classical. Not really, there's no point. But
I just did an orchestral version Let's dance, And I
had an idea of playing classical guitar, but it felt
better to have Bully singing with the strings. Was amazing.
Oh yeah, it's unbelievable. I want to ask you about
(03:49):
all the songs, but let's start with Let's Dance. I
want you to tell me about the first time you
heard the song. Yeah, the very first time David played
Let's Dance for me. He walked into my bedroom. We
were in Switzerland, and I believe that he had said
(04:09):
he had just written it the night before, and he
um walked into the studio and he played something, um,
something that sounded like that. You know. I was like,
and I was like, that was and he was into it,
um and um. He had the lyrics as well well.
(04:33):
He just he was singing very um, true to it,
like he knew what it was. He was singing, Um,
it's almost hard for me to do it. Um. What
was he doing? No, I did that. That's what he said.
(04:56):
He's going, let's stand on the radio nothing something like that.
Way that's up your face. And then I asked him
(05:18):
if I could do an arrangement. So I fooled around
with it and I was going and I knew that
he liked jazz, so I could put in the jazzy
chord and I could tell that he would like it
right away. But then when I moved it from A
minor up to B flat, it actually had a different vibe.
(05:39):
It got it got brighter in like and funkier sounding.
So I started going, you can already hear it like.
Oh and by the way, when I started playing it,
I only imitated his just for a few bars. I
started going, but that still sounded dark. So then I
(06:07):
moved it up and oct him when I went. But
(06:30):
because of the whole disco sucks back backlash, I didn't
want to do chucking on David Poley's album, So you
ended up slowing it down after that, Um yeah, and
only playing like So, if you hear the demo that
I did in Switzerland, I'm chucking. I'm actually playing, you know.
(06:54):
When you hear the original demo, I'm doing then Rogers thing.
But when we got to America, I made a conscious
decision not to do that and had the horns sort
of doubling me and giving it some punch. And when
Bow and I walked into the studio, Um, Bob Clearmontain
was getting the different delays that he was going to
(07:16):
use on the various instruments on the drums, so we
wound up having a multi tap delay happening on the guitar.
So even though all I played was the rhythm that
you here, winds up sounding something like what the song now,
(07:48):
Let's Dance. As many fans, it has one very famous
fan who always wanted to play with you. Um, oh
my god, Prince is that? Oh my god? Yeah? So
um for years, I mean, I can't even tell you
how many years, maybe since the first time I met
Prince Um. He had asked me to play Let's Dance
(08:12):
live together somewhere. So we had played live together in
London at a little club in Camden, and we did
not play Let's Dance that night, I'm positive of that.
We played a bunch of James Brown's songs and maybe
the Ohio Players and some funk songs. When I walked
(08:33):
into the club, he was playing with Ron Wood and
I don't know what they were playing. I don't remember.
I was really pretty high in those days, but they
were probably playing the blues or jamming on a popular
rock song Sunshine or Your Love or something like that.
And then when I walked in, Prince said, whoa, now, Rogers, not,
this man has the funk. And he gave me his
(08:55):
guitar and he sat down on the keyboards and we
just jammed for like I don't even know how long,
but that felt like one of the most amazing nights
of my life. And I remember calling the concierge at
my hotel and asked him if they had purple roses.
I didn't know if there was, if there was anything
as a purple rose, if they existed, So I said,
(09:16):
figure out a way to make them purple, either spray
paint them or put food coloring in them and send
I don't know, I was pretty absurd in those days.
I may have sent like a hundred purple roses to
Prince's room. Nice. That's crazy, But you ended up playing
the song, yeah, eventually. So years later he tricked me
(09:37):
a couple of times. We both were living sort of
in Turks and Cacos a bit. He bought a house
down there and I was part of a resort project,
and one New Year's Eve we played and oh it
was cool, and John bon Jovie came when John got
his start here, so John bon Jovi and Prince came
(09:59):
to the show, and Prince said to me, oh, wow,
tonight is the night. Now I'll get the play Let's
stance with you in the band. So we set up
to set up his amp and everything, did the whole
sound check. We're ready for Prince to come out and
play New Year's Eve. The places crowded, everybody's having a
good time, and we're doing our thing. And I get
into the middle of the setting. I say, ladies and gentlemen,
we have a special guest coming out tonight. I think
(10:21):
you're gonna love this, Prince, and I introduced him and
the band. We're just standing there, no print. He doesn't
come out, and I keep introducing him. I go, Prince.
I don't know if I started screaming press because I
knew it was there, and someone told me that he
actually ran and hid because he wouldn't come out. So
(10:43):
after a while we just said to hell with him.
We played the song, and then at the end of
the night, I didn't even ask him. Maybe I asked
him why he didn't come out or something I don't
even remember, but we wound up playing. It was great,
everybody had a good time, but I was embarrassed as hell.
So now fast forward a year or two later and
we're playing a show with him at the Superdome in
(11:04):
Louisiana in New Orleans, and he told us that he
was going to come out. Now we're in front of
like seventy thousand people, and I'm not going to be
this idiot and make the same mistake again. And ladies
and gentlemen, we have a special guest for you tonight, Prince.
And then he doesn't come out. And I'm standing in
front of seventy thousand people and he doesn't come out.
At least at the resort was only about two hundred,
(11:26):
so I didn't I didn't introduce him, even though we
went through the same steps we did sound check. He
had his am there in the whole bit. So when
we get into the part of the song where Ralph
tells the whole crowd to jump, Jump, Jump, I'm standing
on the stage and I'm jumping up and down, and
then I hear this crowd like, give this loud roar wow,
And I look to my left and there's Print jumping
(11:50):
with me, jumping up and holding his hand up in
the air, and the crowd freaks out. And then we
go into the next bit and he takes over and
starts sewing and it's just killing. It's so good. So
he did a little bit of like the sort of
Stevie ay Vaughan kind of thing, but then he went
into like just chucking with me, and that's what I
got nuts. And you can go online and see it.
(12:11):
It's on YouTube. It's so great. We'll have more with
Bruce Headlam and Nile Rodgers after the break. We're back
with Bruce Headlam, Nile Rodgers and Cheek. Now. I looked up,
(12:49):
and this is for the music nerds out there. I
looked up the chords to Everybody Dance, and it's a
C minor seventh, B flat eleven, B flat eleven. I
should let you tell the chords. You know, the chords
C minus seven, B flat eleven to C eleven A
flat major seven. Now this chord, you can spell it
(13:09):
a number of ways. I like to think of it
as a minor seven with a raise five, or a
minor a minor seven flat thirteen, but most people would
probably call it a D minor eleven with an A
in the base. UM to a B flat eleven, And
(13:29):
the reason for that is because um, I wanted to
have this chromatic movement. So right, so it goes to
everybody dances, do do do do? Clap your hands. Okay,
(14:24):
you're a serious jazz guy. Yeah, nobody else would do
it that way. I don't do do do? You do
all your songs that way? It is it that kind
of chording I like to think. So, I mean, look
at Let's dance? How cool that is? I mean that's
um that. I guess that's somewhat of a trademark of mine,
putting different types of jazzy chords and cool voicings. Um
(14:45):
in pop songs, you know, look at Diana Ross and
I'm Coming Out and all that stuff. And you also,
was everybody dance the first time? You used to break down?
And um, no, breakdowns were actually quite common in our
live shows. Um, it was just the first time I
did it when I was recording and I was the boss.
(15:09):
Every other time that I recorded, I was not the boss,
so I didn't have any control of it. Yeah, And
was that from jazz? Like breaking it down like that
head kind of rebuilding? That's an R and B thing.
It's a it's an R and B disco thing. It's
a common R and B move. You would hear a
lot of R and B bands breakdown and go now
I want to talk to ladies for me, or I
want to talk to you, or like Earth when and
Fire when you hear them say pop, I want to
(15:31):
talk to you about things I see every day, you know,
and they break down on the record. It's all about
So it was very common in R and B to
do that. I want to talk a bit about good times.
(16:24):
You said in an interview once that all your songs
are nonfiction, absolutely, and they're often about things that you
want to see happen. Can you tell me what good times? Yes?
So when we wrote Good Times in America, at the time,
we were in the midst of the greatest financial recession
(16:46):
since the Great Depression. We had gas rationing, you know,
I mean if you lived in New York State, I remember,
if you're a license plate ended with an even number,
you can get gas on a certain day or an
odd number a different day. So times were sort of hard,
and we thought, well, what other period in American history
(17:09):
seemed to feel like that? And we went wow, you know,
the Roaring twenties and the you know, the the Great
Depression and that sort of jazz era and the whole
thing about dance marathons, and that's why we came up
with the whole yas y'alls the thing on dance, dance dance.
The whole concept of the first few Chic albums was
all jazz era stuff and h on risque. When we
(17:33):
finally did Good Times, we were confident enough in our
band to now sort of expose our formula to the world.
So the lyrics to Good Times were sort of ripped
off from Al Jolson and the song that they used
to sing after Prohibition when they were happy Day and
(17:58):
then time and any dang about quarter to night. So
we go, happy, happy Days are here again. Right, that
was we start right with it. So we are obvious
again times. Right, let's get together, Let's do it again.
(18:30):
Because Good Times came out at a particular political time
because the Disco Sucks movement had come they had the
riot in Chicago. Yeah, um, summer of seventy nine. What
did that feel like for you? Well, it was really
(18:52):
interesting because it was sort of like a biphasic kind
of feeling because when we found out about it, we
were on an airplane flying from Europe back to America.
So it happened while we were away, and we didn't
think of ourselves as a disco band. I mean, listen
to every chic album. We have ballads, everyone has an instrumental.
(19:15):
It's always a jazzy, you know type of thing. The
Diana Ross album is incredibly As far as the composers,
I gotta say that that's really unique. There's nothing I've
ever written that sounds like that before or after. That
was purely written for Diana Ross. I mean, you listen
to a song like I'm coming Out, and I mean
(19:36):
I have a fanfare in there. I mean, we're When
we first saw Diana Ross, Bernard walked with me and said, wow,
look at that. She's like our black queen. So I
kept that in my head and when I wrote that fanfare,
I said to Diana, I said, look, you know, like
when the President of the United States walked walks in
(19:57):
the room, they go dad, Hail to the Chief. I said,
this is your fanfare. And I told her, I says,
you will never start a show without this song ever
the rest of your life. And now we see thirty
five years later, I was right. She would never start
to show without playing out Coming Out at the beginning
of her show. Although one of your most famous songs,
(20:18):
the Freak, is actually about being rejected at a disco. Correct,
Can you tell that story quick? Yeah? So our first song,
Everybody Dance, was the real sort of super cool club
song on our first album. Even though Dance Dance Dance
was popular and was big on the radio and was
(20:39):
platinum twelve inch, I mean it was huge, it was
Everybody Dance that really secured our vibe as a cool, hip,
underground dance group. And so Grace Jones had heard Everybody
Dance and she was a fan of that song, and
she was thinking about having these two young new producers
(21:00):
do what would then be her next album. She said
that the only way we could truly understand her artistically
is to see her live show. Then we really would
understand who Grace Jones is. But the problem was we
had only spoken to her that one time. We never
met her. We were on the phone. So Grace has
a very unique accent. She's the only one on earth
(21:22):
that sounds like that, and she says, so darling. But
you go to the back door and you tell them
your personal friends of miss Grace Jones, and they would
let you in so we did that with that accent,
and the guy slams the door in our faces. And
while he's slamming the door, he's going, oh, fuck off,
and we said no, no, no, no no, no, we're kicking
the door again because now we had to be above
(21:43):
the level of the music. Now once we finally got
his attention, so we wanted to get him before he
walked away from the door. So we kicked really hard
and he said, you know, he reiterated what he had said,
I told you the f off, so we knew we
weren't going to get in. It was New Year's Eve
seventy seven going into seventy eight, and we were walking
(22:05):
back to my apartment, which is on fifty second Street
between eight and nine, and to get there we had
to pass a liquor store, so we bought two bottles
of damper On, which in those days we called it
rock and roll mouthwash. We bought two bottles of DP
and went to my house and we downed them so
fast we got really light headed, and we turned his
(22:26):
rejection phrase f off into shriek out. We went, oh, well,
when we first wrote it, we wrote a whole song
(22:48):
using the original lyric and thinking of every situation where
the appropriate response would be fuck up. So we're playing no, no,
if a cab driver cuts you off, don't, don't fuck up.
And I remember saying, if your mother asked you to
do homework, fuck up. And we were into, were laughing,
(23:09):
feeling great, and then finally my partner Bernard's I'm a man,
you notice is happening and I'm like a Bernard. You know,
this is two years before hip hop. We can't get
you know, a radio record on the radio that's got
the F bomb in it. But somehow we wound up
with freak up. We have to take a quick break
(23:57):
right here, but we'll be right back with Bruce Headlam
and Nil Rogers. We're back with Bruce Headlam, Nil Rogers
and Chic. You mentioned that you and Bernard didn't see
yourselves as stars as frontman and you saw a chic
very much as this organization. Yes, you've built this incredible career,
(24:19):
You've had hits literally in every decade since you started
by being this great collaborator. Why does collaboration seem to
mean more to you than being the front man? Because
as a composer, I write for ensembles. That's what I hear.
The only time I could ever think of writing a
(24:39):
composition that was actually recorded and performed for either a soloist,
a solo instrument, or maybe a duet. It's just for films.
I can coming to America write this queue where they
go the Royal Penis is clean, your Highness, and it's
just like a pan flute, you know, pan flute and harp.
(25:03):
And then in the movie called Soup for One, I
do this thing called Tavern on the Green and it's
just me playing classical guitar along with a Yamaha CSAD
synthesizer with my keyboard player. But those are the only
duets that I've ever really recorded. Everything else is for
a bunch of a room full of people. But in
(25:25):
your autobiography, which I'm going to recommend everybody because it's
it really is this incredible life story and it is
it's sort of James Baldwin and Charles Dickens wrote a
book together. It may start to approach your You know,
you had a very you come back to this a
very lonely life. Yeah, you're around your parents or your
(25:48):
stepfather and your mother, whom you love dearly, but who
would send you on bus rides across the country by yourself,
who often left you alone. And they were heroin attics.
I mean they were in pursuit of their number one love.
And when when someone first tuned your guitar and you
played I think a day Day life, right, and you
thought I'm going to be Were you thinking I want
(26:09):
to be a star? I want to be up on
snow No, no, no no. Prior to that, I had
only really played classical music, so I just wanted to
be part of a symphony orchestra. I used to play
the clarinet, which is funny now because if I tried
to play the clarinet it would probably sound hysterical. But
my dream when I was a kid was to be
a part of Maybe that's what it's all about it
(26:31):
because I've always wanted to be part of an orchestra,
to be part of an organization, and because in a
big symphony orchestra, basically you could hide, but you know
every now and you might get a great solo, you know.
So that was sort of my dream growing up. I
wanted to emulate my biological father, who was always just
a percussionist with bands. He was never like the guy
(26:54):
out front, like Tito point there or something. But you
like that sense of anonymity, yeah, because it was the
way that I never felt attractive or anything like that.
And when you looked at stars, stars were always like
you know, they walk into the room. You know. I
remember I used to walk into a club with Madonna.
(27:15):
Now I'm born in New York, knew every club owner
in town, and I'd walk into a club with Madonna
and she was relatively unknown, and people go, hey, who's
that girl with Now who's that girl? You hear it
then like who's that girl? Who's that girl? Now? Who's
that girl? And she was unknown, but that's because she
was a star. She felt like a star from the
(27:35):
moment you met her. She you know, they just have
that thing, Bowie, it's a star. He walks in the
room and like wow, they just you know, you could
feel it, so I knew. I never It's funny. I
always laugh. I say, you know, if I walk into
a room with Lady Gaga, people go, oh my God,
there's Lady God. Then he go wow God, Then he go,
hey Nile, you want to be the Hey Nile guy.
(28:00):
I like being here now, so like I've done, you know,
maybe almost like uh, I mean I heard the other
day they said like fifteen thousand, eight hundred and eight
recording something insane but still like walking through. Hey, n man,
are you doing? I think think Fran might beat me
(28:21):
up if you guys go any farther. Um and I
would stay here all day. We only have one more
song to talk about that Daft Punk. But I think
we're okay. All right. That was unplugged. That was just fantastic.
Thank you. Bruce and Nile didn't have time to talk
about the Daft Punk song Get Lucky that Nile played
(28:41):
on and co wrote, but Chic did perform it for us.
So here it is in its entirety, like the legend
(29:03):
the fan all lives with beginning, what keeps the planet spinning,
(29:27):
the fall from the beginning because came to far to
(29:48):
give star right by and come to die. She's I'm
(30:09):
back to the Sun. I'm a fun back to get home.
She's a fun night fun, I'm a mom dage. We're
a found night to the sun. Were mount again down
night Mine run night together, Lucky, We're up fun nice again. Up,
We're up fum nice again. Luck, We're ubout Night get
(30:31):
lucky night together, Lucky bag and no river my shucket
(30:53):
keep funking man, Yeah, what is the time to la?
If you want to leave my wet come by to
give far And I'm a fun song. She's a fun
(31:28):
fun from a fun fun light of the sun. I'm
a fun night to get song with a fun night
for the fun or up fun night to get lucky
from my fun night to get lucky. We're up fun
night to get lucky. We're up one night to get lucky,
grow up on lack to get lucky. Ship she to
(32:24):
get back the sun from a pumack. So she's a
funda for the fun about sometime lucky. We're up that
(32:47):
of the sun, were up the son. We're up back
of the fun. We're upun back together. We're un night
to gel lucky. We're up lucky. We're upun back to
get lucky. We're up gel lucky. We're up night to
get lay sure up night to get lovey for a
full night to get laughing my lucky. We're fun to
(33:11):
get lucky. We're a fun time to get lucky. We're
up fun time to get lucky. We're up found time
to get lucky. We're U found time to get lucky.
We're found time to get lucky. We're a found night
to get lucky. We're fun time to geen, come too
far to get up who we are? So let's raise
(33:36):
the bar in the car to start. Thanks to now
Rogers for the incredible stories and Too Chic for the
performances we heard now Rogers on guitar and vocals, Ralph
(33:59):
Roll on drums, Kim Davis and Flami on vocals, Rich
Hilton and Russell Graham on keyboards, and Steve Janowski and
Brendan Wright on horns. Than You Year all of our
favorite Chic and now Rogers produced songs on a playlist
at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe
to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken
Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes.
(34:22):
You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambre, Ben Holiday,
Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee.
Our executive producer is Mia Lobet. Broken Record is a
production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and
others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus
(34:44):
is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted,
ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look
for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts, Subscriptions, and if you'd
like to show, please remember to share, wait to review
us on your podcast app Our theme mus Expect Kenny Beats.
I'm justin Richmond,
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