Having masterminded his own band Chic and disco classics like Good Times, I Want Your Love, Le Freak and Everybody Dance, he has produced albums like Diana Ross’ Upside Down, Madonna’s Like A Virgin and David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. 

It’s hardly surprising that Rodgers reputation precedes him.

‘Duran Duran credited Rodgers with saving their musical soul’, according to the Metro after producing their singles The Refles and Wild Boys and their album Notorious.

Rodgers has since taken a back seat from studio work to focus on live performance.

“I had this realisation on stage: “Oh my God, I never have to play another song in my life that I didn’t have a hand in creating,” explains Rodgers. “This is what every composer dreams of. I was just a kid playing guitar in his bedroom, dreaming of making music some day.”

His dream became reality quite early, as Rodgers was just 18 when he received his first paycheck and he has never looked back.

To learn more about Nile Rodgers back in his Chic days, check out his exclusive interview here on t5m.

DJ Rob da Bank, who founded the festival, promised the line up would get better and better and has even offered festival-goers the chance to to spread out the payments of their tickets.

And to put him in the concert mood, Nile will be directing a concert in New York in aid of the ‘UN Breaking the Silence, Beating the Drum Against Slave Trade’ commemoration event on the 25th March.

Photograph courtesy of Berbera van den Hoek.

They had respect for Nile, and learned as much from him as he did from them. And now, years later, he does the same thing, teaching the younger generation of music what he’s learned in his many years of performing and producing. He discusses a recent studio session with Wu-Tang Clan, and the mutual respect between the decade divide.

As well as working and touring on Sesame Street, Nile was performing regularly with the house band at the Apollo Theatre, backing artists like Aretha Franklin, Ben E. King, Nancy Wilson, and Parliament Funkadelic.

Here, he shares the story of his first performance at the Apollo, playing with Screaming Jay Hawkins.

At 19, Nile began his short-lived career at the world famous performing art conservatory, Julliard. After just a few days at Julliard, he auditioned for a tour of the children’s television show, Sesame Street.

He got the job, weighed his options between musical education and a paying gig, and headed on the road with Sesame Street, where he became friends with the likes of Luther Vandross, Fonzi Thornton, Diva Gray, Carlos Alomar, and Michelle Cobbs, who formed ‘Listen My Brother,’ an eclectic group led by Vandross.

Each member of the group continued on to lead influential careers in music, recording and collaborating with some of the generations most successful artists.

The first was an experience with his third grade school teacher. While Niles seemed like a shy and anti-social student, she reached out to him and gave him a very valuable gift.

The second, slightly less sweet, but a good life lesson, was Nile’s first audition to be in a band, which surprisingly, he didn’t get into.
Seemingly trivial memories that inspired a determined Nile to continue to learn and grow as a musician.

“How come we always have to swim upstream, knowing that we’re doing the right thing?”

He and his Chic band mate, Bernard Edwards, felt the sting of a racially divided music industry, but carried through regardless. After being turned down seven times by Atlantic Records, Chic finally turned to sign with small label Buddha records.

Nile was born to his thirteen-year-old mother in New York City. His mother was from Greenwich Village beatnik of the 1950s, he grew up calling his mother by her first name, and never stayed in one place for too long.

These moves led Nile to his music education. Rather than sticking to one instrument all the way through school, he filled seats in the orchestra as they were needed, and so learned an array of instruments and styles.

He speaks about always being drawn to the ‘odd’ or eccentric people in the school, probably indicative of his quirky lifestyle to come. Nile Rodgers went on to lead one of the most successful music careers of the 1970s.

After being turned down seven times by Atlantic Records, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic, finally signed to Buddha Records.

Buddha Records, who had gone bankrupt, knew that Chic’s record was gold, so the VP of the label made a deal with the President of Atlantic Records, who’d never heard that Nile had been turned away. Chic resigned to Atlantic Records, where their album was considered ‘a smash.’