Classic Chats: Nile Rogers

Ten minutes on the phone with a music legend of music? SEB LAW tests the boundaries of what’s possible in an interview with MR. NILE RODGERS, and gets more than he bargained for. 

So I’m calling Nile Rodgers, expecting to go through a series of antechambers, minions and hold tones, when a voice at the other end picks up and asks me to call back in 15 minutes. I agree. It’s only after I hang up that I realise it was Nile Rodgers who told me to call back.

Nile Rodgers.

It was only really at last year’s Lovebox when the immense importance of the man and his career became fully apparent to me. On the Sunday headline slot, with his trademark grin, he proceeded to play ‘a few songs that you might know that I’ve been involved in’ – it was like listening to Now That’s What I Call The Last 30 Years. He has literally produced or been involved with an enormous amount of pop history, including (deep breath): Sister Sledge, Bowie, Luther Vandross, Diana Ross, Duran Duran, Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’, Grace Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson – it seems that whatever Rodgers touches turns to gold.

But let’s be honest, you know all this. You’ve probably read innumerable articles about him, seen the Daft Punk Creators Project videos, so what’s new? Even his official website says “there is nothing you can say about Nile Rodgers that hasn’t already been heard by billions of people” so c’mon then Nile, what else is there?

“I dunno,” he laughs with his inescapably infectious chuckle when I get through to him, “that I sleep with my guitars?” I laugh along, and he says “No, seriously! I keep them either in the bed because I fall asleep practicing, or near the bed for when I get an idea; I’m always composing. Mostly songs you’ll never ever hear. At the time I think of it or dream it, I think it’s really important and the greatest song ever. It’s only when I wake up and I realise that it’s ridiculous and absurd! But at the time I think it’s Beethoven’s 9^th.”

When Nile is telling a story, you listen. This is a man who’s had more hit records than he can remember, and that’s not just because of his hedonistic years.  His enviable approach to collaboration is, sadly, a model that doesn’t really exist nowadays: “I’ve never had a manager or anything like that, you know no record company has ever called me to make a record. I make records with people I’ve actually run into in a nightclub or at a party or in a bar, or just sometimes walking down the street.”

We’re discussing ideal collaborations, Cab Calloway and jazz, and then apropos of nothing, Nile starts telling me about Miles Davis. “He actually asked me to write a song for him,” he says, casual to the point of horizontal; as though he was talking about a completely unknown musician. “Did he?” I manage to splutter down the phone. “Yeah,” Nile comes back, “he actually said [at this point, Nile replaces his soft vocal tones with a gruff bark] ‘Nile, write me about the fucking good times!’ and I thought he was joking so I kept trying to write jazz-fusion songs and he would go ‘Man, I can write that shit, write me about the fucking good times!’ And I just kept saying to myself, I’d heard all these horror stories about Miles but my relationship with him was always fun, so I was always nervous that he wasn’t serious and then after he passed away I realised “Damn, Nile, are you stupid, don’t you realise that we all, we ALL want hit records.”

I forget that I’m structuring the interview, and just let Nile talk. “The truth of the matter is that the only way we get to judge, the only yardstick that we have to judge the penetration of our intellectual property in the world, is your place in the charts, or how many did you sell or you know that sort of thing. That’s our only validation, because we don’t know, there’s no other way to know, and I just realised that with all the stuff that Miles had done, I don’t think he ever had a number one pop record.”

The inevitable happens. I’ve spun out my time with the man for double what I was allotted (with apologies to the poor journo who followed me) and he has to leave. I hang up, and pause, palms sweating at what’s just happened, and with Nile’s infectious grin spread across my face. The Nile Rodgers has just been doing Miles Davis impressions down the phone at me. I mean, how much better does it get than that?

Field Notes

1. Nile is playing events across the UK this summer, including Bristol’s fantastic ‘Love Saves The Day’
2. The only gig that Niles has ever been called for formally in his life was by a French artist called ‘Spacer’ – Sheila and B.Devotion
3. Nile met jazz legend Miles Davis at, of all places, an Issey Miyake photoshoot
4. After recording Get Lucky, Guy-Man and Thomas rang their partner and Nile overheard them saying “we feel like we’ve just touched magic!”