Nile Rodgers

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Nile Rodgers, 2012

Nile Gregory Rodgers (born September 19, 1952 in New York ) is an American music producer , musician and composer .

life and work

Nile Rodgers was born in 1952 in the Bronx, New York, to a 13-year-old mother. He grew up in an environment of heroin addicts and was largely left to his own devices. On the other hand, he was shaped by the unconventional environment with its mixture of artistry and socio-political activism. When he was growing up, his mother married a white man, and Rodgers and his family were now constantly and deliberately confronted with everyday racism that he had not seen so clearly before. At the age of 15 he met self-declared "freaks" who gave him his first LSD trip and introduced him to the music of the Doors and the Beatles . At the age of 16, Nile got his first guitar, which immediately grabbed all of his attention and everyday life. At 19 he was already fluent in the instrument and notes, so that he got his first job in the studio band on Sesame Street . He later became a guitarist in the house orchestra of the Apollo Theater in New York. Rodgers and bass guitarist Bernard Edwards met in 1970 at the age of 17 and shared their musical similarities. Rodgers later played with the less successful “Big Apple Band” in smaller clubs, but even then he was planning to found a rock group with Edwards.

From 1976 Rodgers was mostly in a team with Edwards a style-forming and trend-setting musician and producer. They began to interweave funk jazz with disco and rock elements and eventually formed the band Chic . They made the first joint demo recordings of the songs Dance, Dance, Dance and Everybody Dance for free at night in a studio that was then unused when they were playing in the Radio City Music Hall in the backing band of Luther Vandross , who also contributed vocals on the recordings . The two songs became hits by Chic as well as Le Freak , My Forbidden Lover or Good Times ( US # 1 ), whose recording was borrowed from Sugarhill Gang and created the first rap hit Rapper's Delight . The rock band Queen built their hit Another One Bites the Dust (1980) on the characteristic bass line . At the same time Rodgers and Edwards wrote and produced the disco hits Lost in Music , We Are Family and He's the Greatest Dancer for the group Sister Sledge . The latter two titles reached # 1 in the US charts in 1979. Rodgers also worked with French singer Sheila B. Devotion on the track Spacer , and on August 13, 1986 , he was a guest guest on stage at an aftershow for Prince at the Astoria in London.

Rodgers built his reputation as an excellent producer with productions for u. a. Diana Ross , Debbie Harry , Madonna , Duran Duran , INXS , Dan Reed Network , Grace Jones , Laurie Anderson (Home of the Brave), The B-52’s , Mick Jagger or David Bowie . He was also involved as a songwriter in other productions such as Hotel Room Service (for Pitbull ) or Get Lucky (for Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams ).

In the USA, popular music is still divided into “black” and “white” today. Nile Rodgers is the first musician and producer to produce music with both African-American and white artists that was commercially successful and groundbreaking. In the 1980s he was one of the few producers whose music was played by "white" and "black" radio stations. He produced the soundtracks for the computer games Halo 2 and Halo 3 and composed the song Never Surrender with Nataraj for the second part . In 2005 he was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame .

In the seventies and eighties, Rodgers also used drugs himself uncontrollably and drank a lot of alcohol. This was also part of his personal relationship with Bowie, who - when the two met - was just clean, about which the two argued intensively. In 2010 Rodgers was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He reported in detail on the disease and its course in a well-known blog . Two years later, in 2013, Rodgers announced he was completely healthy again.

Since 1982 he has also been involved as a composer in numerous Hollywood productions, including 1988 for the director Julien Temple for Zebo, the third from the center of the stars (Earth Girls Are Easy) and for John Landis for Der Prinz aus Zamunda (Coming to America) , 1993 for director William Friedkin on Blue Chips and again in 1994 for John Landis in the production of Beverly Hills Cop III .

Nile worked again with Duran Duran on the 2015 album Paper Gods , and he had several guest appearances on the tour of the same name. Nile and Duran Duran already collaborated on the album Astronaut in 2004.

In spring 2018 he worked on the new Chic record at Abbey Road Studios . For this he was able to win Bruno Mars and Debbie Harry as singers.  

The "Hitmaker"

Rodgers plays a 1960s Fender Stratocaster with a neck from the 1959 model, which he affectionately calls " The Hitmaker ". At the insistence of his friend and band member Bernard Edwards at Chic, he exchanged them for his then Gibson Barney Kessel after a performance in Miami, Florida. The instrument is exceptionally light and has an off-white color. Rodgers claims the instrument sounds like no other Stratocaster. In 2014, the Fender Custom Shop issued a “Nile Rodgers Hitmaker Stratocaster” as a limited special edition.

Awards

Rodgers Hits (selection)

Compositions

Productions

Discography

  • 1983: Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove
  • 1985: B-Movie Matinee
  • 1992: Chic-Ism
  • 1996: Chic Freak and More Treats
  • 1998: Do That Dance
  • 2001: MP3 Danceclub, Vol.1
  • 2001: MP3 Danceclub, Vol. 2
  • 2004: Nile Rodgers & Chic - Live at Montreux
  • 2011: Chic featuring Nile Rodgers - AVO Session Basel
  • 2014: Do What You Wanna Do
  • 2016: Give Me Your Love (with Sigala and John Newman , UK: goldgold)
  • 2017: Fantasy (with George Michael )

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Nile Rodgers  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Triptikon: Nile Rodgers of 15 July 2018th
  2. ↑ a b c d Nile Rodgers in: Nile Rodgers - From Disco to Daft Punk , documentary by Julie Veille and Marjory Déjardin, ARTE France, 2015
  3. ↑ Dallach, Christoph: Pop! Status reports from planet C. Spiegel online, September 2, 2011, accessed on March 31, 2014 .
  4. ↑ The last disco freak. ORF, December 18, 2013, accessed on March 31, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Ehrck, Katharina: Nile Rodgers has conquered cancer. (No longer available online.) Ampya.com, July 30, 2013, archived from the original on April 7, 2014 ; accessed on March 31, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ampya.com
  6. ↑ Debbie Harry with Nile Rodgers in the studio. Retrieved April 23, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny. GQ.com, October 8, 2011, accessed November 9, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Nile Rodger's hit marker Stratocaster. nilerodgers.com, accessed November 9, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Press release on the special edition of the "Hitmaker" guitar. January 23, 2014, accessed November 9, 2016 .
  10. ^ Nile Rodgers Awards on IMDB. IMDB, accessed November 8, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Chic's "Le Freak" 2015 inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Grammy.com, December 16, 2014, accessed November 8, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Your official Rock Hall class of 2017 roster. Hall of Fame website, accessed December 22, 2016
  13. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK
personal data
SURNAME Rodgers, Nile
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rodgers, Nile Gregory (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician and record producer
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Bronx , New York , United States