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Among music legends, Nile Rodgers is truly exceptional. His work in the CHIC Organization and his productions for artists like David Bowie, Diana Ross, and Madonna have sold over 500 million albums…
What 363 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about the creative impulse
From the archive
That thing of me being anonymous and just the music that's moving the person.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
The only time I ever heard the song was in my head when I wrote it and when we recorded it that night. The next time I heard it was in a room full of strangers dancing to it.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
You know how difficult that is in a nightclub in New York at 5 in the morning? Everybody just stopped and started listening.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
Listen, I was so poor I couldn't even afford to get a copy of my own record. This is before cassette tapes, I couldn't even get an acetate made so I could go listen at home.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
I walked in completely anonymous and meanwhile these people are responding to my work and have no idea who I am, and it was just 'this is the most incredible feeling in the world'.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
He was playing it and people were dancing. They didn't need to know who the band was, they didn't know what Nile Rodgers… didn't mean anything. They were just going crazy.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
I walked into a club that I didn't even know had my record – thought it was a demo – the engineer who recorded it also happened to be a DJ, he'd been playing it for 2 weeks and it'd become the biggest song in the club, this unknown group called Chick or Cheek or whatever, he didn't even know what to call it.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
I was talking to some kids last night and they were asking me 'do you remember that first moment that you knew you'd made it', and I said, 'of course I remember that moment, I'd been chasing it all my life'.
— Nile RodgersLegendary Guitarist & Producer: Chic Founder, Producer for David Bowie, Madonna
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