Nile Rodgers: 'The 1970s were the most artistically free time black America ever had'

[Dolemite!]

Saw Chic in concert last night, brilliant show.

----


Date: 22 July 2009

By DAVID POLLOCK

NILE Rodgers has plenty of stories to tell.

If, for example, you happen to call him at the start of a 45-minute limo ride from his New York home to the airport, he'll gladly fill the whole trip by regaling you with warm and enthusiastic tales of his career beginnings as part of session outfits The Boys and The Big Apple Band in the early 1970s, his days as one half of the duo at the core of Chic, the disco era's most definitively credible band, and on to the 1980s, where he and Bernard Edwards (Chic's other half) would forge a second career as production gurus to some of the decade's biggest artists.

"I'm headed to catch a flight to London right now," he says. "I'm coming over to do a private party. I can't say who it's for, I'm afraid, but I just got Tweeted by a friend of mine over there who says that they're watching Madonna on stage right now. 'She's killing it!', they're saying. Then I'm off to Rome for a gig the day after next."

Madonna has been a friend of Rodgers ever since he produced her hugely successful breakthrough album, Like a Virgin, in 1984.

Others who fall into this category – whether they worked with Rodgers alone or Rodgers and Edwards – include David Bowie (Let's Dance, the last great highpoint of his career, and Black Tie White Noise a decade later), Diana Ross (Diana, her biggest-selling album), Sister Sledge (We Are Family) and Duran Duran (singles The Reflex and Wild Boys, the Notorious album and their 2004 comeback, Astronaut). It speaks volumes of Rodgers and Edwards' influence on popular music that these epochal contributions aren't as well-remembered as what they created with Chic, a band who wouldn't just define the disco era through hits like Le Freak and Good Times, but would go on to be a huge influence on hip-hop and house music.

"A lot of people don't understand exactly what Chic is," states Rodgers. "Here's the history: only Bernard and I were ever signed as Chic, but when we brought out our first record, we knew we didn't look chic and we didn't have that whole thing down, so we put two models on the cover. That was quite apropos in those days, because bands like the Ohio Players and Roxy Music would do it too. We thought (Roxy Music were] so cool, we were basically doing our own version of them. So when the first record hit, and because our single Dance Dance Dance had two girls singing in unison, everyone thought these girls were Chic."

The keyboard player was Rob Sabino who was friendly with a fast-rising rock group called Kiss.

"They were great," explains Nile. "We used to go see them and hang out with them all the time."

But it was only after a girlfriend took him to see Roxy Music that the idea of Chic was born.


"Our big plan was Kiss and Roxy. That's how we ended up with a four-letter name, that anonymous look we developed - after all, only their friends knew what Kiss looked like under their make-up - and the girls in the band."

"Bernard and I developed a philosophy," says Nile. "We used to say, 'a song is an excuse for a chorus, a chorus is an excuse for a breakdown and the breakdown was where we got to have fun and do all of our cool stuff. We'd seen how the breakdowns worked in clubs - people would flip out. So that became our signature."

Rodgers and Edwards were ostensibly just another couple of guys in the band throughout their initial career as Chic between 1976 and 1983, sharing the stage with long-term drummer Tony Thompson and various singers, including Norma Jean Wright, Luci Martin and Alfa Anderson, but being background men had been a familiar situation to the duo since they met in 1971 and started playing as session musicians for Joe Simon and then one-hit-wonders New York City. This ensemble arrangement would continue through the band's 1990s revival and on into their current incarnation. "We came back to tour in the 1990s," recalls Rodgers, "and the plan then had been to step it up, to take it to another level. But of course, Bernard died."

Edwards passed away suddenly in 1996, at 43, while the recently reformed band were touring Japan. The cause of death was determined to be pneumonia. In 2003, Thompson also died young, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer at 49. Rodgers is the only original member of Chic left in the current touring version, but he remains upbeat and grateful still to be able to perform his music. "I look back on those wild times we had in the 1970s and the Eighties", he says, "and I wouldn't have changed any of it. And I don't think those guys would have either."

Edwards has certainly had an eventful career – before Chic, he would support the Jackson Five around the States. "Michael Jackson's gonna be remembered for his music," he says now. "The behaviour goes away when the person goes away, but the work stays forever."

As for his own legacy, though, Rodgers thinks it'll be about more than the music.

"When the history books come to be written," he says, "you'll see that the 1970s were the most artistically free period that we (black Americans) have ever had. It's the only time we were actually judged by the merit of the notes which were coming off the wax, as they used to say. There was an almost level playing field with the big white acts, where even a gay black man like Sylvester could come out of San Francisco and go up against the Rolling Stones.

"I think that's what came to a head during the Disco Sucks events, where people would get together and burn disco records – we had taken away the power from the powers-that-be. But, you know, we weren't even really a disco band. Sure, a few of our tracks have a four-to-the-floor beat that got people hooked, but we were a soul band, a rhythm and blues band, before we were anything else."

• Nile Rodgers & Chic play the Picture House, Edinburgh, on Saturday 25 July.

[Satan]

Rodgers, Edwards, and Thompson: Great musicians who wasted most of their talent on disco shit.

[ELVIS]

And Mick and Keith who have rehashed the same crap since 1969 aside from a handful of good songs..

[Satan]

Oh not so, Mr. Presley. A quick check of FORD's Stones "Box Set" thread in this very forum reveals a Most Unholy level of diversity in the Stones' recorded catalog.

[ELVIS]

Diversity doesn't make it good...

[standin]

It looks like the phrase black America was added to the text.

Dolomite, why do you hate red people?

[Dolemite!]

It wasn't, Miss Delusion.

[standin]

Why is it in parenthesis?
And why do you hate red people?
Are you saying that Mr. Rodgers hates red people like you do?
That's pretty mean.

[Dolemite!]

I believe anything that isn't in a direct quote is entered in brackets, moron. It's done all the time you stupid cow.

And yes, I hate red people like myself. Seek help, mental spambot.

[Satan]

I didn't realize dot Indians were considered "red people". I only thought that applied to the feather "Indians" (Native Americans who never had anything to do with India at all, but were given that name by some Italian idiots who got lost by going west from Spain looking for India)

Of course only us devils truly have RED skin. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d075.gif

[standin]

then what are the parenthesis used for, dolt?

I knew you hated yourself. Don't push that self-hate on other people and separatism.

[Dolemite!]

"Dot" Indians? Not very politically correct of your liberal self.

Native Indians as well as gypsies are supposed to have originally travelled from somewhere in India.

[standin]

I didn't realize dot Indians were considered "red people". I only thought that applied to the feather "Indians" (Native Americans who never had anything to do with India at all, but were given that name by some Italian idiots who got lost by going west from Spain looking for India)

Of course only us devils truly have RED skin. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d075.gif
Dolomite is posing as a dot Indian?

As for your red skin, patash, you can have any color skin, a jin's an jin is a jin.


And a lot of people have red tinged skin besides jin like you, S'tan.
besides your hair is not red when you have the devil cartoon going.
So, you are not red through and through. ;)

And we taste better. :biggrin::hitch:

[standin]

"Dot" Indians? Not very politically correct of your liberal self.

Native Indians as well as gypsies are supposed to have originally travelled from somewhere in India.

then what are the parenthesis used for, dolt?

[Dolemite!]

then what are the parenthesis used for, dolt?

I knew you hated yourself. Don't push that self-hate on other people and separatism.

That's what I explained in the previous post. Seriously you insane cow, check yourself in. You spam around here sucking on the cocks of the more old time posters but they still ignore you and can't even be bothered to show the plain courtesy of ejaculating in your face in acknowledgment. Just give it up and accept you're an crazy old bag.

[standin]

brackets or parenthesis?
brackets = []
parenthesis = ()

Mr. Rodgers did not say black America!

That was added. You are using misquotes to promote separatism. Don't push your separatism onto others.


It looks like the phrase black America was added to the text.

Dolomite, why do you hate red people?


It wasn't, Miss Delusion.


Why is it in parenthesis?
And why do you hate red people?
Are you saying that Mr. Rodgers hates red people like you do?
That's pretty mean.



I believe anything that isn't in a direct quote is entered in brackets, moron. It's done all the time you stupid cow.

And yes, I hate red people like myself. Seek help, mental spambot.


"When the history books come to be written," he says, "you'll see that the 1970s were the most artistically free period that we (black Americans) have ever had. It's the only time we were actually judged by the merit of the notes which were coming off the wax, as they used to say. There was an almost level playing field with the big white acts, where even a gay black man like Sylvester could come out of San Francisco and go up against the Rolling Stones.

"I think that's what came to a head during the Disco Sucks events, where people would get together and burn disco records – we had taken away the power from the powers-that-be. But, you know, we weren't even really a disco band. Sure, a few of our tracks have a four-to-the-floor beat that got people hooked, but we were a soul band, a rhythm and blues band, before we were anything else."

• Nile Rodgers & Chic play the Picture House, Edinburgh, on Saturday 25 July.[/


That's what I explained in the previous post. Seriously you insane cow, check yourself in. You spam around here sucking on the cocks of the more old time posters but they still ignore you and can't even be bothered to show the plain courtesy of ejaculating in your face in acknowledgment. Just give it up and accept you're an crazy old bag.

[Dolemite!]

There are four main types of brackets:

round brackets, open brackets or parentheses: ( )


And here's the original article, Miss Delusion for you to check.

Nile Rodgers: 'The 1970s were the most artistically free time black America ever had' - Scotsman.com News (http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Nile-Rodgers-39The-1970s-were.5480146.jp)


Now take your fucking issues and check them into a clinic.

[Satan]

Now take your fucking issues and check them into a clinic.

.....says the admitted pedophile. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d020.gif

[standin]

I am sure you copied and pasted correctly. But you was too excited to promote separatism to review the article to make sure the headline was not a misstatement.

But, hi-dee-hi-high-dee-hoe, you knows abouts 'dem misquotes, don't chou, boss.







____________________

Parentheses (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/marks/parentheses.htm)
Use parentheses [ ( ) ] to include material that you want to de-emphasize or that wouldn't normally fit into the flow of your text but you want to include nonetheless. If the material within parentheses appears within a sentence, do not use a capital letter or period to punctuate that material, even if the material is itself a complete sentence. (A question mark or exclamation mark, however, might be appropriate and necessary.) If the material within your parentheses is written as a separate sentence (not included within another sentence), punctuate it as if it were a separate sentence.

Thirty-five years after his death, Robert Frost (we remember him at Kennedy's inauguration) remains America's favorite poet.

Thirty-five years after his death, Robert Frost (do you remember him?) remains America's favorite poet.

Thirty-five years after his death, Robert Frost remains America's favorite poet. (We remember him at Kennedy's inauguration.)
If the material is important enough, use some other means of including it within your text—even if it means writing another sentence. Note that parentheses tend to de-emphasize text whereas dashes tend to make material seem even more important.


The Bracket (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/marks/bracket.htm)
Use brackets [ [ ] ] in the following situations:


You can use them to include explanatory words or phrases within quoted language:

Lew Perkins, the Director of Athletic Programs, said that Pumita Espinoza, the new soccer coach [at Notre Dame Academy] is going to be a real winner.
If you are quoting material and you've had to change the capitalization of a word or change a pronoun to make the material fit into your sentence, enclose that changed letter or word(s) within brackets:

Espinoza charged her former employer with "falsification of [her] coaching record."
See the description of the ellipsis for information on using brackets to set off an ellipsis that you have used to indicate omitted language in a quotation.

Also within quotations, you could enclose [sic] within brackets (we italicize but never underline the word sic and we do not italicize the brackets themselves) to show that misspelled words or inappropriately used words are not your own typos or blunders but are part of an accurately rendered quotation:

Reporters found three mispelings [sic] in the report.
(It is bad manners, however, to use this device to show that another writer is a lousy speller or otherwise unlettered. Also, use it only when it is important to maintain the original spelling for some reason. If you can edit (remove) the error without violating some scholarly or ethical principle, do so.) Note, also, that the word sic means "thus" or "that's how it was" and is not an abbreviation; thus, no period.

If you have italicized or underlined words within quoted language that was not italicized or underlined in the original, you can note that change in brackets included within the sentence or paragraph:

It was the atmosphere of the gym that thrilled Jacobs, not the eight championship banners hanging from the beams [italics added].
("Italics mine" or "emphasis added" would be other acceptable phrases.)

You can use brackets to include parenthetical material inside parenthetical material:

Chernwell was poet laureate of Bermuda (a largely honorary position [unpaid]) for ten years.
Be kind to your reader, however, and use this device sparingly.

[Dolemite!]

.....says the admitted pedophile. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d020.gif

You look at young girls too, asswipe. Though it's against your liberal bullshit religion to say so.

[Dolemite!]

too excited to promote separatism to review the article

Like the worst of women you'll never shut up. But in addition you're a nutjob hag.

[standin]

You stupid fuck, everybody knows the S'tan uses sin against you. Not that his sin is yours, you fucking wacko.

And you are a poor example of a male specimen.

And a good example of what bad parenting and environment can do.

[Satan]

You don't like disco, Satan? Then why'd they name the documentary about the emergence of hip hop, graffiti and disco NY77: The Coolest Year In Hell?

That's part of the reason I hate it! All the people who OD'd on coke or Quaaludes and came down here still dressed in their polyester suits, doing the stupid little "YMCA" gang signs and their half-assed Travolta dance moves.

And when I couldn't even use the Bee Gees records as torture because they LIKED that crap, it made Hell a very bad place to be.

Thank God Sid & Nancy showed up and put an end to all that bullshit! http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d010.gif

[Dolemite!]

Thank you for that information. By your standards if I'm a poor male specimen, then I'm Nicola Tesla, Buddha and Ghandi rolled into one.

[Satan]

You look at young girls too, asswipe. Though it's against your liberal bullshit religion to say so.

It's not the Devil's job to preach morality to anyone, but anyone trying to justify fucking children, that's just wrong.

"Liberal bullshit religion"?? I believe in the same thing now that I did that day long ago when I told my former employer that I would rather rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven. So what religion is that?

[Dolemite!]

It's not the Devil's job to preach morality to anyone, but anyone trying to justify fucking children, that's just wrong.

"Liberal bullshit religion"?? I believe in the same thing now that I did that day long ago when I told my former employer that I would rather rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven. So what religion is that?


Using semantics doesn't give anymore credibility to what you're saying. The male psyche cannot be controlled by political correctness which makes up much of your beliefs.

[Satan]

Political correctness? I'm the fucking DEVIL, you idiot. There's nothing "politically correct" in Hell. http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/teufel/d080.gif

[standin]

Thank you for that information. By your standards if I'm a poor male specimen, then I'm Nicola Tesla, Buddha and Ghandi rolled into one.

:biggrin:

Do you even know anything about Tesla, other than what you have heard of from Coast to Coast (recent discovery no less)



Dolomite take a B12 shot. -_-

[Dolemite!]

What kind of delusion is this, now you really think you're the devil? I'm talking to the same guy behind the Christ nick, who also edits bible verse with a lib slant in his Ford signature.

[Dolemite!]

:biggrin:

Do you even know anything about Tesla, other than what you have heard of from Coast to Coast (recent discovery no less)



Dolomite take a B12 shot. -_-

I've read quite a bit about him. Now beat it, old bag, some people atleast have the decency to quit when they end up looking stupid and clueless but not you.

[Satan]

What kind of delusion is this, now you really think you're the devil? I'm talking to the same guy behind the Christ nick, who also edits bible verse with a lib slant in his Ford signature.

You have obviously been misinformed. I am known by many names..... Lucifer....Beelzebub.....Mephistopheles.....Old Scratch.....but I certainly would have no interest in being the son of my former employer, or an earth-bound Liberal named after a motor vehicle.

[standin]

There, near the end of his life, Tesla showed signs of encroaching mental illness, claiming to be visited by a specific white pigeon daily. Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the pigeon as a "final blow" to himself and his work.
Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder,[93] and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three. Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts mysophobic.

Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, on 7 January 1943.[100] Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts.

Take your shot.

[Satan]

Andy's read all about Tesla. And other hair bands.

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[Dolemite!]

Now loony tunes is trying to dismiss perhaps the biggest genius of the last century by saying he was eccentric. What a stupid cow.

[Dolemite!]

Andy's read all about Tesla. And other hair bands.

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Not a Tesla fan but Edison's medicine is a great song and the first place I heard of the guy.

[Dolemite!]

It might be excusable in school. I wonder how many kids have heard of Tesla at all.

[standin]

Now loony tunes is trying to dismiss perhaps the biggest genius of the last century by saying he was eccentric. What a stupid cow.

Dismiss no, pointing out his dysfunction and loosing "vision", yes.

Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: "Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me."

Did you know he wanted socialize electricity?

He ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, in part because of the implications it would have on his future vision of free power

[standin]

It might be excusable in school. I wonder how many kids have heard of Tesla at all.

That would depend on their family's background concerning the importance of education. Some have, some haven't. Even in affluent family sometimes education , though obtained, is not important.

[Dolemite!]

I'm most indebted to you for this fascinating story. Now shut the fuck up.

[standin]

Learn intercourse, Dolomite. Take your swan song and make it better.

[hideyoursheep]

Native Indians as well as gypsies are supposed to have originally travelled from somewhere in India.

:lmao:

God, you're an idiot...



:rolleyes:

[Dolemite!]

No, because you see, it's those like you who are ignorant and don't read facts that are idiotic.

[standin]

No, because you see, it's those like you who are ignorant and don't read facts that are idiotic.
:hee:
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