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Aside from his mom, who gets it in spades, and his partner Bernard, adualtion is chiefly meted out to his idols like Diana Ross and David Bowie that he had the privilege to work for, but also to Michael Jackson, who sought his help at a difficult time, and Madonna, with whom he partied.His sporadic relationship with his biological father, an addict first and a musician second who died before reaching 40, also made its mark. The extent of his addictions, his attempts at sobriety and his response to the tragic death of Bernard Edwards in Japan in 1996 when Chic were firmly on the comeback trail are handled very effectively and poignantly. His honesty and humility throughout make this a truly fun read, and I have to admit that it made me seek out and listen to a lot of music along the way. This entry was posted in Book Reviews, Nile Rodgers and tagged aljarreau, bernardedwards, chic, davidbowie, disco, inxs, lefreak, let'sdance, nilerodgers.

I really enjoyed this, an inspiring story of a natural performer who overcame the odds to make it big, re-invented his career after the ‘Disco Sucks’ debacle and lived life to the absolute full. I was lucky enough to catch a question/answer session with Nile Rodgers earlier this year, and his fun, humble, and engrossing personality made me decide to read his book. But Chic was Rodgers’s concept — a minimalist funk band inspired image-wise by Roxy Music’s ersatz elegance and Kiss’s refusal to show their faces. During pop’s most glamorous and decadent age, Nile Rodgers wrote the biggest records and lived behind the velvet rope—whether he was holding court in the bathroom stalls at Studio 54, club hopping with Madonna, or scarfing down White Castle burgers with Diana Ross. Sometimes we'd have full-on sex, or maybe one or more girls would give me oral sex… that's just the way it was.In interviews he is a great raconteur and so stories like the conception of Chic’s biggest song “Le Freak” linked to an attempt to get into Studio 54 to see Grace Jones are very familiar but there was a lot I didn’t know.

Lean, jumpy, thoughtful, sometimes acerbic, this body of work stands nevertheless as the second-phase legacy of a superb rock band some may prefer to classify as funk. I was aware of Nile Rodgers from his Chic days (although slightly too young to catch the disco explosion, I caught up on it), then through his connections with Debbie Harry (he co-produced her “Koo Koo” album), David Bowie (I loved “Let’s Dance”) and finally INXS, with “Original Sin”. Note: If you're not familiar with Nile Rodger's body of work, here is a video interview of him playing a medley of some of his most important hits with his band Chic, in just sixty seconds.But since this does not come for free, I guess they already knew that besides bringing joy to the world through music, he would still do charity work, as it indeed turned out to be.

g. "The Greatest Dancer", "Thinking of You", and We Are Family (which became an anthem for the 1979 World Series champions, the Pittsburgh Pirates).The first portion of the book where he recounts his youth with drug addicted parents and constant turmoil was a page-turner. Today’s pop music—genre-crossing, gender-bending, racially mixed, visually stylish, and dominated by dance music with global appeal—is the world that Nile Rodgers created. I was really looking forward to reading Rodgers’ autobiography and about his experiences working in the music industry particularly during that time. In the 1970s, Rodgers and bass player Bernard Edwards formed a writing and production partnership and created the band Chic, which skyrocketed to fame and fortune on the strength of their lean, irresistible grooves. But things take a turn for the worse when the scene that embraced Chic suddenly implodes and gives way to New Wave, and Nile is brutally candid about his embarrassment that his band (and first solo album) can’t get arrested.