Here’s yet another thing about a country-wide quarantine: it frees up people for interviews who otherwise might never give you one. Such as Nile Rodgers, Westport resident of 40 years. After a year of leaving letters at his home and e-mailing his publicist, Fran, they finally relented. I’d like to think my charm won them over but, realistically, they probably wanted me to stop bugging them.
(What was Nile doing when he had to stop and shelter in Westport? He was on tour with Cher. How cool is that? If I can say only one more thing in my life, I want it to be that I was on tour with Cher.)
Right now you’re either wildly absorbed or mildly confused - who is Nile Rodgers? According to Wikipedia, he’s a “guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger and composer. [He has] written, produced, and performed on albums that have cumulatively sold more than 500 million units and 75 million singles worldwide.” He’s also the anti-celebrity celebrity we need right now.
Quarantine has highlighted the grey area in which stars dwell in their relevance. The moment COVID touched down, they practically toppled Twitter in their efforts to comfort we mortals by proffering sacrosanct idioms from the comfort of their petal-strewn bubble baths and pricey estates.
I mean, we all enjoy movies, but just because someone makes millions starring in them doesn’t make them a philosopher king. It stings, I know, but it’s true.
Which brings me back to Nile.
Born to a 14-year-old mother and 16-year-old transient father, he grew up poor among a cosmopolitan clutch of hard-core heroin addicts, his mother and stepfather included. He recalls a home full of sophisticated, fashionably-dressed adults, all well-versed in literature and music and drugged to stone-cold stupors.
These memories taught him to stay clear of heroin, pivoting to cocaine, alcohol and denial. Even after a near-death overdose he rejected any notion of being an addict. He tied this thread of conviction to his not drinking brown liquor, the alcohol of alcoholics, and his ongoing ability to create music. (He’s now sober for 26 years.)
Thanks to the junkie cognoscenti in his house and his father, a virtuoso percussionist-cum-addict, life was filled with music and drugs. At age eleven he was sniffing amyl nitrate and playing the clarinet and flute in the school orchestra. At 15 he picked up a guitar (to wow a babe) and tasted blood. In a few short years he mastered the instrument and went on to a career in which he contributed significantly to the short-lived but transformative disco songbook, then produced numerous iconic and seminal albums, such as Madonna’s Like a Virgin and David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.
He’s also the cat behind CHIC’s 1978 hit song, the vibrant and slightly irreverent “Le Freak”. When I asked him about it he responded, “That hit single happens to be one of my own by a stroke of luck.”
Okay, regardless of expertise it’s almost impossible to know what will leap into popular consciousness or limp into the sunset. Yet his appreciation of the journey and the simplicity with which he ascribes success to good luck, without self-deprecation or false modesty, is surprising. After all, he’s racked up enough wins to comfortably enshroud himself in rock star status.
He concedes, “I don't speak of these life gifts in a braggadocios manner because I mainly view them as just doing my job.” He insists, “I’m just a worker.”
So if you don’t know Nile Rodgers, that’s why. The limelight was never his thing. Though his band, CHIC, wrote and produced some of disco’s archetypal hits, like “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “Good Times”, he and his music partner, Bernard Edwards (now deceased), deliberately side-stepped the spotlight. According to Nile, “Even at the height of the political ‘60s and early ‘70s, no matter how much we tried to say it was about peace and love, people would make fun of you if you didn’t fit in.” Though record labels loved their sound, they were skittish to sign a black rock-funk band.
Nile and Bernard decided to play “faceless back-up [band] professionally,” according to Nile. They signed on a lead singer who looked white (he was actually Puerto Rican), and got signed. Though relegating themselves to sidemen was necessary to obviate racism, they threw no tears. Music was their goal, not lapping up the adulation of adoring fans. Nile adds, “We knew we didn’t know how to come off as stars even if we tried.”
After only a few years the Disco Sucks movement sharply curtailed CHIC’s run, scraping their signature sound from the predilection of American culture. Still smarting from the backlash, Nile accepted a writing/producing gig with Diana Ross. The resulting album, diana, became her best-selling album. This project launched one of music history’s most prolific, though often tumultuous, writer/producer careers, propelling him to enviable success if not stardom. Still, in his acceptance speech at the 2015 BMI R&B/Hip-Hop Awards he states, “It is the greatest job in the world. I am the luckiest man in the world to be up here with y’all and thank you for my [award].”
Well, fortune is fickle. In 2010, Nile’s doctor diagnosed him with aggressive prostate cancer, offering the musician scant hope of survival. To cope, as always, Nile dove into writing, ultimately creating "Get Lucky” with Daft Punk and Pharrell and heralded as “one of the most famous dance music songs of the decade.” Though the meaning of this song seems obvious to everyone but the most blessedly innocent, Nile’s songs always contain an inner truth: his Deep Hidden Meaning (DHM).
“Get Lucky” contains two DHMs. First, the fortuity with which its creators banded. Second, the song enabled Nile to lose himself in creation instead of fixating on his cancer. In SPIN he says, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a more exciting time in my life.”
In July 2013, three months after the release of “Get Lucky,” he was declared cancer-free. But don’t call him a hero or a fighter, “I am just lucky. I never said that I beat cancer. I said that I’m a cancer survivor. My doctors helped me beat it and the only thing I think I did was have a good, positive attitude."
He embraces each trauma and achievement not as a victory or failure, but as life. Straightforward, honest and authentic. He never invites pity nor solicits praise.
We’re all born oblivious to our attributes and circumstances. To be born with a smart mind and a strong work ethic, then, is good luck. To be born into poverty or addiction is bad luck. By acknowledging our good luck we better appreciate our success, freeing ourselves from the insidiousness of “entitlement” and the need for plaudits. Conversely, recognizing our shortcomings and problems as bad luck makes them separate from ourselves, enabling us to reject and overcome them or, in Nile’s case, accept them and move on.
Whether we’re at the end of a pandemic or in the middle of one, none of us know. We’re experiencing unprecedented events, just as Nile has dealt with his entire life. However, we do know this: we are lucky to have whatever it is we needed to get us here, in Westport, on this day. Hopefully we can appreciate what brought us here, and have the fortitude to overcome or accept whatever happens tomorrow. So, yes, Nile is who we need now. “Life isn’t about surviving the storm, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”* -Vivian Greene
*As quoted in his auto-biography, Le Freak