ReviewHow bohemian muso Nile Rodgers continues to inspire younger musicians
The uber producer and mentor to bands of various genres is living proof that disco is anything but dead
As the co-founder of the band Chic and a writer-producer for Diana Ross, Sister Sledge and Debbie Harry, Nile Rodgers created some of the finest recordings of the disco era. And he bristles at suggestions that the genre provided simple-minded music for narcissistic listeners and left no legacy after its 1975-80 dominance on the Billboard charts.
“It sounds simple,” Rodgers, 63, says, “until you try to play it. Let those rock guys try to play our records. They don’t even know those chords. They know A and E, but they don’t know the B-flat-13. The guys who played on those disco records were mostly jazz musicians who knew sophisticated harmonies. There was a lot going on around the dance beat on those records, and that’s why it has had such a lasting impact.”
Disco’s influence on Western pop music has been profound if seldom acknowledged. You can clearly hear the echoes of the late-’70s genre in three of today’s best-selling genres: dance-pop, EDM (electronic dance music) and hip hop. In each case, the chain of transmission went through Rodgers personally, so he is eager to set the record straight.
In 1979, for example, Chic enjoyed the summer’s biggest single with Good Times, an infectious disco anthem. By that fall, a single appeared that featured some young New Jersey vocalists, called the Sugarhill Gang, delivering rhyming verse in sing-song voices over instrumental sections lifted from Good Times. A DJ told Rodgers that it was something new – “rap music”.
The single, Rapper’s Delight, broke into the pop top 40, and hip hop emerged from the underground. Rodgers and his Chic co-founder, Bernard Edwards, were angry at first, but once they won a legal battle for a songwriting credit and the money started pouring in, they felt differently.