Nile Rodgers is a music industry legend, and if you're listening to the radio today you're pretty much guaranteed to hear one of his Grammy award-winning songs. He's worked with the likes of David Bowie, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Duran Duran, Sam Smith, Mark Ronson and Daft Punk. He also once opened for The Jackson 5, has produced film soundtracks and last year performed at Glastonbury and Bestival with his band CHIC. We'd count his most popular songs but there are too many spanning over three decades. Pretty good for someone who used to be homeless and started his career in the store cupboard of a New York music shop.
Now he's working on a project with The Debrief's sister site Go Think Big to encourage young people to persue their passion for music by getting them involved with his upcoming remix of 1978 hit Le Freak (with a little help from Rudimental). We caught up with the genius and his amazing dreadlocks to talk career advice, how to take constructive critisism and why he thinks we all need to be freaks.
You had a really tough upbringing – looking back, was your decision to pursue a career in the music industry really gutsy?
No, I was destined to do this. I had a very, very difficult childhood – both my parents were heroin addicts. So even though we had a very loving household, they were quite dysfunctional so I had to raise myself because they were out perusing their habits. But I knew early on that I wanted to do music.
Your success must mean even more considering your struggle, then?
Now, I’ve won a lot of awards in my life – I’m not trying to say this to influence anyone else but I’m just being honest – I’ve won Grammys and all sorts of stuff but the best award was when I was seven years old and I set the national truancy record in America – 75 days straight and I saw movies every day for 75 days. I used to cut school and go to the movie theatre every day.
That’s amazing! What films were they, anything you’d recommend?
They were early foreign films, top of the line American films, a lot of Hitchcock. In those days we had grindhouse formats so they would show three, four films a day so you would just watch them over and over again – it was awesome.
So you had no plan B career wise?
No, and I would score my life, I’d walk down the street scoring you know, da-da-da. My life was an adventure because I spent it pretty much alone. So I’d have to create characters and create situations and scenarios. Just walking to school was pretty boring so I made it an adventure.
What was your first job in the industry?
My first job in the music business if you will – believe it or not – was as a guitar repairman at a retail store. I wasn’t even dealing with the public, I was working in the back picking the records to give to the people who were interacting with the public. And the reason I did it was because I loved music so much that I wanted to be around it. Of course I wanted to be a composer and a performer, but [I’d do] anything to be around it. When I finally became good enough to play and get paid to play it – whoa, my whole world changed. But it was pretty cool just slaving around picking records.
So is your advice to young people looking to get into the industry to just incorporate it into their everyday life as much as possible?
I think that’s a really cool way to look at it. I think that in a strange way, because of the way that the music business has now been marketed to us, we think that all we have to do is go on a television show and be the best and win. But look at the Olympics; you could be a really great top athlete and have a bad day and lose. So I think that it’s about being passionate, gaining the experience and just doing. I think [it’s] the toughest job in the world, being in the music business – I think it’s really daunting. It’s not as beautiful as it looks on TV.
Be real with us, what’s it like working with Madonna, Diana Ross and Beyoncé?
They’re great! They’re amazing to me, I love them.
A lot of strong, determined women in the music industry get written off as divas or bitches. What have you learned from working with them?
Well, first of all, I’m definitely not someone who thinks a woman that’s bossy or positive is diva-esque or bitchy or anything like that. To me, Madonna is a dream come true. If you’re that focused and you know what you want, you make my job a lot easier. When a person says to me; “No Nile, it shouldn’t go that way”, I go “Really? How should it go?” And if they show me that their way is better than my way, I’m thrilled. These arguments that we have when it comes to making records, they’re always friendly, wonderful arguments. Arguing over structure and content is what artistic people do and usually the best argument wins and it’s not from being diva-esque or tough.
Tell us about this Go Think Big project then?
The concept behind it for me was inspiring. When they told me that there’s approximately a million youths who are not optimistic about joining the work force, we figured that we would do something inspirational. So we’re going to give kids a chance to remix my song Le Freak with Rudimental. We want everyone to join to have the biggest army of support that they can have so you have the 02 army, Rudimental army, you have CHIC organisation and all of the people that sign up. So that’s what we’re trying to do and if we pull this off, hopefully we can inspire people to feel like the job force isn’t that daunting.
Do you think your own set-backs make you want to do this stuff?
I grew up as a hippy, I was a street kid so I was homeless for a long time. I’ve been able to go to musicians [and ask for help with projects like this] because I know that they have altruistic hearts, because a lot of us have really struggled to get to where we are and we’re thankful. We all want to give back in our own way and since music is what we do best, that’s the easiest way for us to give back.
Who should apply?
We want freaks. We’re trying to bring freaks into the work force. And freaks in my opinion are people who are relentless, unstoppable – they just believe in a concept and they go for it and go for it and go for it. And also they’re willing to be educated. As you do more work you get smarter and as my old teacher used to say – doing the work teaches you how to do the job.
Go Think Big is working with Nile Rodgers and Rudimental to recreate Nile's classic CHIC track Le Freak. *This means we've got up to 100 work experience placements to offer on the project. We're looking for everyone from musicians to video producers, to stylists to marketeers to come and help us make this video great. To apply head over to Go Think Big's website here*.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.