Nile Rodgers - 2014-12 Q 10 Commandments.pdf

Nile Rodgers: by the time you’ve read this, he’ll probably have written a couple more million sellers.

“I HAVE MORE COMPUTING POWER IN MY STUDIO THAN THE US MILITARY HAD IN THE VIETNAM WAR.”

NILE RODGERS Q hears the Chic funkateer’s golden rules for life. 1

6

DON’T BOTHER WITH SLEEP

I’ve slept three or four hours a night, sometimes none at all, since I was six. I used to equate sleep with death, so maybe that’s still the underlying thing. The amount of times I’ve gone from nightclubbing directly to the studio… My brain gets active when I start thinking about music, so it’s hard to sleep. Therefore I choose not to.

2

DEFY DOCTOR’S ORDERS

Three and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with very aggressive cancer. They told me to get my affairs in order. They said that the cancer growth was doubling at an alarming rate. I went out, did a bunch of concerts and wrote a bunch of songs, and one of the first was Get Lucky – so I got my affairs in order pretty well!

3

RELAX, DON’T DO IT

My music teacher told me that the only working definition of discipline is the ability to delay gratification. He said, “For now, you’re gonna play [hums mind-numbing guitar-lesson riff], but one day you’ll play [hums complicated practice riff].” And then eventually, I can do, “Aaaaww, freak out! Le freak, c’est chic!” What he meant was, I’d do this boring stuff so that years later I’d not only get to sing the chorus, I’d write the chorus.

WORDS: ANDREW PERRY PHOTOS: ROY COX, REX

4

PARTY WITH GOOD PURPOSE

The one time I spent a million dollars on a record was making Duran Duran’s [1986 album] Notorious. Now, we can’t say that it cost us a million just because we were partying… but [guitarist] Andy and [drummer] Roger Taylor had just quit so I had to keep morale up, and a good way to do that was to party, OK? I remember being at [keyboardist] Nick Rhodes’s house partying with Michael Douglas, and Nick’s elevator gets stuck. Michael had just done [’80s action flick] Romancing The Stone, so now he was Mr Adventure Guy, and he climbs to the top of the elevator and rescues us all. Insane!

5

being egotistical, I just have no clue about such mundane stuff...” After 20 minutes of grilling, she still didn’t believe me. I had to show her the story on my cellphone, about my roadie’s death.

TRY TO AVOID GETTING PISSED OFF

It takes a lot to get me pissed off. But yesterday, I’d just landed at Heathrow and the day before my guitar roadie died, when this woman asks me what I’m doing here. I say, “Charity work.” And she says, “Do you have any certificate?” I say, “I have people who work for me that show me everything to do. I’m not

Madonna: “she taught me.”

TRUST PEOPLE, NOT INSTITUTIONS

As a teenager, I was homeless. Both my parents were heroin addicts, so I learnt to fend for myself at a young age. But I was lucky that I had a certain way about myself, so I could explain my situation to people, and they’d say, “Come in, young man, stay over here for the night.” I’ve been through my whole life without being abused by strangers. Only when I was institutionalised in a place supposed to protect kids, did they abuse me. On the street, people took care of me.

7

HELP YOUR FELLOW MUSICIANS

I believe in giving back as much help to musicians as possible. Recording with Daft Punk, we were in the same studio we did the first Chic single. They went, “How did you make Chic records?” So I taught them the technique. We came up with Get Lucky, then Lose Yourself To Dance and Give Life Back To Music in minutes. All three songs were finished in one day.

8

READ SCI-FI CLASSIC DUNE

The latest book I’ve read was something I first read years ago, [1965 sci-fi novel] Dune by Frank Herbert. It’s even cooler now than it was then. But as many great things as Frank Herbert imagined, look at what we have in the world now. We have mobile phones and drones. I have more computing power at my studio than they probably had in the US military during the Vietnam war.

9

DO AS MADONNA SAYS When I did Like A Virgin, I thought Material Girl was the best song to lead with. Madonna was convinced it was Like A Virgin. But I was like, “Material Girl’s 10 times better.” She taught me that it was about being a girl, losing your virginity, and how relevant a lyric like that would be. Sometimes there’s an intellectual component to a record that can trump its primal component.

10

WATCH MOVIES 24/7

I have movies on every waking minute and I sleep with headphones on because I have to have constant noise. If I didn’t, music would be playing in my head – I need something to drown it out. It’s a life sentence, man, but the good part is, I get to write Get Lucky. The bad part is, I never sleep. n Nile Rodgers is helping young people bring their ideas to life with GoThinkBig. Visit GoThinkBig.co.uk for more. DECEMBER 2O14

61