Nile Rodgers’ chance meeting with David Bowie in New York’s Continental club in the ‘80s could have been a disaster. It came at a time when the music industry considered Rodgers unworthy of working with the icon. The co-founder of CHIC was tainted by the ‘Disco Sucks’ backlash that flared up after his wildly successful hits Le Freak, Everybody Dance, and Dance, Dance, Dance.

After My Sharona knocked CHIC’s Good Times off the charts in 1979, Rodgers’ career flatlined. Bowie still saw the spark, however, as Rodgers slid onto a barstool next to him. They discussed jazz, soul, and R&B until 5:30 am: "We were like old friends sitting on a couch in someone's living room. The wide-ranging, reference-heavy, autodidactic rap made me feel like I was back in the mix of the beatniks, hippies, and jazzers of my youth," Rodgers recalled in his book Le Freak.

Rodgers envisioned collaborating with the Thin White Duke on an artistic, primal album but Bowie was exploring the ‘80s metrosexual world of high fashion. He’d moved on from many identities, including an androgynous alien and an albino 'duke'. Bowie had an idea for a new chapter and a new song - a 'postmodern homage to the Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout' - and wanted Rodgers to produce a dance album: “I want you to make hits. That’s what you do best. You make hits.”

Relaunching Bowie turned Rodgers into a superstar music producer who’d later launch Madonna and work with Lady Gaga, Daft Punk, Mick Jagger, and Maroon 5. It would also give him the platform to bring positive change to the world through his We Are Family Foundation. His is a most unlikely superhero story, one that began in 1952 when Rodgers was born into the heroin-fuelled hell of New York City.

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Drugs and destiny

‍Nile Rodgers discovered that his parents weren’t ‘normal’ around age seven. His mother, Beverly, was a beautiful 21-year-old and the descendent of slaves from the American south. His step-father Bobby was white, central-casting handsome, and had the style of a Beatnik Ph.D. The couple bonded through art, music, literature, and - crucially - heroin.

“They smoked pipes, dressed impeccably, and read Playboy for the articles,” Nile recalled in his autobiography Le Freak.‍

But even in New York City’s Greenwich Village, circa 1959 - home of the Beat Generation - inter-racial couples were unusual. So was Nile Rodgers, an asthmatic, nearsighted kid in Jerry Lewis glasses who was too anxious to sleep and brought Billie Holiday records to show-and-tell at his Catholic school. The closest he came to ‘normal’ was Cub Scouts and after-school programs, two pillars that instilled in him a duty to help others.
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Rodgers’ grandmother introduced him to Elvis Presley. His birth father - often disappearing into his own black hole of addiction - taught him to read rhythm patterns. He died before Rodgers turned professional: "I believe the biggest present he gave me was his gift for music.”

By the time Nile Rodgers was 16, he could play almost any musical instrument but settled on the guitar - it impressed the girls. By then, Rodgers had also discovered his other true love, drugs. He’d graduated seamlessly from sniffing glue to LSD and heroin.

The Black Panthers‍

Rodgers was essentially homeless by 15, having bounced between relatives in New York and Los Angeles where he spent two days at a Hollywood party tripping on acid with Timothy Leary. He was sleeping rough when he met James Irwin, a hippie guru who became his mentor. Irwin taught him how to panhandle in 10 languages - including sign language - and introduced Rodgers to his commune. While there, Rodgers further developed his social conscience.

The Vietnam War was raging. Martin Luther King Jr. and politician Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968, and Rodgers wanted to know more about anti-war 'flower power' activists and Yippies: "Oppressed groups were finding their voices, and I was finding mine," he said.‍

He joined the Black Panthers for a few months hoping to make a difference: “Our group was more dedicated to community service than armed revolution.” He worked on the breakfast program for children but parted ways with the Panthers in the midst of Cointelpro, an illegal FBI program to discredit the organization.
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CHIC is born 

Around this time, Rodgers jammed with Jimi Hendrix but the musicians were so stoned they forgot to record the session. His next venture wasn’t an obvious choice - he was a guitarist for The Sesame Street Roadshow - but Rodgers used the professional job as a springboard to more lucrative work as a house musician at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Rodgers was 18 when he met Bernard Edwards, a bassist who wanted to start a band.

Rodgers’ Eureka moment came after listening to Roxy Music, realizing that the imaging and marketing of an album cover was almost as important as the music.

They came up with the band’s name, CHIC, and first song, Everybody Dance, and hired two models for the cover. CHIC’s eponymous first album went gold.

The next two albums - C'est CHIC (1978) and Risqué (1979) went platinum. The single Le Freak actually went triple platinum and they sold an astounding 20m records in under two years.

Rodgers celebrated with a Porsche 911 and a Cigarette deep-V ocean racing boat to entertain his celebrity friends including Blondie’s Debbie Harry. He often held court in the ladies’ bathroom at Studio 54 and was generous with his cocaine, making Rodgers a popular guest.

Disco dive‍

In 1979, My Sharona became the big summer hit, following an anti-disco campaign started by radio DJ Steve Dahl. Dahl was annoyed that his station switched formats from rock to disco so he encouraged listeners to attend a baseball double-header at Chicago’s Comiskey Park stadium in July ‘79. The plan was to blow up a crate of disco records during intermission but more than 50,000 fans rushed the field. A riot ensued.

The anti-disco event quickly morphed into the ‘Disco Sucks’ movement and CHIC’s records stopped selling with a thud-like finality. Despite the huge early success of CHIC, and writing and producing the massive hit album Diana for Diana Ross in 1980, Rodgers risked becoming a footnote in music history.

By 1983, Rodgers suffered six successive flops as a solo artist and his money was disappearing up his nose. While out clubbing with Billy Idol one night in 1983, Rodgers bumped into David Bowie at the underground Continental club, which led to meetings about Let’s Dance. Rodgers wasn’t immediately convinced.

"By now, ‘dance’ was a loaded word for me,” Rodgers said. “The ‘Disco Sucks’ backlash had given me a post-traumatic stress-like disorder, and I'd vowed not to write any songs with that word in them for a long time."

Happily, Rodgers was soon on board and they began work at Bowie's Swiss chalet in Lausanne. Let's Dance sold 8m records and Billboard named Rodgers the Number One Singles Producer of the Year. His phone started ringing again. If it wasn’t Madonna or Keith Richards, it was Daft Punk, Duran Duran, Britney Spears, INXS, Lady Gaga, Bryan Ferry, or Grace Jones…

Listen to Nile Rodgers’ story | For Your Ears Only podcast

The crash

"I knew the moment I started chasing highs, I was chasing death. But I was fairly comfortable with the arrangement," Rodgers said in Le Freak, recalling the night he collapsed in his New York apartment elevator, aspirating on his own vomit ‘Hendrix-style’. A porter called an ambulance. Rodgers' heart flatlined eight times before he recovered - but he still wasn’t ready to give up cocaine.

Later on, Rodgers recalled being in a closet in a Florida hotel, clutching a gun and a samurai sword as he hallucinated in a full-blown cocaine psychosis. The final straw was reading an article saying Keith Richards had just kicked drugs.

"Are you kidding me? Keith Richards got sober? If he could do it, I could do it. The gauntlet had been thrown down."

Rodgers checked into rehab for eight months and realized he’d turned into his father, another addict lying in the gutter. By 1994, Rodgers gave up drugs and alcohol for good.

Deeply affected by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he organized a celebrity re-recording of his hit song for Sister Sledge We Are Family to raise money for relief efforts. Two hundred celebrities volunteered to help including Diana Ross, Eartha Kitt, Pink, Luther Vandross and, of course, Sister Sledge. The recording led to a Spike Lee film and a children's music project, sowing the seeds for the We Are Family Foundation, a charity co-founded with his long-term partner Nancy Hunt.

"My team started small but performed big," he said. They've since funded the building of schools in Africa and brought first-run films and poetry slams to kids in hospitals. The foundation’s primary program, Three Dot Dash (the spelling for peace in Morse Code) searches the world for global teen leaders who share a vision of building a world of peace and harmony.

CHIC regrouped in the mid-90s, but bassist Bernard Edwards fell ill during a concert in Japan and died overseas. Rodgers found his close friend of 25 years in Edwards’ hotel room. "I lost it. I cried hysterically."

Rodgers has since successfully battled cancer twice, remaining optimistic throughout, and sharing his experience to inspire others. He’s been sober for almost 30 years now, a confirmed tea drinker who tries to limit his vice to one pot a day: “In CHIC, I was into cocaine and caviar. Now it's Earl Grey.”