Nile Rodgers: 'The 1970s were the most artistically free time black America ever had'

NILE Rodgers has plenty of stories to tell.

If, for example, you happen to call him at the start of a 45-minute limo ride from his New York home to the airport, he'll gladly fill the whole trip by regaling you with warm and enthusiastic tales of his career beginnings as part of session outfits The Boys and The Big Apple Band in the early 1970s, his days as one half of the duo at the core of Chic, the disco era's most definitively credible band, and on to the 1980s, where he and Bernard Edwards (Chic's other half) would forge a second career as production gurus to some of the decade's biggest artists.

"I'm headed to catch a flight to London right now," he says. "I'm coming over to do a private party. I can't say who it's for, I'm afraid, but I just got Tweeted by a friend of mine over there who says that they're watching Madonna on stage right now. 'She's killing it!', they're saying. Then I'm off to Rome for a gig the day after next."

Madonna has been a friend of Rodgers ever since he produced her hugely successful breakthrough album, Like a Virgin, in 1984.

Others who fall into this category – whether they worked with Rodgers alone or Rodgers and Edwards – include David Bowie (Let's Dance, the last great highpoint of his career, and Black Tie White Noise a decade later), Diana Ross (Diana, her biggest-selling album), Sister Sledge (We Are Family) and Duran Duran (singles The Reflex and Wild Boys, the Notorious album and their 2004 comeback, Astronaut). It speaks volumes of Rodgers and Edwards' influence on popular music that these epochal contributions aren't as well-remembered as what they created with Chic, a band who wouldn't just define the disco era through hits like Le Freak and Good Times, but would go on to be a huge influence on hip-hop and house music.

"A lot of people don't understand exactly what Chic is," states Rodgers. "Here's the history: only Bernard and I were ever signed as Chic, but when we brought out our first record, we knew we didn't look chic and we didn't have that whole thing down, so we put two models on the cover. That was quite apropos in those days, because bands like the Ohio Players and Roxy Music would do it too. We thought (Roxy Music were] so cool, we were basically doing our own version of them. So when the first record hit, and because our single Dance Dance Dance had two girls singing in unison, everyone thought these girls were Chic."

Rodgers and Edwards were ostensibly just another couple of guys in the band throughout their initial career as Chic between 1976 and 1983, sharing the stage with long-term drummer Tony Thompson and various singers, including Norma Jean Wright, Luci Martin and Alfa Anderson, but being background men had been a familiar situation to the duo since they met in 1971 and started playing as session musicians for Joe Simon and then one-hit-wonders New York City. This ensemble arrangement would continue through the band's 1990s revival and on into their current incarnation. "We came back to tour in the 1990s," recalls Rodgers, "and the plan then had been to step it up, to take it to another level. But of course, Bernard died."

Edwards passed away suddenly in 1996, at 43, while the recently reformed band were touring Japan. The cause of death was determined to be pneumonia. In 2003, Thompson also died young, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer at 49. Rodgers is the only original member of Chic left in the current touring version, but he remains upbeat and grateful still to be able to perform his music. "I look back on those wild times we had in the 1970s and the Eighties", he says, "and I wouldn't have changed any of it. And I don't think those guys would have either."

Edwards has certainly had an eventful career – before Chic, he would support the Jackson Five around the States. "Michael Jackson's gonna be remembered for his music," he says now. "The behaviour goes away when the person goes away, but the work stays forever."

As for his own legacy, though, Rodgers thinks it'll be about more than the music.

"When the history books come to be written," he says, "you'll see that the 1970s were the most artistically free period that we (black Americans) have ever had. It's the only time we were actually judged by the merit of the notes which were coming off the wax, as they used to say. There was an almost level playing field with the big white acts, where even a gay black man like Sylvester could come out of San Francisco and go up against the Rolling Stones.

"I think that's what came to a head during the Disco Sucks events, where people would get together and burn disco records – we had taken away the power from the powers-that-be. But, you know, we weren't even really a disco band. Sure, a few of our tracks have a four-to-the-floor beat that got people hooked, but we were a soul band, a rhythm and blues band, before we were anything else."

• Nile Rodgers & Chic play the Picture House, Edinburgh, on Saturday 25 July.