meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Desert Island Discs

Nile Rodgers

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.413.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nile Rodgers is a Grammy-winning composer, musician, and producer. With his own band, Chic, he's been enticing people on to the dance floor since the mid-1970s with hits like Le Freak and Good Times. With over 200 production credits to his name, he has worked on many highly successful albums from Sister Sledge’s We Are Family to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and Madonna’s Like a Virgin. Born in New York City in 1952 to a teenage mother, he spent his early life immersed in his parents’ bohemian, beatnik, and drug-dominated lifestyle. Drugs played a part in Nile's life too from an early age, and he took his first acid trip with Timothy Leary at the age of 15. After learning to play the guitar, he got his musical break touring with the Sesame Street stage show and playing in the house band of Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, where he met bassist Bernard Edwards with whom he developed a productive musical partnership and went on to found Chic. Following the Disco Sucks movement of the late 1970s, Nile and Bernard turned to production, and sprinkled their magic dust on Sister Sledge and Diana Ross. When Nile and Bernard went their separate ways in the early 1980s, Nile forged ahead on his own, working with, among others, Madonna, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and Duran Duran. Nile went into rehab in 1994 and has been clean and sober for the past 24 years and has received successful treatment for cancer twice. He won three Grammys for his 2013 collaboration with the French electronic music duo Daft Punk, and has recently released the first Chic album in 26 years. Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

0:04.7

Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.

0:09.4

Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take

0:14.1

with them if they were cast away to a desert island.

0:17.4

This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and for right reasons the

0:22.6

music is shorter than the original broadcast.

0:25.4

I hope you enjoy listening.

0:30.0

Music

0:46.0

In 2013 this week's cast away left its guitar and 1959 Fender Stratocaster affectionately

0:53.2

known as the Hitmaker on a train.

0:55.7

Happily the Hitmaker was returned safe and well by a ticket agent called Bob who was

1:00.6

completely unaware of the fact that according to the NME it had been used to produce $2

1:05.7

billion worth of music.

1:08.1

The Hitmaker's owner is Nile Rogers.

1:10.8

Disco, hip-hop, new wave, R&B, electronic over the past 40 years if you've been on a dance

1:16.8

floor the chances are his work got you up there.

1:19.9

He first enjoyed a chart success with his own ensemble chic before going on to produce

1:24.6

and collaborate with artists from a mix of genres and eras from Diana Ross to David

1:29.6

Bowie, Madonna to Michael Jackson, Gerandia and to Draft Punk.

1:33.7

High octane glamour and towering success might be his Metier but they weren't his starting

1:38.6

point.

1:39.6

Born to teenage parents in New York City he got his first break touring with the Sesame

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.