Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and Destiny

Product Information

As Rodgers well knows, the best music is the music is the stuff we feel, the stuff that speaks to us and won't let go. As a producer, he had plenty more, most prominently with Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna and the B-52s, whom he portrays with the sharp eye and tolerance for foible that make his love for his family so believable — the regal Ross nervous about her D. His mom dragged him to LA and back a couple times, had him sent off age 5 to a sanatorium for asthmatic children, left him a number of times with his two loving but not very vigilant grandmothers, did very little to prevent him from becoming a junkie himself and later in life became his largest supplier of drugs! Eventually it all moves onto the ill-fated Chic show at Budokan after which Bernard Edwards was found dead in his hotel room.

He became a Black Panther, was hospitalised at the same time as Andy Warhol, after being spiked with hallucinogens, and jammed with Jimi Hendrix. his natural father is reintroduced several times through the book in various states of incredibly sad states: as a wino at the Port Authority, and later homeless sprawled out in a New York City toll booth. He not only selects from the aforementioned heroes but also looks at producers like Phil Spector and Berry Gordy as well as books on the industry itself such as Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business by Fredric Dannen. I'm not even that big of a fan of some of the areas of Pop Music that Nile has most worked in, but that almost doesn't matter at all. Recomendo a qualquer um que se interesse por música — mesmo que não por disco music pois, como Rodgers deixa claro, nunca a viu separada do rock e do pop.

Their Big Apple Band quickly became Chic, a black fusion of Roxy Music and KISS, and although Chic quickly became synonymous with the disco movement, their roots in jazz, rock and R’n’B and desire to always include a Deep Hidden Meaning (or DHM) in their lyrics always kept them at some remove from the likes of the Bee Gees. Before we get to the late-night sessions in Rodgers’s book, though, we’ve got to meet everyone in his dysfunctional family, a crew about whom the author says, “drugs, crime, and love were the gravy that kept us together. Nevertheless, Rodgers elected to title his memoir after his best-known song in a gesture worthy of a true pop impresario. I was really looking forward to reading Rodgers’ autobiography and about his experiences working in the music industry particularly during that time.

It rescued them from "becoming a minor footnote in rock'n'roll history" and Rodgers became the go-to producer for pop's biggest stars in the 80s. Nile Rodgers was someone in the music business I had been aware of since 1977, when I --- who had just crossed the threshold into adolescence --- first heard on the radio the song "Dance Dance Dance" from his group Chic, with whom he would enjoy a dizzying and intoxicating run of success over the next 2 years with hits like "Le Freak (C'est chic)", "Everybody Dance", "I Want Your Love", and "Good Times. as a Spiritist, I'm pretty sure his friends on the "other side" helped him avoid prematurely ending his present life.All in all, ‘Le Freak’ is a fast-moving, well-written, original account of the life of a self-confessed ‘half-hippie, half Black Panther’, and a must for anyone with even a passing interest in black music over the last 50 years. As Rodgers narrates his story, anecdotes like this show that his signature talent is working as the perpetual underdog, finding artistic inspiration in unlikely places. The position of chronic outsider came naturally to Rodgers, who survived a chaotic childhood with junkie parents in the ’50s, was a Black Panther in the ’60s, and made himself a disco legend with Chic in the ’70s. These career highlights, which might be enough for most producers, barely scratch the surface of Nile Gregory Rodgers’ creative life. In his chatty and astute new memoir, musician and super-producer Nile Rodgers recounts the inspiration for one of his most enduring songs.