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

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He wrote 'We are Family' for Sister Sledge and 'I'm Coming Out' for Diana Ross, and produced two of the most popular albums of all time - Madonna's 'Like a Virgin' and David Bowie's 'Let's Dance'.

The irony here is, once I was fully immersed and engaged into the technical philosophies of making music, was it when the DHM of his life, to include his young life, all came together like the many songs he helped bring up the charts. Rodgers, an up-and-down student schooled more usefully by television and movies, could get by on several instruments before he taught himself guitar from clarinet études he had lying around. Nile Rodgers is a brilliant storyteller who gives readers the surprising behind-the-scenes tales of the songs we all know, and lovingly re-creates the lost outsider subcultures—from the backstreets of 1950s Greenwich Village to the hills of 1960s Southern California to the demimonde of New York’s 1970s and 1980s discos and clubs—that live on in his music and in the throbbing, thriving world of pop he helped to set in motion.After Chic reformed in the mid-90s, Bernard Edwards fell ill before a gig in Japan, but insisted on playing. He's interesting too on how Chic were a deliberately fabricated construct like Kiss, like Roxy Music and -go on, admit it- one of the many incarnations of The Band or The Clash decked out in cobbled together Americana and rockers' pomp. As co-founder of Chic, he soundtracked the glamorous, decadent days of disco with hits including "Good Times", "Everybody Dance" and "Le Freak". The worst bit is c) when they pretend to regret b), and repeat a load of rehab speak about how they're much happier now they stare at wind chimes and think about their recovery twelve hours a day. Eventually it all moves onto the ill-fated Chic show at Budokan after which Bernard Edwards was found dead in his hotel room.

At the age of 13 he was already sniffing glue and had been turned on to acid by Timothy Leary himself.This book is an absolute knockout: exhilarating, warm, and courageous, deeply moving and deeply funny. Although Nile Rodgers makes the grade as a B-list celebrity, he isn’t as famous as the musical record warrants. As a musician, music is my main source of enjoyment and income but the truth is that I have many other interests and I wanted to show people that my life was this weird, multifaceted, complicated thing.

He jammed with Jimi Hendrix, rocked out at Max’s Kansas City, toured with Big Bird on Sesame Street’s road show, and played in the legendary Apollo Theater house band behind history’s greatest soul singers. In fact, he perfectly captures a sense of the exuberance and excess of the early 80s because he was living it - even as a full-blown addict, he was a high performing one, with Chic, Bowie and Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” all being produced during his period. Obsessed by music from a young age, he played flute and clarinet at school, where his more classical tastes included Gershwin. His mother was a thirteen year old student when she gave birth to Niles and he was adopted by an Albino woman living in the Bronx. He tires towards the end of his story, skipping years in a few sentences (hence four stars), but we'll forgive him that given how many drugs he claims to have downed.In fact, one of the surprise gifts of “Le Freak” is that a third of it covers Rodgers’s own opening act — a coming-of-age tale every bit as impressive as the musical insights and star-time chronicles that follow. Rodgers's mother fell pregnant with him at 13, the first time she had sex, and after she split from his father she took up with Bobby, a white bohemian junkie. Punk 45: There Is No Such Thing As Society (2024 Edition) Get A Job, Get A Car, Get A Bed, Get Drunk! Nile Rodgers life's tale is full of exciting things going on and surreal encounters with music legends, and this, combined with fluid and honest writing, makes this book a page turner. The book starts off at Nile the little asthmatic kid whose childhood was spent with his junkie parents, watching TV and loitering around.

If you’d like to file an allegation of infringement, you’ll need to follow the process described in our Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy. The instability extended to his formal education, as Rodgers was not much interested in school; at one point he managed to dodge going to school for almost three months before getting caught when truant officers arrived at his home. I agree with that 100%, and if you look at my book, it’s really about my life: music just happens to be a large part of it. From the glamour of Studio 54 to the squalor of New York's Valhalla, and with a cast of bohemians, drop-outs, disco divas and the odd world-famous celebrity, Niles Rodgers tells his astonishing story.Confession: I haven't read this book but am using it as a way to highlight something very interesting I saw about him. If you want the lowdown on every one of Rodgers's funky relatives (and he seems not to have had a single blood relation who wasn't over the top in several ways), open " Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny" to page 1 and start reading. Pop stars often come across to us mere mortals as a combination of good looks, good luck, the ability to sing passably and a tireless publicity campaign. Too bad that by ending with Edwards’s death during a 1996 Chic reunion in Japan, Rodgers fails to provide a final act — a full picture of a life that slowed down but continued with sobriety, and included his so-far successful battle with aggressive prostate cancer. While I am not a big fan of many of those block-buster 80s records he produced, it would have been interesting to hear more about the process of producing some of them--specific challenges, the reasons for various decisions, etc.