His mother and stepfather were a mixed race couple with strong bohemian tendencies, consorting with drug users, jazz musicians, gamblers, petty criminals, and other colorful characters who frequented their home, a situation young Nile regarded as perfectly normal since he knew no other type of life. At 15 he brushed with such A‑listers as Frank Sinatra while helping a grandmother’s boyfriend clean private jets at Van Nuys Airport.

Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. The partying almost killed him, and you get the lowdown of how he battled his addiction and how he won, though that's not a big part of the book. 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. Many Chic stories are music folklore, not least the wonderful story of "Le Freak", Atlantic Records' only triple-platinum-selling single, which they wrote after being refused entry to Studio 54, even though the headliner, Grace Jones, had personally invited them.

The lonely, sickly child of two jazz-obsessed junkies, Rodgers grew into a brilliant musician blessed with a clear artistic vision that propelled him into almost unimaginable success, with him riding a spectacular tidal wave of sex, money and drugs. but as this diagnosis was some time ago - 2010 - I'm surprised there was nothing more after this, maybe an afterword, or an extra bit added to the text to say what happened next, but that aside it was a thoroughly entertaining read. Throughout his memoir, Rodgers makes writing chart-toppers sound easy, but as he describes his escapades and explains the “Deep Hidden Meaning” of his songs, we soon see the difficulties of the pop producer—his talent propels other artists to stardom while he remains relatively unknown.

By 1979 a significant backlash against "disco" music began to take its toll on Chic's commercial success, but in many ways Rodgers' career was just getting started. During pop’s most glamorous and decadent age, Nile Rodgers wrote the biggest records and lived behind the velvet rope—whether he was holding court in the bathroom stalls at Studio 54, club hopping with Madonna, or scarfing down White Castle burgers with Diana Ross. The scandalous namedropping is kept to a tasteful minimum, but this book is still juicy and full of crazy tales. It's possible the name Nile Rodgers doesn't ring a bell, but if you've been a fan of popular music during the last 35 years it's certain you've heard his work. Rodgers and Edwards regarded Chic as a rock band for a multicultural disco movement that made good on hippie peace, love and freedom.

I could not help throwing the Niles playlist on my stereo while reading about the artists he worked closely with starting with CHIC, David Bowie, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Diana Ross, and Madonna.

from the murderer who held him hostage at age 13 while holding his younger brother out the window - with out his knowledge he was ever a prisoner or there was anything wrong, to his teen hang session with Timothy Leary in the hills outside LA when some ragged friendlies on the beach ask him if he wants to go on "a trip".

The shifting times of his growing up and the strange mirror and fractured perspectives that bohemia can cast on the straight world provide a picture of USA and its changes -life, music, culture, politics, ambitions, dreams and disasters through fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and onward that is as original, lively, honest and perceptive as his music is. My rating probably has more to do with my connection to the subject matter, but it was right book at the right time for me. There's a lot going on beneath the surface that's barely touched on here, probably because at the end of the day the guy's just made too much money to really tell it how it is. s, Bowie greedy for hits and stingy with credit, Madonna transformed from cheeky young opening act to the incomparably famous old friend whose 36th-birthday party was the beginning of the end of Rodgers’s multiple addictions. I was aware of Nile Rodgers from his Chic days (although slightly too young to catch the disco explosion, I caught up on it), then through his connections with Debbie Harry (he co-produced her “Koo Koo” album), David Bowie (I loved “Let’s Dance”) and finally INXS, with “Original Sin”.

He was largely a functioning addict so it didn’t really hold back his multi-million selling career with Chic and production duties for Sister Sledge and Diana Ross and when disco succumbed to the racist, homophobic backlash of the Disco Sucks movement as a producer for David Bowie, Duran Duran, Madonna, Grace Jones and countless more. At the age of 13 he was already sniffing glue and had been turned on to acid by Timothy Leary himself.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. The most obvious example is that he tells the story of his partner Bernard Edwards' death, but doesn't mention the cause of death. 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. The extent of his addictions, his attempts at sobriety and his response to the tragic death of Bernard Edwards in Japan in 1996 when Chic were firmly on the comeback trail are handled very effectively and poignantly.