How David Bowie “really hurt” Nile Rodgers
David Bowie and Nile Rodgers’ collaboration on ‘Let’s Dance’ revolutionised pop music. It signalled a vibrant new phase in Bowie’s career, who, after a three-year hiatus from recording, reemerged as a transformed persona and embraced disco—a genre in which Rodgers had played a pivotal role. The Starman would go on to produce some of his most commercially successful pop hits with this fresh, new style.
On paper, the pairing of Bowie and Rodgers could have gone either way. It was a bold new area of exploration for the English singer-songwriter, who was no stranger to conquering genres outside his perceived comfort zone. However, his pedigree at adapting his sound and evolving as an artist didn’t necessarily guarantee Let’s Dance would be a hit.
There was ample risk attached to the project for both artists involved. On Bowie’s part, his last album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), was a critically acclaimed masterpiece. Still, it didn’t perform well commercially in the United States, leaving the musician without a label in the country.
Meanwhile, despite having the world in his hands a few years prior, Rodgers was down on his luck. The star power of Chic had dwindled, leading to 1983’s Believer to be a commercial failure, and his debut solo offering, released in the same year, performed equally poorly. However, the opportunity to team up with Bowie represented an opportunity for both men to get back on their feet and prove people who had dared to write them off wrong. Additionally, for Rodgers, Bowie was the first artist he worked with from the rock ‘n’ roll world, and if he got this right, it would open new doors to his career.
Thankfully, the joint venture was a resounding success, asserting Bowie as a global pop megastar and selling over ten million records in the process. Furthermore, it was nominated for ‘Album of the Year’ at the Grammy Awards.
While the success also had a transformative effect on Rodgers’ career, as he worked with artists such as Jeff Beck, Peter Gabriel, and Mick Jagger shortly after the release of Let’s Dance, he felt deserving of more credit.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2011, Rodgers was asked to elaborate on comments he made in his autobiography, Le Freak, about Bowie taking the plaudits on the collaborative album. The guitarist replied: “That album was a fantastic experience, probably never to be duplicated in my life. [But] David was on the cover of Time and, like, my name was mentioned once. I was really hurt.”
Meanwhile, during a 2014 interview with The Guardian, Rodgers claimed that Let’s Dance “was almost as much mine as his” and described the project as “a breakthrough moment in my life”.
Although in the immediate aftermath of the release, it was hard for Rodgers to accept his collaborator’s position in the limelight while he lingered in the background, ultimately, it was Bowie’s name on the record sleeve. Additionally, Rodgers may not have received his fair share of accolades at the time, but in the decades following Let’s Dance, that’s rightly been amended.
