Nile Rodgers explains how he first met David Bowie “by complete accident”
Nile Rodgers has explained the story of how he first met David Bowie, saying that they came across each other “by complete accident”.
The iconic musician recalled the tale in a new interview with Vulture, where he was asked about some of the biggest moments of his career. One of those most obviously involved Bowie, and the storming hit they eventually created together in the form of ‘Let’s Dance’.
However, Rodgers opened up about the circumstances which led to this legendary collaboration taking place, revealing the reality that he and Bowie met “by complete accident”.
He said: “I met David by complete accident at a club. I was going into this club with an engineer that I was working with, and Billy Idol just happened to be walking in at the same time. So we hook up, look inside, and there was David sitting all the way in the back of the club all by himself with a glass of orange juice.”
After the pair plucked up the courage to approach Bowie, “We started talking and we never spoke at all that night about rock and roll,” Rodgers continued, adding, “We only spoke about avant-garde jazz.”
Despite the retrospective magnitude of the meeting, in the context of all that would come later, the musician then noted: “We were competing for each other’s sense of cool. But at the end of the day, for some reason, I touched his artistic soul.”
He subsequently also confessed: “I don’t remember much of the night because I used to get really high every single day. I don’t even remember giving him my phone number.”
However, when the pair did manage to reunite, Rodgers described the process of creating the 1983 album Let’s Dance with Bowie as the “most magical time”, putting the singer’s career back on top.
Rodgers admitted that, prior to this, “David wasn’t selling any records in America” and “he wasn’t killing it.”
As such, both the album and its titular track became the best-selling assets of Bowie’s career, with the record hitting number four in America and topping the charts in the UK.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.