The band Nile Rodgers wanted to imitate: “I want to do the black version”
Every great musician never stops being a student of the new school of musicians. For all the people who have developed a signature sound and stick with it until they finally break up, the most adventurous players are the ones who look at other artists and see what they could take from them and turn into their own original sound. Considering his background in the world of dance music, though, Nile Rodgers was knocked out by some of the progenitors of art rock in the 1970s as well.
Looking through his repertoire, Rodgers was usually the go-to person when someone needed to transition into the world of dance music. He had already conquered the world with Chic thanks to ‘Good Times’, but when he started working with Duran Duran and Madonna, he single-handedly turned that version of disco music into the modern sound of pop, complete with those signature rhythm guitar stabs.
Even when he wasn’t overtly working with an act, you could hear his influence on pretty much anyone who tried to have a pop smash. Although Queen never really needed much outside influence during the 1980s, a tune like ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ would have probably not existed had Rodgers not been there to lay the groundwork first.
While Kraftwerk may have helped pioneer that trademark assembly-line style of rhythm, Roxy Music was taking it to a different level. For Your Pleasure already had the perfect combination of Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno working together on every track, but the minute that they started to see chart success with ‘Love is the Drug’, they had taken the adventurousness of acts like David Bowie and channelled it into making pure pop magic.
It was more than being one of the biggest progenitors in art-rock, though. It was all about the presentation, too, and when Rodgers saw the group dressed up like they were ripped straight out of some 1920s noir movie, he knew that he had found his calling in what the music should look like.
Even before they had a major hit, Rodgers thought he saw the basis of the future in Roxy Music, saying, “I had never ever heard of Roxy Music, and we walked into this club in London. Roxy Music was dressed up in couture clothing. I got into fashion, and I said, ‘I want to do the black version of Roxy Music.’”
But what Rodgers was doing wasn’t far from how art-rockers were working on their masterpieces. Whereas Rodgers was laser-focused on making a groove that could get people moving, there was a certain hypnotic quality in every act trying to push new technology like the synthesiser forward as well.
The disco pioneer eventually got his wish to dabble in art-rock as well, working with David Bowie on Let’s Dance and more outlandish projects like Black Tie White Noise. But no matter whether he was working with Bowie, Beyonce, or Daft Punk later down the road, nothing would stop Rodgers from sounding like himself. When you establish a groove like he did, it will be in the bones for a lifetime.
