Le Freak - Hardcover

Nile Rodgers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847443141 ISBN 13: 9781847443144

Publisher: Sphere, 2011

Synopsis

Nile Rodgers is a founding member of the band Chic, and one of the world's most successful music producers. 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'. He also performed with Madonna at Live Aid. His life has been extraordinary - his mother was just 13 when she had him, and he was brought up surrounded by a ragged assortment of artists, drop outs and junkies. At the age of 13 he was already sniffing glue and had been turned on to acid by Timothy Leary himself. A natural, instinctive and brilliant musician, in the midst of all the madness he somehow managed to teach himself classical guitar. He also found time to become an expert in martial arts and a Black Panther. 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.

About this title

Review

A Letter from Author Nile Rodgers: The Reason I Wrote Le Freak

I started writing Le Freak to answer some questions I had about my life. Not the big existential ones, just the facts. I’d asked my mother a question about our early years and her answer would ignite another spark of curiosity rather than provide closure. In no time at all we were off and running like a couple of dog-track greyhounds. The more I wanted to know the more she wanted to tell-- like it was some sort of absolution ritual.

Mom didn’t need to apologize for anything--nor did I--we’d already done that countless times throughout the years. When I started interviewing doctors, institutional historians, family members, and friends I noticed there was a real pattern to this process of rediscovery. Everybody wanted to contribute. My inquiries reminded them that we were all a part of an amazing period in American history.

My early childhood was fascinating in the fifties; my teens were quasi-suicidal in the sixties; young adulthood was sexy in the seventies, and the edginess of the eighties lasted into the mid-nineties. Then that edgy life caught up with me. I only turned away from it when it finally threatened to take away my world’s most precious gift--music.

This isn’t literally a book about music--maybe writing about music really is like dancing about architecture, as the old saying goes. But if music takes the jumble of life--the love and loss, the excitement and pain--and neatly arranges it into notes and chords and verses and choruses that somehow capture it all, then what I’ve done is a little reverse engineering by recovering all the stuff that got packed into those records, a story that trails around the world and back to a newborn leaving his teenaged mother’s arms on Welfare Island in 1952. So in a way this is a book about music because music is about, well, everything, isn’t it?

About the Author

Nile Rodgers is one of the world's greatest producers and the co-founder of hit 70s band Chic.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sphere
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1847443141
• ISBN 13: 9781847443144
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352