And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 77: Nile Rodgers with Guest Host Hannah Karp

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

This week we’ve partnered with the Songwriters Hall of Fame to bring you the final episode of Season 5, which features our special guest host, Hannah Karp, editorial director of Billboard. Among music legends, this guest is truly exceptional. He amplifies his legacy as a multiple GRAMMY-winning composer, producer, arranger, and guitarist by constantly traversing new musical terrain and successfully expanding the boundaries of popular music. As the co-founder of CHIC and the newly elected Chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, he pioneered a musical language that generated chart-topping hits like “Le Freak,” (the biggest selling single in the history of Atlantic Records) and sparked the advent of hip-hop with “Good Times”. This writer transcends all styles of music across every generation with a body of work that’s garnered him inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2017) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2016). With the late Bernard Edwards, he was responsible for writing and producing the songs for their band CHIC, including the hits "Dance, Dance, Dance,” "Everybody Dance,” "I Want Your Love," and "Good Times.” The team also wrote and produced hits for other artists such as Norma Jean Wright, Sister Sledge, Sheila and B. Devotion, Johnny Mathis, Debbie Harry and Fonzi Thornton, with major hits including “He’s The Greatest Dancer” and “We Are Family” (both for Sister Sledge) and “I’m Coming Out” (Diana Ross). His work in the CHIC Organization and his productions for artists like David Bowie, Diana Ross, and Madonna have sold over 500 million albums and 75 million singles worldwide while his innovative, trendsetting collaborations with Daft Punk, Avicii, Sigala, Disclosure, and Sam Smith reflect the vanguard of contemporary music. And most recently, he was appointed as the first-ever Chief Creative Advisor for the legendary Abbey Road. He & CHIC recently released their first new studio album, “It’s About Time” in over 26 years to critical acclaim and a Top 10 position in the UK album charts. And The Writer is… Nile Rodgers!This episode is presented in partnership with the Songwriters Hall of Fame and features special guest host, Hannah Karp, editorial director of Billboard. Prior to joining Billboard as news director in 2017, Hannah worked as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where she covered the music business as well as other industries including sports, travel and consumer products, and regional economics. A native of Berkeley, Calif., she holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University and a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 5 of And the Writer Is with your host, Ross Golin. Before I get my spiel, I want to acknowledge the music army that listens to this podcast every week. Since starting this, the And The Writer is community has literally changed the history of the music business by helping pass the music modernization act, gotten songwriters added to album of the year for the Grammys, and still is advocating for positive changes for our industry. industry on a daily basis. So thank you and congrats. Now, as you know, I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning

why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs. I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, Big Deal Music Publishing, and Mega House music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear, go to our website www. www.andthrideris.com. Welcome to And The Writer Is.

I am your host, Ross Golan, but today we have our first guest host, guest, the wonderful, brilliant Hannah Karp editorial director of Billboard, who, since I've been in New York working on The Wrong Man has graciously come in to do this incredible interview for our finale, which we did with our partner, the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And we're continuing our series where every season we have at least one interview with the Songwriter Hall of Famer, an inductee or Starlight winner. And this episode, we are featuring the music legend, inductee and current chairman of the Songwriter Hall of Fame, Nile Rogers.

As you know, the Songwriter Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization that's based in New York, founded in 1969 by Johnny Mercer and publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond. So this has been around for a minute. They shine a spotlight on the accomplishments of songwriters and legacies of songwriters. It's an organization that has a small board and comprised of senior executives in the industry. So the inductees and songwriters and publishers who vote these people in are people who know what they're talking about. These are truly the Songwriter Hall of Fame has the greatest writers of all time. So the way they introduce the writers every year to this is from a gal that's hosted in New York.

And it's incredible. I mean, legends like, I think last year we had Bonnie Raid and Justin Timberlake and Missy Elliott and, you know, Lizzo performed. And, you know, it's just, it's always incredible to see the people who show up to celebrate songwriters for such an organization like the Hall of Fame. So, you know, they do a few other things. So if you want to follow it, I think you should. You know, they have scholarships, and they have master sessions, and they have craft forums, and digital initiatives. They have an award-winning online museum that honors these songwriters who've been inducted. So go check out the Songwriter Hall of Fame.

Thank you guys for partnering with us again, Songwriter Hall of Fame people who are listening to this. And again, without further ado, here is our guest host, Hannah Karp, interviewing one of the greatest writers and producers of all time, Nile Rogers. Welcome to And The Writer Is. I'm your guest host for today, Hannah Karp. I'm the editorial director of Billboard. And I am very honored to be in the same studio as our legendary guest today. a musician, producer, artist, and writer who has sold more than 500 million albums and 75 million records worldwide. He's worked with everyone from Diana Ross to Avichy to McJaggar

and his ear for production and writing, Ben's genres, from disco to pop to rock and to country. He's been on tour with everyone from the Jackson 5 to Sesame Street. He's headline Glastonbury, and he's probably responsible for creating or inspiring most of the music that has fueled the most epic all-night dance parties that have ever gone down on this earth. And the writer is... Nile Rogers!

Nile Rogers, songwriting and rock and roll hall of fame legend. So, all of those incredible accolades aside, the reason I'm especially excited to be sitting here with you is when I was nine years old and I was in my room listening to the radio in Berkeley, California, I remember a song coming on and having that first experience

of not being able to get it out of my head and desperately wanting to hear it again. And once I found out what it was, it was Rome by the B-52s. Oh, my gosh. I had my mom buy me the tape and I studied the liner notes and I soon realized

that you were the man behind the magic. And as I started to collect more music, it seemed like it became safe to assume that anything that was great you had produced. So, you know, the most amazing thing, though, is that 30 years later, that's still true. But I would love for you to take us back to the beginning and tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up? I grew up here in New York City. I'm a Greenwich village kid. My parents were beat Nix and I followed in their footsteps

and became a hippie, I guess. Just sort of did the American counterculture thing all the way. I learned music in the public school system. So I was musical, I guess, on

some level, right from the start. The first instrument I played was the flute and I moved from flute to clarinet and with a number of other instruments along the way but because of my parents very sort of chaotic lifestyle in those days I didn't stay in one school very long so I would go to a different school and music was part of the standardized curriculum in those days so they would just assign you an instrument you'd play that as poorly as everybody else in the class.

And, you know, playing music as a kid was fun because it really, I mean, almost everybody stank, but you had a camaraderie that was fun. Yeah. And why was your parents' lifestyle chaotic? You were talking earlier about their challenging profession. Yeah. Well, because my parents grew up, you know, heroin was the sort of big drug in those days with the jazz community and the, you know, heroin was the sort of big drug.

the sort of Greenwich Village, Artie community. And those were our friends, you know, Thelonius Monk and Nina Simone and Gloria Lynn and all the sort of hip jazz people. And believe it or not, my stepfather, my biological father was a heroin addict by choice. And he mainly started doing it because he had money because he worked for my stepfather's family.

And because he had money, he would buy recreational drugs. And so my biological father was a heroin addict. By choice, my stepfather became a heroin addict because as a soldier in the Korean War, he was wounded. The very first day on the battlefield, ran over a shrapnel grenade, and he was blinded. and he was bandaged from head to toe. And that was when they discovered the mash unit. And the mass unit was these mobile medical units where they believe that most soldiers who were wounded

died on the battlefield from really simple injuries. And they believed that if they could get you to these mass units, they could save these soldiers' lives. So they took my father to the mass unit, bandaged him from head to toe, because he was blinded from the shrapnel and had puncture wounds all over his body. fed him a morphine drip for a couple of weeks until they sent him back to the States.

By the time they sent him back, he was completely addicted to morphine and heroin and stay that way until he died. Wow. And how old were you when you realized that your family was dealing and using drugs in that way? I guess I, well, I was aware of the symptoms, but I didn't quite understand. I was really young, so I didn't understand that their behavioral patterns and symptoms was a byproduct of not only the culture and just being cool and hey, man, how are you doing? Like that. But also the drug usage, which made them do everything in slow motion.

You know, it's the antithesis of my generation, which were, you know, acid heads. and everything was fast. Yeah. But my parents, everything was like, hey, my man. So how'd you doing that math test today? You know, long division is actually not that complicated. You know, that's how my pop.

Right. No pressure. And so who were your earliest musical influences when you were growing up? Oh, my God. Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Macs wrote, Nina Simone. Gloria Lynn, Bologna's monk, Eric Dalfi. I lived in a modern jazz world. That was it.

And then because of studying music in school, it was classical music. So I became aware of Prokofiev and a lot of the Russian composers because their music seemed to be the music that either was just part of the curriculum. I don't know if it had to do with copyright law. I don't know what it was, but that's what they seem to teach a lot. And then we learned how influential Johann Sebastian Bach was. And then we started to get more into 12-tone stuff and chromaticism. And by the time I was maybe 9 or 10, I was aware of how every instrument in the symphony orchestra function.

So later on, when I became a professional musician and disco was the thing, I could orchestrate. So we were truly a self-contained band. Like the moniker of self-contained band was a big important thing after the Beatles. Prior to the Beatles, most people got their music from other writers. After the Beatles, it was important to play your instruments,

write your own songs. And in our case, we also did own orchestration, which even the Beatles didn't do so. There, there, Paul. He and I are friends now, so he gets it. I always jabbing with that one. And were you learning all of that musical education in public school? In public school, absolutely. And there were also remedial institutions because of growing up in, well, see, the other part of my story was when we were, when we lived in the West Village, as they call it now, in the old days was just the village. You started on the Lower East Side, and then you moved to the West Village?

Right. And then whenever we would do poorly, we'd have to move back to the Lower East Side or the East Village, typically East 8th Street, which was a great street to live on because it was a main sort of thoroughfare. And they had a lot of remedial programs that were. were designed to, I guess, help Eastern Europeans assimilate into American society. So by the time I grew up, those people had assimilated. So the beneficiaries of those programs,

which didn't go away right away, were the blacks and the Puerto Ricans that were now living in those neighborhoods. They were no longer Eastern Europeans, really. Like, I never saw people. You know, even though my mom spoke Yiddish and stuff like that, It's because they work for the Jewish community that were, you know, in the garment district and the garment industry and things like that. And it's amazing to me how closely aligned the Jewish and black communities were at the time when I was a kid.

There was almost no, like I said, my mom speaks perfect Yiddish. Colin Powell, who went to school with my uncle speaks perfect Yiddish. I mean, that was a thing. How's your Yiddish? terrible when I like I know I rebelled so they were beatniks hippies we were on a different thing and how did you end up with Sesame Street tell me about that Sesame Street was funny I so I was studying classical guitar and at that time my teacher and my private tutor wanted me to go to Juilliard because they had just started that year what they called the

extension division and since the guitar is not part of the symphony orchestra they were teaching these other classes that weren't necessarily symphonic but another school uptown Manhattan School of Music which was the former Juilliard campus had been teaching guitar for a number of years so I went to Juilliard one day and hung out there and it was cool. But then maybe even it was that same day, I went up to Manhattan School of Music. And for some reason, it was more comfortable. There were musicians there that I had known, jazz musicians from the community that I had worked with. And I looked at the bulletin board. And in those days, they had index cards and they would post them on the bulletin board, you know, looking for apartments and gigs and, you know, looking for apartments and

whatever and I'll never forget in those days when you were looking for a band you described almost every musical genre you would say looking for a guitar player who's into the dead Hendricks

Fairport Convention James Brown I mean just every it was all over the map just so you could make sure they had range or because everybody liked everything I don't know I think it was because everybody really did like everything

or they just wanted to make sure that whatever they composed you could do i i honestly don't know it may or maybe it made you look hipper or something but um so i answered um an index card on the bulletin board and i went and i audition and the first song that we played uh was who are the people in your neighborhood which was an interesting song to me because i didn't know who i mean so i cite read it perfectly and they just hired me boom like right on a spot you're like wow you can read that because guitar players are notoriously bad music readers but because of my history i was a pretty efficient music reader and while you were with sesame street you formed

the big apple band which would eventually become chic with bernard edwards can you talk about meeting him and how you started yeah so i met bernard um sort of around the same time um i uh i was what we would officially call a runaway. I left home around 14 years old. I've always had a job. I got my first job at nine years old. I read a book one of the Marks brothers called Harpo Speaks. And he talked about getting a job at nine years old. I thought, well, that's what you're supposed to do. So I'm going to get a job. What job did you get? I was working in the Lower East Side. So I worked for Gus the Pickle King. And my uncle, because he worked for a person named Leopold Zippin. Like the Lower East Side was very, very Jewish. That was like the thing. So, you know, we, so Gus the Pickle King, Leopold Zippin, those guys.

And they were always cool when it came to hiring kids because I guess it was just the tradition, the kids would do the sort of manual labor jobs so they could pay us almost nothing. To us, we were making a fortune. and it was fun and we got to, I learned how to make pickles early and stuff like that

and it was just a great fun existence and so I had always worked so when I decided to run away from home at 14 it was just because my mom who I think is a real saint she's almost like a soldier, a total survivor. At that time her, heroin habit was pretty out of control. And I felt like my apartment, like living with my mom,

was dangerous because every time I would buy a guitar, I scrape up the money to get a guitar, one of her sort of degenerate type of boyfriends would steal my guitar and sell it. So I was like, okay, I'm getting out of this place. And I felt comfortable living on the subway. And when you ran away, did you keep in touch with your parents? Oh, yeah. My mom and I are tight. You know, unfortunately, Now she's suffering from Alzheimer's and I have her living in a memory care center, but man, we are so close now. I've seen my mom over the last three years more than I've seen her since I was 14 years old. I mean, I'd see her.

Every time I get a chance to go and visit her, I go see her. That's great. So back to starting Sheik. Yeah, sorry. Oh, right. I went off course there. That's okay. Your Honor, I...

Order in the course. court. Yes, I went off topic, Your Honor. Yeah, so it was during that time of me being a runaway and always having a job, I would do these pickup gigs on the weekend. And one of my great friends, a really terrific jazz guitar player, he called me to substitute for him for one gig because he had a gig paying more money. So he gave me the cheap gig, and he took the expensive gig.

very common practice in the old days. So I took the cheap gig. And how old are you at this point? I would say 18 or so. Maybe 19, because the thing is, is that you were playing in places that were serving alcohol. Sometimes they would look the other way, and it was a mafia place, but I don't think they wanted to have minors in the band. But I could have been 17. but I was around 17, 18, 19, somewhere in that neighborhood.

And I got to the gig late because my friend called me at the last minute. And I ran into the club and I still, I can see it just as if we were yesterday. They were playing a song called Sissy Strutt in the key of C. And I ran and I plugged in my big jazz box and plugged in and do-do-do-do-do-do-dun-pap. and the bass player, for some reason, he and I just became the impromptu leaders of the band right away because no one knew each other. And the guy who was the front person who hired us

was a real showman. So he needed to have a tight band behind him so he could sort of dazzle the crowd. And the bass player and I just figured, well let's you know take control of the band so that we could follow this guy and you know put on a good show

and hopefully get rehired and we did a good job the leader of that band was called Hacked Bartholomew and he used to play for a famous R&B artist named Joe Simon and he was out he was going out on his own now he was a great trumpet player and a cool guy

and very handsome so he had all that stuff that we didn't have we were just bum hippie guys and he was a showman and we handled that job really well

and Hack rehired us and we played this you know mafia joint up in the Bronx so we got the gig for the next weekend

I wound up getting fired the very next weekend because my girlfriend was Italian and she showed up to the gig in a super low-cut dress like I mean this was

you know, during the time of women's live and black power and gay rights and all that stuff. So she was a woman with a body of doom and like, you know, as a teenager, rebellious, she showed it off. And I remember the guys pulling me aside going, uh, hey, Niall, you know, we can't have that kind of thing in this place. And I said, what kind of thing in this place?

You know, they never came out and said, you know, they can't have an interracial couple or whatever. and a girl with a super sexy low-cut dress and she's white and your girlfriend, so they fired me. I couldn't believe it. Oh, my God. New York City.

Wow. So then what happened? Well, what happened was Bernard had said to me the week prior that he never wanted to do a gig without me, and I had said exactly the same thing to him because we had this magical connection instantly. So not only did we become the impromptu band leaders, right there on the spot.

But we also love the way that we complimented each other's playing. And that never went away. Our entire lives, we always had that magical thing. As a matter of fact, every person that we've ever hired who's worked for us, they say, man, as soon as you two guys start playing, it sounds like Sheik. And did you know at the time that Sheik was going to go the distance? Did you see that going on forever? It wasn't even Sheik.

We didn't call ourselves. We called ourselves. At that time, we called ourselves the boys, B-O-I-Z, and we were trying to be a black rock and roll band because our lead singer had just finished doing Jesus Christ Superstar and he was playing the role of Judas, so he had that mega voice. And basically we were like a little bit more progressive version of Journey.

We thought that would work. and every single record company that we visited, everyone, they kept our tapes, they were fascinated with our compositions, they loved it, but as soon as they saw that, we were all black with sort of one white-looking guy in the band

who was actually Puerto Rican, but he looked white, so they talked to him, like he was a leader, and he would go, look, I just joined the band. Those guys are the brains behind this, and they would never sign us.

I mean, the building we're sitting in right now, well, it wasn't here, Atlantic Records. I cannot tell you how many times Atlantic Records turned us down. Wow. It was actually 24 times. Who's counting? Right, but who's counting?

And at one point you opened up for the Jackson 5, right? Was that your first taste of stardom? Well, we weren't stars. Yeah. If you're opening for the Jackson 5, you were not stars. We were, once again, we were a substitute band. The band that really had the game. gig was the OJs.

And so because we had a hit record, we were now calling ourselves the Big Apple Band when we played R&B shows. And that's because the group that we backed was called New York City. They had a big hit record called I'm Doing Fine Now, written by the genius Tom Bell. I'm doing fine now. Without you, baby. So that was their big record. and we come out and we kill

and they do the steps and the whole bit and that worked for us for a couple of years and they released their second album which didn't net any hits but the band by now had built our own reputation when New York City didn't get a gig the Big Apple band we'd get a gig

as a covers band and we would play everything that was hot on the charts and we'd play them well so when New York City officially broke up I they broke up while we were in England

we did our last show in the UK and somehow my passport and wallet were stolen so all my money the whole gig was for nothing for me I had no money no passport but I did have a girlfriend and that was important

because I had a place to stay all you need is love exactly and and I hung out with her over the the weekend and she took me to see her favorite band which was called roxy music and i had never seen anything like rocksy music in my life i thought it was the most incredible thing a magical experience and i called bernard and i said man i've just seen the way i explained it was a completely um it was a completely immersive artistic experience in music that's how i saw it it felt like

when you go to a museum, but now there was a museum with the music that accompanied the objects and the people in the museum look like the right, it was just perfect. And I said, man, we got to do the black version of that. And he still didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

But that was what was great about Bernard and myself because I was this sort of super hippie guy who he liked because I was a hippie. And he loved translating my vision. into R&B. So I was like, oh wow man, you know, like Roxy Music, man, they're fantastic, man. Yeah, right, bro. And you had such great success with songs like La Freak and Good Times.

Lafriek was Atlantic Records' only triple platinum selling single at the time. Can you talk about your songwriting process with Bernard? Well, that one is a really unique one because Lafriek was a really unique one. Freak was atypical of our style of writing. We had been invited to Studio 54, and it was 1977 going into 78. It was New Year's Eve, and Grace Jones was going to be the entertainment. Now, we were pretty old school and young journeymen at the time, so we wanted to be professional. We wanted to get there early.

Now that Grace Jones is one of my best friends in life, she is habitually late for everything. We had no idea at the time. So we were trying to be professional. She told us to come to the back door and tell them that we were personal friends of Grace Jones. Now, we had never, we didn't meet her. We had only spoken to her on the phone,

and she had a very unusual accent. And we thought that we were supposed to pretend to sound like that because we didn't believe that a person really spoke that way. To us it sounded like she was a cross between Bella Legosi, Marlena Dietrich and Bob Barley. She was like

so what you have to do is you go through the back door and you tell them that you are personal friends of Miss Grace Jones and I mean that's what it sounded like to us. We're speaking of oh my God it's Grace Jones the first time so we're not going to back door

and you've got to imagine that the music inside was so loud, how can the person hear us knocking? So we're banging and kicking the door. And he opens the door with an attitude. And we say, hey, hello, we're personal friends of miscresteons. And a guy tells us, he slams the door in our faces and says, our F off. And we said, no, no, no, no, no.

This is a true story. Because that's what she told us to do. We were just repeating what she told us to do. and we somehow got his attention again by kicking louder and he repeated the same thing. Oh, F-off! So I conveniently lived one block away from the backdoor Studio 54 and on our way back to my apartment

since it was clear that we weren't going to get in that night, we stopped off at a liquor store and decided to have our own New Year's Eve party. And we bought two bottles of Don Perignon, which we used to call rock and roll mouthwash, and we downed those two bottles very quickly and got buzzy real fast and we started singing what the doorman had said ah F off D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-F-D-F-F-F-D-D-D-D, and we were getting into it

because we were high and we were buzzing and we were laughing and we were having a time of our lives because Bernard and I were best friends and we found each other's company just delightful it was hilarious I mean And people quite often would wonder how we ever got anything done because we're in the studio just laughing all the time. So we were cracking up and cracking up. And finally Bernard said, he pulled his glasses down over the bridge of his nose and said, my man, you know this shit is happening.

And this is, you know, two years before hip-hop. I'm like going, Bernard, we're not going to be able to get a F off on the radio. So we changed that to a euphemism of the other word, the other F word, and we changed it to freak off. And no matter how many times we sang freak off, it just wasn't happening. It was just like, eh. And then boom, my hippie roots kicked in, and I went, oh, man, freak out. Like, you know, when you have a bad acid trip, man, and you, like, freak out.

And Bernard looked at me like I was from outer space. And then I quickly got my black card together. And I said, no, man, you know, like when you see a fine girl and you're freaking out on the dance floor. And then Bernard, boom, light bulb moment. He went, and that new dance that my kids are doing called The Freak. And I went, whoa. And we went out and we bought two records that were about dancing, a specific dance,

Chubby Checker, the Twist and Joey D. and the Starlighters, peppermint Twist. And we came back home. We listened to it over and over again. When both songs talked about a dance, both songs were very famous, and neither song told you how to do the dance. Since we didn't know how to do the dance, that's what we did. We used that as a blueprint. Fascinating. And how did that compare to the typical way you guys would write together?

What was your general approach? Our general approach was not nearly as interesting as that. Our general approach was I would mainly write the main motifs because I've always been a bachelor. I was single at the time. Bernard had a family. He went home at a decent hour and slept. I went out and partied all night. So I would write just tons and tons of songs.

And typically the next day when I would play it for Bernard, he would then arrange it and go, what were you smoking last night? You know, you've written 15 songs here, and you're calling it one song. We can take it apart and make a whole album out of that. And in hip-hop's infancy, the Sugar Hill Gang used Sheik's track Good Times, which was not the last time the track would be sampled, and it became a legal issue,

and you ended up getting a songwriting credit. How did you feel in those early days about sampling? Well, so, you know, that sounds like a big conceptual problem, but this all happened in rather quickly. When I first heard it, this was something that we were already doing, actually. We, as a band, used to go into the recording studio because our best friend owned a recording studio, and the 12-inch record had just come into existence. And a lot of songs that were popular didn't have extended versions. So as a band, we'd go in and play breakdowns, cut them in the middle of the record, and then sell them to DJ.

So we were accustomed to hearing these sort of bootleggy things. So when I first heard Rappers Delight, I actually thought that the DJ from the club was inside the booth rapping over some tracks that they made, which to me was a common thing. It wasn't weird until I looked at the booth, and there was no one in the booth. And the guy was standing next to me, drinking a split of champagne. I'm like going, now, I know a lot about DJ culture. The only time you can leave the booth is when you have the reel-to-reel tape running, and it's going to give you enough time to go to the bathroom and stuff.

Or you have a 12-inch. That's a really long song, and you better hope it doesn't skip. And I looked at the guy, and I said, what the hell is that? He said, that's a record I just bought this afternoon up in Harlem. Yeah, it's a record. Let me see it. I looked at the late one. I'm like, where's my name?

Because the strings on rappers alike, I could tell with strings that I had orchestrated and conducted. And, you know, you know what your work sounds like. So I said, that's copyright infringement. I can't take the movie Star Wars, which was popular at the time, and make a music video out of the bar scene in Star Wars. war is just because I like it. Yeah. So I said, you can't do that.

That's serious copyright infringement. If people could do that, hell, we'd never have to, man, if I could take a George Benton record and take his solo and put it on my record, I'd be a monster. So we tracked down the owners and we came to an amicable, you know, conclusion. rather quickly, but it was dangerous times. And we were treading on thin ice. But it all got sorted out, and everything worked out great. Now, just two nights ago, we played rappers a lot

with the guys who actually really wrote it. That's great. And then you became an in-demand producer, thanks to your work with Sheik. Can you talk about that transition? And do you like, what do you like doing more? Do you like writing or producing more? I always say this because it's really true.

I always like doing what I'm not doing the most. So if I'm gigging, I wish I were in the studio writing. If I'm in the studio writing, I go, geez, I can't wait until the next gig. Or if I'm solely producing, which, believe it or not, you know, let's finally be really honest. When I produce a record, I am the co-writer. I don't just go. I don't just sit back and go, Mm-hmm, okay, okay, okay.

I actually contribute musically. And I would say 99%, which is a huge number, because I've done thousands of recordings, 99% of the records that I produce, I play on as well. So even if the band has a guitar player or even two, like in a case of in excesses,

I still play. Mm-hmm. Is there any artist that you haven't worked with that you would like to or that you would have liked to? Yeah, my biggest lament when it comes to not working with someone is Miles Davis. He and I became friendly because we did a fashion shoot together for the Japanese designer Issemiake. And on that session, we became really good friends. It was so much fun. And, you know, when I was a kid, Miles was sort of in my

parent's circle, but he was a superstar, so not a lot. We didn't, I didn't see Miles a lot. So now that I'm older and have carved out my own musical lane, if you will, to now meet Miles Davis and we're

sort of on equal footing was amazing. And he would say to me, now, I want you to write me. He would, I mean, can I curse guys i can here's what miles would say

nah i want you to write me a motherfucking good times and i'm looking at him going now you would all your life you had heard about these stories of miles you know berating people and saying man you can start by you know like that's miles's reputation

but i actually never saw that side of him he was always amazing and cool and fun and he used to He gave me his phone number the first night we met, and he used to tell me to call him all the time. And we wound up living one block away from each other for a short period of time. But every time we could go out, he would finally get to some point in the evening and say, now, I want you right, me a motherfucking good times.

And I kept thinking to myself, this is Miles Davis. You want good times? And I didn't realize until after he passed away. And then I heard him do covers of Michael Jackson songs and stuff that. Miles wanted a hit record. You know, Herbie Hancock had already, you know, come up with hit records. And so he was still the great jazz pianist, but now Herbie had crossed over into the pop R&B world,

and he was highly revered in all circles. And that was probably something that Miles, and most of us want. You know, when you're an artist, a performing artist, what you care about is communicating. You know, you want people to hear. your art form. You don't want to just write for this small group of people or else we'd stay just working in clubs.

Why record it? Just do live gigs. And that broke my heart to think that Miles actually wanted a hit and he believed that I could have given it to him and that I didn't take him seriously and I didn't do it because I didn't want to be embarrassed. I didn't

want him to go, man, you think I want to play that bullshit? Because I was waiting for that moment which never happened. I kept writing sort of, you know, like avant-garde Not really that avant-garde, but Fusion type of jazz songs. That had good melodies and were catchy

and he would go, man, I can do that. I don't need you to do that. I can do that. And he would say this all the time, I can do that. Marcus can do that, meaning his bass player Marcus Miller, who was his producer, man, I can do that, Marcus can do that. I want me a motherfucking good time.

And I just never did and that's I can't fix that. Yeah. What's the difference between writing for yourself and writing for somebody else? I feel a greater responsibility to the other person to try and give them a song that's going to communicate to the masses. I, when I'm composing for myself, I believe, that hit records are a byproduct of these other forces out there in the universe that you can't control. You just have to do the best job you can be true to yourself and then hopefully the

label can somehow do the things that they do, that magical thing that gets that record out to the people. If I worry too much about that part of it, I would be insane because I've done thousands of records that are mostly flops. But I love them. My flops are, I think, some of my best records ever. Al Jereau, Teddy Pendergrass, Carly Simon, Debbie Harry. These are amazing records.

I mean, they're phenomenal. I don't know why they weren't hits. As a matter of fact, I remember when I finished the song Why with Carly Simon, I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever done because I had just been introduced to dance hall reggae, and I was like going, well, we're going to do the chic version of dancehall reggae with Carly Simon, what? And we went to the number one rock and roll station that allowed us to DJ for the day, and they told us that we could play anything we want.

And we said, fantastic, we got Carly Simon. And they said, we don't support her at this station. And I was like, what? I grew up listening to WNEWFM and everything was Carly Simon, and you're so vain. And they were like, we don't support it. I was like, what does she do? And they wouldn't let us play our record with Carly Simon. The record became a big hit in England.

We play Y in England, and it's just like playing, we are family. We play in America, people look at us like, what is that? Yeah. Have you ever had times where you've had Writers Block? No. When it comes to music? No. Writers' Block when I was writing my autobiography?

Yes. that wasn't really writer's block. That was just how do I formulate the story. The reason why I don't have writers block when it comes to music is because I write about everything I write about is nonfiction. So I can

just look at you and write a song. Now, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean it's going to be a good song, but it will be a song. It'll have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it'll make sense. and I really can write about anything. I can write about the pattern of the rug and the amplifier over there

or the microphone or the walls or the lights even, anything in the room, anything I see, a glass of water. I could write in my mind I could write a wonderful song about a glass of water. Did you have a songwriting teacher or anyone who gave you advice or wisdom that has helped you? Nope, I only had an orchestration teacher that taught me the fundamentals of how ensembles worked.

But you got to remember, I also was growing up in the time of jazz fusion, and it was all about learning the rules and breaking the rules. So when Sheik first started and everybody had those big gigantic orchestrations, like Barry White and Isaac Hayes and... Curtis Mayfield, even though we had orchestration, we did the antithesis of those big gigantic... You never heard... Well, our first single dance, dance, dance had a little bit of...

But we never whipped out the 32nd note triplets or any of that kind of stuff. That wasn't our thing. And we purposely didn't do the high hat pattern. That was a standard disco. that doesn't exist on any sheet record. And we were purposely trying to make a different style of dance music that could not be

classified as disco. It should have been our form of R&B that you just danced to. We didn't want it to be like, we didn't want to be like silver convention or, you know, or even disco acts that we loved. But that was not our thing. We were really trying to be more like a cool in the gang or an earthwind and fire.

But concentrating more on European dance music. You've always been on the forefront of new music and new genres. How do you discover new music today? How do you listen to it? Where do you listen? Well, it's easy now. Now I just look at my Instagram and somebody goes, Yo, now, check this out.

So I hear new stuff all the time. I run into artists all the time. I'm now the chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. So I am in contact with new songwriters, old songwriters, middle-aged songwriters, just everybody. So my world is filled with artistic people with composers from. Like on every level. I, you know, right now I'm working on the film Cats with Andrew Lloyd Weber. And, you know, so that's a totally different experience.

Imagine you're working with a person. And, you know, I never, you know, I never was really into Andrew Lloyd Weber. Particularly, you know, when I was a kid, Jesus Christ Superstar. Of course, if you're a hippie, you've got to see Jesus Christ superstar and hair. But I also checked out Evita. But that was it. I didn't see cats. I didn't see, you know, starlightics.

It's just not my thing. It was like, wow, it's too commercial for me. But now that I'm working with Andrew Lloyd Weber, he's a genius. He's unbelievable. I mean, like, every time I'm in his presence, we sit around and we are, you know, shooting the bull. Like, we can talk all night. I mean, just, it's nonstop. I love the guy.

I mean, it's incredible. We're getting ready to take a vacation together. It's like we can't get enough of each other. So, you know, I'm at this point in my life, I'm around so many artists with so many things to contribute to the culture that in a really strange way, I feel somewhat overwhelmed because I want to do the best job. for each person. And I did a sort of seminar last night and a person talked about

you know, the problem in today's world is that there's too much music to consume. There's too much music to listen to. And I said, well, I grew up in movie theaters. I didn't really go to school. I went to, I cut school to go to movies every day. And I said, I look at Netflix now

and I'm like, overwhelmed. I can't figure, it's too much stuff to watch everything. I said, but obviously that's the right environment because we now have enough music and enough media to interest a huge amount of groups that have an affinity with these composers and these artists that you may not normally come in contact with. So I actually think it's a good thing that we have this preponderance of a massive amount of compositions and artists and things to listen to. It's wonderful. How many different projects or artists are you working with at any given time? What's your typical week like? Oh, my God.

I would say in the last year, I've worked on over a hundred songs. Easy. Easy. I mean, easy. And a couple of years ago before Avici passed away, holy cow, it was insane. You put the two of us in a room and we could write 30 songs in a few days. So I, you know, I just came off of a year of songwriting with more artists than you can ever imagine. And it's a, you know, I just came off of a year of songwriting with more artists than you can ever imagine. And it's interesting because today's world is so different now because I never really just wrote singles before. Like that wasn't the world I grew up and I grew up in the artistic world of the album. The album was the film and the single was the trailer.

And I had to help you conceptualize and actualize that album. So it's weird to write a song It's like to me writing a song is like doing a television commercial or something or Even when I've scored films and write the songs Inside the film I still get to do the score as well So I'm doing the whole project You know when I write

Just let your soul glow I also write You know I'm writing you know all of that stuff so I feel like I'm doing the whole musical package not just a song here and a song there so it's strange that lately people call me to be part of this new world where you have you know 30 songwriters on an album it's like whoa that's that's strange to me and I'll go in a room with five people sometimes and we come up with a song or two or three or four at the end of a day And how does that change the experience?

Is it harder to write with more people in the room? Not at all. No, it's just the same. Nothing feels different. It's the same. I am incredibly malleable. I will bend to fit the situation and fit the scenario rather than to try and make them do things my way. I mean, I'm 67 years old.

My way is really old school. I'd rather just sit down by myself. I don't need anyone in the room and just do it. and I'll play you what I've done and then you can contribute. That's my most natural way. But because I've had to be in the room with a person like Madonna

who believes that her compositions are all right and perfect the day she plays them for me. And I go, uh, not really, but when we finish, they will be. And, you know, and you got to prove it to that person. You got to really show them. And that's what I've always loved, showing a person that if I can't improve the project,

if I can't be an addition to this, why am I even working on the record? Like if it's already perfect in your mind, what the hell you need me for? If I can't add something musical to it, if I can't make it better than it was before, you don't need me. You need a different producer.

You won three Grammys for your work with Daft Punk on random access memories in 2014. Do Grammys still matter? Of course Grammys matter, but I think all awards matter on some level because you're being recognized by someone other than your parents going, hey, look at it, my boys over there in the corner playing a song.

So it is some other community that's recognizing yourself. It's some collective body that's saying, to us, you deserve a special thanks. But I never did this. I never started to do this to win awards. I guarantee you,

I am shocked whenever I get some kind of award and it's like some big mega thing and I sit there and I'm going, really? like you're telling me that you're going to give me a spot in the Smithsonian Institute for my guitar between John Coltrane's horn and and Duke Ellington's piano or something I'm like what are you talking about like this is insane and you mean I feel like these type of thing I get these letters and I go wow these are great honors and it feels amazing to me but it's It's almost like I don't believe it. It feels sort of like a dream because, one, that wasn't my ambition.

I wasn't trying to do that, so I don't feel like, ah, I finally did what I was trying to do. All I was really trying to do was get a hit record and make a living. I had no idea that we are family 40 years later would still be like a relevant composition in the world. Like it means something. Yeah. Do you think songwriters get enough recognition at the Grammys? Well, why pick on the Grammys? Consider it.

No, I think, look, I think that composers have always been very anonymous. It usually takes time for people to learn who composers are. And I always use this as an example. I said, you know, if Bruno Mars wrote a hit record for you right now and it came out the next day and it was happening and blah, blah, blah, and everybody thought it was amazing. If Bruno Mars wasn't in the video, you wouldn't even know Bruno Mars wrote the song.

And that's how anonymous composers are. I mean, someone as big and as popular as Bruno could do it, and you wouldn't even know he did it unless he was in the video or they made a big deal as featuring Bruno Mars, whatever. You know, random access memories, I was very involved in that record,

but after a while, I guess Random Access memories is a little bit different because I was in the video and sometimes people walk up to me and go hey you're daft punk

because people don't realize that if a kid was 12 or 13 years old at the time and they saw basically Farrell and myself and they see this cool video with these two robots

they think Farrell and I are daft punk and the robots are just cool props like dancers in your video. They don't realize that they're daft bunk and we're like the standing guys. Right. That's so funny. It is funny because I get it a lot. Do you have any frustrations

with the music industry? My biggest frustration is the way that the pie is divided. I think that songwriters and songwriting, and it's not just because I'm the chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, but I think that songs

are the foundation of our business. Without songs, you have no music business. And we are somehow on the lowest rung of the latter. It makes no sense. If Bob Dylan didn't write, once upon a time, you know, it was just Bob Dylan, a cool guy, singing someone else's songs, it'd be, well, he'd still be singing songs.

The fact is you must sing a song, a composition that has a beginning, a middle and an end that can be marketed in the systems that we have. And whatever those systems happen to be, where now it's streaming, still you have to have songs that are the main product that's being promoted through that distribution mechanism. So I believe that songwriters are just paid. Unfortunately, it just, it just,

not fair. You know, when I first started in the music business, I didn't make a big deal out of it because I grew up in an era where to get signed, you had to be the songwriter. I didn't know any bands that didn't write their own music. So we were the beneficiaries of not only do we have our publishing and our songs that we owned either fully or some portion, we did deals, but we had the benefit of going out to perform those songs. So we were making money there and we were getting the performance royalties and we were getting the mechanical royalty,

you know, the records. And so there were different tranches of money that made life very, very livable. And I remember that bands that didn't sell huge amount of records still were doing great. I mean, you didn't have to have the number one record. If you were in the top 40, if you go back and look at the billboard charts, if you looked at the top 40, almost every record had a gold star.

They were all, you know, gold records. And then you'd see platinum, like, whoa. I was like, man. But, you know, once you got past the top 20 or the top 10, then all of a sudden they became platinum. So you went from the little dot to the star, you know, or whatever the symbol was at the time and we're talking a million and two million

if we're talking albums I mean if we're talking singles if we're talking albums we're talking 500,000 to a million and once you passed a couple of million I mean you were doing amazing and plus you were a songwriter so it didn't feel like there needed to be a different type of

distribution of wealth. It felt equitable because you were making so much money during the live performances. And record companies had a very valid point saying that they were spending a lot of money to promote you, to get your image out there, to do whatever they had to do to me. Now, the interesting thing is that it's funny, I always say the record business is the only business where after you pay off the mortgage, they still own the house. It's like, well, wait a minute, we've paid back all the money, blah, blah, blah, but you still own the record. How is that possible? So, but we didn't really complain. It felt fine because we were the people creating the music and we were making a lot of money.

Now, when we're writing a song and I'm doing a song with five people and it's a single and I'm not doing the whole album, wow, everything is really different. Now, in my life, it doesn't make a difference because the bulk of my catalog, I'm the sole person who's the only producer, the only co-songwriter, or the, you know, whatever. I'm the one guy. It's me and David Bowie, or it's me and Duran Duran, or it's me and Madonna, and I have a lot of those in the pipeline.

And I believe some of those that weren't popular at the time at any given moment in the future it could be like when what was the music and they were like seriously head banging in the car and I remember Peter Paterno had done the deal

just for the recordings and not the publishing and everybody was that? Wayne's World and all of a sudden they did that one shot in the film and the next thing you know the guy looks like a genius like okay great everybody's going out

and buying you know so um you know it's it's it um the world is constantly changing and i think that the rules are going to start to reflect this new reality and this new reality of these multiple songwriters on on you know these hit records because you know today's world um the vibe that i feel from most artists is that they're not as concerned with the artistic message and I don't mean this as some as some absolute a statement. I'm just saying in general the vibe I feel is that they're not as concerned with the artistic message as they are with the fame part of it. And I understand it. The fame part looks now more exciting. It's being promoted more, you know, it took a long time in the old days before we learned

the stuff that we learn about an artist now in an hour. So I can see how the fame part in the lifestyle feels more exciting, and people are attracted to that more than they are delivering a message. And as I said, this is not an absolute statement, just means in general. So when I grew up, people were much more concerned about the message and the art form, and the fame was a byproduct of doing that job really well and having your label and everybody do that convergence thing that somehow happens and gives you a hit. But because of the way that it is now, and it's all about the fame game, for the most part,

writers have to be paid better because if you're going to split that pot four or five ways, yeah, if you get a big hit record, sure, it's a lot of money. But still, it's not like when I was coming up. you're not. It's not like, I mean, what I get paid to do we are family is, it was pretty serious. Yeah. Last question. You were recently named chairman of the songwriters Hall of Fame. What does that mean and what do you want to do in that role? So what I, the main reason why I took that position, and I said this at our first meeting that I chaired, I said, you know, I've always looked at pop music under the broad category of rock and roll.

It's just all rock and roll to me. And typically what that means is that once you get a hit record, and I'm old school. So once you got into the top 40, that meant you crossed over. It didn't mean if it was, you could have had a record like convoy or you could have had a record like disco duck. But once it hit top 40, bang, it was rock and roll. Who cares if they're going, not Rubber Ducky, we got a great big combo or disco, whatever. Boom, you hit top 40, you're rock and roll.

That's it. And to me, once you had those big rock and roll songs, whatever they were, those compositions, I always thought that they were clever. I learned to respect that cleverness. I learned to respect that ability to get as much, my teacher said to me one day, he was really berating me when I was putting down the top single in America at the time, he said to me, Nile, what makes you think you're the ultimate consumer? So you just said that that was a lousy composition.

But meanwhile, it's been number one for like six weeks. So you know more than all those millions of people? And I was like, whoops. And I went home and two weeks later I wrote everybody dance. Do-Doo-Dlapped your hands. So it was funny because he was my jazz teacher And and he taught me that How to respect hit records

And he said it so profoundly I said well why would you call We were talking about the record by the Archie's sugar sugar I said why would you call that a great composition And he says Because any record that's in the top 40 Is a great composition I says you gotta be kidding me

He says, no. I said, why would you call that a great composition? He says, because it speaks to the souls of a million strangers. And I went, whoa. Wow. That was like my biggest music lesson in my life. I wanted to speak and write music that spoke to the souls of a million strangers. People I never met would be touched by something.

And that's what he taught me. that's what my purpose would be in life. And it was only after he said that to me. Before that, I was just writing and trying to get a gig, and I didn't necessarily think about the souls of a million strangers. Now it's the souls of a couple billion strangers. So what are you going to do as chairman? So what I've been able to do and focus on is I took that job because

I thought to myself songwriting is the one part of our business even though we're pretty anonymous I have never heard anybody say these two things and believe me I've heard every negative thing you could imagine I turn in a record man the horrible stuff that they'll say

about a song that I turn in and next thing you know it becomes a number one record like so what were you say? But I've never heard this, ever. I never heard a person say, I don't want to record I don't want to record that song because a woman wrote it, and I don't want to record that song because a black person wrote it. And I thought to myself, right away, an organization that has at least that. I've never heard that. So I'm already starting with a certain type of momentum towards the future that I want to help build.

Now that I'm working with more women songwriters that have become technically proficient, I mean, you wouldn't believe the way they write, you know, some of these topliners write nowadays. I'm amazed when they say that they don't need me. I'm actually entertained. Like a 17-year-old girl, we're in there writing a song, it's like killing. And I'll say, okay, great. So you want to come in tomorrow and I'll help you fix up the vocal? and they'll go, oh no, tomorrow it'll be done.

I'll have it right. It's like, whoa. They know how to work the gear. And I want those people that they may still be anonymous to the masses, but at least at the end of my tenure, I want to be able to say, well, when I joined, or when I became chairman, there were this amount of women who were major songwriters.

When I left, there was this amount, and it should be measurable, and it should be a measurable. and it should be a big deal. And it's not because I'm being super altruistic. I'm actually, I think it's just smart business. When I first learned anything about the record business, my earliest attorney said to me, well, let me break down some numbers to you, kid.

You know that women, especially young teenage women, are the greatest consumers of music. And I said, really, He said, yeah, maybe, and I'm just making up a number now, but just to give an example, he says, it's about maybe 60% women and young girls and 40% men. Huh. Well, if that's the case, shouldn't it be 60% girls writing the songs because they know what they want to hear? It was like, when I met Madonna, it was like, she knew what, I mean, she was in tune.

She was like, because they want to hear this. Papa don't preach. I'm having my baby. like a virgin. I'm like, whoa. Like, what are you talking about? But she knew, and it proved my point. It was like, well, if they're the main consumers,

they should be the main writers. They know they have that fast lane into your heart. They know what you, you know. So to me it was just smart business. And I've always been trying to get women who are in my immediate circle to write with me and collaborate and sometimes they feel intimidated.

Only one wasn't really and I formed a band with her. Who was that? Her name was Felicia Collins and she played with David Letterman for like 80 gazillion years and she's amazing. She's in New York now

doing her thing at Rydium taking over the great Les Paul's spot there so mean but she was only one of the I mean, she used to stand out in front of my apartment and wait for me every day. And finally said, all right, come on in and let's play together. And then she was great.

And we formed a band. But most people seemed to be intimidated. I mean, I begged so many women. And now that they've grown up, you know, and it's, you know, 30, 40 years later, they go, damn, I'm sure. Sorry, I didn't take that gig with you. Man, I wish I had you. Well, I was begging you.

Great. Well, it was so great talking to you today. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope I wasn't too all over the map. No, you were amazing. I loved it. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer Is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website at an anwritershider is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer is, is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Berg's Mo, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silverstein from Mega House Music and Michael White.

Until next time, this is Ross Golden.