Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - GRAMMY Winner Nile Rodgers on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Music, Collaboration

Episode Date: April 12, 2017

This conversation is with Nile Rodgers. If you've listened to music in the last 40 years, you've heard his work. By trade, he's a musician and a producer -- He's a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for Musical Excellence. He's done the hard yards to understand the nuances of himself and his craft, to be able to express the inner music, in ways that have influenced the rhythms of the world. What I wanted to learn most in this conversation is how Nile understands music, and how he's been so successful collaborating with others to bring out their music. He's produced Diana Ross, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Madonna, INXS, Britney Spears, Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Avicii, Sam Smith, Pitbull, Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue, Keith Urban and Christina Aguilera. And the list goes on and on and on. This conversation is about relationships -- with self -- with others._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life. When you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David D A V I D proteinT-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. This conversation is with Niall Rogers. If you've listened to music in the last 40 years, you've been influenced by his work. By trade, he's a musician and a producer, and he's also a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for musical excellence. And he's done the hard yards to understand the nuances of himself and

his craft. And that is obvious in this conversation. And the whole purpose is to be able to express the inner music, both from himself and in others. And he has influenced the rhythm of the world through his music. And there's something amazing about what he's come to understand is he has the ability to pull the best out of others. And that is a central part of our conversation. And the other part of the conversation is how he's stayed connected to continually transform himself to be able to be and be connected to what matters most in music. And so it's a phenomenal journey he's been on. And his collaboration in music is phenomenal. Diana Ross, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Madonna, NXS, Britney Spears, Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Avicii, Sam Smith, Pitbull, Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue, Keith Urban, Christina Aguilera, it goes on and on and on and on. And this conversation is really about relationships with himself and with others. And I'm honored to have this conversation and share it with you.

There's so much inside of this. It's going to be worth a couple of times. If you listen to podcasts like I do at time and a half speed or two times speed, you might want to slow this one down. The stories are rich. The spirit is alive. And with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Niall Rogers. So we had scheduled to have this conversation two days ago, and you're in the midst, like 12 inches

of a flood where there are original pieces of art and personal experiences and artifact that are significant to you. And you're jumping on the phone to have our conversation. So that to me spoke volumes. And I want to understand why you did that. And then we said, okay, hey, listen, go back to the triage and figure out how to salvage your basement there. So why did you come and continue to have this conversation in the midst of your house being flooded? Where did that come from for you? When I was a child, remember, I'm 64 years old. So when I was a kid, things like the automobile were not necessarily things that the elderly were completely accustomed to. So women would stand at the corner and wait for young kids or anybody, as a matter of fact, to help them cross the street because

some people are hard of hearing. They just weren't accustomed to the system. So it was just something that was normal. And this was so normal. I always laugh and joke and I say to my girlfriend, whatever happened to all the little old ladies waiting across the street? It just doesn't happen anymore because I guess people have become more accustomed to it and life is just different. And what you took from that is work ethic. Work ethic. Absolutely. It's it's it's it's you care about other people first because you can always have the you know, you know, and I was young. So you always have enough strength to come back and do your job, especially because you care about it. So I could do work for others and then still have enough time to come back and do my job.

Just homework was the same thing. conversation with you is that I've wanted to figure out how you have been able to pull out or create an experience for people to listen and reveal their inner music. And you've done it for significant artists, artists that have changed the rhythm of the world. And you've also done it within your own self to reveal the music that you have within you. And I think you just shared, based on the first couple minutes of this conversation, how you're able to do that, which is you take care of other people, and you have enough work ethic to go back and do your own work. So it's others first, it sounds like. That's exactly right. That's, yeah, it's others first, and then you come back and do your own. As a matter of fact, I gave a speech the other day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was telling the truth.

I said, you know, even when it appears that I'm the boss, that's simply not the truth. I says I remember telling Madonna that when her record comes out, it's going to say Madonna. And I just meant it's going to be her letter. Her name was going to be in big letters. And then it's going to be her letter. Her name was going to be in big letters. And then it's going to say, I just buy Nile Rodgers at the bottom. And I says, and that's the way it should be, regardless of what the contract reads, regardless of how much financial compensation I was getting. That's not the spiritual compensation. The job is I work for you, Madonna. Who cares how much money I'm getting? My mind says this is your record. If this record fails, my life is going to continue the same way. I'll be on the same arc but if if it's if it you know if it succeeds everything changes for you so i care about changing your life arc because mine is on a certain path regardless because that's just

how i am and that's what i believe so so so what what happens the way that I make any record? I don't care if you're completely unknown or a superstar. I when I was a kid, I saw a movie calleding the ship. The commander comes down and he tells all the galley slaves, you live to serve this ship. Row well and live. And that's row as hard as I can. And then and I have a life as a result of working that hard. Yeah, look at the clarity in that. You know, I asked so many people now their philosophy, and they stutter and they stammer, and it's really hard to get it out. And it's not that they're unintelligent. It's just that they haven't spent the lonely work to really articulate what they stand for most or the filter that they view the world and themselves and their decisions and thoughts through and it sounds like if you're not working hard and if you're not taking

care of others life is not going to work out well for you right it's not going to have that depth or that the essence that you are working toward. And is that is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Don't mean to step on you. That's exactly correct. Last night I was working until about three or four. First of all, let me tell you, I have an unfair advantage because I only require a few hours sleep, maybe three since I was a child. So last night I was working, it was around 4.30 in the morning, and all my friends or a lot of my friends were writing me talking about my flood problem and this and that. And I said,

my mom is suffering from ladder stage Alzheimer's right now. I have this horrible what I thought was a completely devastating situation. And I said, but the one thing I know is that after I get through this all, I'll be a better human being. And at the end of the day, isn't that what it's all about? Life is about doing just the best that you can do. It's not getting it perfect. It's just trying the best you can do. And if you continue to do the best you can do, then you feel like you've had a fulfilling life. I mean, what more can you ask for is just do your best. And to me, the byproduct of success for me has just been doing the best job I could. Most records I put out fail. That is a fact. It's

just a numerical and scientific fact. But the fact that I've had so many successes is because I try and do the best job every time. And every now and then the positive fallout of that is going to be a massive record, like like a virgin. Twenty five million as soon as we released it or David Bowie. Let's dance, you know, 14 or 15 million as soon as we released it, just something incredible and extraordinary because it's just because you're working and you're wholly committed to that. And I talk about this thing that's completely made up. It's my own philosophy, but it's something that I call the theory of convergence. And I believe that no success is possible without convergence. And what I mean by that is that there's all this stuff that I can do and I do the best I can, but none of it would work

without these other people that have nothing to do with me doing their job too. And it all somehow falls into place and bingo, we get a hit, whether it be with the disaster I had for the last couple of days. I did the best I could. I was not very educated. I've never had a flood at my house. I'm a city boy. You turn on the water, it works. That's it. Now I've been living in the country for a long time. And but I still think like a city boy. So there's always somebody that you call. Thank God I called someone. And the people that I called were experts. They knew all about this. People who've had rare artifacts seemingly, you know, seemingly in the path of complete and utter destruction said, no, no, no. All you got to do is this. And I took their advice and they were right. I woke up this morning and these beautiful photos of myself and Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger and David Bowie that are one of a kind. They don't exist anywhere else. Mick Jagger at my birthday party with John Taylor from Duran Duran. It doesn't exist anywhere. It

was a snapshot that someone took that night. I have the only one. And this morning, it's beautiful because I did what someone told me to do, which was put water on it. They told me to exactly the opposite. So here it's it was saturated. Right. It was in water. So I'm thinking that now it's ruined. They said, no, do not try and dry it off. Run it under cold water and then let it just evaporate. Let the water evaporate. Don't do not rub it. Don't try and dry it. And I said, OK. And this is a person who is quite savvy in the rock and roll business themselves, very famous. And I tried it. And I woke up this morning to have a glass of tea and looked at every photograph lying on my kitchen table, and they were all beautiful. Now, not necessarily perfect, but once they're reframed,

you would never know the difference. So now I just have a sense that people in your life love you and that your relationships are rich and they have a depth to them is that and i'm like that's just me gathering the way that you speak about the essence of an experience and the essence of people and it is about the process of doing your very best which i want to put an asterisk next to that because I want to understand what that means. But do people – are your relationships deep and meaningful? And is love a thread that rides through them? Or is it – am I way off and it's more about slash and burn and move on to the next? I don't think that's it.

But as an extreme measure. Okay. So here's what it is it, but as an extreme measure. Okay. So here's what it is. You have to look at it from both sides. From my point of view, the love is so deep, it's incredible. From the other person's point of view, it may feel like that, but it can also seem like abandonment because I am so committed to whatever project that I'm working on, the void of having me having the sort of all-encompassing Nile Rodgers in your life to the point where i'm like you know i'm working with this actress now she i think she's probably just 20 years old um hayley steinfeld and she's just i i'm just i love her i'm just obsessed with her right now i just call her four in the morning you know hayley this net your vocals incredible proud of you you're like the greatest person that's ever walked the earth and she's a movie star and then after this is done she'll be on

to the next movie and i'll be on the next record but the way that i feel about her is absolutely real and and genuine but because we're such nuts and such workaholics, or at least I certainly am, and she seems to be cut from similar cloth. I'll be doing something else. And that next person I will be just as dedicated to. Okay, so it sounds like you, you literally go all in with whatever it is, and whomever you're with. Yes. And has that created challenges for intimacy or like long-term enduring relationships?

Or has that been something that you've sorted out? I don't think so. think it may have felt like that from, um, from, as I said, the other person's point of view, because, um, people, um, and I, and I don't, and I don't mean to speak, um, in, in absolute terms, cause I'm not an absolutist. I'm not dogmatic. I don't believe in that. I think that, uh, you know, we're, we all look at life through different lenses. Um, but, um, but I'm not terribly needy. I am so independent. It probably pisses most people off. Um, the reason why I'm having such a great relationship with my mother, even though she's having latter stage, she's in latter stages of Alzheimer's, is because every time she sees me, even though she doesn't remember, as soon as I

walk out the door, her caretaker tells me, when is when am I going to see Pood, which is my my nickname that she calls me, is because I've never really had to be her baby. I ran away from home at 14 years old. So when she sees me, I'm like her buddy. She can relax. Everything goes away. I don't take. I only give to my mom. And most people, I only give to them. So it feels a little uncomfortable. It doesn't feel reciprocal. It feels like I don't need anything when a person wants to help me out. I don't really need it. I was suffering from extremely aggressive cancer six years ago. uh i called my friends who were trying to help

and i said please i i don't even want you to come and visit me at the hospital and they felt that i was being mean and i was just like no i don't want you to have to waste your time and come and visit me in the hospital one i probably want to just sit here and relax and catch up on my reading because i don't get a chance to read i couldn't practice guitar because all this stuff was coming out of my body um but i i'm just that independent i you know i've had a girlfriend for a long time uh 21 years and we live live in separate houses. And it's because she can't sleep with the TV on and I sleep with television on in every single room blasting as loud as possible because I can't turn my brain off. I need the distraction so that I can concentrate. Isn't that an oxymoronic situation? I need a distraction

so I can concentrate. Yes and no. But it sounds like you have a unique understanding of how you work and so that you create your environment to help you flourish, if you will. And it is rare. I just want to put an asterisk next to the three, four hours sleep. That's super rare. That's like 0.01% of the population actually can operate at that level. And it's not necessarily a good or bad thing, as long as when you wake up in the morning, you feel like, no, I'm ready to go. I feel really good. You can hear me. I've been up since. So I didn't fall asleep last night until some really ungodly hour. And I'm ready to go. I've been up since. So it deals making references to the mixes that i sent out uh to my artist and the label and various managers and what have you and filmmakers

uh since six o'clock in the morning because half of my team is in eng. So I went to bed at 4.30 and woke up at 6. And that's complete. They expect it. I told them, I said, look, I need to speak to you at 6 because at 7 I have a conference call. And you got to be ready. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance,

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felix gray you spell it f-e-l-i-x-g-r-a-y.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at Felix gray.com for 20% off. All right. So work ethic with the need for little sleep, but the vibrance is not compromised. You have deep love and engagement with the person that you're with. And I, you know, my thought for you about what I really wanted to learn was how are you able to pull the best out of people over and over and over again, whether that's Duran Duran, Madonna, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera. It goes on and on, like Diana Ross. I mean, legends. And before we get to that now, what was your childhood like? You hinted that you left or at 14. So what

was the early upbringing like? And I think that sets some context for your genius. And so I just want to get to that, if you could share some of that early stuff. So I was raised on the Lower East Side of New York, which at that time was a community full of immigrants. And basically, they had a lot of remedial programs set up to help mostly Eastern European immigrants assimilate into American society. So after that had happened, you know, because they mainly came around the turn of the century or prior to that or in the 1800s. So after that had happened, you know, because they mainly came around the turn of the century or prior to that or in the 1800s. So by the time I was born in 1952, and by the time I started using these programs when I was five and six years old, they were no longer for, you know, Russian Jews or Romanians or Italians or Irish. They were for blacks and Puerto Ricans.

We were the people who lived in those communities. So we were the beneficiaries of these very sophisticated programs that were there to teach people English and music and art and American culture and history to people who knew very little of it. Therefore, since I already spoke English and I lived in America, I got this massive flood of data at this young age. By the time I was five years old, I don't know if you've ever read Moby Dick, but try and read it now. And by the time I was seven years old, I had already read Melville and Stevenson and all these other, you know, terrific authors, mainly Stevenson and people like that and Dumas, because it was exciting and adventurous and things like that. And and the same thing with with Melville. But Melville was loaded with polysyllabic words for us. Five, six year old kid with with a lot of depth and also referring to other cultures and certain things that were not common in the English language. So I had, and I guess when your brain is that young, you can take it all in at some massive rate.

Because imagine, you can teach kids three, four, five languages when they're that young. It's as easy as pie. I mean, you can have a kid learn four or five. I grew up around kids that could speak two or three languages when I was younger. So, you know, it's hard, really hard to do it as an adult, but as a kid, no problem. Our brain hasn't pruned yet. So we haven't pruned all of those dendrites and axons and all the stuff that's making connections. And so like pruning starts to take place. There's like three phases of pruning.

And that's why we used to at one time think from our brain perspective that if you, when you got older, it got harder. It's just that we become more efficient, but the bigger the base you could get at an early age, the better off we are later and so it sounds like that's what you're you're saying is that you had this incredible base at a young age about i think culture and language are those the two things that that were at the center of your early education uh uh culture but only the english language but the main thing that I think that I internalized was culture and other people's traditions. So at that time, because I was living in a highly sort of immigrant type of community, what did I learn? I learned respect and understanding for the for different traditions.

Oh, this happens on this day. This happens on that day. And this is why it happens on that day. And the reason why I want to point that out to you is because when I so my mom had me when she was really early. My mom lost her virginity at 13. And the day she lost her virginity, she actually got pregnant. So I was born to a 14 year old mother. When she had her second child at six years after me, she was suffering from postpartum depression. They didn't understand what that was at the time. And she threatened to kill my little brother on a daily basis. My family intervened, sent my brother to live with his maternal. Sorry, I said my brother to live with his paternal grandmother and sent me to live with

my maternal grandmother, my mom's mom, who had just recently moved to Los Angeles. During that time, it was because of my in-depth knowledge of other cultures, I was able to invoke the greatest survival mechanism of my life at six years old, six and a half years old. I was going to Catholic school. My paternal grandmother raised me and had me baptized and confirmed as a Roman Catholic. When I got to Los Angeles, the Roman Catholic school that I was assigned to because of my district didn't feel like a hospitable place. So I cut school every day, 75 days straight. I actually set the national truancy we had money to put in the collection box. So I had money to get into movies. Kids also paid a very low price. And Los Angeles was famous for what they called the grindhouse movie format, which was you go to the movie theater with four movies or five movies that you can watch all day.

And it didn't make any time, any difference what time you got there. You just waited until it cycled around and saw the beginning. So if you came in in the middle of a film, you just watched it to the end and then you waited until he got to that film again, three movies later. So anyway, I did this and the way I was able to successfully do this was because typically people who worked and once again, I'm not, you know, saying this is an absolute concept, but in general, I could size people up and tell, well, do they know about Jewish culture? Do they know about Russian orthodoxy? Do they know about Egypt? And I could go to the movie theater and say, oh, and plus I was born very sickly. So I was asthmatic and I was raised half in convalescent

homes and half at home. So in hospitals and convalescent homes. So I could go to the movie theater and say, oh, my parents are Sephardic Jews and they wouldn't even know what that was and I'd say yes and we have a holiday and blah blah blah and then I would go to the next movie theater I'd look at the person who's collecting the tickets and say you know uh whatever I'm Roman Catholic but because whatever my father is Russian Orthodox and I know I don't look like, but it's my stepfather and we do this and they would believe me every time. And my favorite day ever was I said, man, this is working so well. Let me go over to these police officers and see if I can get them to drive me to the theater. Come on. I swear, I promise you I had asthma. So I had a note from the doctor explaining that, you know, Nile Rodgers, you know, is asthm strange condition. I woke up this morning really sick, but now I feel great.

But I go to Catholic school and the day is going to end in about an hour and a half. Can you take me to see this movie? There were no movie ratings in the early 60s. So I could see any film. I could see foreign films with subtitles. I could see anything. So I watched foreign films. I watched Berg see anything um so i i watched foreign films i watched bergman i watched felini i watched uh everything i it's so by the time i was

i don't know seven eight nine years old um the regular school curriculum which in america was a standardized curriculum at the time was pretty boring to me because I knew all that stuff. I would just sit there in class, and if you looked at my report cards, they would say, Nile Rodgers doesn't pay attention in school. He stares out the window. And I'm like going, no, because I had this memorized four years ago. You know, see Dick run, run Jane, come on already. That's ridiculous to me. You know what I love about this is that you, no, no one would have imagined that you would have become at the center and the heartbeat of music for modern centuries. Like no, no one would have

guessed that as a 75 year or a 75 day truancy kid, you know? And then, but what you've really just shared, what I'm hearing is that you had a way, an innate way and a skill-driven way for survival to figure out what another person might know or not know. And then you used it to manipulate to get your way. Then as you grew, which is your way was to get into the movie theater, right? To create the story that you could go get the experience and or a la education at that moment. And, and then as you grew as a man, what you've, you haven't lost that skill to understand what's inside of a person and somehow use your insights to not, not for, you know, your gain to get to the movie as an adult a la to make a record, but for their benefit, right? And that's referencing how

you talked about your relationship with Madonna, that it's her music and that you're producing it and collaborating to pull it out of her. Here's what was incredibly obvious to me, but only after I became an adult record producer, that whatever situation I was called upon to perform in, I had this innate knowledge of their culture. So I've made records with Arabic musicians, Portuguese musicians, Spanish musicians, French musicians, obviously Americans, but Americans from the deep south and country and blues and stuff, that was not necessarily a part of my upbringing. You know, they always think that most Black

musicians learn their music in the church. And so I didn't go to Baptist church. My grandmother spoke Latin. I mean, when I was in church, all of our mass was in latin i i i was shocked when i went to a catholic church and they were doing the mass in english recently i was like wow when did that happen um so i had uh this innate knowledge and i and i i remember the first time I recognized it, I was doing an Israeli record and I was doing this. I was playing on this song called Lachah Dodi. And and I knew how to play it. I knew the inflections. I knew all of that stuff. And it was my first professional recording. And they were so happy. I was in and out of the studio in 20 minutes because in those days, you know, as Madonna would say, time is money and the money is mine. And, you know, it's like, you know, they wanted musicians who could read the music fast, do their parts, get in and out so they can go to the next group of people.

And the same thing has been replicated throughout my life. I was music director at the United Nations for this huge conference. And these were people from all different cultures, some countries in Africa that had totally different dialects, some countries in India. I mean, you can't believe how people in india can be from the same country and have no idea what the other person's talking about because the dialects differ and vary so widely that it's almost it's a completely different language but because i speak the language of music i was able to be the music director and conduct the whole show and put on a seamless performance. Okay. All right. So how do you bring out the best in others?

How have you been able to do that? There's one philosophy that I hold dear, and this is the most important thing, that I make sure that before I record one note of music, that the artist knows that I have their absolute best interest at heart. It is not about me. My history has already been written. If it continues to get better, so be it. But I don't look at it like that. I look at it as I'm writing history with that person now. Unfortunately, I have to run to the door because I'm sure this is about the flood. Please. We'll let the recorder run.

Yeah, let it run. Wait a minute. There's someone else here getting it. Okay. Okay. And I guess they'll come up and ask me if they need me. So anyway, that's that's how I how I operate. And I think most people believe it every now and then. Some people don't believe it because, you know, personalities vary in the music business.

Egos vary. And while we're doing it, they seem to believe it. But if the record's not a hit, and all of a sudden, their philosophy changes. My story never changes. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. But that is now it's easy to say that for you, because you've had, you're standing on a mountaintop, you know, your life efforts. It's like, you're, you've been so successful publicly that it's easy to say that my history has been written. Did you have that philosophy before you had incredible success? Or did you have that, you know, at the point of when you're midway up the mountain? Like, how did that work for you? No, no, no. I was climbing up the mountain. I wanted to. So my family, as loving as they were,

and they really were loving, were somewhat detached, which was okay for me because so was I. I really was on my own and I was probably forced to be on my own, one, because of my illness, because of having asthma and living in oxygen tents, which is God knows is the most. Hold on. Yes. Who's calling? Pardon? I'm doing an interview okay but can i have to finish the interview first is everything going okay

okay good great okay great drive the place up go ahead knock yourself out Drive the place up. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Turn the machines up to full volume. Oh my God. The context of this conversation is wonderful. I like, you know, it's terrible that you've gone through it, but the beauty that you have and the freedom that you have around your artifacts is refreshing because so many people are trapped by their possessions. Someone told me that the people that I've hired to do this are actually honest and incredibly trustworthy because they can steal and take anything because I wouldn't know until well after the fact. And one thing I've seen with with contractors and workers and just people, sometimes they don't want to admit to breaking something or what have you. You know, especially if it's a person, a piece of furniture that's incredibly rare. And, you know, I have Chinese furniture that's older than America or at least older than the the Anglo part of America. And, you know, these are things that are very difficult to destroy.

I mean, a couple of thousand years old or hundreds and hundreds of years old. And then they'll get a nick or something on it. And it's like, man, how'd you do that? And nobody wants to, you know, say they were the ones who did it. So I understand that by just living life, I'm putting myself in that position. But you have to trust somebody. I can't be on guard duty all day long. And at the end of the day, these are things that I believe will outlive me. And somehow if they wind up in someone else's hands and they treasure them, I don't know. You know, I actually want to get rid of stuff. I have too much stuff. I feel guilty. I have more beautiful, valuable guitars than a person should have unless they were opening a museum.

But anyway, I don't want to get off subject. Yeah, no, I think that's actually germane because your relationship with things is shining through this conversation. Meaning that things are wonderful and enjoyable, but they're not defining. It sounds like the, you know, as we've, as I thought before we met, that the relationship is more important than the thing. Yeah, much more. So, so you have to just snap my brain back because I got really distracted with that. I wanted to be helpful to him and not have him feel like he was doing the wrong thing. So I can't remember where we were. You know, it doesn't matter to me.

I think that that was actually more important. So because I was very sick when I was younger, my parents detached and I detached on some level physically and not necessarily emotionally, but maybe emotionally, too, because I was so fiercely independent. I didn't need a mother going, oh, sweetie, how do you feel? I feel fine, mom. I'm in an oxygen tent. So what happened was that I had to live on my own. And I was fortunate enough to read this brilliant autobiography by one of the Marx brothers, by Harpo Marx. He was the brother who pretended not to speak. And it was called Harpo Speaks. And it talked about his life and him leaving school and getting a job at nine years old. And I thought that that was so incredibly noble. I wanted to work as young as possible. So when I ran away from home, I didn't run away from

home to, you know, like sit around and smoke pot and sit around and go, well, man, this is so cool. You know, no, I I ran away from home and worked. I got and developed many, many skill levels. I can do jobs that I hire people to do and they can't believe how well I can do them. And I said, oh, yeah, I used to be a professional guitar repairman. I used to be this. I used to be that. Sometimes I go to people's funerals and I'll say, God, I can't believe he's got the same surname as a guy that I worked for when I was six years old. And he said, Mr. Rogers, that's him sitting over there. He's 95. And I'd go, oh, my God, I worked for you when I was a kid. You know, so, you know, child labor laws, I guess, were different in those days,

especially living in New York City, especially living in an immigrant community, like the, the black community and the Jewish community were very closely aligned when I was a kid. My mom speaks perfect Yiddish as does Colin Powell, uh, because they went to the same school. They lived in the same neighborhood. They worked in what we call the schmata business, the, the garment district. They, they, I mean, Colin Powell speaks perfect Yiddish. I mean, it's incredible. My mom speaks perfect Yiddish. You would think she was you would think she was from, you know, Poland or whatever, you know, like, you know, it's it's and my mom has never had an education beyond 13 years old formally. And if you think about what you were learning at 13 years old,

if you retain that information, you'd almost come off like Albert Einstein. We were learning at 13. That's right. Yeah, we were learning algebra and plain geometry and stuff. I mean, it was incredible. And my mom cherished that information. So she cherished that education. So when you speak with my mother, you have no idea that she never went to school beyond 13 years old. You think you're speaking to at least a person who's graduated from an Ivy League college because that's her knowledge base. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high-quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So when you look at people like you just did with your mom, but I want to think about like your collaborators, your partners

in music and business or whatever, and even in life, is that are you working to shore up their weaknesses? I don't think that's it, but I just want to ask for context. Or are you working to find their gem, their crown jewels and amplify those? And it sounds like what you do prior to the work that you do is you say, listen, I'm here for you. And you're just going to have to figure out how to trust that. I'm going to use those words and I'm going to show you the best way I can. And I'd love an insight on how you show people that. But you set the context that I'm going to show you the best way I can. And I'd love an insight on how you show people that. But you set the context that I'm here for you, which is, in essence, what love is, right? It's the verb of love is doing loving things for other people. And so now you're in this relationship where it's all about the other person.

And it doesn't feel like you go away or minimize yourself, but you become so absorbed in the other person that you are amplifying their crown jewels. But I want to make sure that I'm right in this thinking. And wherever I'm off on that, please course correct. I'm trying to get to the center of how you amplify and bring out the best in people. You're spot on. When I go and I make a record or I do any job, I am the head cheerleader. I'm on the team. If I if you call me to be the quarterback and I got to throw the ball, I throw the ball. If I have to be the person who in the fact that because of the standardized education and the standardized curriculum that we once had in this country i learned to read music at a very early age so uh when i make a record you, there's no there's never been a record that I've made that I've called an outside orchestrator.

I do all my own orchestration. I write my own strings and my horns and my vocals and every single thing that's on a record. So when the Beatles came into existence, the the the term self-contained band became very important because prior to the beatles most bands and most stars were like elvis you you know elvis was a superstar but everybody else made his record and he sang um he didn't play guitar on the record. He didn't write the records. He didn't do any of that stuff. He was the talking head, if you will, or the singing head. Well, once the Beatles came into existence, they wrote their songs, they played the songs and all that stuff. So this term self-contained band was important. That's what the music business was looking for, these individual pockets, these individual entities that could create the product from start to finish. But even most of the best of those self-contained bands, including the Beatles, did not orchestrate their records. Well, my band, Chic, we orchestrated our own records because we had me in the band. I have never there's never been another person who has written my string lines or my horn lines or my.

Yeah, they that that's what I do. So when I do a record, I do it from start to finish. And when I work with a person, since they know that and I let them know that early on, that no one else need come into this studio unless I feel that they need to be here or unless you feel that you want them there. I got your back. I totally have you covered. You give me the idea and you tell me you want it on bassoon. No one's told me that except for when I do a movie. But you're going to get it on bassoon and it'll be written in the proper proper clef and everything in the fingering and never, you know. I think you just, I think you just shared with, with me how you've been able to

reinvent yourself so many times from, from a, an artist to a producer, from, you know, disco to, you know, Daft Punk, like how you've been able to do this over and over and over again, I think is because this relentless work ethic, but the early experiences of wanting to go do something, um, to work in a noble way is that you just keep learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. And it's not a reinventing of yourself. It doesn't sound like that, but I haven't asked you about the dark side, like the parts that are really challenging to be world-class, but is that a fair thought to have? Is that what the way that you've been able to stay, um, on top of your game is by being able to have this incredible work ethic, but the same time having a such a wide

variety of experiences education that you're a whether it's from learning how to fix guitars to play them in a world-class way that you understand your industry in totality I don't I hope that's not too big to say no totality is wonderful because understanding it in totality means that I have had a massive, I mean, an extraordinary amount of failures. And it's those failures that give you, if you have the inner fortitude and strength to look at those failures, knowing that you did the best job, you did the best job you did the best job you could do and you still failed right so like i did the best job possible and it was a total failure but it wasn't a total failure in the fact that the process to me is is what's fantastic like i always make record making fun for the artists uh people if

you've interviewed other people who work with me the first thing they'll usually say is i don't even know how this guy gets anything done because he spends all day laughing i love it the whole session they're laughing and cracking jokes they're never stop. If you look at the credits on the back of Madonna's album, she just couldn't help it. She got so caught up into it. She had even cracked jokes on the credits because we were just all day long making fun of each other and trash talking. And that's because I work with such virtuosos that it's nothing to us. It's like, you know, it's like the Willendas. I mean, you know, you you walk the high wire and you pretend to slip. Unfortunately,

some of them actually did slip. But you make it look like you're falling because otherwise people think it's so easy that you just they don't take it seriously because you can do it with it's like effortless but trust me it's not effortless there is a massive amount of computing that's going on inside my brain when i was figuring out of let's think of something recent that way people can identify with it like get lucky when i was doing get lucky the amount of computing that was going on in my head to come up with those parts was just extraordinary. And when I was looking at the face of of Guiman, so you have two guys who make up Daft Punk, Guiman and Thomas. You know, we'd probably like to call him Thomas. So Guiman was looking at my face. I was looking at his face and he had such a sourpuss look on his face. He didn't realize that what I was doing was not playing the parts that I was going to play on the record. I was eliminating the stretch the boundaries and see, can I get away with this?

What part of the song can I do this in and stuff? And then once I was ready to go, I just looked at the engineer and said, OK, man, make it red. Here we go. And I did it in one or two takes. It was done. And what wound up happening is that they loved my experimental process so much where I play from the beginning to the end, they kept everything and just pulled in and out different parts of my performance. So that's why the record is inherently so interesting on a level that you don't even perceive at the beginning, because it's constantly changing, but you can't tell that it's changing. And that's how I play guitar.

I always tell people that I think of my guitar playing as the right hand of the piano. I'm always embellishing and doing little licks and working off the vocal or any other thing that I hear, because every record I produce, I just feel like I'm just joining the band. And in my, you know, in my context as being one of the band members, I'm working off your parts. It's what we call getting off. I'm getting off on your part. So I hear a little something go by and I'll embellish it or I'll repeat it or, you know, or I'll echo it or I'll anticipate it because we've been jamming so well together for so many years. I pretty much know what lick is going to follow this part. So if you listen closely to Get Lucky, you'll hear it's changing all the time. And I find it hysterical when I read supposed intellectuals viewpoints of the record. Well, Niall is just playing a loop here and I'm crying. I'm going

a loop. You got to be kidding me. This thing is changing all over the place. There's no loop there. It's me playing from the beginning to the end because that's what I like to do. Tell me about training. So tell me about how you got that good. And you could say, listen, it always was easy. That's, that's fair. It's like, um, you know, that happens for some people, but like, I get a sense that you've enjoyed the process and not just saying that it's cool to say that nowadays, it's not about the outcome. It's about the process, but then, but people are overwhelmed really by the outcome. That's why they're saying that. I don't get that from you at all. Well, you can see that I don't necessarily think it's that good, because if you go to my Twitter feed and look at what I was doing at four o'clock in the morning when I should have been in bed

asleep, I was laying on the plastic in my living room is now it's all covered in plastic and keep everything from it. It's ridiculous. in plastic and keep everything from the back. It's ridiculous. And I was laying there playing jazz standards at four o'clock in the morning. And people said I had to look up that I had to look up the name of that song. And when I finally found it, I thought it was beautiful. That's incredible. So I'm always trying to make myself better. As I think I said to you at the beginning of our conversation, that to me, life is about becoming a better human being. And since guitar is the voice that I mainly speak with, I want to become a better guitar player, not just a better technical facility but um just understanding the ins and outs and the inner workings and things that i would have normally played at a certain place on the

instrument because the guitar is quite limited in what it could do um uh compared to the piano forte i mean you know it's it's just like it does certain things and it only has six strings, so that's just what you can do. But because of the way that it's laid out, because of its own unique construction and structure, there are things that it can do that other instruments can't do. And as I get older, I start to find those things out and I go, oh, my God, I could have done it like this. How cool would that have been? But, you know, it's just I love to continue to learn and I love to exercise my brain, not for any commercial reason other than the main reason is because I just like it.

I like becoming smarter. It's just fun to learn more. And the biggest regret I have in my life is that I didn't learn other languages. Yeah, because I concentrated so much on learning the language of music that I wish I could speak other languages. Now, the great thing is because I'm so familiar with other cultures, I can make people feel comfortable and they almost think I know what they're saying because I know enough words

and God knows how many languages, you know, I can order food and I can, you know, you know, I can whip out profanity and stuff like that and make people laugh. When I'm in Japan, I sometimes, you know, do my whole speech in japanese or do it in english and throw in a couple of key japanese words that have the people in stitches because you know i use it in the proper context you know and you know things like that um but i i don't have command of any language other than the english language and that's really heartbreaking to me because I'd be able to communicate with with people other than musicians. And don't get me wrong. I communicate with people other than musicians all the time. I'm almost embarrassed at how little politicians know about the rest of the world i can't believe it i go

you know i'm just a simple musician and i know all this stuff how do you not know it and you're secretary of state and you're this i said i am telling you you know a person who lives in this country you know they do this they do that they do this this, they do that. And I'm amazed. And it's because I grew up around people with varied cultures and you get to go to their houses and eat dinner with them and hang out and they explain why you wear that on your head. Wow, really? And there are always these phantasmagorical stories, just like the Bible is all, somebody lived in a well, like, come on, give me a break. But it's all that stuff.

It's all this like, yeah, flew across on a magic carpet to this. And it's like, really? Okay. All right. So how do you can you teach me about this phrase the space between the notes uh yeah you mean like according in accordance to different musical philosophers or just my my take on Yeah, I think that that thought has been, I'll give you some context quickly is that I think what masters of craft are able to do are people that have mastery of self

is they, they play in the space between the space between thoughts, the space between people, the space between them and their craft. And, you know, the space between notes was a phrase that captured me long ago. And that that's where the music really lies, is what Virtuoso shared with me. You have described my approach to music perfectly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know know my hair just stood up i even said to people and i don't mean it to sound egotistical but i said this at the rock and roll hall of fame the other night i said you know when i produce a band that has even two guitar players i still play on every record that I produce. And why is that? Because I believe that musically, my main voice, if added to your record, will make it better because I'm trying to give you the best

performance that you can possibly have. And if I didn't think that, so I'm not being an egotist. It's just that I know how to hear that in between stuff. A great example is after Daft Punk had finished Get Lucky and I hadn't heard it for, you know, about a year or so. And the first time I heard it finished was at Ibiza in front of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people. And they asked me to play along with it. So I started to try and play along with it and i couldn't play along with it and people were looking at me looking at me going why the hell can't niall play along with those four chords it's just four chords and someone said that aloud they said uh niall it's just four chords and i looked at him and i says wow do you think i'm actually just playing four chords that's that's that's what your ear is perceiving i said no wonder cover bands never

sound like me i said yes the root the root of the chord you are absolutely correct the root is four chords yeah those that's the harmonic stability that we've based this composition on but what I do is depending upon the mode of the song I says I'm continually and even continuously interpreting the modal voice leading of my performance. So I'm in between those notes. You know, Miles Davis famously said, and I live by this philosophy, he said, it ain't the notes that you play, it's the notes that you don't play that count. And I was like, that's my style altogether. Everybody thinks I'm playing more than I'm playing, but I'm not playing that. I'm making you think that

because of the voice leading. You think that after I play this, the next logical thing will be this. Typically, after I play this, the next logical thing is silence. And then I play the thing after that. So when I listen to a person trying to play something like We Are Family or Freak Out or something that's really popular, it's difficult for me because I'm going, God, they just don't hear it. They don't hear the silence. They only hear the thing that I was implying that I wanted them to hear. and that's how we achieve groove. Groove is coming from this incredible syncopation, and you have to get out of the way so that you can have a sonic picture

to build your composition, or else the thing is going to be too crowded you you don't know what to listen to it's it's it's it's hard to explain without showing how i do it but i i've if you listen to any brian ferry record that's been made ever since the first record i played on you i don't care how many guitar players are on there. And he always has a huge amount. He calls me up last. And I walk in there and go, OK. And I can always find a part to play.

And you can ask Brian. You can see him in interviews. He says, I don't know how he does it. Steve Winwood said the same thing. I don't know how he does it. But we think the record is finished. And now Rodgers comes he does it, but we think the record is finished. And now Rogers comes in and after he plays the records finished, but before that it's not finished. So how do you prepare yourself? So you're calling it groove, like group groove or group flow state,

which is the most optimal state of group can be in together. That harmony and the syncopation and dissipation is all by design. And it's happening in a way that is authentic the syncopation and dis-syncopation is all by design and it's happening in a way that is authentic and organic and it's the complete flow, the most optimal state a person can be in with others. And so group groove, when was the last time you found group groove? And when was the last time you found flow state in, in and of itself for you? Yesterday. Okay. So yeah. So what was that? The group groove or the flow state in in and of itself for you? Yesterday. Okay. So yeah, so what was that the group groove or the flow state? Both. Okay, how do you? Okay, so before I say how, how often does that happen for you? Almost every day. Because one, I've been fortunate enough, i've never played in a band that

to use a musical this should actually be in a musical dictionary i've never been in a band that sucked i've never played in a band that sucked i've played in bands that have had a couple of members that weren't quite up to stuff. But I since I was a child, I was lucky and fortunate enough to gravitate towards virtuosos. I we just we we orbit in that same that that thing. Most of my friends have never made it in the music business but boy you listen to them play and you go jesus christ how come you're not a superstar um i've been around people that have been so insanely talented that they've and this is a number of people that have committed suicide because the voices in their head are so complicated. They just don't know how to express themselves. And out of pure frustration, they kill themselves. They just can't. They can't. They think on such a high level

that they can't understand how to break it down to speak to us lesser human beings. So what I've tried to do is to always listen to music that people think is simple and corny and pop. When I was the greatest lesson, the greatest music lesson I've ever had in my life was I was taking a lesson with this great, great, great jazz guitar player. And he was my mentor. So I had a classical mentor who was amazing named Julio Prol. And then I had a jazz mentor named Ted Dunbar, who was just a genius, a harmonic genius. And one day I came to study with, take my lesson with Ted Dunbar,

and he saw that I was a wee bit upset. And he asked me, he said, Niall, what's wrong? And I said, well, Ted, you know, tonight I got to go out and play, you know, this bullshit music. He says, what bullshit music? I said, yeah, this Top 40 stuff. He says, what bullshit music? I said, yeah, it's top 40 stuff. He says, Niall, you're playing top 40? Now, in those days, almost every record in the top 40 was a million seller.

When I was a kid, almost every record had that dot next to it, which meant a million, or a star, which meant platinum. Every record. That's what it meant to get to which meant platinum every record that's what meant what it meant to get to the top 40 and that's why radio stations had a top 40 playlist because these are all million sellers so he said to me he says what makes you believe that you're the ultimate consumer and this threw me for a real curve uh coming from this jazz aficionado who didn't play pop music at all, really. So I said, well, you know, this one club tonight, I know we got to play this song by the Archies called Sugar Sugar. I said, you consider Sugar Sugar a great composition? He says, Niall,

any record that's in the top 40, the top 30, the top 20, the top 10, number one is a great composition. And I says, why would you say something like that? He says, because it speaks to the souls of a million strangers. And I went, wow. What a great thought. What a great thought. Oh, my God. It speaks to the souls of a million strangers these are people that

don't know the archies they but this song talks to their soul and i i was i i was i was befuddled and dumbfounded because we weren't learning this type of music that speaks to the in my mind i was learning this very sophisticated music that you know you only play in small clubs and you know there's never a hundred if you're you're lucky if there's a hundred people they're buying drinks you know and stuff uh because that's what i loved and um okay that that that tees up i think something that i'm trying to understand for you is like what are you most hungry for n Niall, in your life, in your craft? Like, what is the thing you're most hungry about? kinder to be smarter um to do all the things that i love better than i can do them which

i know doesn't make any sense because as we get older we physically are not supposedly we shouldn't be able to do these things but i say with a huge amount of pride that I beat the national Jamaican ping pong champion only about six years ago in a game of ping pong. I was 59 years old. smashed him because my brain my brain doesn't think my body can't do what it did if you see a live you just go on youtube and see a live performance of chic i still think that i'm 19 years old look at bruce springsteen i don't know how this guy is not in an ice bath every night i don't know how he does it it's just it's just just insane. He's doing the same moves and just, it's like me. I mean, I can't help it. I don't modify what I do because that's how I think a performance goes. So how do you recover?

So we think about stressing our mind and our body in a world-class way. And then to do that over and over and over again, we need to recover intelligently. What do you do to recover? There's something about me metabolically where I only require a couple of hours sleep a night. So I guess my body, and I don't know if there's any really scientific stuff to prove this.

I stopped looking for answers when I was a kid because they put me in a sleep clinic and I was there for a couple of weeks. And the next day they would have me do, you know, perform tests and whatever. And the doctor asked me, this very young, how do you feel? I said, I feel great. He said, well, he says, you feel great. I said, yeah. He said, but you only slept an hour and a half last night. And this whole week you've been in that kind of pattern. How can you feel great? I said, I don't know. I just do. And then they released me from the clinic and they told me, you know what? Go home. You're going to live a third longer than everybody else. And what he meant was my waking hours, I'd be more productive because everybody else would be asleep and I'd be doing stuff. Okay. So what is your diet like? What's your nutrition and hydration? And yeah. So I, unfortunately unfortunately i used to be i followed in the footsteps of my parents my parents all all of my uh adult caretakers when i was younger all of

them i mean unilaterally across the board from my biological father to my stepfather who was jewish who's the father who raised me, my mom, you know, my uncles, aunts, everybody. They were all heroin addicts. Though I never did heroin as a kid, you are always trying to outdo your parents, or at least most people are. So when I was a kid, what came into vogue uh were hallucinogenic drugs and i knew and it's funny my parents were heroin addicts you know my father almost died god knows how many times of overdoses uh

but if i even uh mentioned doing lsd to him he what are you crazy are you out of your mind so i did hallucinogenic drugs and um and uh uh unfortunately i went down um this negative trail but in the beginning it was fantastic and positive i was doing all this great stuff and uh one day i think it was madonna's 38th birthday party i went there and before i went to her party i went out playing i went out gigging with these musicians these incredible musicians from cuba that were just virtuoso geniuses um and they recorded the performance and the next day he played for me what i thought was a brilliant performance because all the people were going crazy I was doing all these tricks playing behind my head like Hendrix and all that sort of stuff the next day when he played it it was a less than perfect performance and I went

wow I absolutely believe now that I'm going crazy because my brain perceived one thing, but the reality shows me something completely different. And I knew that I loved making music more than I like doing drugs. So I actually stopped. Now, don't get me wrong. I did go to a rehab and all that. But the day that I stopped, I never drank again or did drugs again. I'm 22 years sober or I'll be 22 years sober madonna's next birthday come august um so um um you know i i'm the kind of person that i believe in stuff so anyway all that was to say that i had pancreatitis twice at a very early age. And as a result of that, I wound up developing diabetes, I guess. So I wound up eating like a bodybuilder.

So I eat many meals a day, relatively small, but no high glycemic stuff, except whenever I'm having fun, like I'll do it every few months or so. But so I keep my blood sugar from spiking. And I don't gain a lot of weight. If you see me, I can wear I wear a size 38 jacket, which is amazing for a 64 year old guy. Um, um, and, uh, I, I wear, I can almost wear all the same clothes that I wore when I first started chic. Now, when I started chic, I was unusually skinny. Um, but, um, that, that's what I do. I just eat like a bodybuilder. Um, and that seems to work for me. Okay. All right. Brilliant. Uh, I've just like a bodybuilder. And that seems to work for me. Okay. All right.

Brilliant. I've just got a couple more questions for you because you have this way about you that is really, it's a grounded confidence. And so can you teach where confidence comes from? And maybe even embedded in that is how do you deal with like that inner critic? But where does confidence come from for you i'm not really sure um because i don't feel uh overly confident unless i'm in my element then my element is in the music in the recordings deal there i'm a confident guy but i'm open to learn that my favorite artists are the people who teach me new stuff um you know that's why i work with 20 year olds and 25 year olds because i leave the studio and go wow i never would have thought of

that um and they like working with me because I teach them about theory and, you know, and stuff that they never had to learn because the gear that they use, a lot of that stuff is built in. You could just buy a great computer and the chords are there so you don't have to learn tertiary harmony. You don't need to know what a chord is called. You don't need to know what a key signature is. You don't need to know any of that stuff. And maybe some of the most famous, successful writers in today's world, and I know because I work with them, I say, hey, man, can you put a B-flat in that chord instead of so-and-so? And they look at me like I'm from Mars. They don't know what I'm talking about.

And these are superstars. They're popular. And I can't believe they don't have what I would consider rudimentary knowledge, but they have this accelerated genius type of knowledge of ear training that they just develop by living in this world. The same thing that I have when I go to another country. And even though I can't speak the language, I can get around from place to place. I can make a person feel comfortable because I know their customs and I know, you know, certain things like that. So I can't really tell you where confidence comes from oh i think it comes from maybe this is going to be my best guess just using myself as an example uh from a peaceful place like if you feel at peace and that's why i always make my artists try and feel like i have their best interest at heart because then they relax when

david bowie asked me to make let's dance and he had no record deal and he had to pay for the record himself he thought you know once i hire this guy i'm gonna be able to afford this record and it's gonna be a hit and it was we did it in 17 days start to finish i mean can you imagine that 17 days start to finish because i understood what he wanted so well and he trusted me so much that i would just do it and he'd say wow that's right rarely did i anticipate something that would be wrong and the thing that i anticipated that would be wrong was so right he went i love that and i and i it was to me i thought it was the most ridiculous idea but i thought it was a necessary idea and when he heard it so did he

okay um how do you define success? That's tricky because I'm in the music business. And unfortunately, the only way that other people define our success is by hit records and numbers. See, I don't look at it that way because I think the process of doing it is successful um my best records are probably records that were not hits i did an album with al gero that i think may be the best thing i've ever done i don't know if i've could that i could ever top that my level of playing my level of of execution of harmonic stability um juxtaposed with instability was just on it was next level it was really unbelievable and uh and we were our own worst enemies because it was so good that the commercial song on the album, we gave away. And when we gave it to another label, they got a number one record out of it. And our record failed. Okay. Gosh, now, thank you so much. And then the final parting question is, maybe it's one of the more challenging questions, but how do you think about

or articulate or even define mastery? I define mastery as something that the individual defines because only they know when they've achieved that thing. It's different for every person. As I said, when I beat the Jamaican champ in ping pong, he thought he was there. He probably thought to himself, this old dude beat me like that. And I thought I was that good. I better go get my stuff together um you know so there are lessons that we learn along the way that teach us have we arrived are we close to that thing that we consider mastery i happen to believe that we never get there that's just me i don't want to believe that i never get there. That's just me. I don't want to believe that. I want to keep getting better. Even if somehow I'm not able to play guitar, I hope that my knowledge of theory and other things that I could help other people do becomes better because now that I don't have

to worry about my fingers moving, I can say to somebody else, oh, wait, wait a minute. If you do it like this, you can do that. And they'll go, oh, man, I never thought of that, because at that point I'll become maybe more of a technician and and, you know, maybe somewhat of a, you know, a technocrat more than an artist, possibly. And that's a form of of mastery, you know, to be so good technically at something that you may not necessarily know how to artistically express yourself. But, you know, robotically, you can whip this stuff out. And, you know, maybe that's what I want to achieve. I've always wanted to be an artist more than a technocrat. I believe that expression and trying to help you understand my message is 10 times more than being flashy. That just it's it's just better to me. You know, I talk about it after I was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I said, you know, quite often people think that

on certain records that someone else who you think of as this flashy shredder is playing the solo. And it was one thing in particular i was talking about where i did a solo on a cindy lauper record but in the music video it's a guy who's known for being a shredder in the music video so he's doing it in the music video no one believed that that was actually me playing the solo because you don't really see me do that that often oh got it and then so i said well no that was actually me on the real recording he just did the music video because she he's in her band but she wanted me to do it so i did it um i uh i look at myself as a worker bee. I love being called upon to fix stuff. I live for solving problems. When I was a kid, I went to science school. I'm a mathematician at heart, a scientist at heart. the greatest thing that i have to look forward to is at the end of this year

i'm going down to chile to um uh to the the the great telescope content complex and it's in the desert and it's like at this super high elevation and you have to acclimate yourself because you can't even breathe up there and it's to me it's going to be like the greatest the absolute greatest day of my life when i climb that peak and they they say it's impossible to get there it's a five-day journey it's like you can only take a plane to Santiago and then another plane to another town. That's you. You got to drive for five hours and then you have to live at like 10 or 11000 feet before you can go to the next level. And I am so looking forward to this because they say that it changes your whole concept of life when you can look at the outer cosmos like that and you can see

they did they just said that you will never be the same and the reason why i know this to be true is not just from scientists two days ago i had a taxi driver and i could hear from his accent that he was from south america and i said hey by the way are you from chile and he says yeah he says blah blah blah so i explained to him that I was going on this trip. He says, you won't believe it. Seven years ago, I took my wife there. He had married an American woman. Now he's a cab driver. He said, seven years ago, I took my wife there. And this is exactly what he said to me. He says, you will never see life the same way again. Exactly what all my scientific, my cat drivers said, you will never see life the same way again.

And that's what everybody, you know, all my astrophysicist friends are saying to me. They say, once you go there, you will never see life the same way again. Oh, God. I mean, it's obvious that you look forward to the future, that you're an optimist at heart, that you are a lover of life and experience, and that you've put in the hard yards and the hard

work to be able to express yourself and bring out the best in others. Niall, I want to really thank you for your time, especially with the mini crisis of things that were damaged in the last couple of days. But I'm going to have to go downstairs and deal with right now. Yeah, I know you. Oh, my goodness. So, OK, now, thank you. And, you know, for those of us who enjoyed this conversation, where can we find out more about you?

What is the social media stuff like? Where's the ways that people can be connected to you? Easiest guy in the world to find. I'm just you go to Twitter. I'm just Nile Rodgers. You go to Facebook. I'm just Nile Rodgers. Now, I do have a said, oh, I saw you hide out in the open. I said, well, you know, go buy some music that Niall's been part of, support him that way. And, you know, you're going to say something. Oh, right, Michael. I just wanted to say that it's my name is Niall, which is easy, like the river, N-I-L-E. But Rogers is R-O-D, as my grandmother would say, with a dignified D. R-ified D G E R S R O D G E R S. Yeah, there you go. Brilliant.

Okay. So you can also hit us up at iTunes, you know, write a review. It helps us and subscribe. It helps us. So thank you for everybody that's been part of the finding mastery tribe. And then now I'll see you on social as well. So my Twitter's at Michael Gervais and then Instagram now i'll see you on social as well so my twitter is at michael gervais and then instagram is finding mastery and then so thank you like what what a what a wonderful experience

for you to be able to share your insights and if you had one question that you were going to ask a master of craft or somebody on the path of mastery, what would you ask them now? At this exact moment? Yeah. How do I absolutely make sure I don't get any mold in my basement? What a gem. Okay. I hope you have a fantastic day and I hope you figure out the mold issue. And thank you for the gift you've given the world.

Thank you, man. All right. Take care. Total pleasure. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button

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