by Nile Rodgers
Next we added keyboardist Rob Sabino, one of the truly underreported heroes of our funky jazz-rock sound, and a solid pillar in our new organization. It was mostly he who played all those brilliant acoustic piano parts in the small openings in between Bernard and me chucking later in Chic.
Finally, we added an outstanding male lead singer named Bobby Cotter, who had just finished a stint in Jesus Christ Superstar. Bobby was a great front man, handsome with incredible vocal range and abilities. We were ready to rule the world, or so we thought.
Our new unit gigged regularly and eventually recorded a hot demo, which was produced by Saturday Night Live’s music director, Leon Pendarvis. The music got a lot of attention from the labels, but no offers after they saw we were black. Bobby’s voice was super soulful, and before they saw us, they were probably imagining we were like a funkier Queen or Journey. The demo’s sound leaned more to the rock-funk side rather than the smooth-groove side, so the labels assumed we were white. It was clear after months of meetings that our funk-rock formula didn’t work, so we went back to the drawing board.
We knew many local bands. Our keyboard player was friendly with one particularly odd new group called KISS. They wore whiteface makeup onstage and looked like deranged superheroes. At some point we started checking out KISS’s live shows. There was something very cool about the way their theatrical whiteface roles were so defined onstage, and that nobody had any idea what they looked like offstage.
One auspicious night a lightning bolt of an idea hit me: “What if we played the faceless backup band professionally?” I asked Bernard. It wasn’t crazy to me. Actually, it made a lot of sense. The Big Apple Band originally was the faceless backup band for the vocal group New York City, who were the stars. Though we had hired Bobby Cotter to be our singer, he was clearly our band’s front man. He looked like a star and we looked like his band. This faceless role fit us perfectly. We knew we didn’t know how to come off like stars even if we tried. When we had meetings with record labels, they’d direct the questions to our keyboardist, Rob. They assumed he was the leader simply because he looked white! He was Puerto Rican and always used to tell the execs, “Hey, I just got here, it’s their band. Talk to them!”
(Illustration credit 7.2)
Taking our cue from the few KISS shows we took in, Nard and I started to reason everything out. We didn’t look like our music. The labels all loved us until they saw us. We weren’t stars—but our music was! The answer had been right in front of our faces: KISS! We realized KISS’s art direction was just as important as their music, much like Roxy Music. Both bands presented completely immersive theatrical experiences, albeit in diametrically opposed ways. How could that translate to us? Nard and I thought it over and came up with some answers via “band logic,” not to be confused with actual logic:
KISS’s onstage characters were faceless offstage. Faceless.
Check! We could do that.
Roxy Music was slick and suave. Slick and suave. Check! We could do that.
Their art direction was as important as their music. Check! We could do that.
Then Bernard and I tried to figure out how to mesh KISS’s anonymity with Roxy Music’s musical diversity and sexy cover-girl imagery. This concept stuck in our minds no matter how many survival gigs we had to take in the meantime. For the next few months, we were consumed with this.
Nobody around us had any idea what Bernard and I were obsessively up to. Even our drummer, Tony Thompson, couldn’t see the big picture of what we were trying to do. And who could blame him?
KISS and Roxy Music were rock bands. No matter how inspiring they were conceptually, they were clearly rock. But musically, I found my inspiration in jazz. Many of my jazz heroes were enjoying hit records—only they were doing it by making R&B dance music. Roy Ayers, Herbie Hancock, Joe Beck, the Jazz Crusaders, Norman Connors, and others were topping the pop charts. So we developed a new sound that was a fusion of jazz, soul, and funk grooves with melodies and lyrics that were more European influenced.
Just when we thought we had everything together, things started falling apart. Our lead singer suddenly left. Then another group called the Big Apple Band put out a phenomenal disco reworking of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It was an instant smash called “A Fifth of Beethoven,” by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band (who were also faceless). Our phone started ringing off the hook with congratulatory messages from our studio musician friends. Problem was, they had the wrong Big Apple Band. Walter was a New Yorker, born within a couple months of Nard and me. He gigged on the same circuit, doing R&B covers, but his Big Apple Band got a hit record first.
We had no choice but to start over with a new name—and try and connect our small but reliable mid-level-bar-band following to it. In those days word of mouth was exactly that, one person to another, and if you weren’t a signed act with a press agent it could take months before folks got the news. Back when I’d originally talked about Roxy Music’s style, Bernard suggested we call the group Chic. Tony and I laughed and shot him down, but we had the luxury of being the Big Apple Band, and were doing gigs! Now, because of Walter’s hit record and the loss of our lead singer, we had to call ourselves something different. “Chic” still sounded funny, but I decided to at least give it a try.
Bernard thought of the name, so as the group’s main writer at that time, I did my part and wrote the first song, “Everybody Dance.” Only a handful of bassists on earth could play the bass line I wrote for the song, but a few years had passed since the night Nard and I had met in the Bronx, and by now I knew what he was capable of. The jazz-influenced song was really complicated: It had a mixture of harmonically extended chords, and the latter half of the progression incorporated two strict chromatic movements in the bass. I compensated by writing an insanely simple hook: “Everybody dance, do-do-do, clap your hands, clap your hands.” I sang it to Bernard, and he liked it, but asked me, with great earnestness, “Uh, my man, what the fuck does ‘do-do-do’ mean?” I responded with equal seriousness, “It means the same things as ‘la-la-la’ motherfucker!” I’ve never laughed as much in my life as I did with Bernard.
As I said earlier, the band had acquired a little following, and our ex–lead singer Bobby had a friend named Robert Drake, who’d become one of our biggest fans. Robert was a true audiophile who owned a personal recording studio and worked as a maintenance man at a larger professional studio called Sound Ideas. He booked our first session as the new band there. We worked at the studio after hours when it was supposed to be closed, and the only person we had to pay was the elevator operator, ten bucks, to keep his mouth shut about the secret session. Robert engineered the record and also charmed the studio’s assistant engineer to kick in her time free, too!
The backbone of this life-changing session was our four-man Big Apple Band rhythm section, but we also reached out to some good friends to help make the song sound more like a record. Luther Vandross brought along his crew of singers; Eddie Martinez (Run-DMC’s “King of Rock”) played the guitar overdubs with me; and two top jazz studio cats, David Friedman and Tom Copolla, played the vibraphone and clavinet, respectively. This crew of thrown-together friends became a template that has never changed for the Chic Organization’s productions. Luther’s vocal arrangements of my basic song taught us what to do and how to do it from that point on. We had never produced a record before that night and didn’t realize we were producing one then. I was the composer/arranger/orchestrator/guitarist, and Bernard was the bassist/bandleader, and we acted accordingly. In this setting Robert Drake was the session’s engineer/producer, if you will.
We all had done enough sessions to know to let the engineer get the sounds first, and after he’d done that, we’d rehearse, then we’d record. It quickly became apparent that the two people who were most in charge were Bernard and me, despite the fact that we were not calling ourselves producers yet. It was clear I had written the song, and he was directing the musicians. We started changing and rearr
anging parts based on the ensemble’s interpretation of the music.
Nard changed his bass line to a chucking part, so I simplified my original part because it complemented his. Prior to that session, only I had actually played the song, but now we were all playing it together and this new arrangement took the song to a higher level. After we knew we had the arrangement exactly right, we started recording.
From the first downbeat, we knew it was hot. I had fully orchestrated the lengthy song, which was a series of different instrumental sections, highlighted with “breakdowns.” A breakdown is accomplished by taking out major parts of the composition and featuring the basic elements of the groove, then adding more instruments until finally the whole band is playing again. The concept is to deconstruct the song and rebuild it in the listener’s ears. I knew that this formula worked at live R&B shows, and believed it would work on records. We completed the entire song in one night. Mind you, the first incarnation of “Everybody Dance” had no lead vocal, only Luther’s choral arrangement of my hook. Robert did a rough mix at the end of the night, and what happened next is too weird for words.
We did this recording session before cassettes existed, so the only time we got to hear the song was when we listened to the playback a few times after recording it, very late that night. I didn’t hear it again until three weeks later, when I got an “emergency” phone call that demonstrated the effect that our faceless breakdown music had on people.
By 1976 there was a new social and cultural phenomenon that Americans were just becoming aware of—buppies (black urban professionals)—and their stronghold was New York City. The musical engineer on “Everybody Dance” was also the DJ at one of the city’s hottest buppie clubs, the Night Owl, which happened to be in Greenwich Village.
At this time I was temporarily living in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, at my then girlfriend Rosalia’s apartment. We’d met a few weeks earlier on a gig I was doing near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I had written “Everybody Dance” at her crib, because she had a day job that allowed me to compose alone uninterrupted. A mere three weeks after we’d recorded it, Robert, who had made a few lacquers (lacquer records that could be reproduced quickly), made an “emergency” call to me because he was DJing and had to be sure he’d get me between records. “Hey, Nile, you’ve gotta come over and see this,” Robert said.
“See what?”
“I can’t explain it, you just have to see it. Come to the Night Owl, and when they stop you, tell them you did ‘Everybody Dance.’ ”
The fact that I’d be stopped was inevitable. The Night Owl catered to an upscale black crowd that adhered to a strict dress code. I didn’t have the duds or the dough to get in, so I asked Robert, “What do you want me to do?”
He repeated his instructions, then emphasized, “Tell them you are the one who did ‘Everybody Dance.’ That’s all you have to do, no matter who stops you. You got it?”
“OK, cool. See you in a couple hours.”
I’d started dressing while still on the phone because the curiosity was killing me. I ran to the subway and rushed to the club to see whatever it was that I had to see. As soon as I got to the door, the huge bouncer said, “Hey, man, you can’t come in here dressed like that.”
“I’m a friend of Robert Drake.”
“I don’t give a damn if you are Robert Drake, you ain’t getting in here dressed like that.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. I did ‘Everybody Dance.’ ”
“ ‘Everybody Dance?’ Brother, let me shake your hand. What’s your name?”
“I’m Nile.”
“Yo, this is Nile. Let him in,” the bouncer told another bouncer inside, working the ticket booth. I took the elevator up. The door opened, and the next bouncer said, “Hey, you can’t come in here looking like that.” Right away I said, “My name is Nile, and I did ‘Everybody Dance.’ ”
“ ‘Everybody Dance?’ Damn, no shit? Come in, brother man. Can I buy you a drink? Hey, Tom,” he shouted to the white owner of the black club, who was smoother than a gravy sandwich. Tom was the seventies version of my stepdad, Bobby: sartorial perfection, slick rap, and an appetite for sisters. “This is the dude that did ‘Everybody Dance.’ ”
“Hey, man, my name is Tom, and this is my place. You can come here anytime you want and it’s on the house.”
This all seemed like Robert was playing a practical joke, because I’d never met any of these people and they were treating me like I was the man. Tom and I chatted for about ten minutes about his new club in my old hood, and then he escorted me through a heavily cigarette-smoke-clouded room over to the DJ booth. Robert was talking to a beautiful buppie hottie who worked on Wall Street.
“Yo, Nile,” he said as soon as he saw me. He didn’t spend any time with idle chitchat. He screamed over the music, “You’ve got to check this out,” and started laughing.
The stylus dropped onto the lacquer, and after Tony’s opening drum fill, Bernard’s killer bass line came in. I hadn’t heard this for almost a month, but I knew the song right away because I’d written it. The Night Owl patrons let out an almost bloodcurdling “Oww-www.” Then my guitar entered along with Rob’s piano, David’s vibes, and Tom’s clavinet. The room filled with voices—“Everybody da-ance, do-do-do, clap your hands, clap your hands.” A frenzied crowd of dancers, playing air guitar and air bass on the dance floor, lasted through seven continuous replays of Robert’s two lacquers—approximately an hour of the same song. I’d been into dancing and nightclubbing since my days with my ex-girlfriend Karen, and I understood why DJs played a popular record repeatedly to keep the dance floor hopping, but this was ridiculous. An hour of the same song, and it was my demo!
Did I really just witness this? It was so overwhelming that while I outwardly pretended to accept it, inwardly I questioned it. But I reasoned that Robert couldn’t have staged this, and if he could, why would he? Everything was feeling completely absurd.
To further highlight the absurdity of the scene, Robert said, “Now watch this,” and played the No. 1 record on the Billboard chart that week in October 1976, “A Fifth of Beethoven,” by none other than Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band: the group who just a few months earlier had forced us to change our shared name. All the people started booing and threatening to leave the dance floor. Robert replayed “Everybody Dance” at least another four times before the crowd would accept “A Fifth of Beethoven.” How ironic was that? While Walter’s record played, I ran to a corner telephone in the club and called Bernard, who was at home asleep with his wife and kids. I said, “Get up and come down here. You’ve got to see this.”
“See what?”
“I can’t explain it. You just have to come down to the Night Owl. Oh, and remember to tell them at the door you did ‘Everybody Dance.’ ” A little while later, I saw Bernard’s puzzled face as he approached the DJ booth in the smoke-filled room with the club’s owner, Tom.
THE REBUILDING OF our new band had begun. But as positive and fantastic as the Night Owl was, it would take quite some time to get a Chic album deal. We’d bring many industry people to the Night Owl to witness the crowd’s reaction to our breakdown music, but it never went anywhere, so we just kept working at it.
Bernard and I liked to gig together, but that wasn’t always possible. Bernard got a gig, playing bass on a session with a producer/arranger/musician named Kenny Lehman, who was also introduced to us by Robert Drake; the song was a sappy but hooky single called “I Love New York,” or something like that. In those days singles had to have an A and B side in order to be sold. Typically B sides were filler, but every now and again you’d get a song like Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” which might be the biggest B side of all time. Kenny just had the band jam and would finish the filler song later.
At that point I had been the sole writer in Chic, so Kenny came to me with the B-side jam, whose musicians were Jimmy Young on drums and Bernard on bass. Based on a number of factors, including the originality of the
bass line, Kenny and I agreed we should bring Bernard back in as a writing partner.
I had written a hook that went, “I just dance, dance, dan-dan-dance, all of the time. I just dance, dance, dance … all the time.” When Bernard heard it, he said, “That’s too complicated.” He suggested we change it to “Dance. Dance, dance, dance.”
From that moment on, Bernard was my official songwriting partner. It was his very first song, and it was right. Nard was a bandleader and was accustomed to changing parts to bring out the best in everyone for live shows. When he became a songwriter, he did the same thing. His philosophy was simple and pragmatic: Fix it now, so we don’t get booed off the stage later. It’s really why we worked so well together. I would always overwrite and he’d always simplify it. Countless times he told me, “Damn, you’ve got the whole album in that song.” He had a knack for understanding what a song was trying to say, then getting the song to say it.
I had already written the song’s verses more or less, and after Nard simplified the hook, we thought it was ready to record. Once again we hired my old Sesame Street friend Luther Vandross as the vocal contractor. In the seventies we followed the professional rules of recording, even if the gigs were nonunion. The unions had established pay scales, and people were paid according to their responsibilities. The leaders or contractors of a group of musicians were paid higher fees and had greater responsibilities, primarily hiring, conducting, and filling out the contracts.
After Luther and his crew had recorded the song, the chorus was a little too simple for me, so I wrote the phrase “Keep on dan-cing,” following the pattern of rewriting in the studio that we’d established working on “Everybody Dance.” This completed the chorus and the song’s vocals. Kenny Lehman did the orchestral sweetening on “Dance, Dance, Dance,” and my original hook was relegated to the role of a secondary counterpoint melody, played on a Micromoog synthesizer during the verse. We used every complex musical idea that I had written for the song, but we rearranged them according to Nard’s sense of balance and logic, which perfectly checked and balanced my impulse to overdo it.