by Nile Rodgers
In my quest to prove my point, I played both songs (“Material Girl” and “Like a Virgin”) for everybody I knew, trying to gin up enough evidence to back up my gut instinct. I remember one colleague’s reaction as clear as day—that of my friend Gail Boggs. Gail was a real pro; she’d sung with Bette Midler and costarred as one of Whoopi Goldberg’s spiritual assistants in the film Ghost. I can still recall the day she sat in my car to take my musical version of the Pepsi challenge.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long. Once I blasted “Like a Virgin,” I never got a chance to follow up with “Material Girl.” After one listen she uttered these prophetic words:
“Nile, this record is going to be No. 1 for at least six weeks.”
It was. Gail was right! And I, well, I had to admit I was wrong. Gail’s enthusiasm was so compelling that I could no longer deny that the song was something special. Madonna had captured its essence and put it right in my face. Already things were changing with Madonna: People were starting to follow her scandals, the guys she was sleeping with, and her outrageous fashion moves, but they were willing to pay for her music because it spoke to them. All true artists have this gift, and her delivery of what could’ve been a cute pop song with a provocative hook really touched people—especially young women.
My young charge clearly had serious instincts.
IN THE RECORDING STUDIO, Madonna’s superintense let’s-get-down-to-business attitude sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. I tried to protect the musicians on the album—after all, they were my secret weapon—from her tougher side. Their loyalty to me drove her crazy, and she tossed off some fairly insulting stuff. When they were directed at me, I could laugh her insults off because we really did love each other. Much like with Nard, we’d developed a relationship that allowed for the constant hurling of insults. It was how we entertained ourselves during the lengthy methodical process—but it was supposed to stay between us.
Unfortunately, other people weren’t so comfortable with her verbal abuse. One day Madonna’s insult slinging went too far. Our assistant had the temerity to go to the bathroom, and she freaked out on him.
“Where the fuck is he going?” she said, loudly enough that he could clearly hear. Unsatisfied that she’d made her point, she then let off a fusillade from her usual arsenal of one-liners: “Time is money, and the money is mine,” etc. But today her tone was laced with a cruelty that I hadn’t heard before. She was being mean. So I confronted her.
“Madonna,” I said, “you can’t treat people like that. He’s just a guy trying to help you make the best record he can. And he needs to go to the bathroom.”
“Fuck that,” she said, “he didn’t ask me if he could go.”
And with that she and I got into it. This was not the Madonna I knew, and I didn’t appreciate it. Our exchange got so heated that I actually quit the record. I got up and said, “If you are going to treat people who are working for you that way, I can’t do this anymore.” I promptly collected my belongings and stormed out of the studio door.
I was seething with anger, waiting for an elevator that couldn’t arrive quickly enough, when she ran out.
“Nile!” she yelled. Once she realized that she had me cornered, she pivoted and said in her best girlish voice, “Does that mean you don’t love me anymore?”
I looked at her and smiled. The smile then turned into a full-out laugh—her transparency was comical, but she was also right: I couldn’t fight the affection I had for her. With that I went back to work, ending what has to be the shortest producer strike in history. That would hardly be the last of the blowouts we’d have before the record was finished. Some of the scuffles were my fault: Sleep deprivation and too much partying probably made me act a little crazy. Meanwhile, my crew was doing lots of drugs, too. They’d show up late or even miss a session, and I had to lie to protect them from Madonna’s wrath. I once made a call to the police in front of Madonna to convince her that Nard had gotten into a traffic accident, even though I knew exactly where he was. Deceptions were necessary to keep the project, my people, and myself on track.
SPEAKING OF CRAZY:
One day, as I was leaving the studio at the end of the workday, Madonna asked me out of the clear blue sky, “Hey, Nile, do you think I’m sexy?”
“Madonna, is that a serious question?”
“Yes.”
“You have to be one of the sexiest people I’ve ever known.”
“Then why don’t you want to fuck me?”
“What? Well, er, um, because I’m your producer.”
“Well, that never stopped any of the other ones.” She turned her back and stormed into the studio. I was left standing there with a silly look on my face.
She never made clear what the point was. What made her question even weirder was that I knew Madonna was never sexually attracted to me. She only went for great-looking guys, the kind that girls obsess over and then end up getting treated like shit by. If Madonna went out with a guy like me, it would’ve been as confusing to the public as when Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett. And even if she had found me attractive, as a few other girls I’ve considered out of my league have over the years, I wouldn’t have taken the bait. No, I’d learned a massive lesson much earlier in my career: Don’t shit where you eat. The last thing I wanted was to ruin what I thought would be a long and fruitful relationship with an artist I believed was going to become an Eternal Pop Superstar.
RIGHT BEFORE WE WERE about to wrap up the record, I got a phone call from Michael Ostin, Madonna’s A&R exec. Michael was my sole contact at Warner on the Madonna project, and by now we’d become very close. We had an honest relationship and could discuss anything about her and the record with complete candor.
I could tell from his tone we had a problem. Michael was in a pickle.
“Nile,” he said haltingly, “I know you guys have finished the single and Madonna is chomping at the bit to put it out, but ‘Borderline’ is taking off like a rocket ship. No one expected it. It’s killing the charts and burning up at MTV. What would you do if you were us?”
Without dropping a beat, I said, “When ‘Borderline’ starts to fall off the charts, follow it up with ‘Lucky Star.’ It’s one of the best songs on the album.”
“But that could put you back months—and Madonna is itching to put this new record out.”
“Michael,” I said, “you already have the product in the stores. And you’ve got another single on the album that’s smoking. You’d be a fool not to try and take it all the way.” Michael is a smart exec. He was probably going to do this all along but was just being courteous. It was smart, respectful, and correct.
IT MAY HAVE SEEMED like I was on the label’s side, advocating holding the record I’d just completed in favor of milking Madonna’s previous album. But by now I knew every song on that first record, which meant I knew those tunes had a lot more shelf life. If her first album had a chance at a second life, why wouldn’t they jump at it? And it would only increase the anticipation for the new album.
“Like a Virgin” would now have to wait for the earlier singles to fade. Such an embarrassment of riches is almost inconceivable now, when whole careers come and go in a few weeks, but Madonna suddenly had a backlog of hits because she also had a few hot songs from films she’d recorded. We knew that, as a general rule, the marketplace only affords an artist one single at a time.
So we waited. And we waited. And sure enough, both songs were hits, which meant that Madonna’s first album started to move some major units. So we waited, and we waited some more.
The wait lasted many months, during which time I made a ton of records and Madonna promoted her first album like crazy. We worked very hard. And we played even harder. I wound up spending more time socializing with Madonna than recording with her.
She joined me at La Samana, a luxury resort in St. Martin where the clique I was hanging with spent every Christmas. Despite the growing success of her first record, Madonna still hadn�
��t become the fully realized Madonna, but she was in good company with my extended crew. Back then, my top pals were Daryl Hannah, her family, and her boyfriend, Jackson Browne; NBC bigwig Dick Ebersol and his actress wife, Susan Saint James, and family; Oprah Winfrey and her boyfriend Stedman Graham; politician Vernon Jordan and his wife-to-be, Ann Dibble Cook, and family; music mogul Marty Bandier and his family, including wife Dorothy, an ex-model who was connected to my best friend from the Black Panther days, Jamal Joseph, and his wife, Joyce, another model/actress; and my main man and closest friend, publishing mogul Jann Wenner and his then wife, Jane.
Our crowd also included Bob Johnson, who was just starting BET (Black Entertainment Television), and with whom I regularly played tennis; and Harry Belafonte and his daughter Gina, whom I loved debating with (we were on the same side—it was just stimulating to have another ex-street-level lefty to shoot the shit with in this super bourgeois hedonistic resort). There was also my then girlfriend Nancy Stoddart, who single-handedly introduced me to this lifestyle. Though I’d become financially well off, I had never had a true vacation until I met Nancy. In fact, the very first time I did, I went kicking and screaming, but to my surprise I actually wound up having a good time.
By now I had to have coke everywhere I went. Every day. Most of my friends and colleagues never knew the extent of my addiction. (At least I don’t think they knew.) I remember the day we arrived in St. Martin, Madonna, Jellybean, Nancy, and I lunched on the resort’s terrace. Though coke accompanied most of my meals, I hadn’t flown down with any. But I wasn’t worried. It was the eighties and I knew I could find drugs anywhere. Or more correctly, the drugs would find me.
The rest of my party never suspected a thing. But in the drug world, word travels fast. A high roller had landed. The moment we passed through customs, I was on a local drug dealer’s radar. Everywhere I went on the island, I had someone laying in the cut to keep my nostrils filled. I gave the word that I’d happily pay extra if they didn’t step on it too much. The baby laxative and sugar they cut it with ruined the intensity of the high. I’d become accustomed to close-to-pure stuff back in New York. But none of my friends seemed to notice how deep I was into the drugs. I was still at the top of my game professionally, and my work ethic powered me through the days. They have a saying in recovery programs, “God protects drug addicts and fools.” I was both, so I was especially well protected.
Really, everything had worked according to our Chic master plan. My music was well known, but for the most part, my face wasn’t. This unique blend of anonymity and affluence was all very convenient: I could go anywhere and do anything I pleased. As Oprah said when I appeared on her Season Two “Rags to Riches” show, “You are one of the richest people I know,” which is sort of funny to think about, given that Oprah is now probably the richest person I—or anyone—knows. Money wasn’t my goal, just a yardstick to measure success.
On New Year’s Day 1985, my situation was near perfect. Life was fantastic, almost blissful. We’d finished Like a Virgin in just six weeks. We knew the record was great, and we now had time to relax in the sunshine. Meanwhile, my relationship with Madonna continued to grow. When her promotion schedule opened up, she joined me on Martha’s Vineyard.
A PLAYBOY BUNNY FLIGHT ATTENDANT I once dated used to tell me how great “the Vineyard” was. Her name was Renée, and for many years she’d worked on Heff’s corporate jet. The famed Playboy jet was black, sleek, beautiful, and classy—and so was the drop-dead fine Renée. Not only was she gorgeous, but genuinely nice, well mannered, and very popular. One day she and I went shopping in an upscale Chicago department store, and baseball superstar Reggie Jackson walked up and greeted her by her first and last name. I was proud that she was with me. Renée was superconnected and worldly; she could have easily been a politician, diplomat, or royalty.
“Martha’s Vineyard is where the rich black folks hang,” she’d repeatedly told me. I think her whole family had been summering there most of their lives. Cool. I’d become a certified rich black folk, and I certainly knew how to hang. And so in the summer of 1984, I rented Seven Gates Farm, a massive house with its own private beach, in the town of West Tisbury.
I’d envisioned the Vineyard as La Rive Gauche for black people. I pictured everybody from Muhammad Ali and Pam Grier to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Angela Davis would be lounging beachside, locked in heady conversations about art, high fashion, sports, and politics. Based on Renée’s description, the Vineyard sounded similar to the best aspects of my childhood. I suspected the fascinating personality types of my youth would be there tenfold: armchair philosophers, artists, chess and Scrabble players, and envoys from every possible affinity group, and I’d be freer to be me. I couldn’t wait to be welcomed into the fold of my fellow overachieving brothers and sisters.
And then from the moment I touched down on the island, I felt much more racially alienated than I’d ever felt anywhere else.
When I rolled around the Vineyard with the likes of Madonna, Carly Simon, or any of my many white friends, things were always cool, but if I flew solo or with black friends, things were not. I was used to that, but as I said, I expected life would be different in an idyllic enclave of American black affluence. I’ve always struggled just to fit in, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I know I’m somewhat, well, different, maybe extremely so, but on top of that, I have that extra difference, which is the American black thing.
Since I was six years old, I’ve traveled all over this country and more than half the world, and for the most part we black Americans have a style that’s uniquely ours. Even if I’m in a crowded foreign city, I can spot a black American in a crowd easier than a Parisian can spot an American in a bistro. Now here I was on the Vineyard, ready to enjoy the relaxed joyfulness and racial harmony. Unfortunately, it turned out that race still mattered. And here’s what made things so wacky on the Vineyard: It wasn’t the white people who made me feel unwelcome.
It turns out I’d come back around to the same color caste system that I’d first experienced in my own family growing up. This phenomenon isn’t folklore or fantasy. Like many darker kids who were the butt of juvenile jokes such as “Your mama’s so black she can stand next to a Cadillac and charge the battery,” I was left without a suitable comeback. I’m dark-skinned. And like most people, I get even darker in the summer. It quickly became apparent that many Vineyard visitors of color had been given the same instructions as my mother’s ancestors: “Marry light!” Now, I hadn’t come here to the Vineyard to marry anyone, but the message carried over to other forms of socializing as well.
My brother Bunchy—who at the time was a sometime musician, carpenter, and drug wheeler-dealer—has light skin like our mom. Though he wasn’t wealthy—and he wasn’t even particularly employed, legally at least—he was accepted almost everywhere on the Vineyard, especially in Oak Bluffs, a village about ten miles from my summer place that was a haven for some of the richest black folks in America. But I was given subtle grief from the moment I set foot in town. People were never overly hostile, but I got just enough negative attitude to let me know where I stood.
On my very first trip to Oak Bluffs after sundown, I was refused entry to an upscale house party—a party I’d been invited to—by the bouncer guarding the front door. I was totally perplexed.
As Renée had said, the Vineyard was where rich black folks hung. I was probably richer and absolutely blacker than ninety-nine percent of the people there. I quickly realized that the standoffish posturing I’d been experiencing was simply based on my hue. Of course I can’t swear to what was in his head because I’m not a mind reader, but I’ve encountered this before. My skin color was the only information the doorman at the exclusive Oak Bluffs party had to judge me. And for him color, which masquerades as a key to one’s status, was what mattered. Fortunately, the situation was resolved when an ex-girlfriend, who had spotted me being turned away, told the doorman, “Hey, that’s Nile Rodgers, the leader of Chic and Di
ana Ross’s producer,” at which point he let me in—along with my entourage.
The funny thing is, he probably shouldn’t have let me in—for an entirely different reason:
My friends and I all stank powerfully of skunk.
A few days previously, my girlfriend Nancy’s dogs had trapped a skunk under our house. As any self-respecting cornered rodent would do, the little fellow sprayed the dogs, drenching them nearly to the point of drowning. We tended to their burning noses and eyes, bathed them in cool water, and washed the pooches in tomato juice, as Fin the groundsman had instructed. We then dried them with about ten bath towels.
That would have been the end of that, but my housekeeper, in a particularly forgetful moment, washed all our clothes with those skunk-infused towels. The scent stayed in everything for weeks.
After a few hours, we more or less got used to the smell. But that was just us. Once we were inside the party and past the point of no return, we unknowingly offended everyone’s olfactory systems. You should have seen the facial expressions. After a few minutes of appalled wincing, one of the bourgie black revelers yelled out, “Damn, I smell skunk!”
During the skunk phase on the Vineyard, Madonna’s A&R chief, Michael Ostin, and his wife were among my houseguests. They went straight from the beach to Paris. When they checked into the exclusive George V Hotel later that week, and the bellman brought their pristinely matched Chanel suitcases into the elegant lobby, they emitted a distinct fragrance, Eau de Skunk, by the house of Monsieur Pepé Le Pew.
Our Martha’s Vineyard rodent perfumer would continue to make his presence felt for some time. In fact, his work traveled all the way back to the Ostins’ California home, about a month after the original incident.