Le Freak

by Nile Rodgers

  “Yeah, I’ll bet the sound system’s new and improved since then,” I cautiously replied. Blank stare from Chris. So I just came out and asked, “I think I’ve seen you here at least twice before tonight, right?”

  He gave me a confused look. Oh shit, I thought, he actually doesn’t remember playing one of the most famous venues on earth. I was also positive he’d played there the year before as part of a big Atlantic Records celebration that my band Chic, the act with label’s largest-selling single, “Le Freak,” was not invited to participate in, but that was beside the point.*

  Other people’s mind-boggling memory loss due to drug use should have been a warning. But I honestly believed I was different. At that point in my life, even after multiple binges, I still had almost total recall. I could remember minute details of even trivial events.

  Boy, was I in for a surprise.

  AND SO I KEPT ON GOING, faster and faster, running from something, the way I used to run from bullies as a skinny little kid. It was the perfect time for someone in flight from reality: It was the eighties, after all, an era of truly historic excess. Here’s the dizzying account of artists I worked with during that wild ride, in no particular order: the Thompson Twins, Steve Winwood, the B-52’s, Sheena Easton, Cyndi Lauper, Hall & Oats, Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, the Honeydrippers (with Robert Plant), David Lee Roth, Depeche Mode, Jeff Beck, Ric Ocasek, the Vaughan Brothers, Jimmie Vaughan, Bryan Ferry, Southside Johnny, the Dan Reed Network, Sister Sledge, Paul Simon, Al Jarreau, Michael Jackson, Michael Gregory Jackson, Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Philip Bailey, Diana Ross, Stray Cats, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, David Bowie, Paul Young, Wet Wet Wet, Toshi Kubota, Seal, Marta Sanchez, Slash, Taja Sevelle, Spoons, Lorelie McBroom, Mariah Carey, David Sanborn, Samantha Cole, Will Powers, Christopher Max, Kim Carnes, Jenny Burton, the System, Carole Davis, Terry Gonzalez, Outloud, Paula Abdul, SMAP, the Southern All-Stars, Claude Nougaro, and my own solo projects. This list is not complete; it’s just to give you a sense of scale.

  On each of these records, all of which I still vividly remember, my role was basically always the same. I was the guy managing and working around problems and variables, from the songs to the equipment to the personnel. If you take what you now know about the often highly knotty process of making a record and multiply it by the preceding list of artists, it’s not hard to imagine the mental, spiritual, and physical damage I was doing to myself. My only defense is that my over-the-top lifestyle brought a certain order to my life. Think about the way turbulent weather patterns look from outer space.

  THE SPRING OF 1988 marked the end of three especially intense years of back-to-back projects following Live Aid. In addition to producing many of the artists I just mentioned, I’d also been hired to score my first major film and was really excited to write a full orchestral score. Though I was a novice film composer with only a few scores under my belt, somebody had told the film’s director, John Landis, “Nile Rodgers, oh, he’s a genius,” and on the strength of this recommendation, he pursued me. I didn’t even know what the film was because it didn’t have a name, only the working title “The Zamunda Project.”

  The film turned out to be the Eddie Murphy vehicle Coming to America, and it would provide me with yet another level of pop-cultural cred. I’d thought my rock-and-roll life was excessive and over the top. The truth is, I was still living minor league compared to the lifestyle I could enjoy subsidized by a major league film budget.

  It all began when Paramount temporarily gave me my own studio, built over the weekend on the lot to meet an absurd production deadline. Apparently, Eddie Murphy had been moved by an Orson Welles docu-style movie in which Nostradamus predicts the exact date of the Big California Earthquake. Unfortunately, that date happened to be a few months after we started shooting. Eddie insisted that he wrap all his scenes before the Golden State plunged into the Pacific.

  In order for Eddie to escape before the big disaster, Landis wanted music in place in order for him to sign off on a scene. But he didn’t want just any temporary placeholder music, he wanted the right music, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. This meant I had to score dailies. Let me explain the process: After they filmed a scene, the film was developed, rough-edited, and scored to determine if they had it in the can. Landis, a veteran director, knew a decent Hollywood composer would never agree to such a thing. He was betting my lack of experience would result in my agreeing to indentured servitude.

  He was right. After I signed on, I had my new assistant, Rich, and my Porsche 911 Slantnose Targa 3.0 shipped to California. They even granted me my own handpicked top-shelf engineer. We worked day and night and basically lived on the Paramount lot.

  I still remember the first day I arrived for work. The welcoming committee was John Landis himself, waiting for me at my official parking area, and a slightly disheveled elderly white man. I thought the man was John’s dad, so I was very respectful, speaking very slowly because he seemed hard of hearing.

  After a few minutes of inconsequential chitchat, the old man suddenly spoke to me in a markedly different voice.

  “It’s Eddie,” he said.

  I didn’t quite understand. So he repeated, “It’s Eddie,” this time in a slightly more assertive voice. I still didn’t get it.

  “Yo, it’s Eddie.”

  “What?”

  “Nile, man, it’s Eddie,” he said, louder now, and in his familiar East Coast–urban timbre.

  “Oh shit!” I screamed. And with that the old white man and John Landis got their guffaw on. This was their way of welcoming me to the big leagues and making me comfortable. Genius!

  Eddie’s old-Jewish-man-from-the-barbershop makeup job was completely convincing, and I knew it would look great on camera. The joke was not only funny as hell, but had the additional benefit of jump-starting my gray matter. I started writing music in my head right there on the lot. I was instantly into the project, and oh, what a project it was.

  I got any and everything I wanted, like a spoiled child. Money was not an issue. I had all the comforts of New York and then some. My girlfriend visited me whenever she could. Many of my L.A. friends stopped by regularly. My purpose-built Paramount studio soon became the place to be—and drugs, of course, were the reason. But I was hiding them from select people.

  As I fell further into addiction, I was still lucid enough to know who was—and who wasn’t—cool with getting high. Oprah and I had become very close and I knew she didn’t do blow. She was in town working on a movie of her own, The Women of Brewster Place, and decided to drop by. I hid the toot. I don’t believe she ever witnessed me getting or being wasted, although she’s obviously very sharp and intuitive, so she probably suspected something funny was going on.

  Either way, she never judged me. Later, when my life started falling apart, she tried to help me by suggesting respected therapist Harville Hendrix. Unfortunately, the referral marked the beginning of the end of our relationship—but that was a ways off. She used to refer to me as “her little brother.” Even though I’m older, she was infinitely more mature. I’m usually drawn to brightness and maturity, but I was starting to feel more and more comfortable around chaos and bedlam. Coming to America provided the perfect backdrop: Life had served up the perfect frenzied situation, exactly when I needed it.

  But like the conclusion of any good movie, the curtain was getting ready to come down. I’d soon be heading for the blackout highway like my rock-and-roll brethren.

  HERE’S SOMETHING I’VE ALWAYS WONDERED about my life back in the day: Was the cocaine trade completely out of control? Or was it just me?

  Sometime during the summer of ’85, I began to assimilate dealers into my social life—I realized that an in-house supplier was far more convenient and safer than sending my studio staff to cop. And just as I was bringing dealers into my personal circle, my personal circle started dealing themselves. Everybody close to me was getting in on the lucrative action. And a lot of these people seemed to be part of my family.
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  During those heady days, my best supplier was probably my younger brother Bunchy, who by now was making frequent trips to South America. Bunchy wasn’t working for me, exactly—I was just his best customer. He made more money during that period than any other time in his life. Had he saved and invested what he made off of me, he could’ve just laid back forever. (I don’t even want to think about the amount of money I burned up my nose.) Meanwhile, my mom, a dabbler in the drug business since I was a kid, had delved back in with a vengance.

  I didn’t know the extent of my family’s involvement in the drug trade until they started spilling the beans years later during one of our family Thanksgiving bashes. During that same feast, my brother Bobby confessed that he’d been selling pot since he was six, unbeknownst to my whole family. (We thought the reason he always seemed to have cash as a kid was his formidable gambling skills.) Then there’s my youngest brother, Dax, who had the toughest luck due to drugs: He was sentenced to eight years in the can for the least lucrative role in one of the biggest drug cases in the history of North Carolina.

  For years I’d been caring for them all, but they couldn’t resist selling drugs for quick cash.

  They also couldn’t resist getting high. Everyone in my immediate family maintained some kind of habit, even my brother Tony, whom my mother let her aunt adopt.

  So much for nature versus nurture.

  And let’s not forget my stepfather, Bobby, the patriarch—or what passed for one in my unique clan.

  For as long as I could remember, Bobby was either high or drunk. Once, while doing a stint in the VA hospital residential program, they’d tried to get him to admit to his alcoholism. He beamed with pride and said: “Man, dig it. Alcohol is nothing to me. I drink when I want and what I want. I’m a dope fiend, baby.”

  It was harder for Bobby to admit to being an alcoholic than for Pete Rose to admit to betting on baseball. Every Thanksgiving at the family gathering in Vegas, he’d proudly say, “Pud, I’m the world’s oldest living junkie.” But never an alcoholic, at least in his own mind.

  IT’S EASY FOR ME to point out my family’s shortcomings, but my problems were worse than all of theirs combined.

  I should have known better. After all, I knew as well as anyone how common accidental overdoses and intentional suicides were in the music business, but the funny thing was, I continued to live my wild life without fear. I’ve never thought drugs would whisk me out of this world. When I popped my drug cherry sniffing glue, I essentially overdosed. Given my poor respiratory health and low body weight, passing out could have easily killed me. Obviously it didn’t. Instead, I came to and said, “Let’s go again!”

  Since the tender age of eleven, I’d been dabbling in mind-altering substances, living on the edge and behaving as if I was invincible—and I’d had no reason to think there was anything wrong.

  I was about to discover what it feels like to fall off the mountaintop.

  (Illustration credit 12.1)

  * Right before this went to press, I called Chris Squire. We had a delightful conversation and his mind was crystal clear. He had all the dates for his upcoming Yes tour memorized. We laughed our asses off about the Garden incident and in the end he said to print it. I said, “But if you don’t remember seeing McCartney, maybe I got the rock star wrong.” He laughed and said, “It really could have been me, so just say it was.” I was confident in my memory because I noted at the time I was in mega-bass player heaven: Chris and Bernard on my left and right and Paul McCartney onstage.

  part 3

  I Made It Through the Wilderness

  (Illustration credit 3.1)

  thirteen

  The Dance, Dance, Dance of Death

  I SOMETIMES REFER TO SEPTEMBER 13, 1982, AS THE OFFICIAL BEGINNING of the Grim Reaper’s Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll-Call. That’s the day almost all my friends and pop culture associates started to die.

  The first to go was Chic’s trumpeter, Ray Maldonado, who passed away while I was across the street from his apartment ordering barbecued ribs. Ray was soon followed by Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Miles Davis, Vitas Gerulaitis, Andy Warhol, Michael Hutchence, Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson, Luther Vandross, and at least ninety-five other Nile-world regulars.

  What I didn’t know was that the Reaper was coming for me, too. The signs were all around me, I just wasn’t paying attention.

  One of the most unexpected and tragic passings during this funereal stretch had to be Stevie Ray Vaughan, who went on August 27, 1990, at 12:40 a.m.

  When I first met Stevie during the Let’s Dance sessions, he was a relatively unknown opening act with a huge personality and a penchant for getting high like there was no tomorrow. Since that first meeting, he’d become a superstar. Of late, he was also clean, sober, and happier and friendlier than ever. I was in the midst of producing the next chapter of his exciting musical life: His record with his brother Jimmie, called Family Style, which was going very well. Between recordings, Stevie toured with his band Double Trouble, and on one such occasion he and Jimmie headed to the Midwest for weekend gigs with Eric Clapton. After a performance at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, Stevie wanted to turn in early, so Clapton offered Stevie his seat on a chartered helicopter out of town. They lifted off in a souplike fog. The pilot failed to climb high enough to clear a hill that wasn’t visible through the low ceiling. The crash killed everyone on board.

  All his years of death-defying boozing and drugging hadn’t killed him, but, tragically, Stevie didn’t live long enough to enjoy his sobriety to the fullest. Meanwhile, I flirted with the void daily. I knew the moment I started chasing highs, I was chasing death. But I was fairly comfortable with the arrangement.

  ABOUT SIX MONTHS AFTER STEVIE’S PASSING, I came home from another night of debauchery—I parked my newest Porsche at about 6:30 a.m., said hello to the doorman like I always did, and headed toward the elevator. I stumbled into the elevator and pushed the button marked “14,” which made no sense because I lived on the twenty-eighth-floor. Somewhere between the lobby and the fourteenth floor, my heart stopped beating. I literally dropped dead.

  Luckily, I collapsed into the hallway on fourteen, aspirating on my own vomit, Hendrix-style. A porter miraculously happened to be on fourteen picking up the trash. He called the EMTs.

  I can’t explain why I pushed “14,” but had I not pressed it, I would have remained dead. The twenty-eighth floor was deserted at 6:30 a.m. The trash had already been collected for the day.

  When the EMTs arrived, I had no pulse. They rushed me to the emergency room, barely clinging to life. The ER docs tried various resuscitation techniques, but I continued to flatline. After they’d done all they could, they gave up and decided to “call it.”

  As they were recording the time of death, an orderly in the room said, “Hey, Doc, we’ve got a live one here.”

  “What?” the ER’s attending physician replied.

  “Yup. His heart just started beating again, all by itself.”

  How do I know this story almost word for word? The attending physician decided to stick around to tell me how hard they’d worked to save my life. He hoped I’d appreciate what the ER team had done to save me. He was right. I felt beyond appreciative. I was humbled and ashamed.

  But not ashamed enough to learn my lesson! And to make matters worse, this wasn’t even my first near-fatal incident due to intoxicants. I’d already done a tour in the Intensive Care Coronary Unit at New York Hospital a few months earlier. (I roomed next to the shah of Iran; coincidentally, one of his relatives had hired a band I once played in called the Master Plan, which had gigged in Iran a few months before Chic blew up.)

  I’d also wound up in the hospital after a flight from Hawaii to L.A., during which, on a dare, I downed every whiskey sour they had on board in less than six hours. “That’s some kind of record,” the flight attendant informed me while serving me the last round. After we landed, I passed out and
was whisked off to the ER with my second bout of acute alcohol poisoning and pancreatitis, which could have easily resulted in the pushing up of daisies.

  Death had visited me on countless occasions, but never long enough to exercise the option. The Ferryman threw me back like an undersized fish. I can’t explain why I feared sleep more than death. I seemed to pursue death like Indiana Jones searching for the Lost Ark, but not from some kind of death wish: I was just an addict, like everybody else in my family. I can say this now with dignified relief. For years I’d awaken with the room spinning and soon find myself kneeling at the toilet, swearing, “Oh, God, if you help me through this, I’ll never do that again.” But by nightfall …

  ONE HUMID SWELTERING NIGHT about two weeks into August of ’94, I bumped into Madonna at a club in Miami’s South Beach district called Liquid. We were surprised and happy to see each other after so many years, and we exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes. As I prepared to take my hang to the next level, she said, “Yo, Nile. I’m having a party over at my place this weekend. Wanna come?”

  “Cool,” I said, while Ingrid Casares, her close friend at the time (she’d long since split with Sean Penn), jotted down the address.

  I was in Miami working on preproduction with Cuban musical genius Nil Lara, one of the most meticulous artists I’d ever met. His home studio was practically an archive on a scale that rivaled the library at any institution of higher learning. On the night I arrived, he happened to be performing at a local club in South Beach. He asked me to sit in, which I happily did.

  When I hit the stage, I kicked ass. I unleashed every guitar trick I knew; I played behind my back and lay on the floor as if overcome by the voodoo of funk while jamming. I may have even stooped to the lamest low: playing with my teeth.