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New Year’s Eve 1977: Disco in front of the door – Nile Rodgers writes Chics “Le Freak”
On New Year’s Eve 1977, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards are waiting to be embedded in New York’s disco temple “Studio 54”, where fashion icons such as Calvin Klein and Halston with Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol vanished. But even though chic hit “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)” is running inside, the bouncer knows no mercy. 30 minutes later, Rodgers wrote a song about it. The chorus reads: “AWW, fuck off!” “I used to be with the Black Panthers,” explains Rodgers, “but Bernard was a creditor.” So “fuck off!” In “Freak Out!” changed. When “Le Freak” climbed to the top of the charts in 1978, Rodgers easily came to the “Studio 54” every evening. Disco was created in New York’s gay clubs in the early 1970s. There, DJs had to provide dance music because live bands did not want to play for this audience …
But then the European producer Giorgio Moroder and his colleagues liberated the beat from the minority niche and made it suitable for mass by mixing pop melodies, rock aggression and sparkle hythmas. Moroder produced Donna Summers Hit “Love to Love You Baby” in 1975. She allegedly recorded the orgasical vocals on the studio base with a stomach and rhythmic hip circles.
“Turn up on red!”
What Summer does not want to leave: “I was lying on my back. I couldn’t sing something like that with four guys, so I put myself on the floor. We hanged up curtains and turned the light down.” Summer delivered Disco his biggest hits, but the best band was definitely chic. Not least because of “Good Times”, in which Edwards plays the most famous bassline in history … and that came like this: Because Edwards came too late, Rodgers played the piece on the guitar to his drummer Tony Thompson and his friend, the queen bassist John Deacon. At some point Edwards came in and stopped bass without excuse.
Rodgers, a bit acidified, wanted – “Walk! Walk, motherfucker!” – a walking bass: Edwards did as the ment and sound engineer Bob Clearmountain received the instruction: “Turn high on red!”
Clearmountain reacted quickly, pushed the recording button and caught the bassline, which was copied everywhere from hip-hop (“Rapper’s Delight”, Sugarhill Gang) to rock (“Another One Bites the Dust”, Queen). For Rodgers, a prime example of efficiency: “After the first take the thing ran.”