Top 35 Nile Rodgers Quotes

If I could live in one city and do every single thing I do there, I would choose Venice. You can’t turn your head without seeing something amazing.

I am very rich because of ‘Chic’ – artistically as well as spiritually. It’s been an amazing life.

It feels like my job is to support people. I support great artists. When I worked with a symphony, I sat in the third chair, not the first chair.

When I was very young, there was a lot of music at home, mostly jazz. I was walking around singing and pretending I was in bands from a very young age. But the first song that was really personal to me was ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.

I’d probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they’re somewhat biographical – they’re fiction but also non-fiction.

I’m always the last person in the world who would ever try to predict a trend.

I’m completely obsessed with the film versions of ‘Superman’.

It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.

I’ve found great solace in finally taking care of myself and others.

When people tell you you’re on the brink of death, you’ve got to dig pretty deep to get it together.

I never wished my parents were normal, because they were unique, special and fabulous.

I grew as close to Madonna as I’ve ever been to a woman without being romantically involved.

Every record I have done was because I was a person’s friend. The only time we did not continue to be friends was if the record did not become a hit. If it did, we became great friends.

I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.

My life was really interesting before ‘Chic.’

I’ve never cancelled any public appearance, simply because that’s what my life is; it’s doing my work, and I never want to stop doing my work unless it becomes impossible for me to do it.

I’m always swimming forward like a shark. You just keep going and you don’t rest. I love waking up knowing that I have a problem to solve.

Trust me, the only real way to understand ‘Chic’ is in highfalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early ‘Chic’ records to impress my jazz friends.

Music is the one part of the entertainment business where you can’t fool anybody into buying a record.

Any real record person knows that the number one most powerful marketing tool when it comes to music is repetition.

I don’t believe in the philosophy of stumbling across hit records.

I wouldn’t know how to retire.

When I go on vacation, I take very few clothes and a whole lot of books. It’s the most soothing thing in the world. Reading ‘Moby-Dick’ is like being in a time machine. I almost feel as excited as the first time I read it and I always find something new.

You can fool a person into going to see a movie with a good trailer.

I love Madonna! If you want to see the Madonna I know, just go on YouTube and you’ll see those early interviews before the record came out. She was giddy and wonderful and giggly and happy and so excited looking towards the future.

I only work with people I like.

My career has been wacky and not at all normal. I’ve never had a manager, nobody gets jobs for me. I wind up working with artists that I meet.

There’s never been a song that I just wrote and tried to send to an artist.

I’m a record producer and songwriter; I’m a problem-solver.

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that’s what I like to think I’m doing.

The only person I have regrets about is Miles Davis. He and I had become good friends after we did a photo shoot, and coincidentally, we kept running into each other at parties and stuff. I regret not having written a hit for Miles Davis.

I’ve been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.

My responsibility is to the artist first. There’s something that artists intrinsically know about their music and their fanbase that neither the record company nor the producer really knows.

Everything about my life was culturally rich, and all the people I met sort of reinforced the wackiness that was normally inside of me. No one said, ‘You can’t do that,’ until I got to real record companies, that is.

There’s been this strange irony to my whole life. All my original bandmates have died, when I was the most wild and most reckless of us all. But I’m still here.