Le Freak: The Life and Times of Nile Rodgers

You will hear a Nile Rodgers song today. It will make you happy.

Legendary producer and co-founder of Chic, Nile Rodgers wrote We are Family for Sister Sledge and I m Coming Out for Diana Ross, produced Let s Dance for David Bowie and Like a Virgin for Madonna. He has worked with just about every major star, from Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan to Prince and Duran Duran.

But before he reinvented pop music, Nile Rodgers invented himself. Born into a mixed-race family of dopefiend bohemians, he learned at a very early age everything he needed to know about love, loss, fashion, art, music, and the subversive power of underground culture. The stars of the scene were his glamorous teenage mom and heroin-addicted Jewish stepfather, but there were also monkeys, voodoo orishas, jazz cats, and contract killers in the mix.

By the age of 16, Nile was busking his way through the 60s, half-hippie and half-Black Panther. He jammed with Jimi Hendrix, took acid with Timothy Leary, toured with Big Bird on Sesame Street s road show, and played guitar behind history s greatest soul singers. And then, one night, he discovered disco.

This was pop s most glamorous and decadent age. Nile Rodgers wrote the songs, produced the hits and lived behind the velvet rope holding court in the bathroom stalls at Studio 54, club-hopping with Madonna, scarfing down burgers with Diana Ross.

Le Freak is the personal, moving story of a creative genius, told in his own unique voice warm, intimate and relentlessly charming. It is also a stunning recreation of an age told by the man who wrote its soundtrack.