1
00:00:01,440 --> 00:00:03,320
Speaker 1: And Amanda jam Nation.

2
00:00:03,720 --> 00:00:05,560
Speaker 2: When it comes to big stars, that don't get much

3
00:00:05,559 --> 00:00:08,600
Speaker 2: bigger than our next guest. He's a musical legend and

4
00:00:08,760 --> 00:00:11,680
Speaker 2: producer who's worked with the likes of Madonna, David Bowie,

5
00:00:11,760 --> 00:00:15,080
Speaker 2: Duft Punk, Diana Ross to name mister Feu. He's the

6
00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:17,400
Speaker 2: co founder and guitarist of Chic and he's here to

7
00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:21,480
Speaker 2: announce they are touring Australia. I'm so thrilled, Nil Rogers.

8
00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:23,800
Speaker 1: Hello, Hey there, how are you well?

9
00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:25,079
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled as well.

10
00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:28,520
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just hog the thrill. No, we're sharing the thrill.

11
00:00:30,040 --> 00:00:33,159
Speaker 2: When you say, or when someone produces someone, what does

12
00:00:33,159 --> 00:00:36,760
Speaker 2: it mean? For example, David Bowie, when you meet David,

13
00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:40,320
Speaker 2: do you collaborate with him? Do you have a sense

14
00:00:40,360 --> 00:00:42,560
Speaker 2: of the music he should be doing? How does it work?

15
00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:47,560
Speaker 4: So when I worked with David, that's a really good

16
00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:51,440
Speaker 4: one to start with. He basically said to me that

17
00:00:51,560 --> 00:00:54,240
Speaker 4: he wanted me to make a hit album, not a

18
00:00:54,320 --> 00:00:55,800
Speaker 4: hit single, a hit album.

19
00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:58,560
Speaker 1: And to me, what a hit album.

20
00:00:58,360 --> 00:01:03,320
Speaker 4: Is is an album that tells a complete story.

21
00:01:03,760 --> 00:01:05,800
Speaker 1: And when you drop the needle on the first.

22
00:01:05,480 --> 00:01:07,880
Speaker 4: Song, you love it, you love the next one, you

23
00:01:07,880 --> 00:01:09,840
Speaker 4: love the next one, you love the next one, turn

24
00:01:09,880 --> 00:01:11,760
Speaker 4: it over, you love that one, and that one, that one,

25
00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:14,480
Speaker 4: and you get to the end. So to me, I've

26
00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 4: always looked at albums as the way filmmakers look at films.

27
00:01:20,240 --> 00:01:21,920
Speaker 1: They have a beginning, of middle, and an end.

28
00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:24,199
Speaker 4: So when he said that to me, I was sort

29
00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:28,360
Speaker 4: of pretty thrilled because that gave me a blueprint in

30
00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:31,440
Speaker 4: my mind what I would do. So to me, every

31
00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:33,880
Speaker 4: song had to be catchy, sort of like chic songs.

32
00:01:33,920 --> 00:01:36,760
Speaker 4: Every song had to start with the hook. That's why,

33
00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:40,800
Speaker 4: you know, when we did Let's Dance, with a big

34
00:01:40,840 --> 00:01:44,479
Speaker 4: single from that record, I wanted the first words out

35
00:01:44,480 --> 00:01:49,200
Speaker 4: of David's mouth to be Let's Dance, as opposed to

36
00:01:49,480 --> 00:01:52,120
Speaker 4: when we did you know, songs like China Girl, which

37
00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:55,440
Speaker 4: he whipped out on me when we finished. We had

38
00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:57,560
Speaker 4: a great day of recording and he said, NOA, I'm

39
00:01:57,560 --> 00:02:01,440
Speaker 4: thinking about adding this song to the album too, and

40
00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:04,200
Speaker 4: he played China Girl for me that he did with

41
00:02:04,240 --> 00:02:07,480
Speaker 4: Iggy Pop, and I'm like, WHOA, that doesn't sound like

42
00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:11,040
Speaker 4: it belongs on our hit album. So I redid it

43
00:02:11,200 --> 00:02:15,680
Speaker 4: and I put in that intro, which I thought was

44
00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:18,080
Speaker 4: the most racist thing I could think of, other than.

45
00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:24,880
Speaker 3: Because we still play China Girl and it still stands up.

46
00:02:24,919 --> 00:02:27,120
Speaker 3: But I've often wondered, is there a chance that it

47
00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:29,040
Speaker 3: could be canceled in today's culture?

48
00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:34,720
Speaker 1: Do you think? You know? I don't know. I mean,

49
00:02:34,840 --> 00:02:39,760
Speaker 1: you know, some things don't make sense to me because

50
00:02:39,919 --> 00:02:43,800
Speaker 1: I think that that song, even though I did.

51
00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:47,280
Speaker 4: That lick, it was really because I was afraid to

52
00:02:47,440 --> 00:02:52,480
Speaker 4: talk to David ask him about what the ideology of

53
00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:56,280
Speaker 4: that song was. I forget because when I met David,

54
00:02:56,800 --> 00:03:00,000
Speaker 4: I noticed that he had a tattoo on his right

55
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:02,280
Speaker 4: leg I believe it was, and it was in Kanji,

56
00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:05,480
Speaker 4: and I was like, going, wow, what is that? And

57
00:03:05,480 --> 00:03:08,680
Speaker 4: he said that was the Serenity Prayer written in Kanji

58
00:03:08,760 --> 00:03:11,919
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh man, this dude is pretty dedicated.

59
00:03:12,160 --> 00:03:14,919
Speaker 4: At that time, I was still drinking and doing drugs.

60
00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:18,680
Speaker 4: And because the song was called China Girl, what most

61
00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:24,600
Speaker 4: people didn't know that China China white was a slang

62
00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:29,920
Speaker 4: for heroin and a girl was the slang for cocaine.

63
00:03:30,280 --> 00:03:33,120
Speaker 1: So I thought the song was about speedballing. And I

64
00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:35,720
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk to David about speedballing.

65
00:03:36,320 --> 00:03:38,200
Speaker 4: I thought that I would give him the wrong impression

66
00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:42,520
Speaker 4: as a producer and not respecting his sobriety. So I

67
00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:47,720
Speaker 4: just took I just I just concentrated on China.

68
00:03:47,760 --> 00:03:51,600
Speaker 2: This must be your unique gift. You can hear perfection,

69
00:03:51,720 --> 00:03:53,720
Speaker 2: you can hear a hit in your head, which is

70
00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:57,440
Speaker 2: that with chic as well? This is something that's never

71
00:03:57,520 --> 00:03:59,560
Speaker 2: left you. What a rare gift.

72
00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:05,480
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the thing is is that I every

73
00:04:05,560 --> 00:04:11,120
Speaker 4: song that I've ever written is basically nonfiction.

74
00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:12,960
Speaker 1: It's something.

75
00:04:14,200 --> 00:04:18,440
Speaker 4: That I see in real life or something that has

76
00:04:18,520 --> 00:04:22,440
Speaker 4: happened some incident, and I write about it in a

77
00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:28,640
Speaker 4: way that comforts me. So take something that's a negative situation,

78
00:04:28,920 --> 00:04:31,440
Speaker 4: like when we didn't get in the studio fifty four

79
00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:33,560
Speaker 4: to meet Grace Jones, who would have been the biggest

80
00:04:33,560 --> 00:04:37,159
Speaker 4: star that had ever touched our universe at that time,

81
00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:41,120
Speaker 4: and the guy slammed the door in our faces and

82
00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:43,360
Speaker 4: told us to f off.

83
00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:44,400
Speaker 1: We're like, whoa wait.

84
00:04:44,200 --> 00:04:46,600
Speaker 4: A minute, No, we were invited by miss Grace Jones,

85
00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:51,280
Speaker 4: and anyway, we didn't get in. We went home. So

86
00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:54,200
Speaker 4: this was two years before hip hop. We knew that

87
00:04:54,320 --> 00:04:56,799
Speaker 4: profanity would certainly not get.

88
00:04:56,600 --> 00:04:58,760
Speaker 1: On the radio. Even though we wrote this really cool

89
00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:00,880
Speaker 1: song that went go.

90
00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:11,400
Speaker 4: Down and my partner and I went, my man, you

91
00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:15,320
Speaker 4: know this is happening, how we're going to get this

92
00:05:15,400 --> 00:05:18,120
Speaker 4: on the radio. So of course with a little bit

93
00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:21,839
Speaker 4: of nipping and talking, you eventually found up that freak out.

94
00:05:22,400 --> 00:05:25,680
Speaker 1: And uh Bingo Bingo.

95
00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:27,840
Speaker 4: Was about a dance that we knew was happening at

96
00:05:27,880 --> 00:05:33,400
Speaker 4: the time and biggest selling single in their history Atlantic.

97
00:05:32,920 --> 00:05:39,640
Speaker 3: Record man, it's always forever uh And we're looking for

98
00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:43,760
Speaker 3: to you tickets to see you going South Thursday, September

99
00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:46,880
Speaker 3: seventh from Ticketmaster. It's just always a treat to have

100
00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:49,760
Speaker 3: you on the show now, Roger, thank you for joining us,

101
00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:50,640
Speaker 3: you in Australia.

102
00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:51,880
Speaker 1: Thank you