Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Nile Rodgers and Chic

Transcript

Nile Rodgers and Chic · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
0:13
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
0:16
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
0:18
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced
0:22
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right,
0:28
Speaker 1: enjoyed the episode. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to
0:32
Speaker 1: Broken Record. You've probably heard that riff before. Producer now Rogers.
0:38
Speaker 1: He's made so many of the classic hits for the
0:40
Speaker 1: last forty years, Good Times, the Freak, Everybody Dance. He
0:45
Speaker 1: collaborated with Dinnah Ross, like a Virgin with Madonna, Get
0:49
Speaker 1: Lucky by Daft Punk. He's produced everyone Deran, Duran, Grace Jones,
0:54
Speaker 1: the Thompson Twins, Lady Gagoff. For goodness sake, he's a legend.
0:58
Speaker 1: Here's what you might not know about now Rogers. His
1:01
Speaker 1: mother was just thirteen when he was born. Both his
1:04
Speaker 1: parents were drug addicts. He sniffed glue starting at age
1:07
Speaker 1: ten and sometimes slept in flop houses, but he found
1:11
Speaker 1: salvation in music, first in a school band, then as
1:16
Speaker 1: a jazz guitarist, and finally as a partner in Chic
1:20
Speaker 1: with a great bass player Bernard Edwards on this episode
1:23
Speaker 1: A Broken Record Now Rogers sits down with my podcast
1:27
Speaker 1: partner Bruce Hadlam at New York's Power Station studio in
1:30
Speaker 1: Hell's Kitchen, in the very same room where he and
1:34
Speaker 1: David Bowie created the album Let's Dance. That's the original guitar. Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: this is it. You still only use one guitar? This
1:40
Speaker 1: is it? I only use one guitar. Do you only
1:42
Speaker 1: have one? No, I've about two hundred. Okay, do you
1:46
Speaker 1: have nice hollow bodies? Mainly I have guitar. Yeah, I'm
1:50
Speaker 1: just going to make sure Diangelico the Cristo's L five
1:55
Speaker 1: Super four hundred. But this one was win. Did you
1:58
Speaker 1: buy that nineteen seventy three? Wow? What wasn't It wasn't
2:02
Speaker 1: an expensive one? You put it in? No, it's cheap.
2:04
Speaker 1: I didn't actually, So I traded my jazz guitar and
2:08
Speaker 1: they gave me this and three hundred dollars. So if
2:11
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, imagine them giving me three hundred
2:14
Speaker 1: dollars plus a strap, Like what was a jazz guitar
2:18
Speaker 1: worth in those days? Who I mean, even though it's
2:21
Speaker 1: a strat, it's not like any other strap Yeah, it's
2:25
Speaker 1: light as a feather. It's thinner than anything you've ever seen.
2:28
Speaker 1: It's the nineteenth strat that they made in nineteen fifty nine.
2:32
Speaker 1: Look at Look at the difference, and just look at
2:34
Speaker 1: Look at the thickness of the headstock there. Just check
2:37
Speaker 1: it out. Look at that. You can see it all
2:39
Speaker 1: the way from there. Look at this one. Big hands though,
2:44
Speaker 1: you don't need a you don't need a thin Wow, No,
2:47
Speaker 1: I got small hands? You do? Oh man, Jesus. You
2:50
Speaker 1: ever see real guitar players like these guys like Steve
2:52
Speaker 1: Y and Shit and Hendrix. Like for me when I'm
2:56
Speaker 1: when I'm playing classical guitar, I really have to get
3:01
Speaker 1: this stretch in certain pieces. That's a big deal for me.
3:05
Speaker 1: Like I have my fingerway down here. Most classical guitar
3:07
Speaker 1: players can still you can still see some of their thumb.
3:10
Speaker 1: But me, you still practice classical. Not really, no point.
3:16
Speaker 1: But I just did an orchestral version of Let's Dance,
3:20
Speaker 1: and I had an idea of playing classical guitar, but
3:26
Speaker 1: it felt better to have Bully singing with the strings.
3:28
Speaker 1: Was amazing. Oh yeah, because unbelievable. I want to ask
3:32
Speaker 1: you about all the songs but let's start with Let's Dance.
3:37
Speaker 1: I want you to tell me about the first time
3:38
Speaker 1: you heard the song. Yeah, the very first time David
3:43
Speaker 1: played Let's Dance for me. He walked into my bedroom.
3:47
Speaker 1: We were in Switzerland, and I believe that he had
3:52
Speaker 1: said he had just written it the night before, and
3:55
Speaker 1: he walked into the studio and he played something something
4:04
Speaker 1: that sounded like that, and it was like and I
4:08
Speaker 1: was like, that was and he was into it, and
4:15
Speaker 1: he had the lyrics as well well. He just he
4:18
Speaker 1: was singing very true to it, like he knew what
4:23
Speaker 1: it was. He was singing, it's almost hard for me
4:26
Speaker 1: to do it. What was he doing? No, I did that.
4:39
Speaker 1: That's what he's going, Let's dance the radio some like,
4:55
Speaker 1: that's way, that's up your face. And then I asked
5:01
Speaker 1: him if I could do an arrangement. So I fooled
5:04
Speaker 1: around with it. I was going and I knew that
5:11
Speaker 1: he liked jazz, so I could put in the jazzy
5:13
Speaker 1: chord and I could tell that he would like it
5:16
Speaker 1: right away. But then when I moved it from A
5:18
Speaker 1: minor up to B flat, it actually had a different vibe.
5:22
Speaker 1: It it got brighter and like and funkier sounding, so
5:26
Speaker 1: I started going, you can already hear it like, oh,
5:34
Speaker 1: and by the way, when I started playing it, I
5:36
Speaker 1: only imitated his just for a few bars. I started going,
5:49
Speaker 1: but that still sounded dark, So then I moved it
5:51
Speaker 1: up and octave and I went. But because of the
6:15
Speaker 1: whole disco sucks backlash, I didn't want to do chucking
6:18
Speaker 1: on David Police album, So you ended up slowing it
6:22
Speaker 1: down after that, yeah, and only playing like So, if
6:28
Speaker 1: you hear the demo that I did in Switzerland, I'm chucking.
6:30
Speaker 1: I'm actually playing, you know, when you hear the original demo,
6:39
Speaker 1: I'm doing the not Roger's thing. But when we got
6:42
Speaker 1: to America, I made a conscious decision not to do
6:46
Speaker 1: that and had the horns sort of doubling me and
6:50
Speaker 1: giving it some punch. And when Bowie and I walked
6:53
Speaker 1: into the studio, Bob Clearmountain was getting the different delays
6:59
Speaker 1: that he was going to use on the various instruments.
7:02
Speaker 1: On the drums, so we wound up having a multi
7:04
Speaker 1: tap delay happened on the guitar. So even though all
7:08
Speaker 1: I played was the rhythm that you hear, winds up
7:13
Speaker 1: sounding something like now, let's dance as many fans. It
7:18
Speaker 1: has one very famous fan who always wanted to play
7:21
Speaker 1: with you. Oh my god, Prince, is that what you?
7:26
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Yeah, So for years, I mean, I
7:30
Speaker 1: can't even tell you how many years, maybe since the
7:34
Speaker 1: first time I met Prince. He had asked me to
7:39
Speaker 1: play Let's Dance live together somewhere. So we had played
7:43
Speaker 1: live together in London at a little club in Camden,
7:48
Speaker 1: and we did not play Let's Dance that night, I'm
7:52
Speaker 1: positive of that. We played a bunch of James Brown
7:55
Speaker 1: songs and maybe the Ohio Players and some funk songs.
8:00
Speaker 1: When I walked into the club, he was playing with
8:02
Speaker 1: Ron Wood and I don't know what they were playing.
8:05
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I was really pretty high in those days,
8:10
Speaker 1: but they were probably playing the blues or jamming on
8:12
Speaker 1: a popular rock song Sunchina Your Love or something like that.
8:16
Speaker 1: And then when I walked in, Prince said, whoa, now, Rogers,
8:19
Speaker 1: Now this man has the funk, and he gave me
8:22
Speaker 1: his guitar and he sat down on the keyboards and
8:24
Speaker 1: we just jammed for like I don't even know how long,
8:27
Speaker 1: but that felt like one of the most amazing nights
8:30
Speaker 1: of my life. And I remember calling the concierge at
8:34
Speaker 1: my hotel and asking him if they had purple roses.
8:37
Speaker 1: I didn't know if there was, if there was anything
8:40
Speaker 1: as the purple rose, if they existed. So I said,
8:43
Speaker 1: figure out a way to make them purple, either spray
8:46
Speaker 1: paint them or put food coloring in them and send.
8:49
Speaker 1: I don't know, I was pretty absurd in those days.
8:52
Speaker 1: I may have sent like a hundred purple roses to
8:55
Speaker 1: Prince's room. Nice, that's crazy, But you ended up playing
8:59
Speaker 1: the song. Yeah, eventually. So years later he tricked me
9:05
Speaker 1: a couple of times. We both were living sort of
9:09
Speaker 1: in Turks and Keikos a bit. He bought a house
9:12
Speaker 1: down there and I was part of a resort project
9:17
Speaker 1: and one New Year's Eve we played and oh it
9:20
Speaker 1: was cool, and John bon Jovi came when John got
9:24
Speaker 1: his start here. So John bon Jovi and Prince came
9:27
Speaker 1: to the show, and Prince said to me, oh, wow,
9:29
Speaker 1: tonight is the night. Now I'll get to play. Let's
9:31
Speaker 1: stand with you in the band. So we set set
9:34
Speaker 1: up his vamp and everything, did the whole soundcheck. We're
9:36
Speaker 1: ready for Prince to come out and play New Year's Eve.
9:39
Speaker 1: The place is crowded, everybody's having a good time, and
9:43
Speaker 1: we're doing our thing, and I get into the middle
9:44
Speaker 1: of the set and I say, ladies and gentlemen, we
9:47
Speaker 1: have a special guest coming out tonight. I think you're
9:49
Speaker 1: gonna love this, Prince, and I introduced him and the band.
9:53
Speaker 1: We're just standing there, No Prince. He doesn't come out,
9:56
Speaker 1: and I keep introducing it and I go, uh, Prince.
9:59
Speaker 1: I don't know if I start screaming friends, because I
10:03
Speaker 1: knew he was there, and someone told me that he
10:06
Speaker 1: actually ran and hid because he wouldn't come out. So
10:11
Speaker 1: after a while we just said to hell with him.
10:13
Speaker 1: We played the song, and then at the end of
10:15
Speaker 1: the night, I didn't even ask him. Maybe I asked
10:18
Speaker 1: him why he didn't come out or something I don't
10:19
Speaker 1: even remember, but we wound up playing. It was great,
10:21
Speaker 1: everybody had a good time, but I was embarrassed as hell.
10:24
Speaker 1: So now fast forward a year or two later and
10:28
Speaker 1: we're playing a show with him at the Superdome in
10:32
Speaker 1: Louisiana in New Orleans, and he told us that he
10:36
Speaker 1: was going to come out. Now we're in front like
10:38
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people, and I'm not going to be this
10:42
Speaker 1: idiot and make the same mistake again, and ladies and gentlemen,
10:45
Speaker 1: we have a special guest for you tonight. Friends. And
10:47
Speaker 1: then he doesn't come out. And I'm standing in front
10:49
Speaker 1: of seventy thousand people and he doesn't come out. At
10:51
Speaker 1: least at the resort, there was only about two hundred,
10:54
Speaker 1: so I didn't introduce him, even though we went through
10:58
Speaker 1: the same steps we did soundcheck. Yet this am there
11:00
Speaker 1: in a whole bit. So when we get into the
11:03
Speaker 1: part of the song where Ralph tells the whole crowd
11:05
Speaker 1: to jump, jump, Jump, I'm standing on the stage and
11:08
Speaker 1: I'm jumping up and down, and then I hear this
11:10
Speaker 1: crowd like, give this loud roar, and I look to
11:16
Speaker 1: my left and there's Prince jumping with me, jumping up
11:19
Speaker 1: and holding his hand up in the air, and the
11:22
Speaker 1: crowd freaks out. And then we go into the next
11:24
Speaker 1: bit and he takes over and starts sewing and it's
11:27
Speaker 1: just killing. It's so good. So he did a little
11:30
Speaker 1: bit of like the sort of Stevie ray Vaughn kind
11:32
Speaker 1: of thing, but then he went into like just chucking
11:35
Speaker 1: with me, and that's when he got nuts. And you
11:38
Speaker 1: can go online and see it. It's on YouTube. It's
11:40
Speaker 1: so great. More of Bruce and Nile Rogers. After this break,
11:49
Speaker 1: we're back with Bruce Headlam Now Rogers and Chic. Now.
11:55
Speaker 1: I looked up and this is for the music nerds
11:57
Speaker 1: out there. I looked up the chords too, everybody dance,
12:02
Speaker 1: and it's a C minor seventh, B flat eleven, a
12:06
Speaker 1: B flat eleven. I should let you tell the chords,
12:08
Speaker 1: you know, the chords being an idea C minus seven
12:10
Speaker 1: B flat eleven to C eleven A flat major seven.
12:14
Speaker 1: Now this chord you can spell it a number of ways.
12:18
Speaker 1: I like to think of it as a minor seven
12:22
Speaker 1: with a raise five, or a minor a minor seven
12:27
Speaker 1: flat thirteen. But most people would probably call it a
12:30
Speaker 1: D minor eleven with an A in the base to
12:34
Speaker 1: a B flat eleven. And the reason for that is
12:38
Speaker 1: because I wanted to have this chromatic movement. So, okay,
12:46
Speaker 1: you're a serious jazz guy. Nobody else would do it
12:49
Speaker 1: that way? Do you do? You do all your songs
12:52
Speaker 1: that way? Is it that kind of chording? I like
12:55
Speaker 1: to think so, I mean, look at let's dance. How
12:57
Speaker 1: cool that is? I mean, that's that I guess that's
13:00
Speaker 1: somewhat of a trademark of mine, putting different types of
13:04
Speaker 1: jazzy chords and cool voicings in pop songs. You know,
13:09
Speaker 1: look at Diana Ross and I'm Coming Out and all
13:12
Speaker 1: that stuff. And you also, was everybody dance the first
13:15
Speaker 1: time you used a break down? No, breakdowns were actually
13:21
Speaker 1: quite common in our live shows. It was just the
13:26
Speaker 1: first time I did it when I was recording and
13:30
Speaker 1: I was the boss. Every other time that I recorded,
13:33
Speaker 1: I was not the boss, so I didn't have any
13:35
Speaker 1: control over what it. Yeah, and was that from jazz?
13:38
Speaker 1: Like breaking it down like that? It's an R and
13:40
Speaker 1: B thing. It's an R and B disco thing. It's
13:43
Speaker 1: a common R and B move. You would hear a
13:45
Speaker 1: lot of R and B bands breakdown and go now,
13:48
Speaker 1: I want to talk to ladies for me, or I
13:50
Speaker 1: want to talk to you, or like earth Wind and
13:52
Speaker 1: Fire when you hear them say pop, I want to
13:53
Speaker 1: talk to you about things I see every day, you know,
13:56
Speaker 1: and they break down on the record. It's all about
14:00
Speaker 1: So it was very common in R and ME to
14:02
Speaker 1: do that. I want to talk a bit about good times.
14:05
Speaker 1: You said in an interview once that all your songs
14:09
Speaker 1: are nonfiction, absolutely, and they're often about things that you
14:12
Speaker 1: want to see happen. Can you tell me what good Times? Yes?
14:17
Speaker 1: So when we wrote Good Times in America at the time,
14:22
Speaker 1: we were in the midst of the greatest financial recession
14:27
Speaker 1: since the Great Depression. We had gas rationing, you know,
14:31
Speaker 1: I mean if you lived in New York State, I remember,
14:34
Speaker 1: if you're a license plate ended with an even number,
14:36
Speaker 1: you can get gas on a certain day or an
14:38
Speaker 1: odd number of a different day. So times were sort
14:44
Speaker 1: of hard, and we thought, well, what other period in
14:48
Speaker 1: American history seemed to feel like that? And we went, Wow,
14:53
Speaker 1: you know, the Roaring twenties and the you know, the
14:57
Speaker 1: Great Depression. In that sort of jazz, you're a whole
15:00
Speaker 1: thing about dance marathons. And that's why we came up
15:03
Speaker 1: with the whole yas Yauza thing on dancing stance. The
15:06
Speaker 1: whole concept of the first few Chic albums was all
15:09
Speaker 1: jazz era stuff and on risque. When we finally did
15:15
Speaker 1: Good Times, we were confident enough in our band to
15:18
Speaker 1: now sort of expose our formula to the world. So
15:23
Speaker 1: the lyrics to Good Times were sort of ripped off
15:28
Speaker 1: from Al Jolson and the song that they used to
15:32
Speaker 1: sing after Prohibition when they were happy, Dang I hand
15:37
Speaker 1: run and then drink time and evening about quarter to nine,
15:44
Speaker 1: So we go right, it was cool, We start right
15:48
Speaker 1: with it, so we are obvious. Good Times came out
15:52
Speaker 1: at a particular political time because the Disco Sucks movement
15:56
Speaker 1: had come that had the riot in Chicago summer of
16:00
Speaker 1: seventy nine. What did that feel like for you? Well,
16:03
Speaker 1: it was really interesting because it was sort of like
16:06
Speaker 1: a bi phasic kind of feeling because when we found
16:11
Speaker 1: out about it, we were on an airplane flying from
16:14
Speaker 1: Europe back to America, so it happened while we were away,
16:19
Speaker 1: and we didn't think of ourselves as a disco band.
16:22
Speaker 1: I mean, listen to every album. We have ballads, everyone
16:25
Speaker 1: has an instrumental there's always a jazzy, you know type
16:30
Speaker 1: of thing. The Diana Ross album is incredibly as far
16:33
Speaker 1: as a composer's I got to say that that's really unique.
16:36
Speaker 1: There's nothing I've ever written that sounds like that before
16:40
Speaker 1: or after that was purely written for Diana Ross. I mean,
16:44
Speaker 1: you listen to a song like I'm coming Out, and
16:47
Speaker 1: I mean I have a fanfare in there, I mean,
16:51
Speaker 1: when we first saw Diana Ross Bernard walked with me
16:53
Speaker 1: and said, wow, look at that. She's like our black queen.
16:56
Speaker 1: So I kept that in my head and when I
16:59
Speaker 1: wrote that fan fare, I said to Diana, I said, look,
17:02
Speaker 1: you know when the President of the United States walks
17:05
Speaker 1: in the room, they go Hail to the Chief. I said,
17:08
Speaker 1: this is your fanfare. I told her. I says, you
17:12
Speaker 1: will never start a show without this song ever the
17:16
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And now we see thirty five
17:19
Speaker 1: years later, I was right, you never start the show
17:21
Speaker 1: without playing I'm coming out at the beginning of her show.
17:25
Speaker 1: Although one of your most famous songs, the Freak, is
17:28
Speaker 1: actually about being rejected at a disco. Correct, Can you
17:32
Speaker 1: tell that story? Qua? Yeah. So our first song, Everybody
17:35
Speaker 1: Dance was the real sort of super cool club song
17:41
Speaker 1: on our first album. Even though Dance Dance Dance was
17:44
Speaker 1: popular and was big on the radio and it was
17:48
Speaker 1: platinum twelve inch, I mean, it was huge. It was
17:52
Speaker 1: Everybody Dance that really secured our vibe as a cool, hip,
17:57
Speaker 1: underground dance group. And so Grace Jones had heard Everybody
18:02
Speaker 1: Dance and she was a fan of that song, and
18:04
Speaker 1: she was thinking about having these two young new producers
18:09
Speaker 1: do what would then be her next album. She said
18:13
Speaker 1: that the only way we could truly understand her artistically
18:17
Speaker 1: is to see her live show. Then we really would
18:19
Speaker 1: understand who Grace Jones is. But the problem was we
18:22
Speaker 1: had only spoken to her that one time. We never
18:25
Speaker 1: met her. We were on the phone. So Grace has
18:28
Speaker 1: a very unique accent. She's the only one on earth
18:31
Speaker 1: that sounds like that, and she says, so darling, but
18:34
Speaker 1: you go to the back door and you tell them
18:36
Speaker 1: your personal friends of miss Grace Jones and they would
18:38
Speaker 1: let you in. So we did that with that accent,
18:42
Speaker 1: and the guy slams the door in our faces. And
18:46
Speaker 1: while he's slamming the door, he's going, oh, fuck off,
18:48
Speaker 1: And we said no, no, no, no no. We keep kicking
18:50
Speaker 1: the door again because now we had to be above
18:53
Speaker 1: the level of the music. Now. Once we finally got
18:55
Speaker 1: his attention, so we wanted to get him before he
18:58
Speaker 1: walked away from the door. So we kicked really hard
19:01
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, he reiterated what he had said,
19:04
Speaker 1: I told you to f off, So we knew we
19:06
Speaker 1: weren't going to get in. It was New Year's Eve,
19:08
Speaker 1: seventy seven going into seventy eight, and we were walking
19:14
Speaker 1: back to my apartment, which is on fifty second Street
19:17
Speaker 1: between eighth and ninth, and to get there we had
19:20
Speaker 1: to pass a liquor store, so we bought two bottles
19:22
Speaker 1: of Don Perignon, which in those days we called it
19:24
Speaker 1: rock and roll mouthwash. We bought two bottles of DP,
19:29
Speaker 1: and we went to my house and we downed them
19:31
Speaker 1: so fast we got really lightheaded, and we turned his
19:35
Speaker 1: rejection phrase f off into freak out. We went well.
19:42
Speaker 1: When we first wrote it, we wrote a whole song
19:44
Speaker 1: using the original lyric and thinking of every situation where
19:49
Speaker 1: the appropriate response would be fuck off. So we're playing
19:53
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, they if a cab driver and cut
19:55
Speaker 1: you off, don't, don't fuck off. I remember saying if
20:00
Speaker 1: your mother asked you to do homework, fuck up, and
20:04
Speaker 1: we were into laughing, feeling great, and then finding my partner,
20:07
Speaker 1: Bernard's a man you notice is happening and I'm like, well, Bernardo,
20:12
Speaker 1: you know this is two years before hip hop. We
20:15
Speaker 1: can't get you know, record on the radio that's got
20:19
Speaker 1: the F bomb in it, But somehow we wound up
20:24
Speaker 1: would freak out. We'll have more of Bruce and now Rogers.
20:28
Speaker 1: After this break, we're back with Bruce Hadlam, now Rogers
20:36
Speaker 1: and Chic. You mentioned that you and Bernard didn't see
20:41
Speaker 1: yourselves as stars as front man, and you saw Chic
20:44
Speaker 1: very much as this organization. Yes, you've built this incredible career.
20:48
Speaker 1: You've had hits literally in every decade since you started
20:53
Speaker 1: by being this great collaborator. Why does collaboration seem to
20:58
Speaker 1: mean more to you than being the front man? Because
21:01
Speaker 1: as a composer, I write for ensembles, That's what I hear.
21:06
Speaker 1: The only time I could ever think of writing a
21:09
Speaker 1: composition that was actually recorded and performed for either a soloist,
21:17
Speaker 1: a solo instrument, or maybe a duet. It's just for
21:21
Speaker 1: films I can come into America. I write this queue
21:24
Speaker 1: where they go the Royal Penis is glean your Highness,
21:27
Speaker 1: and it's just like a pan flute, you know, pan
21:30
Speaker 1: flute and harp. And then in the movie called Soup
21:34
Speaker 1: for One, I do this thing called Tavern on the
21:38
Speaker 1: Green and it's just me playing classical guitar along with
21:44
Speaker 1: a Yamaha CSAD synthesizer with my keyboard player. But those
21:49
Speaker 1: are the only duets that I've ever really recorded. Everything
21:51
Speaker 1: else is for a bunch of a room full of people.
21:54
Speaker 1: But in your autobiography, which I'm going to recommend everybody
21:57
Speaker 1: because it's it really is the incredible life story, and
22:02
Speaker 1: it is it's sort of James Baldwin and Charles Dickens
22:05
Speaker 1: wrote a book together. It may start to approach your
22:09
Speaker 1: You know, you had a very you come back to
22:12
Speaker 1: this a very lonely life. You're around your parents or
22:17
Speaker 1: your stepfather and your mother, whom you love dearly, but
22:20
Speaker 1: who would send you on bus rides across the country
22:22
Speaker 1: by yourself, who often left you alone. And they were heroinautics.
22:27
Speaker 1: I mean they were that they were in pursuit of
22:28
Speaker 1: their number one love. And when when someone first tuned
22:33
Speaker 1: your guitar and you played I think a day a
22:35
Speaker 1: day in the life, right, and you thought I'm going
22:37
Speaker 1: to be Were you thinking I want to be a star?
22:39
Speaker 1: I want to be up on Sto no no. Prior
22:43
Speaker 1: to that, I had only really played classical music, so
22:47
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be part of a symphony orchestra.
22:49
Speaker 1: I used to play the clarinet, which is funny now
22:51
Speaker 1: because if I tried to play the clarinet, it would
22:53
Speaker 1: probably sound hysterical, but my dream when I was a
22:57
Speaker 1: kid was to be a part of Maybe that's what
23:00
Speaker 1: it's all about it because I've always wanted to be
23:01
Speaker 1: part of an orchestra, to be part of an organization,
23:05
Speaker 1: and because in a big symphony orchestra, basically you could hide,
23:09
Speaker 1: but you know every now and you might get a
23:11
Speaker 1: great solo, you know. So that was sort of my
23:15
Speaker 1: dream growing up. I wanted to emulate my biological father,
23:19
Speaker 1: who was always just a percussionist with bands, who was
23:22
Speaker 1: never like the guy out front, like Tito punt there
23:25
Speaker 1: or something. But you like that sense of anonymity, yeah,
23:29
Speaker 1: because it was the way that I never felt attractive
23:34
Speaker 1: or anything like that. And when you looked at stars,
23:38
Speaker 1: stars were always like, you know, they walk into the room,
23:41
Speaker 1: you know, you go. I remember I used to walk
23:43
Speaker 1: into a club with Madonna. Now I'm born in New York,
23:46
Speaker 1: knew every club owner in town, and I'd walk into
23:50
Speaker 1: a club with Madonna and she was relatively unknown and
23:53
Speaker 1: people go, hey, who's that girl with? Now who's that girl?
23:55
Speaker 1: You hear a din like, who's that girl? Who's that girl? Now?
23:58
Speaker 1: Who's that girl? And she was unknown, but that's because
24:02
Speaker 1: she was a star. She felt like a star from
24:05
Speaker 1: the moment you met her. She You know, they just
24:07
Speaker 1: have that thing, Bowie, it's a star. He walks in
24:10
Speaker 1: the room and like wow, they just you know, you
24:14
Speaker 1: could feel it, so I knew. I never It's funny.
24:17
Speaker 1: I always laugh. I say, you know, if I walk
24:19
Speaker 1: into a room with Lady Gaga, people go, oh my God,
24:22
Speaker 1: it is Lady God. Then he goes, wow God. Then
24:24
Speaker 1: he goes, hey, Nile, you want to be the hey
24:29
Speaker 1: Nile guy. I like, so like I've done, you know,
24:32
Speaker 1: maybe almost like I mean I heard the other day
24:36
Speaker 1: they said like fifteen thousand, eight hundred and fifty eight
24:39
Speaker 1: recording something insane, but still like walk in the room, Hey,
24:43
Speaker 1: now you name man? How you doing? I think the
24:49
Speaker 1: friend might beat me up. If you guys go any farther,
24:52
Speaker 1: then we're any and I would stay here all day.
24:55
Speaker 1: We only have one more song to talk about that
24:57
Speaker 1: staff Punk, but I think we're okay. All right. That
24:59
Speaker 1: was Brooks Unplugged. That was just fantastic. Oh thank you
25:07
Speaker 1: you all day. Broken Record is produced by Mielobel and
25:12
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrell, with help from Bruce Headlam. Jaquita Paskill, Jacob Smith,
25:17
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Justin Richmond, Jacob Weisberg, and of course l
25:21
Speaker 1: Hefe Rick Rubin. To hear all the songs featured in
25:25
Speaker 1: today's episode, check out Broken Record podcast dot com. This
25:29
Speaker 1: show is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm
25:34
Speaker 1: Baba