GroUp Entertainment is proud to present Two Rooms Live, a spectacular live theatre / concert experience celebrating legendary songwriters.
Bernard Edwards & Nile Rodgers wrote and produced many of the most popular and memorable disco and funk hits of the 1970s and 1980s. Meeting as session musicians in New York, the pair formed many bands before teaming up with singer Norma Jean Wright to become Chic. This remarkable songwriters wrote and produced era-defining hits such as; “Le Freak,” “Good Times,” “Lost In Music,” “I’m Coming Out,” “Upside Down,” “I Want Your Love,” “We Are Family,” “Everybody Dance,” “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah),” “My Forbidden Lover,” and “Rebels Are We.” In addition, they are also credited with producing songs such as Powerstation’s “Some Like It Hot” Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill,” Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young,” as well as songs for Norma Jean Wright, Sheila and B. Devotion, INXS, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, Johnny Mathis, Adam Ant, Deborah Harry, Air Supply, ABC, David Bowie and Madonna.
Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 hit “Rappers Delight” and was based on the music from the song. It is widely considered the first rap song to become a mainstream hit. “Good Times” has been sampled by artists from a wide variety of genres, from Rap to Punk and Techno to Pop and said to be the inspiration for Queen’s mega hit “Another One Bites the Dust and anchoring the Daft Punk hit “Around the World”
Y'know, smile, dance, get crazy... we sure do while we're making it, because music is our leeezshure; it's my fun.
We didn't know what to expect but we had written everything before they got there. There were never any demos. We made the record. When they walked in, We Are Family sounded like We Are Family except we were still writing the lyric. They couldn't believe it: 'They're writing our song right in front of us?
There will never be another Bernard Edwards. I have the time of my life playing these amazing songs we created together every day, but I will never be able to replace him and the special chemistry we had.
The music provided the hedonist's soundtrack while also being very melancholy. It was funk but it wasn't Parliament. It was based on European modal melodies. It was sophisto-funk.
Talking about their songwriting partnership in the mid-90s, Edwards said: “[Rodgers] used to come up with a lot of really great hooks… so it always worked well together that way. He’s really commercial-minded, and I always tried to keep it solid — a nice foundation.
One year to the day [after Good Times reached the top], the number one hit was Another One Bites the Dust by Queen and it sounded not like My Sharona but like Good Times! It was clearly an homage, not to mention that [Queen bassist] John Deacon was with me in the studio when I wrote the damn thing! But then, as Verdi said, "Good composers borrow, great composers steal.
Not only did I feel as if I'd lost my best friend, I felt as if my music was taken away from me – he's half of my music.
It's funny, there's this coffee shop near where I live and recently, I ran into these hip, young kids who are really into what's happening now. So, I asked them, "Can you sing a song by Chic?" And they'd never heard of Chic. Then I asked, "Have you heard this?" And I went, "Aaah - freak out!" And they sang the whole song. Then I sang, "We are family – I've got all my sisters with me." And they look at me like I'm crazy: "Of course we know that song, everybody knows that song!" And I go, "Well, I wrote that." And they're, like, "Come on! Get out of here!
It was funny the way we discovered that walking bassline - it was a total accident. Bernard started playing something and I screamed: "Walk!" And he did and that was Good Times.
He was the private, pragmatic and preternaturally talented bassist whose beguilingly simple grooves helped to turn Chic into a world-conquering band by the end of the 70s, in the process crafting what has become the "Nile Rodgers' sound.
Chic were, are, undoubtedly good. Rodgers' elegant, jazz-flavored guitar lines and Bernard Edwards' impossibly nimble-fingered bass parts made Chic a genre-busting proposition, far fresher than any lumpen rock prospect.
Almost every single song we put out it was a struggle and a fight. Le Freak, our biggest single, we played that record for the record company and every one of them tried to talk us into changing it or releasing something else. And that's the only triple-platinum single in the history of Atlantic Records! They couldn't hear it, and the reason was, they couldn't compare it to anything else going on.