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.