Thank you. So, I do a lot of these type of
things, and I never ever prepare because I
come from the school the old school of music,
like let's just read the crowd and see what
we will do, but since this is Google, ...(laughter)...
I have to give the appearance of trying to
be prepared. Honestly, normally I never prepare,
but I decided I was going to prepare at least
the subject... ...(laughter)...
So, my talk is going to be fact: music is
ever evolving as proven by my brief career.
I want to show you a quick film to show you
who I am in case you don't know the stuff
I have done. This is just a small portion
of the songs and music that 
I have done.
(Video).
[...Applause...] I figured you were smart
people you could keep up with all of the visual
references and all that thing. But any way,
to address the fact that music is ever evolving,
I am going to talk about somebody, I think,
is interesting to prove my point. As I say,
never prepare so this is funny for me to look
at a note. But, Darwin actually theorised
that there was musical proto‑language that
actually existed before we could actually
speak before there was language. That, in
fact, music was around before we could speak.
And the thing about it, it makes sense that
there was a way to communicate where you could
take, you know, wave forms whether they were
punching somebody in the head or smacking
somebody in the head or going ‑‑ or grunting
or what have you. You could take those organised
wave forms and communicate with people even
though you did not have speech yet. I think
that Darwin was on to something. Anyway, in
my career, I am showing you that music has
never stopped evolving. When I was a kid and
I wrote my very first song, which was a long,
long time ago, it was a hit. I got a hit record
with the first record, I got signed to Atlantic
Records to a singles deal and that record
we went on to sell millions and millions of
copies. And then I got an album deal, and
that record went on to sell millions and millions
of copies. And then the head of the label
asked me to write for somebody else on the
label, because he wanted them to sell millions
of copies. And well, I mean, prove this example.
So we talked about I know that a lot of people
have heard about the recent lawsuit with Robin
Thickie and Pharell Williams and stuff like
that blah, blah and, you know, I want to talk
about music evolving. It always evolved. So
when I was 16 years old or 15 or 16 something
like that, 16, maybe in 17, me and some of
my friends we decided to go to Woodstock,
and we were going up to Woodstock. We wanted
to see Hendrix and Country Joe and the fish
and all that thing but we actually were in
love with this band called the Children of
God. The reason I wanted to see the Children
of God because they used to have the amazing
song called do what you want to do. And in
the middle of the song called do what you
want to do, they had this chromatic progression
that was a series of dominant nine chords
that moved up chromatically from D to A. And
I was like, this is the coolest thing I have
heard in my life! This was some sort of fusion
folk band. But, it just ‑‑ the musical
composition was the coolest thing. It went ‑‑
(music). They stuck that in the middle of
some folk song. I was 17 years old, and I
kept that in my head.
So, we go back to evolution. So fast forward
a couple of years later. Now I have a record
deal and they want me to write for other people.
So, I meet this group called Sister Sledge,
and they asked me to write music for Sister
Sledge, helped define their careers. I have
never it maybe Sister Sledge, I didn't know
anything about them, but the head of the record
company told me they were like family to them
blah, blah they said, and so on, so after
we pretended to act like business people,
to like we pretended to know what we were
doing, we went home and looked at the CEO's
rap/his sales pitch to just ‑‑ and they
were actually the basis of the lyrics of We
Are Family. I went 
and I wrote ‑‑ We Are Family... Yes,
I wrote that part. But here's the part that
I didn't write... I sort of ‑‑ I should
have stole or evolved from the Children of
God and my trip to Woodstock. So, that is
the part. We Are Family, do the proper turnaround
from this chorus, it was not interesting enough,
with the stuff that I knew. But what I did
was, I took the stuff that I learned at 17
years old, and stuck it in the middle of this,
and so when we turn the chorus around, when
I played that, when I played that for the
people who were in the Children of God, they
did not even recognise it. ...(laughter)...
I said, I stole this from you! If you know
the great classical composer Verde said that
that good composers borrow, and great composers
steal. I stole that right from the Children
of God, played it for them and they had no
idea! When I showed it to them, and I sang
their song, and I sang do what you want to
do, and put it in there they went oh my God,
I get it. I get it. So, that was a sort of
a pretty extreme example, but it really worked.
Even that the composer of the original thing
did not know it until I played and sang their
song and showed it to them.
Fast forward now. I am Nile Rodgers, got a
hit record freak, all these sorts of things.
And I meet this gentlemen named David Bowie.
After an unfortunate event happened in America
called disco sucks I built the career on disco
I had one hit record after the next ‑‑
I was Mr Disco, freak and. Le Freak and everything
was going great. We are Family. One night
in a disco, while he's the greatest dancer.
Everything was great. Disco sucks. 1979. I
could ‑‑ no record executive would answer
my telephone call; I was like, persona non
grata. That was it. Done. Disco sucked. You
suck, pal. No gigs, nothing. I meet the guy
David Bowie in a bar in an afterhours joint
and we just fall in love with each other right
away. It is just like magic. I don't know
because I loved jazz, he loved jazz, he did
not know anything about my background, and
he did not know about my classical background,
or anything, but once we had talked we connected.
We decided on the spot we were going to do
a record together. So I come over to Switzerland,
and he invites me into, well, actually comes
into my bedroom one morning and he goes, "Nile,
darling, I think I have got a hit. I wrote
this last night". He comes in my bedroom I
will do the truncated version because I have
to catch a plane, I was dying to meet Stephen
Hawking, I was like there ‑‑ sorry about
that. So, David walks in to my room, he says,
"Nile, darling, I think I have this hit record".
And he goes ‑‑ I said... Really, David?
What do you call that? And I like to call
it Let's Dance. I was like, "David, I am black,
I come from dance music! I am the disco guy
right? We cannot call that Let's Dance!" He
says, "No, it is about the juxtaposition of
a relationship in the dance". I said ‑‑ "no.
No. No. No. No, no, no, no, brother. This
is pop music. You cannot talk about this.
The juxta ‑‑ no", I said. So, any way
I took his composition, talk about it evolving,
and so instead of me doing his little ‑‑
moving voice thing that may not be exactly
what David played, it may not be have been
that corny ‑‑ it was pretty corny! I
moved it to here, and I went, that was better
but not cool enough, because, in A, we have
these overtones on the guitar; so I thought ‑‑
I move to A flat to be B flat rather to A
to B flat or to A sharp in England; I am not
sure what you want to call it in England.
All of a sudden it was not resonating so much,
it was actually, muted and funky. I went,
"my God! How cool is that?" I took away to
moving voice went ‑‑ that is still was
not quite cool enough. Then I inverted it
up an octave and went ‑‑ and David went ‑‑
I love that! And I said well check this out.
I put it in a very jazzy chord now that chord
the first chord is a B flat 11, so whatever
you want to call it your terminology, the
second chord was a B flat minor 13, this does
not appear in pop songs, let alone David's
pop songs. I went ‑‑ to.... And then
I went to a.... To a six chord and then to
a straight minor seven, even though I write
ensemble music I will try to play this thing.
So you get the holistic point of view of how
it came out, even though I did not chuck on
the actual record all I did was go ‑‑
and then let the delays make the... kind
of sound.
But the holistic vibe after we did this, because
remember I said I am black, I come from dance
music, disco I wanted to be funky, when we
finally finished it had this kind of a....
[...Applause...]. So, what had started out
as a sort of a folk type of, you know, song
about the juxtaposition of love and life,
and the dance of relationships and what have
you became an actual real Funky R and B song
about dancing and David's poetic message lived
underneath it. But the song continued to evolve.
Then I orchestrated and what have you.
The best example of the evolution of music
at how it never stops evolving, last night
I was talking to this gentlemen here Mr Steve
he was talking about, "Nile, why don't you
talk about the relationship between EDM, which
electronic dance music and disco?" I was thinking,
well, that is sort of almost pretty obvious,
but I will try to show people by example something
that has maybe a little less obvious. So,
in 1979, the year of the disco sucks, when
I actually had two number one records, both
disco, the first was called le Freak, the
second was called good times. When I wrote
good times I was just writing a Chic song,
it was cool to me, and it went...
The basic, good times.... Normally I play
much funkier than that as we're with the band
and we go good times.... Anyway, for the
purposes of this example, I am playing it
lame, so don't think I am playing lame because
I play lame, I am trying to be extreme here.
So, anyway, a few months later, after disco
sucked, some other guys decided that disco
did not suck and they took good times, the
exact song, and came up with this....
By the way, we sold millions of copies of
good times but when these guys came up with
this, they sold tens and tens and tens of
millions.
I says hip hop....
Anyway, these guys took our riff, they took
our riff, that we thought was sacred, just
as I had taken the Children of God's riff
that they thought was sacred, and it had evolved.
They basically did a few little things different
but anybody who has heard rapper's delight
hears good times. They know, it is pretty
much the exact same song with a few little
nips and tucks. So, what happened is that
the music evolved. It has no choice. It is
just like life, it is just like everything
else on this planet. Right? We evolve, everything
gets better. Well, everything is supposed
to get better, everything changes, things
do absolutely change, and in my life I have
gone from a guy who just composes the stuff
in the basics and what have you, or I come
in and I help the artist, music, evolve. I
help, you know, when Daft Punk, when we did
Get Lucky, it was not Get Lucky, it was another
thing. It had to take all of these people,
all of these brains, this whole process of
everybody getting involved to help this thing
evolve. We had to get involved and, you know,
it is funny people ask you whether these things
happen naturally, or was it, you know, was
this pre‑determined by God? I just met my
hero, Stephen Hawking. He was ‑‑ I was
dying. I was having a super‑fanboy moment!
One of his favourite sayings, I will probably
paraphrase him poorly, but, you know, Mr Hawking,
Professor Hawking, says, that even people
who believe in things that are pre‑determined
still look both ways before crossing the street ‑‑
(laughter)... So we got this does not happen
by magic as part of this process of evolution.
The fact that music continues to evolve, the
fact that like Stephen because EDM is just
a natural progression of hip hop, that started
with jazz or whatever, or R and B, or funk
or Gospel or whatever you want to call it,
it is just these things that ‑‑ these
categories that we determine moments in time.
This is just what is happening right now in
time, so we can market it and we can get the
affinity group to be down with it, right?
That is all it is. It is nothing more than
that. I mean, if somebody happens to come
up with a hit that is completely retro, I
mean, I remember in the 80s, when Billy Joel
did his song called Uptown Girl. It was reminiscent
of the fifties, but in the eighties we were
dancing to it like it was the cool new song.
Uptown Girl, when you're living in your ‑‑
it was like, all like it was old school. Do
wop stuff ‑‑ Paul Simon did this over
and over again.
All I am trying to say is that throughout
my career, and I was, as I said, I made this ‑‑
I was trying to make this example by using
my career, to show that this evolutionary
process that takes place with music, this
is something that will never stop. You know,
I watch my industry, the music industry, have
ups and downs like everything else, but the
truth is that this process of evolving is
just natural. And it takes clever people.
It takes dedicated people. It takes loving
people. It takes people who are obsessed with
making it better. As Verde says it takes really
great thieves to take this music and move
it to another level. And I always tell people
who are my students, that I work with, I say
the single greatest motivation when it comes
to music, single greatest motivation, number
one, is jealousy, and it is a truth. It is
truth. One of the seven deadly sins is the
single greatest motivation because when we
hear a composition that we love, it just takes
us over, we go ‑‑ "Damn! I wish I had
written that!" But what if it went like this....
When I heard the Children of God I heard that
chromatic therein I went, "Damn, that is cool!
But what if it went like this!" And I stuck
We Are Family around it and the Sugar Hill
Gang stuck Rapper's Delight around Good Times
they had that and I have got to get out of
here I am going to New York, I have got to
go to LA to do American Idol ‑‑ oh no.
Thank you, so much, [...Applause...]. Thank
you.
