*As you may have heard Nile Rodgers – but not his legendary band, Chic – will be given the award for Musical Excellence next year at the 32nd Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
HHe called into FOX 5’s “Good Day New York” after finding out he will receive the award alone, without his bandmates from Chic. He told Rosanna Scotto and Greg Kelly that he is “shocked” that Chic will not be inducted, after their 11th nomination.
But, there will be no drama. Nile plans to accept the award without controversy, and chooses Greg Kelly to present it to him.
Please see below for more excepts from the interview.
ON RODGERS’ SHOCK THAT HE WILL BE HONORED WITHOUT HIS BAND CHIC
“I’m okay, I guess. I’m always, you guys know me by now, and I’m always flattered when I get an award, especially something so big. But ya know, it’s shocking to me because Chic was nominated. We’ve been nominated 11 times. That means something. Why would you nominate a band 11 times? So they plucked me out of the band and said, ‘You’re worthy but the band’s not worthy.’ And that sort of makes you feel a little weird because I wouldn’t know David Bowie, or INXS, or Duran Duran, or Madonna, or Paul Simon, or any of these people unless I was in Chic, they were all Chic fans.”
ON IF RODGERS PLANS TO ACCEPT THE AWARD OR DO SOMETHING ‘CRAZY’ SINCE CHIC WAS NOT AWARDED
“Of course I am.”
[Laughing] “I don’t do crazy stuff.”
ON IF RODGERS WILL MAKE A SPEECH THAT MAKES ‘HALF THE ROOM UNCOMFORTABLE’ TO DEFEND CHIC
[Laughing] “I don’t know.”
ON HIS CONFUSION THAT CHIC WAS NOT NOMINATED SINCE THEY REIGN AS THE BAND WITH THE LONGEST SELLING RECORD FOR THE PAST 37 YEARS AND THE ONLY SONG THAT HAS BEEN #1 RECORD 3 TIMES
“We had the longest selling record in Atlantic history. 37 years, no one has topped ‘Le Freak.’ 37 years. It’s the only song that’s been the #1 record on the Billboard charts three times. No artist in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in history has done that. Nobody. Not the Beatles, nobody, Hendrix, no one has had the number one pop single with the same song three times.”
ON WHO SHOULD INTRODUCE NILE RODGERS WHEN HE ACCEPTS THE AWARD AT THE CEREMONY
[Laughing] “I want Greg [Kelly] to do it.”
ON NILE ADMITTING THAT IN THE ORIGINAL LYRICS TO ‘LE FREAK,’ ‘FREAK OUT’ WAS “F*** OFF” UNKNOWINGLY LIVE ON AIR IN AN INTERVIEW ON “GOOD DAY NEW YORK”
“That was Greg [Kelly’s] horrible sense of humor tricking me into doing it because he knew the story. He knew the story and he knew we were on air, but I didn’t know.”
ON HOW THE LINE ‘YOWSAH YOWSAH YOWSAH’ FROM THE SONG ‘DANCE DANCE DANCE’ WAS MEANT TO BRING CELEBRATION IN A DARK PERIOD
“So we had just seen a film with Jane Fonda, called “They Shoot Horses Don’t They” and it was about the Depression and dance marathons, and during the Disco Era records started to become really long. And the way that DJs would make the records even longer, they would have two turntables and they would get to a certain part and then play the record over and over again so it would just last forever. So as artists, we thought that this felt this reminiscent of the Depression. Because if you remember, I know you guys are younger than me, but during the ‘70s it was the greatest financial recession since the Great Depression…Our music was incredibly celebratory so that we were mired in the fact that we were on gas rationing lines. I don’t know if you remember that stuff, but it was really pretty dreadful.
So ‘yowsah yowsah yowsah’ was just a specific call that a guy named Ben Bernie made popular, and it was to keep the dancers on their feet during these dance marathons and also to inform the crowd of what was happening… Basically it was like the town crier.”
source:
Victoria Gurrieri
Junior Publicist
[email protected]
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