Before Nile Rodgers recorded a single track for David Bowie’s 1983 massive seller, Let’s Dance, he made sure they spent time listening to music.
“We spent most of our pre-production in libraries,” Rodgers tells Vulture of his time with Bowie “going around looking at different artistic concepts. I’ve always wanted to do that with another artist, to get to know who they were as a person through their taste in art, and exchange albums.”
Rodgers had worked with artists ranging from Sister Sledge and Debbie Harry to Daft Punk. But rarely has he gotten to know a musician on a such a deep musical and personal level as he did with Bowie. And he says that was largely down to the work they did before entering the studio.
The results speak for themselves. Let’s Dance was a global smash that turned Bowie into a superstar. Of his 26 studio albums, it remains his biggest seller.
Years later, when Rodgers had a chance to work with John Mayer, he thought he’d try his method again. It didn’t go as expected. And he blames it all on an album he shared with him.
“He turned me onto his favorite record, which was Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes,” he says. “I thought it was cool, but I gave him the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, which I think is the most underrated rock and roll album of all time.
“Those first two days we got along like brothers, but then after we did the album thing, it was like, ‘This isn’t happening.’”
Rodgers says the outcome surprised him. “It didn’t work with John. It’s weird, too, because John might be one of the smartest people who’s ever walked this Earth.”
Granted, Their Satanic Majesties Request has never been short of critics. Released in 1967, it was born from a turbulent time and saw the band diving into the heady waters of psychedelic rock.
“None of us wanted to make [the record],” Keith Richards wrote in his memoir, Life. “But it was time for another Stones album, and Sgt. Pepper was coming out, so we thought basically we were doing a put-on.”
Drug use in the band was also rife at the time. Bass player Bill Wyman recalled in his memoir that it was a “lottery” who would turn up to sessions. Like many critics, he’s said he “hates” the record.
However, prog legend Peter Gabriel is among those who believe there is merit in the record.
Speaking in a 1983 issue of Trouser Press (via Furious), Gabriel said “the album is far more interesting than [their] other albums because they were trying to do something a little different. But they got so slagged off by the press and avoided by the public that they decided, I think, never to take such a risk again. That's a pity.”
Decades on, Their Satanic Majesties Request continues to divide opinion, and ruin potential collaborations too.
Elsewhere, Rodgers says that David Bowie wrote one of Let's Dance's biggest songs on a 12-string acoustic, which featured only six strings during a writing process that helped reinvent the lauded Englishman as a songwriter and cultural icon.
