Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and Destiny

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Sometimes we'd have full-on sex, or maybe one or more girls would give me oral sex… that's just the way it was.

It’s a fitting choice in more than the marketing sense, because like most songs in the Rodgers catalogue, “Le Freak” has a telling backstory: It was penned after he and Edwards were turned away at the door of Studio 54 (the hook, “Freak out,” was originally a “fuck off” directed at the club). He shows that with practice, dedication and commitment anything is possible, I had no idea of his background before I read this book; but he shows clearly that if you choose to, you can exceed your environment and become great. Nile and ''Nard' (his name for Bernie Edwards, his partner in Chic) had a theory of trying to find the DHM, the Deep Hidden Meaning in all songs, what the DNA of them is, the key to making them a hit. Obsessed by music from a young age, he played flute and clarinet at school, where his more classical tastes included Gershwin.Niles couldn't handle it all with out dangerous, rampant drug-use and the narrative comes across as if it's been therapeutic for him. Despite promising himself he would learn from his parents' mistakes, Rodgers succumbed to alcohol and drugs.

Rodgers holding court in a stall of a Studio 54 ladies’ room where he’d share his blow and his sexual apparatus with visiting lovelies. Rodgers's mother fell pregnant with him at 13, the first time she had sex, and after she split from his father she took up with Bobby, a white bohemian junkie. The extent of his addictions, his attempts at sobriety and his response to the tragic death of Bernard Edwards in Japan in 1996 when Chic were firmly on the comeback trail are handled very effectively and poignantly.It's a fascinating story and a surprisingly gripping read, and I found myself singing some of those songs to myself as he described their creation. The book then details on the writing of their first hits and the conception of their image, their first inspirations and their sound. Susan, who every one knows from Sesame Street actually helps him land his next job at the Apollo Theater. By the time he was sixteen, Nile was on his own, busking through the sixties, half-hippie and half–Black Panther.

Rodgers has worked on hundreds of projects since then; he name-checks a bunch of them but gives real space to only a couple of highlights: David Bowie and Madonna. However, that hasn’t stopped Rodgers from providing one of the most well-thought-out and thorough lists on music books we’ve ever seen, even if he does think the whole idea of writing about music is a little pointless.The first quarter of this book has nothing to do with his future mega-celebrity and even then, every other page shocks and amazes. Rodgers loves the mayhem but had the talent and discipline to emerge, in his early teens, as a real player on the music scene. But perhaps the most well-known book on the list, the one that every single musician should read at some point in their lives, is Chronicles: Volume 1 by Bob Dylan. The stars of the scene were his glamorous teenage mom and heroin-addicted Jewish stepfather, but there were also monkeys, voodoo orishas, jazz cats, and serial killers in the mix.