Chic

Origins

Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970 as session musicians in the New York area. They formed a rock band, first called The Boys and soon The Big Apple Band, and played gigs around the city, but despite interest in their demos they never got a record contract. Both then joined New York City, who had a hit in 1973 with I'm Doing Fine Now, and that band broke up in 1976. After Walter Murphy released A Fifth of Beethoven as Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band, the two changed their name to Chic. Rodgers took the idea of a group whose music and image would form one seamless whole from a Roxy Music concert, with Kiss as a further influence.

In 1977 drummer Tony Thompson joined, and he recommended keyboardist Raymond Jones. Singer Norma Jean Wright completed the first line-up under an agreement that let her pursue a solo career. With the young engineer Bob Clearmountain they cut Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah), first issued by Buddah and then reissued by Atlantic, where it reached number 6 on the US pop and R&B charts. The first song they recorded as Chic was Everybody Dance, and both songs sit on the self-titled Chic, released in 1977. Luci Martin joined in early 1978. Wright left in mid-1978 after the legal details of her solo contract, and Alfa Anderson, who had sung backing vocals on the debut, took her place.

C'est Chic and Risqué

C'est Chic (1978) was their commercial peak. It reached number 4 on the Billboard album chart, spent eleven weeks at the top of the US R&B chart and went to number 2 in Britain. It held Le Freak, which began as a jam in Rodgers's apartment on New Year's Eve 1977, after he and Edwards were turned away from Studio 54 when Grace Jones failed to leave their names at the door. The refrain started as an expletive, became freak off, and finally became freak out. Le Freak reached number one in the United States and sold more than six million copies. The follow-up, I Want Your Love, reached number 4 in Britain, the highest of any Chic single there. It had been meant for Sister Sledge, who received He's the Greatest Dancer in exchange.

Rodgers described every Chic album as the set of an unknown opening act, with one track announcing who the band were. Rhythm tracks were played live without a click track, with a single chosen take, and strings, horns and vocals were each recorded in a block of a few days. Risqué followed on 30 July 1979. Its opener, Good Times, reached number one on the Hot 100 in August. Edwards's bass line was rebuilt in the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight the same year, and Rodgers and Edwards threatened legal action and were credited as co-writers. John Deacon's bass line for Queen's Another One Bites the Dust was inspired by it as well.

we're the opening act for a really big star, and we're unknown

Nile Rodgers, on the concept of a Chic album, 2005

After the backlash

After the anti-disco reaction at the end of the 1970s the band struggled for airplay and sales, and they disbanded in the early 1980s. Real People (1980) reached number 30 in the United States. Rodgers and Edwards kept writing and producing for others: Sister Sledge's We Are Family, Diana Ross's Diana, with Upside Down and I'm Coming Out, and Debbie Harry's KooKoo. Rodgers later co-produced David Bowie's Let's Dance and Madonna's Like a Virgin.

After a 1989 birthday party where Rodgers, Edwards, Paul Shaffer and Anton Fig played old Chic songs, the pair organized a reunion and made Chic-ism (1992). In April 1996 Edwards died of pneumonia in Tokyo, during a series of concerts there. He had played the Budokan show just before, and that final performance was issued in 1999 as Live at the Budokan. Thompson died in 2003.

Legacy

Chic were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame eleven times between 2003 and 2017 without being inducted. In 2017 Rodgers was inducted for Musical Excellence. Le Freak was selected for the National Recording Registry in 2018, and Chic were inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005. They headlined Glastonbury in 2013 and 2017, and in 2018 released It's About Time, their ninth album. Rodgers and the band continue to perform as Nile Rodgers & Chic.

Andy Beta wrote in Pitchfork in 2018 that the songs from 1977 to 1979, for all their familiarity, still represent pop at its most triumphant and complex.