{"id":21178,"date":"2025-09-17T04:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T04:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/21178\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T04:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T04:16:07","slug":"as-soon-as-we-played-that-i-screamed-i-could-tell-right-away-that-it-was-a-smash-nile-rodgers-breaks-down-how-he-and-david-bowie-made-lets-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/21178\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAs soon as we played that, I screamed. I could tell right away that it was a smash\u201d: Nile Rodgers breaks down how he and David Bowie made Let\u2019s Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new David Bowie Centre at the V&A East\u2019s Storehouse<\/a> contains a treasure trove of material about the man and his illustrious career. And in addition to the many thousands of Bowie-related artefacts, the V&A has now put online a revealing interview with Nile Rodgers about his working relationship with the great man, and in particular the making of Let\u2019s Dance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The track was the lead single from the 1983 album of the same name and, as Rodgers explains, was originally a very different beast to the hit version we now know.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI was staying at David\u2019s house in Switzerland, and frankly, I was asleep,\u201d he says. \u201cHe walked into my bedroom and said, ‘Nile, darling, I think this is a hit.’ I went, ‘Oh, cool, man. Let me hear it.’ He was playing it on a 12-string guitar with only six strings on it. Ding ding ding ding\u2026’<\/p>\n

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Rodgers was confused at first. ‘He\u2019d called it Let\u2019s Dance. Huh? Why do you call it Let\u2019s Dance? He said \u2018Well, it\u2019s a song based on the dance that people do when they first encounter another person \u2013 or they\u2019re trying to impress them.\u2019 I said \u2018David, I come from dance music. Can I do an arrangement?\u201d<\/p>\n

David Bowie\u2019s Biggest Hit: Nile Rodgers Breaks Down \u2018Let\u2019s Dance\u2019 – YouTube
\n\"David<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Bowie\u2019s original idea didn\u2019t exactly scream ‘hit’. \u201cWhat we had settled on \u2013 or at least what I believed we had settled on \u2013 was this sort of cool mix of R&B-meets-funk-meets-dance music that would be of the current zeitgeist, if you will,\u201d says Rodgers \u201cBut what he played was the antithesis of that concept. So I thought to myself: OK, he\u2019s trying to test me. He wants to see if I\u2019m going to go: \u2018Oh, Mr Bowie, you\u2019re so great, man. I\u2019m really happy to be working with you.\u2019 But in fact, everyone I called said: \u2018No, man, he\u2019s not that kind of person. If he says he thinks that it\u2019s a hit, he\u2019s being really sincere.\u2019”<\/p>\n

So Rodgers wrote out an arrangement for two guitars, drums and bass and hired three jazz musicians for the demo session at Queen<\/a>\u2019s Mountain Studios in Montreux. \u201cI said: \u2018David, sing exactly what you sang in my bedroom, but sing it over this music.\u2019 I never played it to him beforehand. He only heard it for the first time when I heard it for the first time. I\u2019d heard it in my head as an arranger, but I never really heard it until we were in the recording studio and we played it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI counted the song off, and we did the little dominant pyramid thing\u2026 Dah\u2026 Daaah\u2026 Daaaaaaah. I started playing: dink dink dink dink\u2026 As soon as we played that, I screamed. I could tell right away that it was a smash, because if the first part of it sounded like that, I knew that what was coming up in the arrangement was going to be mega.”<\/p>\n

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Indeed, although Bowie was pleased with what he heard from the session players, Rodgers knew that the best was yet to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid was really happy, and I remember this like it was yesterday. I said: ‘Do you think this shit\u2019s happening? Wait till you hear my guys play it.’ I knew once we got back home and it was the people that I played with, playing my arrangements, it was going to be killer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new David Bowie Centre at the V&A East\u2019s Storehouse contains a treasure trove of material about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-21178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}