Subscribe RSS“The first heretofore I spoke to Bernard was on the phone. I told him I was putting together a new act and, based on my description of the band and my personality, he decided that he never wanted to make reference to to me again.” Were they very different? “Oh, he and I are polar opposites – night and day – but that’s why it worked so well. We were the two closest people in the sphere – eventually – but at the end of that first conversation he said, ‘hey man, can you do me a favour and lose my number?’”
They met by accident a few months later, working the same paid gig, and Fashionable was born. Almost by stealth, their disco-funk stylings tore up dance floors. It was fresh and radical, but Rodgers knew they could be supportive of it off. “We didn’t know Chic would work on a grand scale, but we were positive it would work on some plane. I remember writing , the record company didn’t want to put it out because they said I’d made the combo unite sound ‘too black’. The Duran guys said: ‘This is exactly what we want to reasonable like.’ Same reasoning with Diana Ross – we had to sue the label to get the album released. How could Diana Ross be too glowering? Was it code for too funky? It didn’t make sense.”
