EXCLUSIVE: Nile Rodgers has produced $2 billion worth of hit music on his Fender 'Hitmaker.' He spoke with Insider about sharing a piece of his legacy with fans worldwide.

• Legendary guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers is releasing a new Fender guitar based on his famed Hitmaker.
• Rodgers has sold over 100 million albums and generated $2 billion of hit music on his iconic guitar.

Nile Rodgers has never been without a musical idea.

On a warm Tuesday in February, he sat behind the mixing board in the "Purple Rain" room (where Prince's eponymous hit was recorded and mixed) at Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles, holding his faithful 1960 Fender Stratocaster, dubbed The Hitmaker, which he bought at a small Miami music shop in 1973. Swaths of the guitar's original sunburst color are worn down to the wood from decades of passionate play and touring.

The Hitmaker was the instrument where he ideated the chucking, triad chords that have been etched into a long discography of hits from Sister Sledge's "We Are Family," to a sample used in the Notorious B.I.G's "Mo' Money Mo' Problems."

Wearing a white turtleneck and white Kangol bamboo beret with brown tortoise Persol shade, the legendary guitarist, producer, and frontman of CHIC cracked a smile while he explained the etymologies of some of his mega-hits.

Rodgers reflected giddily on how his band CHIC's song "Le Freak" was borne out of being rejected from Studio 54, despite an invite from Grace Jones to come through the club's back door.

He and his longtime musical counterpart and bassist Bernard Edwards returned to Rodgers' apartment. There, they downed two bottles of "Rock and Roll mouthwash" — AKA Dom Perignon — and started jamming to the lyrics, "Aww, fuck off! Fuck Studio 54!"

For radio purposes, the track was later modified to "Le Freak's" infamous chorus "Aww, freak out!" but the energy behind it remained. Between 1977 and 1979, after winning over underground DJs, CHIC's "Le Freak," and "Good Times" charted at number one in the US, and singles like "Everybody Dance," "I Want Your Love," and "Dance, Dance, Dance" dominated the Dance and R&B charts simultaneously. All of the tracks were platinum and double platinum-selling singles, and to date, "Le Freak" is one of two triple-platinum records in Atlantic Records' history.

Rodgers stressed that he was often "very lucky" in his long career.

On a night out with Billy Idol in 1982, they spotted David Bowie in a suit, sipping orange juice alone around 5 a.m. at The Continental after-hours bar in New York. After that chance encounter, Bowie and Rodgers bonded over abstract, at times almost competitive, contemplations on jazz.

When Bowie told Rodgers he wanted a hit record, Rodgers obliged and said he reworked the initial demo for "Let's Dance," which he said originally "sounded like a B-side at best."

Seventeen days at Power Station studio in New York later — completed with lead guitar by Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had Sam's Barbecue from Austin, Texas, flown in during the sessions — Rodgers delivered his promise. By 1983, "Let's Dance," the song, was simultaneously number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, and topped Billboard's Dance Club Songs for six weeks. The eponymous album has sold over 10.7 million copies worldwide and is Bowie's most successful to date.

Rodgers' iconic production for artists like Sister Sledge and Diana Ross in the 1970s and Bowie, Madonna, and Duran Duran in the 1980s cemented his mythic status in music and shifted ideas of popular music.

In the studio, he reminisced that when Daft Punk reached out to him to work on their 2013 album "Random Access Memories," they told him that he and his musical partner Bernard Edwards massively influenced their sound and that they wanted an album "that sounded like it was made before the internet existed."

After a marathon session with the French duo at Electric Lady Studios in New York, Rodgers produced three tracks on the album and would go on to win three Grammys for the album, including Best Group Performance, Album of the Year, and Record of the Year. "Get Lucky," enjoyed a 13-week stay at number one on Billboard's Hot Dance/Electronic Song.

In 2017, Rodgers was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame after having been nominated 11 times.

As another hat tip to his legacy, Fender is releasing the Nile Rodgers "Hitmaker" Stratocaster® guitar, based on the exact specs of his original model, which Rodgers' label estimated has produced $2 billion worth of hit music. The guitar giant's Signature Series release will also include a capsule of video lessons and stories from Rodgers, breaking down songs he produced like "Good Times" by Chic, "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross, and "Like A Virgin," by Madonna.

Insider sat down with Rodgers in an exclusive interview about the endless groove that has powered his life and career.

Can you take me on a trip from your first guitar to this one, and how does it feel to put out a Signature model of your Hitmaker for the masses, sharing that piece of history?

I got to take you back to the beginning.

When I bought this guitar, I had no idea what I was getting, because I was just a straight jazz guitar player. And I really knew next to nothing about solid body guitars, other than the fact that my favorite guitar hero, who played a solid body at that time was Jimi Hendrix. And when I heard another kid playing a Stratocaster through my own amplifier and he sounded better than me, I was like, "Wait a minute, I don't understand this." So, I thought that there was something uniquely wonderful about a Strat and R&B/soul music. So, I traded a very expensive Barney Kessel for this particular Strat, and I got it. I didn't know it was the great Strat or whatever. All I know was the cheapest Strat, it didn't have a whammy bar, which didn't mean anything to me, because I was a jazz player. So, I got this guitar and I noticed that it was incredibly light. And then I started playing recording sessions, one after the next, one after the next.

I noticed after maybe just a couple of weeks, that everybody I've started playing records for, would say, "Hey, call that guy back." And I'm not sure if it was because of the way that I played or a combination of the way that I played, but the way my guitar sounded on their records, that it gave it a certain amount of rhythm and clarity that they were not accustomed to. And all of a sudden I started getting more and more sessions as everybody was calling me, and I was playing on a ton of records, more records than I can even count.

Every now and then I'll listen to the radio and I'll hear and I go, "Holy shit, that's getting played." Because those days you'd play on a song and it didn't even have a title, it was the B-side or something. But anyway, just to get to the point where I realized I had something special, I started my own hit records and started touring. And of course, when you're touring, your guitar is more vulnerable than when it's with you all the time. So, I started to try and find another one.

Let me talk about an exercise in futility. I must have bought, and this is no exaggeration for drama, at least 200 Stratocasters because I was making good money. I had hit records. I could never find another one. There's never, ever been another Strat that fits the dimensions of mine, that sounds like mine. It just doesn't exist.

So, I went to the custom shop, had them remake one hundred. They didn't sound like this, and we couldn't figure out why. And then finally I got my old guitar repairman. And then he went over the guitar, very judiciously with a Micrometer, and he said, "Nile, the custom shop ones are way bigger than yours." He says, "Yours is tiny. Listen, do it to these specs." And he measured the specs out exactly and gave it to the guys and said that's Nile's guitar. Do that one, make the headstock that thin, make the body that thin. And all of a sudden they started sending these and we said, "There you go, finally. Finally!" For 40 years I've been trying to get another guitar that's like mine.

And I wanted to ask you about the early days of playing with Bernard Edwards and when you developed the chucking technique. What did you think it was that really cemented this chemistry and magnetic interplay that you guys had?

Well, the thing is, Bernard was my bass player. But prior to him playing bass, he also played guitar. Therefore, he had this chucking style, which I actually just saw Paul McCartney do in one of the old Beatles films. And when a bass player's playing that style, he's given you the rhythm that he's feeling as well as the vibe and the bassline of the song. So, when Bernard started doing that and I picked up on it, I thought, "Man, if the two of us locked in and did that, it would sound like this machine just going." And it was almost like a typewriter, I made that a part of my style. I'd always play 16th notes and just play accents on whatever notes the arranger may have had written.

And the next thing I know, I started getting gigs with big bands and everybody started loving that style. And Bernard kept telling me, "I'm telling you, man, that is your thing, that chucking thing that I showed you, you've now taken it to a whole another level. You're putting it in everything. And what's great about that, it makes you sound like you." And I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Nobody else does that on every song. You could even play a ballad and chuck." And I'm like, "Oh wow, I never thought of it like that. It just sounded nice because we had a trio and that extra rhythm went along with the high hat." So the sound of my band Chic, really was the drummer's high hat locked to my guitar and the bass locked to his bass drum, and that became our thing.

That's so cool. And you were reared with a lot of jazz in your household and in different music scenes in New York. How did that influence your musical style?

I grew up in a household where modern jazz, bebop, was basically the order of the day, that's what my parents listened to. And that was it, I grew up with that. When I morphed into composing my own music, it had to have jazz foundations, because that's just how I heard harmony. But then I realized that the music that made people come together and just gravitate as one unit, like whenever you watch a flock of birds fly and they all do that thing together, I was like, "Man, that's what disco represented to me." And because I grew up in the political sixties, it was all about community organizing and people being together. And though I was a subsection leader in the Black Panther Party, people always have the concept of the Black Panther Party, completely wrong.

The Black Panther Party, we worked for every organization. So, because we were the tougher guys, or at least the media painted us that way, because we're the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

If a women's rally was happening or a gay rally was happening, we were the people who were the security for the rally.

And when you first were exposed to Disco music and the social movements behind it as well, what intrigued you about disco?

We supported all like-minded causes, and I remember the first time I went to a disco with my girlfriend at that time, the three songs that played were Donna Summer, Love to Love You Baby, followed by the Village People, San Francisco, followed by Eddie Kendrick's "Girl You Need A Change of Mind." My girlfriend was a waitress at a jazz club, the one thing that we noticed was that this club was packed and it was a disparate audience.

It was Latinos, Asian people, because we lived in Greenwich Village, so we were on the cusp of Little Italy, the cusp of Chinatown, very working-class whites because of the poor rents on the Lower East Side and the whole bit.

But then also the more sophisticated crowd from the West Village. Everybody was at this club. Everybody was dancing to Donna Summer, everybody danced to the Village People. And me being a New Yorker and a hippie, I knew exactly what they were singing out. "San Francisco, San Franci-" I was like, "Holy shit, this is a gay anthem." And everybody is dancing, nobody was weird about it. And then Eddie Kendricks came on. Eddie Kendricks used to be the singer in The Temptations, and he's singing an overtly political song. This was Motown going into new territory. He was using words like "emancipate," he was saying, "All men don't discriminate this man emancipates. Now, I'm for equal rights, but I also want equal nights." So, he had a love song that was using overtly political terminology.

So, he was using the liturgy of that current political zeitgeist. If you will, hippie '60 black power movement, Donna Summer was singing, "Ah, sexy. Ah, love to love you, baby. Oh." So, overtly sexual there. Village People singing about gay lifestyle. Eddie Kendrick's mixing in politics with sexuality. And I'm like going, "This is the most revolutionary shit I have ever heard in my life. This was unbelievable." So as an ex-Black Panther, because I had just left the Black Panther party at that time, I was like going, "Man, this is more political than anything that we had ever done."

Like whenever we were standing security for other organizations, it was clearly their organization and clearly their message but we were there in support. This night at this disco, we all were aligned with the same message. Even if these were disparate messages, even though they seemed to be overtly about one thing, we realized that there were cross points in these messages.

And that these cross points, we could all be down with and we didn't have to dogmatically drill on. It was very, very revolutionary. And I was like, "Wow, this is the kind of music I want to write." And I then wrote my very first song, which was called "Everybody Dance," do do, do, do, do…

I love that. And I wanted to ask you about that moment, seeing the Studio 54 dance floor packed out for "Everybody Dance" for the first time. How did that feel?

It was incredible. I didn't even have enough money to buy a copy of my own record because in those days you'd have to buy either a reel-to-reel or an acetate copy. And acetate was a platter that you would play, but it would eventually degrade, it wasn't like vinyl. But at least you could go home and listen to your record, and if you wanted to make any changes, you can come back and make changes. I couldn't even do that. I made the record with no money at all. The person who recorded it, he wanted to become an engineer. But in fact, he was the maintenance guy and he paid the elevator operator $10 to ferry us up and down and not tell the owner of the studio that he was using the studio that night. So, I heard it for the first time, about two weeks after I recorded it.

And I walked into this club and people let out a blood-curdling scream. They heard that opening drum fill and they knew what was coming after...And they jumped up and danced, and everybody was singing and screaming. "Everybody dance do, do, do, do, clap your hand, clap your hands."

Honestly, I have been chasing that moment since the very beginning of my career.

So, to get this guitar that I now know is my guitar. And to be able to live those moments again, to just have the freedom to write and do what I've always done, to feel like I've been given a B12 shot, is pretty exciting.

You mentioned this idea about a decade ago that I thought was really interesting, about world leaders having a jam session before big policy decisions, as big world events happen. So, how do you think that would be effective or how would that work?

I would say, "Your honor, I rest my case." Just imagine, if Putin and Zelenskyy had to sit down and jam and create together, that creates a bond unlike any other. And believe me, I've been there. A chess player, I've been a Black Panther, I've been all sorts of things where there was a built-in camaraderie to that particular affinity group. There is absolutely nothing like playing music with the other person because you got to be in sync, it's got to work. And after you share that kind of experience, there's something magical that happens. It's almost like making love. It's like, to think in terms of now harming that person that you just jammed with, it would make no sense. And you'd certainly think twice, if maybe somewhere down the line you got to that point. You certainly wouldn't get there that next day.

I know I can't scientifically back it up. But I got to tell you, I can emotionally back it up because I have been there. I have been the bandleader and the music director for warring peoples at the United Nations. And in that room, they became the best of friends. My charity, We Are Family Foundation, same thing. You put people who are warring people in the room together and we're playing music and we're singing and we're eating and it changes everything because they're no longer seen as the enemy. They're the person in your house. They're the person sitting at your table. They're the person sitting on the drum kit. I mean, imagine if Putin was in my band, I get to say to him, "What the hell are you playing, no man. Play that shit on the one. Dude, what are you doing?" "Okay, I'm so sorry, Nile." "Okay. Yo, come on, right here. Boom, boom, boom." "Oh, I got it. I got it."

There's this type of altruism that all musicians have. You never want to be on a bandstand and have the other musicians suffering. Believe me, we don't finish a session and go and laugh if somebody is having a hard time. If we did it, we would laugh with that person to make them feel good. So that the next time they'd played it right. But we don't like having another musician not come across the best they can. And I guarantee you, I used to always think that when president Clinton came out playing the sax, if he went and he played the sax and if all those leaders in Yugoslavia sat down and before they went to war, a little band and say, "Hey man, for the next three days, let's just jam." There would be no war. I promise you.

And I will fight, and I will have an ideological struggle against the most intelligent politician in the world and prove it. Especially if they played an instrument. And I guarantee you, we'd be buddies at the end of the session.

Thank you for sharing that. And I wanted to ask you about this really big moment in your career when Atlantic Records offered you the opportunity to produce for the entire roster in 1979, and you and CHIC chose to produce Sister Sledge and reinvented their sound as well. How important was it for you, and for musicians in general, to really understand the value of their music and trust their gut instincts?

That was huge for us because we had to completely imagine what Sister Sledge was. We didn't meet Sister Sledge until they came to the recording studio. When they were walked in the studio, their album was completely written and done, they just had to sing what we had already sang and played. So in a strange way, that caused a bit of a rift between us because they were going, "Well, we thought we were coming to discuss what we were going to do." And we were like, "Well, this is what you're going to do, it's already done."

And that was a little weird because we didn't know any other way. As studio musicians, we never got to hear the music before we got to the studio, no one ever sent us a demo. They would just call us up and say, "Show up at this address at this time," and you get there and the sheet music would be on your stand. The producer or composer or conductor would say, "You're sitting guitar one, two, or three," and I'd sit down and I'd play whatever was written in front of me.

So we had to visualize who they were. We created this image of, what would it be like to be these cool girls who were sisters at the end of the '70s, at the height of the disco era? So we made them that group. We had no idea that they were very religious girls. And the very first song we wrote, or the very first song we released, was about them having a one night stand, which, Kathy was like 16 or 17 years old and she was a virgin. And she's talking about, "My crème de la crème, please take me home. Oh, what, wow! He's the greatest dancer I've ever seen."

In 1979, Detroit rock DJ Steve Dahl organized "Disco Demolition Night" at Comiskey Park in Chicago, inviting fans to bring $1 disco records which he later exploded in a crate in the middle of the field, dealing a massive blow to the scene. How did that moment affect you in the short and long term?

Well, in the immediate term and the long-term, CHIC never had another hit record ever again. And it was weird because that was the summer of '79 and we had two number one pop singles. That's almost unheard of, to have two number one pop singles, and then never have another pop top 10 or even top 20 record ever again. And the fact that it's not like we didn't know how to do it, because obviously, I wound up having a bigger career, but it seemed like, because we were so associated with disco, and I don't know, it just became just one of those things where the crowd was going along with it. It's funny, I now think back on how many rock and roll people were my friends at the time, and have stayed my friends. They were like, well, we weren't anti-disco, as a matter of fact, look at how many rock records I made after that.

So it was basically this mentality of Steve Dahl and the crowd that was willing to go along with him. A very racist, homophobic kind of crowd that was willing to go along with this sort of bullying type of event. Which we now see history has shown us that the bullies somehow can rally people more effectively than peace-loving people. You know what I mean? It's like they can sort of make a person who normally wouldn't kick a person when they were down, kick a person when they're down.

But as far as my career was concerned, it was probably liberating and really good because I still got a lot of work and eventually I ran into David Bowie and that was a life-changing meeting because I made the biggest record of his career and then wound up having hit, after hit, after hit, after having flop, after flop, after flop.

You described in your book the '80s being a time where you were a workaholic and partying very hard too. You said that your life would look how "turbulent weather patterns look from outer space." So at what point did you feel like you were able to feel at peace with your life and your work? Or was that something that you kept with you?

I still am a workaholic that's for sure. But I have a certain amount of peace and I'm trying to... I don't know. I'm trying to become more at peace with the world. I start to realize that as an individual all I can do is what I can do. So through my charity work, I do a lot and that helps me feel good about my life but I also feel frustrated because no matter how much you do, it seems like you still can't have the impact that you'd like to have. I just do the best I can and I'm trying to get to the place where my heart accepts now you're doing the best you can, you don't have to kill yourself trying to do more and more and more. Accept the fact that you are doing everything that you possibly can and be at peace with that.

You wrote so much on your blog, Living on Planet C, about your different bouts of cancer starting from your first diagnosis in 2010. Did your lease on life and music change after surviving cancer?

It didn't change that much. But what it did do, is it changed my focus a little bit. So I started to try and help other cancer patients because people seemed to be very willing to help me. The reason why I started that blog honestly, is because what happened is that while we were rebuilding CHIC's live show, we were starting to become really popular. And that particular year, where I was diagnosed and had to have the operation and all the treatment, I think we were booked to do the Emmys.

I was like, "How do I tell everybody just one time we can't appear?" So, that's what I did. I was like going, "Well, the reason why we can't appear is because of this." And next thing I know, like a quarter-of-a-million people read that first post that I put on. I was like, "Whoa, what is this?" I didn't really know anything about social media.

And I think that it happened to coincide with social media being sort of new. It also coincided with the fact that I was talking about cancer. And as we know, if it bleeds, it leads. So it was a topic that people were like, "Whoa, this guy's got cancer and he's talking about it." And then people helped me get through my recovery. And I thought that I just felt obligated to try and help other people, and they were total strangers. And what that did for me was, the residual benefit was that when we did concerts now, and I go look out at the crowd at the concert and there's like 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred thousand people.

I look at it like I have a hundred thousand friends because those are the people that I've been talking to. And every time I do a show, they say, "Hey man, yeah, we've been talking online for like 10 years. Now, I finally get to see a show." So that's actually changed my attitude when it comes to live shows. People ask me like, "Do I have stage fright?" And I go, "Why would I have stage fright? It's like all my friends are out there."

And I wanted to ask about the impact that you've had in terms of sampling? First from setting the legal precedent with "Good Times" being sampled in "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang. And then going from that to being sampled countless times in countless genres, countless hits. How has it felt to see your work sampled and celebrated in that way? And I have to ask if you have a favorite sample or favorite flip of your work?

I love it. I think that the one that I've always felt was the most clever was Notorious B.I.G., "Mo Money, Mo problems."

I just thought that was brilliant. How the record has both hooks happening at the same time. You hear, "I'm coming out" and going along with, "I don't know what they want from me, it's like the mo money..." I'm like, "Wow!" I remember when I first heard it, I was on a plane, I had fallen asleep and a very famous film director came up and put headphones on me and started playing it. And I woke up and I was like, "Whoa, what is this?" And I couldn't believe it. I was like, "Man, now that is the clever usage of a sample." That was unbelievable.

Do you feel like it's easier to make a hit nowadays for producers, and artists? Compared to if you take it back a few decades or at the start of your career?

Well, I don't know if it's easier, but certainly, they have more tools available to them. So they have more, I like to say, "More colors they can paint with." If we take my dear friend, rest in peace, Avicii. He didn't know anything about music, but he knew it in his soul. So he had equipment that would allow him to express himself as a musician and express himself as a musician, and he made amazing records because the tools allowed him to have that power as a composer and a producer. And he did some brilliant work. He didn't need the 10,000 hours playing keyboards. He was able to step at it, and it was great.

And I always used to admire his talent. I used to always brag about how working with Avicii was so much fun because we'd just go into the studio together and I'd come up with a riff and an idea and he'd... right on and he'd just start step editing, taking it apart. He would hear a guitar lick, make it the baseline, just all sorts of stuff that I would never think of doing because he was so in touch with the gear, that the gear just became the medium for his sense of artistry and expression. It was really brilliant to watch him work.

What's a piece of advice, whether it was in the musical or personal context, that has stayed with you throughout your career?

My music teacher, well I've had a number of music teachers, but the one who I look at as my greatest influencer was my jazz guitar teacher. I was this sort of jazz and classical snob. To me, pop records were "eh."

I liked pop records, but I didn't feel that they should be held in the same regard as really amazing jazz recordings. And I remember he said to me, "Nile, any record that's in the top 40 is a great composition. "And I went, "A great composition? What are you talking about?" because I was specifically talking about a song called "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies. And he said, "Any record that's in the top 40 is a great composition." And I said, "You call 'Sugar, Sugar' a great composition?" He said, "Yes." And I said, "Why would you say that?" He says, "Because it speaks to the souls of a million strangers."

And I was like, "Whoa." That was the big lesson of my life, that I wanted songs that spoke to the souls of a million strangers. Now, a billion. Or more. But that was the greatest lesson I ever had because after that, I had a respect for people who have big records, who have big, big, big hits, and it gave me something to strive for.

I mean, at that point in my life, I had no hits at all. I was a jazz guitar player who was fortunate enough to at least have work. I had steady work, but I had never had any hits. I was just working doing utilitarian gigs, television commercials, and things like that. But then he gave me that perspective and I was like, "Hey, man. I want to write hits. I want to speak to the souls of a million strangers."