I used to play flute and clarinet at school, and although I wasn't thinking about making a living or getting a pay cheque, I already knew I was going to play music all my life.
Every record I have done was because I was a person's friend. The only time we did not continue to be friends was if the record did not become a hit. If it did, we became great friends.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Friendship can both inspire collaboration and determine the strength of relationships based on success.
This quote reflects the importance of friendship in creative endeavors, particularly in the music industry. Nile Rodgers conveys that many of his records were born out of personal connections, suggesting that the bond and collaboration with friends can lead to successful outcomes. However, he also highlights the paradox in these relationships, where the success of a record can dictate whether friendships continue to flourish, implying that success can complicate personal dynamics.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about teamwork, one might quote this to emphasize the value of friendships in achieving success.
More from Nile Rodgers
All quotes →Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.
There's been this strange irony to my whole life. All my original bandmates have died, when I was the most wild and most reckless of us all. But I'm still here.
Music is the one part of the entertainment business where you can't fool anybody into buying a record.
With Sumthin Else Music Works, I wanted to spread the love and give newcomers a chance to make it because something that really helped me were all the people who had given me an opportunity when I was putting my career together.
I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.
Similar quotes
We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.
Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
In a Ramada Inn near the grapevine, they stop to rest for the night. Traveling down south, looking for good times. Visiting old friends feels right.
It is somethingit can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.