With Nile Rodgers - BBC Q&A | SXSW 2018

Nile Rodgers returned to speak to the young hopefuls of the music industry at this year’s SXSW. Following his highly acclaimed Keynote Speech of last year, he returned this year as a Q&A guest with the BBC’s Jo Whiley.

Fresh off the plane after performing at London's Royal Albert Hall just the day prior, he began by setting the record straight at the start with his 300 million record sales, it was made certain from the start that he is at the top of his game and how lucky we were to have his time (if that wasn’t obvious already!)

The main focus of the Q&A was going through Rodgers own career and allowing us to relate it back to ourselves and pick up tips and tricks from his stories, as he gave us an insight in to various aspects of his career, from his time in Chic, working with Abbey Road Studios, to Carly Simon boldly ignoring his advice for her song ‘Why’ and showing us what it means to follow your own guts.

Surprisingly, this was not overwhelmingly attended – in fact his appearance at the festival was kept rather low-key, which allowed those of us who did attend a more intimate session with him. A lot more laid back than his keynote speech, the talk didn’t see Rodgers live demonstrating any riffs or composition techniques, but snippets of a pre-made documentary by the BBC was played which complimented his stories.

It’s always an inspiring moment to see the greats of the music industry spend time with the new members and future leaders of the industry, really opening everyone’s eyes to what is out there and what it takes to be where he is!

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