Nile Rodgers brought funk and soul to the Barrowlands

Edinburgh might have had the guitars and the attitude and the Gallagher brothers on Tuesday night, but Glasgow had the funk. And the soul. And disco and pop and even a dash of jazz and hip-hop. All of it combined in one man.

On a sweltering evening in the Barrowland Ballroom Nile Rodgers reminded us that effectively he is the living embodiment of pop music. 

Backed by a group of stellar musicians and two remarkable vocalists – Audrey Martells and Naomi Rodgers, both dressed in silver and Afros (purple in Martells’s case), and looking like they’ve both just stepped out of a George Clinton fever dream – Rodgers telescoped 50 years of music into just under two hours of continuous sonic pleasure. 

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Starting with a quartet of Chic classics – Freak Out, Everybody Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) and I Want Your Love; all of them sounding fresh and vivid and shockingly contemporary – what followed was a trip through Rodgers’s back catalogue, taking in songs from Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Beyonce and Daft Punk. All songs graced by Rodgers’ writing, performing and producing skills and all of them as familiar as the back of your hand.  

Beyonce’s Cuff It – a top 10 hit and a Grammy winner – was as close this evening gets to a deep cut. Duran Duran’s Notorious even got a run-out. But so good were the performances and the vocals that you never felt the absence of the original singers. This was an act of reclamation.

In all, it felt like the best kind of history lesson. Since he and his friend, the late Bernard Edwards, co-founded Chic in the late 1970s, Rodgers has been a remarkably consistent and successful music-maker and tonight that back story was laid out for us.

There’s an astonishing scene in Ryan Coogler’s recent film Sinners in which the entire history of black music, past, present and future, is conjured up in a 1920s Mississippi juke joint. At times watching Rodgers at the Barrowland I was sure I was watching an extended version of that sequence. 

At the same time, this was a reminder that great music never goes out of date.

This was a tightly organised and choreographed performance – some songs were cut short just to squeeze more than 20 songs into the set – with every transition nailed down and on the money. And yet it never felt calculated, confined, or by the numbers. “We’re sweating our asses off,” Rodgers admitted as the temperature peaked.

You might be inclined to wonder why. Rodgers has survived cancer twice and suffered in the past from a terrible fear of flying. He is – as every second of this gig reminds us – hugely successful. He doesn’t need to do this anymore. 

But as he duckwalked across the stage or dueted with bass player Jerry Barnes it was abundantly clear that he still loves it. And that love is reciprocated from a raucous, joyous Glasgow audience. Everyone of us lost in music.

This was a breathless night. A giddy, exhilarating performance and a reminder that the primary purpose of music is to make you dance. 

So, I did.

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