Nile Rodgers Tells the Story of the Iconic Riff on Bowie’s Let’s Dance

In this video from Fender, the legendary producer/composer/guitarist Nile Rodgers sits down with his iconic Stratocaster and talks about how he took a folky tune that David Bowie came up with and turned it into the jazzy backbone of the pop song Let’s Dance, arguably Bowie’s biggest hit. Listening to where the song started off before Rodgers started tweaking, it’s hard for this musical simpleton to recognize that it’s even the same tune.

Update: Rodgers told a variation of this story in 2015.

• David Bowie
• music
• Nile Rodgers
• video