“She was almost like a sister.”Ĭhic approached Ross’ new album with the meticulous ambition of a passion project. “There was something in the air that bonded us,” Rodgers recalled in his 2011 memoir, Le Freak. She brought Ross to one of Chic’s shows in Santa Monica, where Rodgers and Edwards forged a friendship with the star backstage even as they were both clearly bowled over by her presence. Chic’s crossover appeal and spare, in-the-pocket grooves neatly fit the bill though they hadn’t met, de Passe used to run in the same circles as the band in the late 1960s, when she booked acts for Midtown nightclub the Cheetah. Having already revitalized Ross’ career in 1972 with the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues (for which de Passe became the first Black woman to receive a screenwriting nomination at the Oscars), she was now intent on doing the same for the diva’s musical career. Suzanne de Passe, Motown brass and Gordy’s right hand, had come to the same realization. But as the ’80s loomed, she was dangerously close to appearing old-fashioned.
Ross had already lived many musical lives-auditioning for Gordy and joining the Supremes as a teenager, then reinventing herself twice through her dual solo and film careers. Ross had good reason for reclaiming a lost sense of authority: Her most recent film, Mahogany, had been critically panned, and she often felt at the mercy of Motown head Berry Gordy when it came to her music. “This was to be my initiation into taking responsibility for myself,” she wrote of the move to the city in her 1993 memoir, Secrets of a Sparrow.
She grew beguiled by New York’s seductive commotion, whether watching revelers from a private balcony at Studio 54 or ensconced in the darkness of a movie theater by herself. Ross had recently moved with her three children into an apartment in Manhattan to film The Wiz. The new album would be Ross’ 11th LP, following 1979’s The Boss, a peppy disco record produced by husband-and-wife duo Ashford & Simpson that performed decently on the charts but couldn’t touch the crossover success of her biggest solo hits like 1973’s power ballad “ Touch Me in the Morning” and 1976’s swooning “ Love Hangover.” Now, on the other side of a divorce from talent manager Bob Ellis and embarking on a fledgling acting career, Ross was determined to find a fresh sound with which to reintroduce herself.
By the time diana, their sterling pop-disco collaboration, arrived in the spring of 1980, the legendary Supremes singer hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in four years.
The chance to work with Diana Ross didn’t come without its own professional risk. Within a year, he would be writing and producing for one of them, as though with enough confidence-and perhaps a fair amount of cocaine-he could bend the law of attraction at whim.
Yet as the duo segued into production work, crafting the everlasting, celebratory 1979 album We Are Family for labelmates Sister Sledge, Rodgers held on to three childhood idols on his bucket list he still wanted to work with: Barbra Streisand, Mick Jagger, and one Diana Ross. Always the chameleons, he and Edwards adjusted to the times by making new wave, dance, sometimes even straightforward rock. In fact, owing to the group’s sudden, triple-platinum success, he thought it was all but preordained to happen at some point. Rodgers wasn’t exactly surprised by his group’s seeming downfall.
The disco backlash hit full stride, dampening both Chic’s mood and sales and curbing the duo’s momentum as it reached an apex. Guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards put out three slinky, disco-funk albums in as many years with platinum records like “ Le Freak” and “ Good Times” when clouds of smoke billowed out of Comiskey Park in Chicago, where their records and so many others were being destroyed by mostly white rock fanatics. In the summer of 1979, Chic were simultaneously a colossal success and on the precipice of becoming a footnote in music history.