If something is worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.
It feels like my job is to support people. I support great artists. When I worked with a symphony, I sat in the third chair, not the first chair.
I think the hardest thing to overcome is judging yourself and being your own worst critic so to speak.
The only person I have regrets about is Miles Davis. He and I had become good friends after we did a photo shoot, and coincidentally, we kept running into each other at parties and stuff. I regret not having written a hit for Miles Davis.
I've found great solace in finally taking care of myself and others.
If I could live in one city and do every single thing I do there, I would choose Venice. You can't turn your head without seeing something amazing.
It was actually my partner, Bernard Edwards, who helped me develop my sort of funky jazz style.
I've been working since I was a child. I worked cutting lawns, delivering newspapers; I was a telephone salesperson; I was a guitar repairman.
I'm a record producer and songwriter; I'm a problem-solver.
When I was very young, there was a lot of music at home, mostly jazz. I was walking around singing and pretending I was in bands from a very young age. But the first song that was really personal to me was 'Blue Suede Shoes'.
Music is the one part of the entertainment business where you can't fool anybody into buying a record.
Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting.
I am very rich because of 'Chic' - artistically as well as spiritually. It's been an amazing life.
Art, well good art at least, takes you to a place you go during the experience of it, and then after you experience it you are different.
My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.
Trust me, the only real way to understand 'Chic' is in highfalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early 'Chic' records to impress my jazz friends.
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.
I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.
Bands always call me when they are in need of a boost and I come in and put them back on top.
