Nile Rodgers Forest Live Thetford 2026: Review and Photos
A Forest Full of Number Ones captured by Norfolk Music Photographer, Lee Blanchflower
Nile Rodgers and CHIC played Forest Live Thetford on the hottest night of the week as Norfolk headed into an Amber alert Heatwave. It turned a field of picnic blankets into the best disco in the country in what’s possibly one of the most glorious concert venues in the UK.
.This was night two at High Lodge, and after McFly opened the run with guitars, the forest got something completely different. One man in a Kangol cap and a white Stratocaster, and a back catalogue that turned out to belong to half the crowd’s record collections without them ever knowing it.
We were on site shooting it, year 14 at Forest Live for Blanc Creative, and this was one of the easiest nights all week to photograph. Here is why.
The hottest night in the forest
The weather did half the job before a note was played. Scorching sun, barely a cloud, and the light dropping slow and golden through the pines.
The crowd matched it. Where McFly drew a tight, vocal, sing it back at them kind of field, this was a relaxed one. Picnics out, blankets down, drinks open, people of every age stretched out in the heat waiting for the groove to start.
It was the most diverse crowd of the run so far.
Grandparents who bought Le Freak on seven inch sitting next to twenty somethings who found Nile Rodgers through Daft Punk. That mix is exactly what a Nile Rodgers show does, and it is a gift for a photographer.
You are not just shooting a stage, you are shooting a whole field slowly getting to its feet.
The Brand New Heavies. A great support act for Nile Rogers & CHIC.
The perfect support for a night like this. They are the band that helped invent acid jazz in the first place, a London outfit who have been fusing jazz, funk and hip hop since the mid eighties and selling records by the million while they did it. Putting them in front of Nile Rodgers was no accident, it was two generations of the same groove on the same stage. Founding pair Simon Bartholomew on guitar and Andrew Levy on bass still anchor the band, and they ran through the songs that built their name. Dream On Dreamer, Never Stop and Midnight At The Oasis are the kind of tracks people half recognise without quite placing, then sing every word of once the chorus lands. By the time they finished the field was warm, loose and ready, which is exactly what a support act is there to do, and from the pit they were a good shoot too, a proper live band with horns and movement lit by the last of the evening sun.
The songs you didn’t know Nile Rodgers produced for the biggest names in musics history
Here is the thing about a Nile Rodgers set, and the reason it never plays like a standard greatest hits show. You think you are going to hear a few CHIC songs you half remember. Then the medleys start, and the penny drops.
He opened with the CHIC catalogue proper, Le Freak, Everybody Dance, Dance Dance Dance, I Want Your Love. Then came the run that always gets the crowd. I’m Coming Out and Upside Down, both his, written for Diana Ross. He’s the Greatest Dancer and We Are Family, both his, written for Sister Sledge. Then a sharp turn into Duran Duran’s Notorious, Beyonce’s Cuff It, and the two Daft Punk monsters Get Lucky and Lose Yourself to Dance, all of them with his guitar somewhere in the DNA.
By the time the field worked out how many of these number ones came from the same hands, the whole place was up. That is the genuine magic of this show. It is not nostalgia. It is a slow realisation that one man quietly soundtracked five decades of pop, and he is standing right there playing all of it.
The Madonna story
The moment of the night was the Madonna section. Before going into Like a Virgin and Material Girl, Nile told the story of how he came to produce her, and it is a good one.
Madonna picked him to produce her second album back in 1984 because she loved what he had just done with David Bowie on Let’s Dance. The funny part is that he very nearly did not record Like a Virgin at all. He did not like the hook, turned it down for a few days, and then could not get it out of his head. So he went back and told her that if a song was catchy enough to live rent free in his head for four days straight, it had to be a hit. He brought in his CHIC bandmates to play it, and the album went on to sell more than twenty million copies.
Hearing that story in a Norfolk forest, from the man who actually made the record, then watching him play the song right after, is the sort of moment you only get from an artist with a history this deep. It is also the sort of thing the crowd will be talking about long after the run is over.
Asleep on the bus, then this…
The other thing that made the night feel human was how openly he laughed at himself. He joked that he had been fast asleep on the bus backstage, worn out from a long flight and a longer journey in. For a man in his seventies who has every reason to coast, none of it showed once he was on stage. The energy never dipped. The chat was warm, the band was tight, and he played the full set like someone half his age.
That contrast, the tired traveller who naps backstage and then conducts an entire forest through fifty years of hits, sums up why people still talk about a Nile Rodgers show the way they do.
Nile Rodgers and CHIC setlist, Thetford
Here is the Nile Rodgers set from the night, drawn from the 2026 tour:
- Le Freak
- Everybody Dance
- Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)
- I Want Your Love
- I’m Coming Out / Upside Down / He’s the Greatest Dancer / We Are Family
- Like a Virgin / Material Girl
- Modern Love
- Cuff It
- Get Lucky
- Lose Yourself to Dance
- Lost in Music
- Notorious
- My Forbidden Lover
- Let’s Dance
- Good Times
Support on the night came from acid jazz and funk favourites The Brand New Heavies, who set the tone nicely for a night built on groove.
What we shot. Norfolk Music Photography that doesn’t stand still.
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From a photography point of view this was a dream night. The golden hour light meant the early part of the set was lit for us, warm and soft, with the forest behind the stage. Nile Rodgers is a photographer’s gift anyway. The Kangol cap, The bandana, the dreads and the famous white Fender Stratocaster he calls the Hitmaker, and a smile that almost never leaves his face. He plays to the room and he plays to the camera.
We worked the band, the guitar, and the crowd in equal measure, because on a night like this the field is as much a part of the picture as the stage. Hands in the air, blankets abandoned, generations dancing together in the heat. That is the shot that tells the story of a Nile Rodgers night, and we came away with plenty of them.
McFly opened Forest Live 2026 with a bang. Nile Rodgers and CHIC followed it with pure joy. Two nights in, the forest was having a very good week.
Words and photography by Lee Blanchflower, Blanc Creative.
