- 14 minutes ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:04Mark Ronson, a globally renowned producer and songwriter who's worked with some of the
00:09biggest stars in music. He began his career as a DJ on the New York hip-hop scene of the
00:171990s, soon becoming renowned for his diverse musical taste and genre-blending sound. He
00:24moved into music production and, in 2006, worked with Amy Winehouse, producing the classic
00:30album Back to Black. Since then, he's released five solo albums and worked with artists such
00:39as Lily Allen, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Ray and Bruno Mars, winning nine Grammys in the process.
00:47Uptown funk.
00:51In 2018, he added an Academy Award to his list of accolades as co-writer of Shallow from
00:57the film A Star is Born. And more recently, he was Oscar-nominated for his work as producer,
01:02composer and songwriter for the soundtrack to the film Barbie. In this episode of This
01:08Cultural Life, the Radio 4 programme, Mark Ronson reveals his formative influences and experiences
01:15and talks in detail about working with Amy Winehouse on Back to Black.
01:20I just remember it being so exciting to the two of us and being like, this is so cool. And
01:25then as some people from the record company started to hear it, I could feel people getting
01:29excited, but it certainly didn't seem like something that was like, this is going to be
01:33a huge commercial success. It just felt like raw and honest.
02:06Mark Ronson, welcome to This Cultural Life.
02:08Thank you so much.
02:10It's very nice to see you again.
02:11Great to be here.
02:12DJ, record producer, songwriter, musician, in that order?
02:18I would just say all of those things.
02:19All of those things.
02:20Yeah.
02:20So if you met somebody on a plane, they say, what do you do?
02:23I usually say, I say I make music. It's just the easiest thing to say, usually.
02:28On This Cultural Life, my guests discuss the most significant creative influences
02:32that have informed their own career. And you've chosen your parents. Tell us about
02:37your earliest memories of home life as a young child.
02:40My parents were quite young when they had me and they liked to party. They went to clubs.
02:45They were out in, this is like late 70s London. So I'd wake up a lot of the time in
02:50the middle
02:50of the night, walk out into this crazy reverie that was going on and 50 people partying. I mean,
02:57I don't remember seeing specifically Keith Moon and Christopher Reeve and these people,
03:01but I know that they were there. My dad worked in music.
03:04Your dad was a music publisher, wasn't he?
03:06He had a music publishing company and his claim to fame at that time was he signed the songwriter
03:11who wrote Buck's Fizz, Making Your Mind Up.
03:13Which won Eurovision.
03:14Which won Eurovision. So that was like his big hit. He had a great ear for music, just didn't play.
03:19And I remember night being this time of excitement and loud music. And to be honest, daytime was the
03:27opposite because we know what goes up must come down. And daytime is, if you're partying, is the
03:32hangover. They were really good people, but they were not good together. There was a lot of shouting
03:39and just, it was a volatile atmosphere in our house. It was not nice.
03:43A lot of music in the house generally. I mean, not just when parties were on.
03:46My dad had amazing, still does. He has incredible taste. He loved Sly and the Family Stone and
03:54Graham Central Station and Steely Dan and Parliament Funkadelic. He loved anything that was funky,
04:00so to speak.
04:00Cool dad.
04:01Cool dad.
04:02This is St. John's Wood in North London.
04:04Yeah.
04:05So a very affluent child.
04:06Yeah.
04:07I mean, overall, looking back at that period of time, a happy childhood?
04:11I wouldn't say it was happy. I remember just always walking on eggshells around the house,
04:18especially in the day. It was not a happy place to be. You know, I might have found music
04:23anyway. I might have become a DJ, but I'm sure there's some kind of link between this idea
04:28of night is fun, day maybe not so much. When my parents split, things got very different,
04:36both for my dad and for my mom.
04:39And you were five years old?
04:40I was five years old. My mom, a few years later, met my stepdad, who was a very talented
04:47musician from the band Farner. And they also liked to party and they had that thing, but
04:51it was a little less, it was more jolly, I guess what it was. It was a little less dark.
04:56So you moved to New York City when you were probably seven years old, seven or eight years
05:01old.
05:01Seven, yeah.
05:01Was there an element of sort of culture shock?
05:03Yeah. I remember all the kids teasing me for having this English accent. So I obviously
05:09ditched it as quick as I could, came back to England. So all my English friends two months
05:13later, they're like, why do you sound like a Yank already? You know? So I'm just like,
05:16whoa, definitely three months in, I don't fit in in either of these places.
05:21And so there's a new family unit formed in New York because your mom remarried to Mick Jones,
05:27who was the guitarist and the founder and chief songwriter of the band Farner. He had
05:32a home studio as well where you lived.
05:34So did he let you in there? Was that a kind of Aladdin's cave for you at a young age?
05:38Yeah, no, it was amazing. He was so generous at showing me like his equipment and some of
05:44the equipment was insane. Like the Sinc Clavier, which was this 1980s programmer sampler that
05:51were like Trevor Horn used to make Frankie Goes to Hollywood relax. Like this was like the top
05:55of the land equipment. And as a nine-year-old kid, I had no business putting my grubby
06:00mitts on it, but he showed me how to do it. And I remember stumbling through sounds and
06:04finding the lead melody sound from Terrence Trent Darby, Wishing Well by Ice.
06:19So I was like, oh, so I wonder if I can remake the entire song. So I slowly reprogrammed the
06:25drum beat. And, you know, it was so exciting to me.
06:28And Wishing Well would have been, if I remember, probably 87, something like that. So you were
06:3312 years old then?
06:35Yeah, I was 12. Yeah. And that was the other great thing, coming back to London once or twice
06:39a year to visit my dad. I would hear these things like whether it was Terrence Trent Darby or EMF
06:46or Bross or the Wonder Stuff or Stone Roses, these great things that were happening and very exciting
06:51in England.
06:52Which you wouldn't have heard in New York.
06:54And taking them back and playing them for my friends. Yeah.
06:58Your next creative inspiration, Mark Ronston, a real cultural turning point, was hearing a hip
07:02hop record in 1992. It's They Reminisce Over You by Pete Rock and CL Smooth. What impact did it have
07:10first hearing this record?
07:12I mean, it was just such a line in the sand. Like it just sort of changed everything. Up to
07:18that point,
07:18I was, I knew hip hop as a casual fan. I knew the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy and things
07:23like that.
07:24But at that point, I had been playing guitar in a band. And our band was doing quite well for
07:30a bunch
07:30of high school kids. We were playing at CBGBs and, you know, playing some decent shows. But technically,
07:36everybody around me was so much more proficient. They would shredders on the guitar. And I was kind
07:41of like a B plus. And I was like, whoa, if this is what it is to be a guitar
07:46player, I might need to
07:48find another angle or a lane if I want to be in music. And it just happened to dovetail with
07:54the
07:54moment of hearing this song, They Reminisce Over You.
08:12Was part of the appeal because it didn't have the swagger that so many of the hip hop records up
08:16to
08:16that point had. Right. I think a lot of the stuff of the production of Public Enemy and those things
08:21at the time were fueled by these like James Brown, very aggressive breakbeats. And this was a sample
08:25from this jazz musician named Tom Scott, who was covering a song by the Jefferson Airplane,
08:32this very hippie-ish sort of sweet, elegiac folk song. So it was this weird mix of soul and hippie
08:41and jazz. And the song They Reminisce Over You is actually a song dedicated to a friend of the
08:46groups who had died. So everything about it is about mourning the loss of the absence of
08:51innocence and having a father in your life that had this melancholy mournfulness that just got under
08:58my skin. And at that moment, I was like, I only want to be around music that sounds like this.
09:05And I
09:06wasn't a rapper. I didn't know anything about producing hip hop. But I was like, DJing and
09:11turntables, that is maybe my way into this genre of music that I love. So that song just kind of
09:19changed everything for me.
09:21Your book Night People charts your rise to becoming a superstar DJ for very rich and famous people over
09:28a few short years, but starting out in tiny little back rooms and warehouses.
09:32What are the key factors, do you think, that you had that made you such a successful DJ in the
09:3890s?
09:39I think it was the way that I brought together ACDC and Rufus and Chaka Khan and Biggie and EPMD
09:47and the White Stripes and mixing all these things together that was not really happening at the time
09:52that really made my name. And then as Huffy came in and Jay-Z and sort of the whole of
09:59downtown New York
10:00scene change really just suddenly becoming dominated by hip hop and the sound. And I was
10:06the guy at the time who was the best DJ around.
10:10You were ahead of the game.
10:11Yeah. And I guess I had to address it in the book and be honest with it because,
10:15you know, all the allegations came out about Puffy and all the dark, horrible things that we learned.
10:21But to leave him out of a book and talking about New York in the 90s would be disingenuous to
10:26discuss
10:26my rise without saying that he was a part of it. But I'm sure it also didn't hurt that while
10:33he was on
10:33this rampage to take over all of New York society to have, you know, a white kid from a nice
10:41family
10:41uptown, you know, certainly wasn't maybe a coincidence.
10:45And we're talking, of course, about Puff Daddy, Sean Coombs, who more recently has been convicted
10:51of various charges, prostitution related charges. But at the time, he was such a massive figure in New York.
10:58Yeah. Well, he was, you know, with his bad boy records, having Biggie and Faith Evans.
11:04And he was putting out half of the records that all us DJs were playing.
11:09Tell me how you do that. What is the process of selecting the records in the moment,
11:13looking at the room, reading the mood, feeling the vibe and then picking the right tune at the right moment?
11:20I really believe I was never a better DJ than I was in the 90s when I was playing four
11:24or five
11:25nights a week. You can go into any room and just sort of like scan it and be like,
11:29all right, I know what's going to happen tonight. There was a night where I was at this club called
11:33Cheetah, which was the big hip hop night. And, you know, it was sort of Mike Tyson, Prince,
11:39Janet Jackson, Jay-Z, everyone who went to this club and they didn't play anything like rock and roll.
11:44None of the other DJs played it. And I just was like, tonight, I'm going to play ACDC,
11:49Back in Black. I'm just going to play it. And even if it gets a bottle thrown at the booth
11:52and it's
11:53the end of my career in New York, I just, I have to try this. And I found a way
11:57to drop it in this
11:58way, bringing it out of the Benjamins.
12:00You just explained the Benjamins because there's a Puff Daddy track in itself, isn't it?
12:03Yeah.
12:03With Biggie Smalls his rapping.
12:04Yeah, with Biggie Smalls his rapping. So I played that because it was the biggest record in New York
12:08at the time. And then right as it comes to the end of Biggie's verse, Squeeze Off Till I'm Tempt,
12:14All About the Benjies.
12:24If you drop a record on beat, if you're not throwing the rhythm off, if you're finding a way to
12:29keep it
12:29going, people's legs are still moving, their bodies are into it. They don't have a time to
12:34second guess, like, should I be dancing to us? Do I like this? You just have to succumb to what
12:38your body does. And it worked. And it kind of, the room just like erupted. And it was this moment
12:46and that from that point on, I was like, you know what, I'm going to take these risks as much
12:51as I can.
12:52The book is incredibly detailed in terms of the specific records that you play at a particular
12:58time on a particular night 25 years ago. Is that your imagination working overtime? Or do you
13:03actually, did you document what you were playing on particular nights at the time?
13:07Music was my, one of my greatest aids while I was working on this book, because, you know,
13:13you asked me what happened on a Tuesday night in 1997, I'd be like, I have no idea. But then
13:19I hear
13:20a song like Busta Rhymes, Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See, and I can smell the smoke in
13:26the club
13:27rebar on a Tuesday night.
13:28All over those years, when you were developing your craft as a DJ, did you have your eye on
13:33record production eventually? Was it an ambition that you were harboring?
13:36Yeah, absolutely. I always wanted to be making music and I would meet a singer or a rapper in
13:42the club and say, come to my house tomorrow. You know, I had a little eight track recorder
13:45and a drum machine to make music. But when you're up till four or five in the morning blasting your
13:50ears with the sound of all these other producers and things, it's very hard to find your own voice.
13:56But one night I was DJing in the club and this guy came up to me, Dominic Trenir, he's an
14:03amazing
14:03A&R guy. And he had this crazy voice, like he'd been gargling razor blades since the 80s.
14:09He said, yo, I got this white chick signed on my label and I don't know what the album's
14:13supposed to sound like, but I want it to sound like how you DJ.
14:16And her name was Nika Costa and that was the first production gig that I had and we made
14:21an album for Virgin Records.
14:34That had this one hit, Like a Feather, that people in the music industry kind of like because
14:39it stood out. And then that got me my own record deal where I did, had the song, Ooh Wee,
14:45which is my first single over here. And in America it sold about eight copies, but it was
14:50a small hit over here. I got to do Top of the Puffs, you know, like my grandmother could
14:55finally be like, okay, I think I maybe understand what your job is.
15:11Your next choice for this cultural life, Mark, is meeting Amy Winehouse. You said in a note
15:17to us, she is the main reason anybody knows my name. When did you first meet her?
15:21I met her in the spring of 2006 or very early in 2006 on the stoop of my recording studio
15:29in New York. And of course I recognized her cause she had the hair and she was, had her
15:34kind of like fifties look already, um, the ballet slippers. And she said, I'm going to
15:41meet Mark Ronson. And I said, Oh yeah, I'm Mark. She just kind of gave me a blank look.
15:45I was like, all right. And just went up and she was like, so I get here to meet Mark
15:50Ronson.
15:50I was like, no, no, I'm Mark Ronson. And she was like, Oh, I thought you were like an old
15:54guy with the beard. I don't know why. Maybe because she had heard my name for a while.
15:58She just assumed I was somebody else. I liked her so much right away. And I said, what do
16:03you want your record to sound like? And she said, well, they play this record down at my local,
16:07the good mixer. And she played me some music by the Shangri-Las in that era. You would usually
16:23have some tracks ready to play a singer. But I was like, well, I've never done anything
16:28like that. But, um, if you want to go back to the hotel, come back tomorrow, I'll try
16:32some ideas tonight. So I came up with the piano that became Back to Black and a little
16:37bit of the percussion track. And she heard it the next day and she loved it. She wrote
16:41the lyrics maybe in, I don't know, an hour.
17:05She had quite a few of those songs written already, Wake Up Alone and Love Is A Losing Game. And
17:11then she wrote Rehab while we were together in New York. And it was an amazing time. It
17:16was such a short time. It's like, now it's a bit of a blur.
17:20So Amy had given you the Shangri-Las as the sort of, as the reference point. But the record
17:25that we came to know and love has all of these sort of retro references to the Shirelle
17:30ceremony of those girl groups, the Ronettes, a lot of Motown in there as well. But you hadn't
17:35made any of those kind of records. So how do you go about creating something? Was it just about
17:40it being live and analog and authentic? You know, when it started, I was just so excited
17:46by her and I think really honestly inspired by like, okay, this girl's so cool. I want
17:52to make something that impresses her or at least keeps her in New York for three more days
17:57because she was flying back the next day. So I don't know, it's just one of those moments
18:01of really good inspiration. I came up with the piano and I started to use, I didn't know how
18:06to make that analog sound at the time. So I was using sort of computer plugins and artificial
18:13effects to make it sound a bit old. But I was working with the horn section from the band
18:19The Dap Kings because I had started to also make some demos for what will become my version
18:24album. So I said to Amy, I said, you know, we're trying to make all these things sound old
18:30and vintage and we love this vintage music. But I know these guys actually out in Brooklyn
18:34who this is what they do, their sound. And I played her Sharon Jones record by them and
18:39she said, oh yeah, she said it's the nuts. If she liked something, she said it's the nuts.
18:43And so I took it to those guys. And you know, what I love so much about The Dap Kings
18:47is they
18:49don't give a crap about anything in the outside world of being commercial. They just care about
18:54their little scene. So like, I came to them with this thing and here's this artist, Amy,
18:58signed to this major label. They're like, well, I don't know if I can find someone to watch
19:02my dog that day. You know, they were just like, they didn't care, but they, I think they dug
19:08a little bit of the demos and that's how we got that sound.
19:27She had those songs written, the lyrics and the melodies. And what she would do was she
19:32would show me them on her guitar. She had a nylon string guitar and she was a good guitar player.
19:37She could play jazz chords and she would show them. And sometimes she'd have to write the chords
19:41or diagrams for me because they were really complicated and she would leave overnight.
19:45And then I would play some instruments. And then those are the demos we took to The Dap Kings.
19:51With Rehab, you know, it started with her as a bit of a slow 12 bar blues.
19:57She was like, they tried to make me go to rehab. And I remember, because I'm a DJ, trying to
20:06think
20:06about how anything can be made danceable. And I was like, well, why don't we do it like the kind
20:12of
20:14because you like that music. And that's what's in the DNA of all the music you're playing.
20:18And she'd be like, yes, try it. So, but it was very quick. I think we demoed all those five
20:24or six songs
20:25in five days.
20:27It is such a classic album, Back to Black. It's great song after great song and the sound and...
20:32I remember her saying when it came out, I remember her saying, the thing that she felt most proud of,
20:38she goes, I got 10 bullets in this one, like 10 bullets in the chamber.
20:42But were you aware of that at the time as you were recording it?
20:45You know, I had never made really a hit record before, and it didn't sound like anything else
20:51that was on the radio that was popular. So, no, there was no reason for us to be like,
20:56oh, wow, we're going to make this. I just remember it being so exciting to the two of us
21:02and being like, this is so cool. And then as some people from the record company started to hear it,
21:07then they were like, I could feel people getting excited, but it certainly didn't seem like something
21:12and was like, this is going to be a huge commercial success. It just felt, like, raw and honest.
21:17As a producer, what did you learn from her, do you think?
21:20I learned so many things from her, really, and things I still carry with me,
21:24but she was just so unfiltered with her criticism and like, if she didn't like something in the studio,
21:30there's this tendency in the studio, because so many people's feelings and emotions are involved,
21:35that if somebody says they don't like something, you go, oh, what if I try a bit of this?
21:39Or maybe that's the thing that you don't like. So I remember with Amy, I played her this one track
21:44and it was a rare example of something that she didn't like. And she said, no, I don't like it.
21:49And I was like, oh, well, what if I add this? Oh, maybe it's this, you know, and she goes,
21:53no, no, no.
21:54Why are you trying to fix it? She goes, it's a piece of, if it's not happening, just get rid
21:59of it.
21:59So I learned that from her. I mean, I wish I had her brazen, blatant honesty too,
22:05like her quote unquote, frankness, but I just, that's not my power.
22:27You said that you weren't sure during the process of making Back to Black, you know, how it would pan
22:32out, how it would be received.
22:33You must have known when you were writing and recording Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars that that was an absolute
22:38surefire hit.
22:41Maybe towards the very end and only at the very end when we had been working on the song for
22:46seven months.
22:47But even at that point, I remember the record company saying like, I don't know if you want to put
22:52funk in the title of a song.
22:54It's kind of cheesier. It's like it's four. It's over four minutes.
22:57We should really get it down to 315 or radio won't play it.
23:01We had the excitement when we created it, certainly that first day when the cares stand up.
23:07But you never know if something's going to be a hit.
23:29You've worked with so many great artists, had so many huge hit records.
23:34How much of your experience as a DJ has fed into that success that you've had as a record producer?
23:41I think with the dance records, all of it.
23:44Like I think that idea of not only obviously night in, night out, seeing what makes people move and, you
23:51know, becoming aware of that.
23:53But studying and digging for all these old records and these old 60s and 70s soul records almost becomes like
24:00the way you study arrangements.
24:02Great arrangers like Quincy Jones or Charles Stepney, who did all the Rotary Connection, early Earth, Wind & Fire music.
24:09Like that's that's your learn. You know, that's your sort of school in a way, your education.
24:14You just have this cyclopedia of sounds, which is helpful.
24:17And then it can be to the detriment, too, because my original demo of Shallow had these like big obnoxious
24:25drums in it that thank God Lady Gaga,
24:27when she went and produced the thing herself, took them off because there is that idea of like that knowing
24:34when to shut the, you know, the disco ball off.
24:55You're best known as a collaborator. And I presume part of the job when you're producing somebody else as a
25:01vocalist is to coax the best and coax that emotion, something very personal out of each artist.
25:06How different was it when you had to tap into your own very personal feelings and stories for your album,
25:12Late Night Feelings, which was kind of very much a breakup album, wasn't it?
25:15Yeah, it was very different because I had always just thought I'm the DJ. I make fun records for the
25:22most part. I make dance records like nobody wants to hear the DJ like pick up the microphone over the
25:29music.
25:30And go like, I've been having a really hard day today, you know, like, but then I was so overwhelmed.
25:35Those are the emotions I was going through.
25:36It had more of my DNA and probably personal feelings and other records I had done, but it was still
25:44a collaborative thing.
25:56As a pop producer, is it getting increasingly hard to make something totally original these days to come up with
26:03something sonically new because the commercial expectations of the market are so high?
26:09Pop music is just changing so fast and it's so, it's so different. It's dizzying.
26:15Part of the reason why I'm loving scoring and writing music for films is because it's something where I'm writing
26:22from a point of pure emotion and maybe not thinking about so many of those outside considerations.
26:27And then the other thing that's crazy is that I remember being in the studio with Duran Duran when I
26:35produced a record for them and from being a huge Duran Duran fan from the age of six, going like,
26:42you guys should do something like kind of like Rio and Girls on Film.
26:45You know, I remember them being a first kind of not that receptive being like, but we did that, you
26:50know, it's like, I remember being like, it doesn't matter.
26:52It was so long ago and everybody wants to do that again. And now I'm that guy in the studio,
26:58you know, I like I'm in the studio with Ray or somebody who's so young and, you know, maybe I
27:04start to go into like a drum sound or progression or a sonic.
27:07That's something from a record that I did 25 years ago and I go, well, my first instinct is to
27:12be like, well, I can't do that because I did, I did that 20 years ago.
27:15And they'd be like, nobody cares. Most of the people weren't alive. Like, it just feels good. Do it. But
27:20it's not really an option for me because I just, I would just get so bored.
27:24Like I just, I'm always looking for new sounds or sonics or different things to put into the music.
27:49I still love making music for myself and working with Dua Lipa and Miley and all the people I love
27:57working with.
27:58And is there a wish list of artists that you just haven't worked with that you would love to? And
28:03if so, who is top of the list?
28:04There's artists that I love, but I feel like if that's going to happen, I'm going to bump into them
28:10in the hallway or something that's going to happen.
28:11I try not to like, because if I start to mention like, oh, I'd love to work with Kendrick Lamar,
28:17it looks like I'm like kind of trying to throw out some kind of resume card.
28:22A new Stevie Wonder album produced by Mark Ronson, that's the thing, isn't it?
28:26That would be, then maybe I would retire.
28:29Generally, what drives you on creatively?
28:33It's still, it's still the idea of sampling a drum kit and chopping up and finding the sound of a
28:45snare drum that's so excited that you can't wait to put the rest of the puzzle together or sitting down
28:49at the piano and playing a chord that's just beautiful and you can't wait to find the next one.
28:55It's just the creativity itself, I think.
29:00Mark Ronson, thank you very much indeed for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:03Thank you so much.
29:04Thank you very much.
29:12Thank you very much.
Comments