Mark Ronson’s first memories of making music
Mark Ronson has collaborated with some of the biggest stars in the music industry, including Amy Winehouse, Adele, Robbie Williams, Miley Cyrus, Queens of the Stone Age and Bruno Mars.
Ronson was born in London, and his mother married Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones after divorcing his father. With his mother and stepfather relocated to New York City at age eight, Ronson was thrown into the wild musical environment that the Big Apple offers.
Discussing his youth, Ronson said his first memories of making music were of making hip-hop and “sampling old breaks”. Detailing further, the musician said: “It’s all about the sound of the kick and snare. A bad guitar sound will be a dampener on a song, but a bad drum sound? Imagine a song like ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ by the Supremes. Now imagine a giant 1980s gated Phil Collins snare on it. It’s, like, totally wrong. And that’s kind of what I made a career on, I guess. Recording drums and having live musicians play them but not having it sound so organic that you can’t hear it in the club.”
Ronson continued: “With, like, ‘Valerie’ or ‘Locked Out of Heaven’ or ‘Uptown Funk’, it’s all live musicianship because that’s what people did in the 1960s and 1970s. People made great records that you’d want to go out to and dance to. Now when people think of live drums or live instrumentation, it either sounds like smooth jazz or just big rock ‘n’ roll things. I guess, Tame Impala and other producers like James Ford and stuff, there’s a lot of guys around today that get really good drum sounds – Danger Mouse, for example – but it’s definitely a dying art.”
When Ronson attended university in New York, he became steadfastly involved in the burgeoning hip-hop scene and started DJing in several clubs. Ronson’s eclectic taste in music, with him playing funk, hip-hop and soul, led to him being a sought-after disc spinner.
Of buying his first record, Ronson said: “Going to the corner shop where I lived before I moved to New York and buying 45s and enjoying them in the way that other kids might enjoy buying a comic book. The first album that I remember buying was probably Michael Jackson’s Thriller, like everyone. The first 12″ I remember going out and spending my own money on was this one by a band called Sly Fox called Let’s Go All The Way. That’s when I’d already moved to New York.”
Ronson also said that his parents “had a lot of fun in the 1970s”, before offering more context: “I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and there’d be like a hundred people in the living room, music blasting, and I would go down and stand in from of the speaker, and whenever music was playing, I’d just air drum and have fun. It’s weird. I can’t actually remember what specific song was, but I feel like my dad was just playing whatever, like, the good funk and soul and disco was of that era. So probably Sly and the Family Stone or Graham Central Station or something.”
