“All the licks”: Mick Ronson’s favourite guitarist of all time
When David Bowie finally crafted his Martian mullet and unveiled his Ziggy Stardust persona in 1972, the Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson formed an essential piece of Bowie’s glam career rejuvenation. Whether it’s Bowie’s slack-wristed shoulder drape on the iconic Top of the Pops performance for ‘Starman’, or Bowie’s guitar fellatio at Hammersmith Odeon, all thrust Ronson as a key presence during the Ziggy fever that struck the UK and soon the States with follow-up Aladdin Sane.
Born in Kingston upon Hull in 1946, he received classical training as a child on the piano and recorder, but upon hearing Duane Eddy’s country rock ‘n roll he turned to the guitar and made a name for himself in the Hull music scene as a confidently melodic player with local bands The Rats and The Mariners.
The Rats lead singer Benny Marshall revealed Bowie’s enticement of the ambitious Ronson: “Mick was the best guitarist in Hull, so when he left to head down south and join Bowie, I was pretty upset. John Cambridge, our drummer, had played with Bowie on Space Oddity. He was the bloke who went back to Hull in January 1970 with the brief to find Ronson and bring him to London. He found Mick marking out the lines on the municipal football pitch.”
The pairing was magic, Ronson’s northern machismo the perfect foil to Bowie’s androgynous sexual ambiguity, and soaring Les Paul solos that electrified on the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars LP. Despite seeming to have found his musical comrade, even joining production forces on Lou Reed’s 1972 classic Transformer, cocaine and creative dissatisfaction soured their relationship, Ronson later exclaiming “David needs someone around him to say: “Fuck off, you’re stupid.” He needs one person who won’t bow to him.”
Speaking at The Hammersmith Odeon in 1992, Ronson listed several artists who inspired his guitar playing after Eddy’s catalyst. Reeling off the likes of Eddie Cochran, George Harrison, and Hank Marvin, but it’s Jeff Beck who had arguably the biggest effect.
Marshall confirmed Beck’s impact: “He knew all the licks, except ‘Beck’s Boogie’, which he dissected but couldn’t master. It infuriated him. In 1968, The Rats had supported Beck at the Cat Ballou in Grantham, and afterwards ‘Ronno’ asked him to show him the fast run at the beginning. So Beck plays it, and Mick says, ‘No, play it slower.’ Beck said: ‘If I play it any slower I’ll stop!’ But he was patient, and Mick learnt that riff.”
Part of The Yardbirds’ unparalleled revolving door of guitarists, including Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, and routinely celebrated in the top tier of guitarists of all time, it’s easy to see why Ronson would afford particular praise on Beck. By the time he assembled The Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s, everybody from The Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd was eager to recruit him, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason confessing years later they “didn’t have the nerve to ask him!”
Ronson and Beck’s paths would cross again, joining Bowie on stage in July 1973 for ‘The Jean Genie’ as captured in the 2022 documentary Moonage Daydream.
