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Interview Podcast Audio Mark Ronson
Version

Despite an excellent debut album and solid production chops, Mark Ronson was largely known as a celebri-DJ and offspring of rock royalty.

That is, until he turned pop music on its head in 2007, taking a retro, soul-soaked sound mainstream on highly praised and commercial successful albums by Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, as well as with a diverse cast of characters on his own covers album called Version.

Ronson spoke to MP3.com about his incredibly successful allegiance with Brooklyn-based funk masters the Dap-Kings and what it's like to take a sound whose radio heyday is a distant memory and make it go pop all over again. He also talked about Winehouse's tumultuous year, whether they'll make another record together, and what's on deck for 2008.

We're good. Hey, Mark. Hey, man. How are you doing? Pretty good. We spoke before, right? Yeah, a while ago. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you, are you open to a little career advice from some sort of no-name music writer with zero musical talent? Yes, please. Come on. I'm thinking, now that you've completely mastered this sound, the Dap-Kings retro sound, if you could switch up your game and go straight 808 or like minimal techno style. I don't know if minimal techno, but I definitely was on the phone to the Dap-King guys, yesterday, going, "I love you but as far as from my end, work might start drying up because I can't just keep like exploiting you guys' amazing musicianship." The thing is with the Dap-Kings is what's so cool is, and we kind of had like this big ordeal this week, where it just got a little out of hand. I think everyone had too many emotions and there was like, we almost stopped working, I think, for three hours.

But it is basically, alone they make amazing records. Their Sharon Jones record is great. Alone, you know, I make what I like to think are good records, Lily's stuff and [Ronson's second album] Version, but together there's kind of like a sensibility there. Like I make their s*** sound a bit tougher and bigger than it is. They make my s*** sound a bit more soulful, and so that's like the Amy and the Bob Dylan remix and those things. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. I don't want to be a one-trick pony, either, but there are things about great musicianship that will never get played out. But the style of recording and some of the arrangement ideas are like, you know, they're on their last stand. Well, I was just kidding because I think, you know, obviously, the past year to maybe 18 months has been a pretty incredible run for you. I mean, just in terms of all the success that--merely from the Lily and the Amy records alone, it's been pretty amazing. Yeah. No, they have. I've been producing records for a good, like, seven, eight years. In that sense, I've always had things that have flirted with success and then kind of, you know, not done well at all. Medium level of success, right. Whether it's the Nikka [Costa] thing or my first record and the Rhymefest record. And not to take anything away from those artists because those are all extremely talented artists who deserve to do well. But, yeah, it was just funny, and it was like about a year and a half ago, maybe two years now, I was just like, "Man, f*** this," I guess. I'd seen all my "peers" or contemporaries or people that I started off with about the same time, like the Neptunes and the Kanyes just go like whizzing by my head and then new ones coming up like Brian [Burton, aka Danger Mouse] and people like that, and I'm just like, "You know what, maybe I'm just not that good at this. I might just, honestly, just carve out a little, you know, decent living for myself doing music, the TV and commercials and be able to care for my dog and my girlfriend."

And at the same time that Radiohead cover project came up, and I met Lily, and I met Amy a few months later. And I think it was that feeling of just like that, go for broke, like f*** it. I'm just going to make the s*** that I like. It allowed me to like remove a lot of those bulls*** filters that you have when you work in an industry where you're thinking about hits and that stuff. Right. You're right. So by the time I met them, all we were thinking about was making music, and that's what makes it even more sort of like, yeah, exciting and gratifying when it comes out and actually does well 'cause you know it just came from the most honest place. And that's why, I think, they've done incredibly well too, regardless of me, is because they're just really honest artists that just are making the s*** that they like. Yeah. You get the truest sound and the truest music when you just, like you said, you just kind of say, "F*** it all. I want to do what I want to do." And if people buy in, great. I think some of the great geniuses around today--I hate to use the word "genius," it might be a bit full blown, but with people like James Murphy or Jon Brion, you really do get the feeling that when they're in the studio working like the doors just close, and they're just completely on their own thing. I just don't have that, maybe, naturally all the time, that kind of self-conviction. Right. I got you. I got a chance to chat with Daniel Merriweather at the VMAs this year, and I asked him about whether there was a moment or a few-week period where he realized that you were really on to something that was going to kind of blow up. And I was wondering if the same is true for you? Like you mentioned that moment where you said, "I'm going to go for broke and make it happen." But was there a point during the recording process, either for Lily or Amy or yourself where you realized this was a sound that was going to kind of take off a little bit? No, I never had that moment in the studio where there was like that high-five moment, even when Amy's A&R guy came over from London and heard "Rehab," and English A&Rs aren't like the stuffy guys you have here. And he's like, "Oh, rewind that selector!" He's like, "What the f*** is that? Play that again." I was like, "Really?" Not because I didn't think it was good, but because I was just like, "It doesn't sound like anything on the radio. Why are you getting so excited 'cause you just heard a song about when they tried to make me go to rehab, and I said, no, no, no."

And he said, "No, no. It's great!" And for me it was like a "If you say so" kind of thing. We knew it was great, but I think the whole time, there might not have been a moment, but I had never been that happy making music up to then like because I think I was just like enjoying so much everything we were working from. From like the way me and Amy came up with the arrangements for the songs to going out to Brooklyn to the Dap-King studios for the first time and hearing them play it and hearing it like come to life. Sure. Absolutely. I think the moment that I realized maybe like outside of the creative process that it was happening--my first album Here Comes the Fuzz did better in England than it did here--so I decided on this record, especially because there were a lot [of] English covers, to spend time over there. And at first I'd be playing at a club and there'd be like 300 excited kids like it was on my first album. And then like two or three weeks it started to really build, and then I started to see my name in the papers all the time. And all of a sudden I had a feud with like the Arctic Monkeys, you know where a typical British tabloid makes s*** up, but you know that you've at least got to be like a recognizable name for them even to care to lie about you.

I stay at my dad's when I go there. He'll wake up on the way to work in the morning and throw The Sun on my bed and be like, "You're in here again." And it was just funny to me that as a DJ, making a record is fairly faceless. I'm not singing the songs. I'm not in the front. It started to become a bit more of like in England, where there are people like Norman Cook [Fatboy Slim] who are DJs you'd kind of recognize walking down the street, but not that many. And, yeah, it just started to feel like there was this kind of groundswell. And then when "Stop Me" came out and shot to No. 2, I was just like, "Oh, f***!" Interesting. Well, speaking of the whole tabloid business, I wanted to ask you about the year that Amy's had. It must be a bit difficult for you to watch what she's gone through. The tabloids tend to just kind of gravitate to the most sensationalist idea. But my sense is that this [is] the first time in recent memory that they've been going ape s*** on someone who was actually an artist, like coming from... Yeah, somebody who's not like a Paris Hilton, who's there for no reason. Right. Like all these people, yeah, they may have a talent here or there or whatever, but for the most part, you know, they exist for those reasons. They exist to be in those magazines or whatever, those newspapers. Amy was coming from a completely different place, and all of a sudden she's got, you know, people following her everywhere, train stations, you know, shops, and everything. Yeah. I think she's probably the only one of the artists in a long time giving people enough ammunition that they'd probably want to follow her. I think it's disgusting what the tabloids do, but I understand it's an industry, blah, blah, blah. They're going to do it anyway. I mean, yeah, I think it's f***ed, and I've gone around with Amy even in England on a night where you can't even believe it, these people are like animals.

This one guy was like, they're like, "Amy, Amy, look here." And this other guy is like, "Amy, Amy, you c**t, look over here." And I'm like, "Did you f***ing hear what he just said?" She's like, "Oh, no, that's that one guy. Like that's his gimmick. Like he says that to everyone. Like he calls everyone a c**t to get their attention.

And I said, "I don't give a s*** if your gimmick is like walking down the street with a red shoe and a purple glove on one hand. That's f***ing disgusting." But she has to deal with it, and it sucks and what can you say? There are not a lot of other polarizing exciting people to write about. If I was opening a tabloid, unfortunately, I'd rather read about Amy Winehouse than fucking Mischa Barton as well. That's what it comes down to. Absolutely. So are you pretty confident she's going to come out on the other side of this whole thing stronger for it? I think definitely stronger for it because that's who she is. And she's not an idiot. You know what I mean? That's all I can kind of say. We've spoken about going back into the studio in November. I've implied that I'm not looking to go into some kind of like circus show working on a record. And that's kind of it. OK. Interesting. But let's also talk about the future. I mean, obviously, you have the Daniel Merriweather record that you've been working on for a while and you, you know, the Version record has been doing really well. The Dylan remix thing has been doing really well. What else can people expect to hear from you? Well, we've been on tour the whole summer. So, basically, we've got like one or two days here that have come up, but now we're going to be properly in the studio. I'm cutting a song for Mary J. Blige's album on Sunday in the studio. It's something I'm excited about. Cool. OK. Wale, this rapper from DC we just signed, who I love. Yeah, the DC guy. Yeah, sure. And then this year's Rhymefest album, and then Amy in December. OK. Cool. You mentioned the touring you guys did. I got a chance to check you guys out at the Highline Ballroom in July and, you know, that night had very much, it seemed, for you to have this like "kid in a candy store" type vibe where all these people that you had worked with over the year or two or three come up and join you on stage. Was that kind of a vibe continuous through the course of the touring you did? It was. We were really lucky. Well, on most of the tour Alex Greenwald, Daniel Merriweather, Wale, Kenna was there for some dates, as was Santogold. But on some of the dates, obviously, when you're like in New York and LA, like when we did LA last month, we had Robbie Williams, Nikka Costa, it was literally was like, "This is your life." And then we played a gig two weeks ago with the BBC 52-piece Concert Orchestra where we opened up the Electric Proms.

And that was really surreal because Ricky from the Kaiser Chiefs came up and sung "Oh My God" with us. The Charlatans came up to do "The Only One I Know." We had Terry Hall from The Specials, Sean Lennon, The Rumblestrips, Adele, Candie Payne. I mean, it was pretty insane. It was like and plus the orchestra. So that was the highlight of the year, I think, so far for me. Right on. Right on. Well, congrats on all the success, man. Keep it moving, and thanks again for taking the time to talk to us. All right. Take care, Jim. All right. Have a good one. Bye.