Interview with Mark Ronson

HOT ALL-ROUND MUSICAL GENIUS Mark Ronson is one major go-to producer. Since hitting the music scene he has delivered three solo LPs, soundtracks to soundtrack for ad campaigns (including one for Tooheys beer), a theme song for the London Olympic Games, and has worked with every other artist in the top 40. Check the tracklisting of his LPs and half the songs will have the ubiquitous ‘featuring’ beside their titles.

Antonino Tati chats with Ronson about working with music veterans such as Amy Winehouse while having a knack for spotting new talent, recording in the studio versus playing live, and lending his production skills to the ad world.

Does it matter where you are when you’re producing records and soundtracks?

Usually I like to be in my studio in New York; it’s quite comfortable there.

Since having had huge success with Amy Winehouse’s album all those years ago, has there been pressure to live up to that LP? That record seemed to capture a moment really well. With Amy, we really had a bond over music so we just said, ‘Let’s make it sound like stuff that we like’...

But all I can keep on doing is make music that I like, and hopefully someone else will share the same opinion.

You have a knack of picking up and exposing hot new talent and marrying this with quality veteran artists on your albums...

Maybe I just have a certain taste, or maybe that’s a terrible insult; that my taste is so regular, so the common denominator; that I like the same things that other people like… Oh well, on one of my previous albums [Record Collection] it was really important not to go with the people banging down my door, like Robbie Williams and Amy Winehouse, when she was with us. Instead I opened the door for the next round of artists. I really enjoy working with young talent. There’s just an excitement and energy that comes with recording when someone is doing it for the first time.

But you did worked with Duran Duran on their last album...

I did. And I think it sounded like Duran Duran in a very good way. It’s not like we were rehashing anything. I love Duran Duran…

Do you meet these musicians at parties and liaise with them directly, or is it all done officially through record companies?

It’s never really about the record companies; it’s always through a friend. Lily [Allen], for example, I met one night when I was DJ’ing at a hip-hop club in London and she was there at the end of the night and we just started talking.

Amy, we met through a friend of a friend way back when.

Do you think that’s what keeps the music sounding so organic on your records? That casual attachment to other artists?

I’m not sure if it contributes directly but it is all part and parcel in a way. The same way I meet people organically, we also play organically live. Everybody I work with enjoys music naturally and loves making music for music’s sake.

When I think about people who’ve been hooked up through record companies, they’re usually young pop stars who come into the studio and [the situation] is just blank. I’m not good at that; I don’t work well in that environment and that’s not how I like to create. The people I have worked with from their early days like Daniel Merriweather or Amy Winehouse - they had a really strong vision of their own when they wrote, so all I had to do was be a great producer.

Santigold was another artist you’ve worked with sans major record company interruption.

True. I met Santi before she blew up big. I used to drop my dogs off at her apartment in Brooklyn on the way to the airport and she’d walk my dogs for a week.

What you just said actually sounds like a snippet from a Santigold record.

So that is you having a conversation with her on the Diplo remix album?

Yep. John Taylor from Duran Duran actually asked ‘Are you offended?’ and I was like, ‘That’s my voice, moron’.

I find it quite ironic that John Taylor doesn’t drink anymore, yet the pair of you were pushing a beer campaign with a Tooheys ad you created some time ago.

Basically the contact was to create a band and take them to New York and write.

So one day I recorded with John, one day it was Santi and so on, and the best song – the one that we thought was the most appropriate and most awesome and

exciting – was the one with John in it. He really loved it, he contributed the change and the bassline and three days later we recorded it.

The song also featured Sean Lennon. Who on earth was footing the bill there?

Tooheys, I think. But really everyone was doing it for the love of beer. Except for John, perhaps.

Do you find a common link to the artists you work with, or is it the diversity that makes an interesting project, be it an album or an ad soundtrack?

I think it’s the diversity. The thing I love most about treating first recordings as demos with artists is that you get the most out of each session.

When you’re touring, are you twiddling knobs on electronic gadgets or playing real instruments onstage?

The guitar is pretty much the only thing I would stand on stage and play in public.

Mark Ronson’s new album ‘Uptown Special’ is out now through Columbia Records / Sony Music.