Green Grooves
Super-producer and friend to the stars, the London-born artist is the headline act at Abu Dhabi’s inaugural Green Grooves festival
A new music festival at a 10,000 capacity venue takes place this month – and UK heavyweights Mark Ronson and rapper Labrinth headline
The old adage suggests some are born to greatness. In a similar vein, a quick glance at Mark Ronson’s life story so far suggests some are born to fame: his dad managed 1980s pop acts Bucks Fizz and Roachford among others and when his mum, the socialite Ann Dexter-Jones, remarried, it was to Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones, who wrote rock-classic I Want To Know What Love Is to win her hand.
While the family were close to the London establishment, with a lineage including several notable British politicians, their move to New York saw the young Ronson and his sisters (Samantha, a well-known DJ and Charlotte, a renowned fashion designer) immersed further in celebrity culture.
The Central Park block where they spent half their transatlantic childhood counts Steven Spielberg and Dustin Hoffman among their neighbours, though not Madonna, who was turned down by the board. Parties chez Ronson saw the children cross paths with stars including Al Pacino, Robin Williams and David Bowie, while a young Mark and his friend, Sean Lennon, son of John and Yoko, once wrote a song for family pal Michael Jackson. Their neighbour, Roberta Flack, thought it sounded like James Brown.
From all this, coupled with Hollywood good looks and a sense of sartorial flair, not to mention a model wife and trail of supermodel exes, one might deduce it’s all come rather easily to Ronson, who is surely among a mere handful of record producers to themselves become a household name. But he is quick to play his reputation down.
“It’s not that hard to date a supermodel if you live in New York and go out. But people expect me to be [an idiot],” he sighs, admitting that it has at times felt like he has to prove his worth rather than
“Now, I have to love the material and know that I can do something great with it”
just his connections. “When you’re sitting in the reception area of some TV station, next to Daft Punk, who you love, and you have to excuse yourself to go to the toilet because your video has just come on and you’re so embarrassed – that’s one of the moments.”
Nonetheless, there’s little doubt that Ronson’s eclectic upbringing was a major influence on his career path. While at New York University, he began DJing, charging US$50 a slot to spin the records he wanted to listen to – from New York hip hop to funk and soul, via the Londonbased rock music of his childhood. He quickly became a sought after name and in 1999, appeared in an advert for Tommy Hilfiger, wearing the brand’s denim in a recording studio.
A leap into production followed, then his first record contract. But while his debut studio album, Here Comes The
Fuzz, featuring the likes of Jack White, Ghostface Killah and Nate Dogg, was critically acclaimed, his record label dropped him two weeks after its release. Undeterred, he took to the studio to produce records for major names of the time, including Macy Gray, Christina Aguilera and Robbie Williams.
But it was to be collaborations with two epoch-defining stars, on Amy Winehouse’s
Back To Black and Lily Allen’s Alright, Still, then his own follow-up album Version, in which both stars featured on funk soul covers of indie rock hits, which were to propel him to A-list status.
“It was cool to be down with the two most interesting things going on. They captivated the attention of the world,” he says, before admitting that the attention would ultimately cause his career to implode. The popularity of Version, and in particular the collaboration with Winehouse, Valerie, made his horns and trumpet sound ubiquitous. Ronson admits, “Once people talk about ‘ the Mark Ronson sound’, like in quotes, that’s my cue to switch it off, because they’re saying my sound is predictable.” While his next studio album, Record
Collection, was a deliberate departure – “no horns, no covers” – it failed to reach the heights he reached previously and Ronson’s flame began to burn out.
Which brings us to the present day, and Ronson’s critic-bashing return to the fore with his fourth album, 2015’s Uptown
Special, which in true Ronson style features a cast which runs the gamut from Stevie Wonder to the Pulitzer-prize winning writer Michael Chabon, who contributed the words for all but two of the albums songs – one of which, Uptown Funk, featuring Bruno Mars, has already become the most downloaded song of the century.
Ronson is typically modest of this latest success, and his resurrection, speaking of fame, “Now I’ve had it, then lost it, then got it back again.”
His secret? “I used to sign on to records [to produce them], thinking like a relentless optimist – ‘even if they don’t have that many great songs now, they’ll write a few more before we get in the studio’. But you can’t go in unless you’re convinced you can make the best of everything. Now, I have to love the material and know that I can do something great with it.”
“Now I’ve had it, then lost it, then got it back again”