MC: Your productions and songwriting are certainly not, by any definition, time stamped. Does this reflect your background as a DJ?
Ronson: There is a reason that the “Funky Drummer Break” (James Brown) or a Maceo Parker horn line or a snare drum from The Meters will never sound dated in hip-hop or any kind of music. These are from certain eras when things were so well recorded. Maybe it’s the advent of technology and grooves all meeting up. I guarantee that in the next 100 years of pop music no one will ever top those classic drum breaks. It’s like the Golden Age of American cinema—films from the early ‘70s, even though they look old they look rich as opposed to things that came after in the ‘80s.
I think it has to do with a lot of these things are analog, and the human brain reacts. Someone watching a movie doesn’t know the technical side of it.
MC: Certainly on Uptown Special, but on many other projects, your ability to collaborate across genre lines is a trademark. How do you bring out the best of someone else within these multiple collaborations.
Ronson: Most of the people I work with have a divine sense, and they are good at bringing out their best music anyway. Like Bruno Mars or Kevin Parker (Tame Impala). I think being a producer, that’s your job—to make whomever you are recording sound like the most absolute, most amazing version of who they are and what they do. Collaborating with someone, you already like what they do, so you are bringing that out of them.
Read More: ALBUM REVIEW: Mark Ronson - Uptown Special (9/10)
MC: Are you self-educated musically?
Ronson: I took music lessons when I was a kid. After a couple of violin and guitar lessons I stopped, because I didn’t show virtuosic tendencies. My musical knowledge came from being around amazing musicians like Andrew Wyatt or Jeff Bhasker or buying Steely Dan or Stevie Wonder songbooks. It takes me so long to read music, maybe seven hours to figure out what’s going on and another two months of practice to play it in a normal way. But yes, as knowing records you can’t be anything but self-taught.
MC: You spoke on a recent Ted Talk about how sampling changed the course of music—it appears as if it certainly did for you.
Ronson: Of course; that was all I knew. When I decided I wanted to be a producer, when I was 17 or 18, I didn’t know anything about miking a drum kit. I did what DJ Premier was doing; it meant making beats. That’s my musical education for the most part. Hundreds of hours spent in record bins listening to and learning about records. All of my waking moments were spent digging for breaks or going home and studying the backs of records to learn who played on what. All of my early productions really came from that.
MC: Have you envisioned formally expanding your knowledge?
Ronson: I always tell myself I’d like to go back to school and study. It’s like in the Quincy Jones biography when he talks about that he has already had all of these hits with Leslie Gore, and he goes back to school to study counterpoint. You can always be better at your craft. But I haven’t had the time.
