Mark Ronson On DJing In The '90s

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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

Music producer and DJ Mark Ronson's new memoir, Night People, takes us back to a New York that no longer exists.

Before Mayor Rudy Giuliani's crackdown on nightlife, before camera phones and bottle service transform the culture forever?

It's the story of how a young outsider with a British accent found his place in the 1990s club scene, learning how to read crowds, dig through crates, and create the perfect mix of venues where the city's tribes collided.

Rappers and models and skaters and socialites.

Everyone glamorous and as Ronson describes them, a little lawless.

Night people, as he defines them, are different than people who simply enjoy a night out.

They become their best selves once the sun goes down, and daytime is just the warm-up.

These formative years, spinning records would shape everything that came after.

Ronson is a nine-time Grammy Award winner, producing career-defining albums for Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga.

He's also behind hits like Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars, Shallow from A Star is Born, and the Barbie soundtrack.

But Night People takes us to Ronson's beginning, DJing in 90s New York and rubbing shoulders with artists that would go on to become hip-hop and RB legends, like Biggie Smalls, Timbalin, and Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Puff Daddy, and Aaliyah.

Mark Ronson, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Tanya.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, you know, Mark, this was a really fun read, and it had me thinking that most of us experience the DJ from the dance floor.

So this book really gives us a glimpse of what it's actually like for the DJ.

And I actually think I want to start our conversation by you reading from the book.

It's the opening scene right at the top, and it gives us a taste.

Can you read it for us?

Absolutely.

2 a.m.

You're at a house party, packed with people rolling up from the club, all trying to squeeze a few more hours out of Saturday night.

It's not wild, but it could get there.

In the kitchen, bodies huddle around a counter mixing bottom shelf vodka with whatever's in reach.

Capri son, kombucha, maybe both.

Out on the terrace, the diehards are smoking cigarettes like it's still 1999, ashing into a cereal bowl that's been sacrificed for the occasion.

In the living room, speakers pump out a mishmash of bedroom pop and the occasional boy band classic.

Somebody's go-to playlist.

It's ironic, tolerable, and ultimately, a bit lifeless.

You can feel it, though.

The party is on the verge.

Just need someone brave enough to tip it over.

You pull out your phone and queue up your Surefire banger.

Sliding over to the speaker, you hijack the aux chord like it's nothing and

a sharp electronic buzz rips through the room.

Eyes snap towards you.

The judgment is heavy.

But then your fingertip makes contact and the opening kick drums of Fat Man Scoops Be Faithful tear through the room like blows from Thor's hammer.

The shift is seismic.

Cups slam to countertops.

The sofa gets shoved back.

Bodies flood the the floor with raised hands.

A collective finally overtakes the place.

You stand by the speaker, cradling your phone like a trophy.

The room is alive, buzzing, and somehow united.

Your finger hovers over the screen to queue up the next heater.

The crowd now trusts you.

You're about to show them why.

That's my guest today, award-winning producer and DJ Mark Ronson, reading from his new memoir, Night People.

Mark,

I love this moment because it really is kind of a pure show of your power as a DJ.

You're able to just make the room explode by the decisions that you make.

And you describe in this book how nothing compares to the first time you feel it.

Take me back to the actual first time you actually experienced that rush.

Yeah,

I...

So the first time I had that feeling, I was at my mother's wedding to my stepfather, and I think I was 10 years old.

And they had like a really small little wedding in the garden of this summer rental.

And even though my stepdad was this really successful huge rock star, he was in the band Foreigner and you know wrote all these songs, I Wanna Know What Love Is, Waiting for a Girl Like You.

It seemed like the music at the wedding was almost an afterthought.

Like I think they were playing like a tape deck in the house that was wired to some speakers in the garden.

And then one point as the sun was going down, the music just kind of stopped entirely.

Like you heard the cassette like kind of snap.

And Mick just looked at me and he was like, Ma, go put something on.

And, you know, obviously it just felt like all the responsibility of the world in my hands, like this little kid obsessed with music, like my stepdad saying, like, you can control the music, you know, like at this wedding.

So I ran in the house and there were all these cassettes on the floor.

And I remember like searching through them and there was nothing that seemed right.

And then I saw

timepieces, the best of Eric Clapton.

And I was like, ah.

And even in my like 10-year-old brain I saw the song Wonderful Tonight on there and I was like that is an appropriate song for now that is like my mom my mom is looks wonderful in her dress and it seems romantic and I'm gonna put that on I quickly queued it up hit they you know had some crazy 80s cassette deck with an auto cue and found the song hit play and I remember standing inside the house looking through the window as my stepdad pulls my mom in for like a slow dance and the moon and you know I even say in the book my memory here is blurry and it might be a little Hollywooded out, but it was like he brought her in.

She's luminescent in this dress.

And I just stood there watching this scene, slightly drunk off this feeling of like, oh my God, you know, this is my music playing out there.

But also it was this thing.

It was like the first time in my life I genuinely have a memory of having done something right.

So, you know, obviously at that moment, that wasn't like my Spider-Man Genesis story.

I wasn't suddenly like, ah, now I'm going to be a DJ.

I didn't even put this together probably till I was writing the book, but it really is one of my most

sort of visceral early childhood memories.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, you make this distinction between

people who enjoy a night out and night people, people who kind of just become their best selves once the sun goes down.

And when did you realize that you were also a night person?

Well, I think it's one of those things, you know, when I was 18 starting out as a DJ in clubs in New York, music was just my passion.

So I'm chasing this thing at night because if you're a DJ, obviously you work at night.

But then as I was writing the book and I started to piece together like, wait, this really tight-knit crew of maybe 200 people that we saw at all the time that were all a little broken in their own way, or maybe it's too much of a generalization to say everybody was like, you know,

falling apart or a vampire.

But there was this thing that just the people that I saw out night after night were people that the daytime was just like a little too, like in the broad, in the whatever, the bright light of day, it was like too much for people.

Maybe they were running from something, running towards something, looking for community.

So I realized, you know, I came up with the term night people because I thought that applied to our little cracked community of people.

You also were raised by night people.

You mentioned your mom, you mentioned your stepdad, Mick Jones.

He would actually wake you up in the middle of the night on school nights, and I think you were in middle school to get your opinion on foreigner mixes.

What do you remember most about those nights?

I just remember...

Thinking it was so cool that he obviously he valued my opinion.

You know, I was so obsessed with music and he had a home studio and the idea of being in his home studio, watching him craft these demos and trying to learn how to work these tape machines and stuff was so cool.

Like, his home studio was my favorite room in the house.

So, the fact that he would wake me up at two in the morning and be like, play me these mixes from the latest foreigner songs and ask my opinion.

I just, I mean, I've so valued my time spent alone with him because he was out of the house and on tour a lot, and I was so close to him.

But also, feeling like my opinion meant anything was also really kind of, yeah, it just meant the world to me.

Aaron Trevor, Mark, I mean, it's your life, so it's normal for you.

But I think for any foreigner fan or even those who just are aware of foreigner, to hear that you were in the room as he was going through these mixes, some of them went on to be very popular songs, iconic songs.

Are there things that you remember where you were listening to those beginning, like the beginning stages of music that would become the tapestry of

our lives.

I don't remember specific songs, but I think it was the first time that he brought a mix home and played it for me.

And then he played me a mix of the same song, you know, a week later.

And I said, I kind of like the other one.

Well, I was, you know, nine years old, squeaky English actor.

I kind of like the other one because it had a, the bass was a bit louder.

And he was just like, what?

Like, how?

And then he checked with the engineer, like, was the bass louder?

And I think after that, he realized I had these sort of like

bizarre, like, recall for these things.

I think he started to value my opinion.

But no, it is crazy to think that I was listening to, as he was like, I want to know what love is in these songs that would become classics.

Like, I can't tell you how much of my

opinion actually went into the final product, but

it was so important to me.

I really can't get over that he wrote, I want to know what love is about your mother.

I know.

And,

no, that's insane.

And then also

the song that he wrote, Waiting for a Girl Like You,

before

he tried to convince my mom that he wrote it for her too.

And she was like, not having it.

She's like, but you wrote that four years before you met me.

But he was like, but I was waiting for a girl like you.

I think he was just trying to be romantic or something.

But yeah, she wasn't having it.

You had this incredible music education at home with Mick.

And just your mother also had lots of musician and creative friends who would come in and out of your home.

She had lots of parties at night.

So you got to see night people even in the adults who were around you as a young child.

But at 17

you write about how you were still kind of searching for your own musical identity.

You had started a couple of bands with friends and then you heard this song by Pete Rock and C.L.

Smooth.

They reminisce over you, Troy.

That's the name of the song.

And something in you clicked.

And I want to talk to you about that.

But first, I want us to listen to a bit of it.

I reminisce for a spell, or shall I say, think back, 22 years ago to keep it on track.

The birth of a child on the 8th of October was my toast.

When my granddaddy came so bunny, count all the fingers and the toes.

Now I suppose you hope the little black boy grows.

I think that came out like in 1992.

Tell me about the night you first heard that and why it rocked your world.

Like you said, you know, I'd spent my whole teens

wanting to play music.

I had this band that I'd put like my entire sort of like, I had no social life at school.

Like everything was about this band and there were four other brilliant musicians in it and I was sort of probably the weak link technically as a guitar player, but

I hustled,

made the flies, got us the gigs, arranged the songs, produced our demos and stole stage clothes from my mom's closet.

But

I think there was this moment where I started to become a little frustrated with the lack of my technical abilities and everyone's kind of shooting past me.

And I started to have this more real realization, like, if this this is what being a musician is, like, if I want to be a music, I might have to find my own lane.

And we had had this really big gig, our most important gig ever, at this thing called the New Music Seminar, which was sort of like a south-by-southwest that used to happen in New York in the 90s, where the biggest bands and new bands

would play and, you know, ANR scouts would come, and that's how they find the huge superstars of tomorrow, whatever.

And we got this big gig, which I had sort of blagged our way into opening up for, I think it was arrested development.

And we had just, we had bombed.

We had bombed at the gig.

It was the last gig before a couple of the band were going off to college.

It was like just one of those turning point nights where we're like, wow, like we just,

this might be over.

And riding back uptown in my drummers, I remember he had a Miles de 626.

It was his stepdad's, and we had shoved the drum kit and my amps in the back, and we're heading up the West Side Highway, kind of like in dead silence, because we're just both kind of like just so bummed from the gig.

And he put this song on,

They Reminisce Over You.

And there was just something, I mean, you just heard it, how mournful,

it's just so beautiful.

But the drums are so driving and groovy and incredible.

And there's something about loss and mourning that's in the lyrics.

And I just heard it and it just got under my skin in such a way.

And

I just was like, this is what I want to do.

Whatever I have to do to only be around this music from now on, that's what I want.

And that was kind of the turning point when I decided to become a DJ.

You described it as wanting to live inside of the song, which I thought was just really powerful.

Yeah, there was a, yeah, and I think I said, like, I got back to my drummer's house and I stayed over at his house because it was just one of those nights that you do anything not to go home, like, even if you're sleeping on someone's couch, just to be in the next room from someone.

And I just remember listening to his, he had a single, cassette single, and I listened to it over and over again, like chasing the ache.

Like, you know, when there's something that's just sad, but you just like want to absolutely fully dive into it.

And that was a real turning point for me.

There's that saxophone that loops in that song, which is a sample.

It's actually from the 1967 song Today by Tom Scott.

And I actually want to play a little bit of that too.

And we're actually picking up the song Where That Saxophone Comes In for the song, which is kind of later in this song.

Let's listen.

To be any more

than I am

would be a lie.

I'm so full of love, I could best advance and start to cry.

That was Today by Tom Scott, 1967.

And Mark, this was a real turning point for you.

As you said, in this original sample, you found it as well, and that ignited an obsession for you.

You write about spending hours in record stores hunting down for these kind of obscure records.

But what strikes me about this particular sample is how I don't want to say buried, but it comes at the latter half of this song.

So when you're hunting for samples, I mean you're not just hunting for rare records.

You're hunting for hidden moments within the records.

I'm just wondering when you started to go search for your own samples, how deep would you dig into a single song?

Well, I think you're exactly right.

Like, this is an example that the most beautiful moment of a song could be somewhere, you know, in the middle.

And there's a tendency when you're sampling or, you know, quote-unquote digging for breaks, like you're just kind of listening to the beginning three seconds of every song.

But you talk to any legendary producer from that time, DJ Premier or Q-Tip, they were always like listening to the whole record.

Dilla, you know, one of the most celebrated producers, always would.

But

I love that you played that song, A, thank you, and B, it's so emblematic of that time.

Like that was,

I know, because I'm so obsessed with the Pete Rock song, I know all the folklore.

And there was this famous record convention that would happen a few times a year at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown.

And everybody would go to find their breaks, you know, in the 90s.

And Large Professor, a very popular producer of the time, had grabbed the record and decided maybe listen to it quickly, it wasn't for him and handed it to Pete Rock while he was leaving and been like hey there's nothing for me on here like you might dig this and then the fact that it's an obscure Tom Scott was this incredible session saxophone player who played with Joni Mitchell and on countless you know film soundtracks and so celebrated now but back then he was just making an obscure jazz instrumentalist record where he was covering also like a not obscure but a lesser known song by the Jefferson airplane and like how do all these things come together to then provide the music for one of the most sort of iconic hip-hop songs of its era is just was just such a wonderful like sort of you know patchwork like of all these coincidences so and it was so emblematic of that time.

How deep was your obsession to find these obscure records and like what lengths would you go to?

Oh my god.

Like well this record was an obscure record like most things and probably a $5 record until that sample happened and then suddenly it was a $100 record because now it's part of an iconic, it's part of history.

And everyone wants to also check what other gold might be on that album.

So that record was out of the question for me to have at that point because, you know, it was a $100 record.

But I would, you know, there was no streaming.

There was nothing there.

So there was one guy at my college, this DJ record collector named Ben Velez, who I knew who had that record.

And I would just go to his room.

Like sometimes he would come back to his dorm room.

He's a senior, and I was a freshman.

And I'd be like sitting outside his dorm room, waiting for him to like open the door so I could come and listen to some of these records again.

Because that's that's and I had to spend like the first month at college like proving my worth and like trustworthiness to him so he would even let me listen to records.

So, like, it was such an interesting time.

That if there's something that you love, like the access to it was so slim, and you had to kind of like befriend people who had the records and then prove yourself as a, you know, whatever, like a genuine music appreciator.

But of course, I love it because it made everything so sacred, but it's ridiculous now to think you could just go to who sampled and you would find out what the thing was and you would immediately go to Spotify or YouTube.

Our guest today is Mark Ronson, Grammy-winning producer and author of the new memoir, Night People, How to Be a DJ in 90s New York City.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

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you paint this vivid picture but i want to go a little bit deeper into the sheer physicality of your job because i would just guess that new york city is not for the faint of heart for djs because today you just have kind of like a computer or a thumb drive with your music but back then you had to lug these big crates of records through the city to play gigs

How many crates on average would you take to a gig?

And like where would you jump in a cab?

Would you be on a subway would you be climbing upstairs oh my god i mean all of it i mean so i i the standard that i would take on any given night was probably three crates that you know with a hundred records each and maybe like a giant bursting bag because you're taking old school disco and classics old school hip-hop new school hip-hop R ⁇ B, reggae, a little bit of house music.

So if you're doing a four or five-hour set, which is what we're doing most nights, that's what you're bringing.

So if I was playing a cool club, I had a bunch of friends with me.

Everybody wants to get in, get some drink tickets.

If I was playing like a not-so-cool club, like it's playing one of my, you know, uptown, like pay-the-bills gigs at a bar on the Upper East Side, nobody was coming with me.

And those were the nights when, you know, I mean, I kind of write about it.

Like sometimes leaving my apartment would be like that riddle of the teacher in school, the fox, the farmer and the bag of grain and the fox and the chicken and the farmer has to take them across the thing.

So I had three crates and put one in my front door to keep the door open, call the elevator, put one in the elevator to keep the elevator door open, go back for the third one that was in the apartment, put that in the elevator, pick up the one that was in my apartment door, bring that over on the way and kick the one that's holding the elevator door open all the way downstairs.

I'm already breaking a sweat, and then repeat the whole thing in reverse.

And that was like in the apartment.

That was only one building where I ever had an elevator.

The rest of it were like four or five-story walk-ups.

So you were really like,

yeah, you were, you had broken a sweat before you were even in the cab on the way to the club.

But

it's, I was 22, you know, my back could take it.

It's a little bit more.

Yeah, what's your back like today?

Yeah, it's not very grateful to that 22-year-old DJ.

It's, I have like, you know, listen, it's not like

maybe being a chef or another intense line of thing where you're just like covered in cuts, bruises, and calluses.

But I still have, I only only found out two years ago that I have this crazy arthritis in my right foot from 25 years.

The doctor, when I went in, he was like, oh, I watched a YouTube video of you.

I noticed you kind of like really aggressively tap your foot while you're DJing.

And I had never thought about this because you're just tapping to the beat.

He's like, yeah, that happens to...

musicians in the fill like even just tapping your foot for 30 years at the thing so i i've named it dj foot because i just like want it to be like my own

And then, I mean, I'm not proud of anything, but terrible tinnitus.

My back is completely messed up from 25 years of headphones on.

You've got your neck crooked to one side.

Which looked kind of cool, you know?

Like, that always is kind of the stance.

It's the stance.

It looks cool, but

it's not great for you.

Is there something you miss about it, though?

I mean, it's much easier now.

You just got your computer in front of you, I would guess.

Yeah,

you know, in the book, I wanted to keep it as diaristically and just really only in the 90s.

And it's really only in the epilogue where I'm walking around downtown with my daughter strapped to me in the baby beyond, seeing the clubs and talking about what it was like then versus now with the laptop versus the hundreds of records.

And a good friend of mine read the book and he said...

He said, I really like the book.

He goes, it just sounds like you really miss playing vinyl.

So you should just only play vinyl till the end of the year.

and I don't know why I was just like okay so I just I started to play records again and been playing out in clubs in Brooklyn and downtown and it really has been this joyous restart of my love for DJing so I'm very grateful to it in some ways but in other ways like yeah carrying those records around is insane going down into a basement and coming back up and like I used to, I hope this is okay, like I used to be leaving the club and like dialing the dealer dealer on the way out of the club.

And now I'm making an appointment with my acupuncturist online as I'm leaving the club because my back is just so jacked.

But

it's been incredible playing vinyl again, actually.

I didn't realize how much I had missed that process.

I want to talk a little bit about that power and control that you have to move people.

There's this night you describe where you make people go literally nuts.

It was at a club called Sweet Thang.

Can I have you read?

Absolutely.

One night, around 1 a.m., I dropped a new cut called Deja Vu Uptown Baby.

Only a few weeks old, its hometown pride refrain had already taken over every club and radio station in NYC.

When the chorus hit, as the crowd chanted, Uptown Baby, Uptown Baby, We Gets Down, Baby, loud enough to be heard five blocks away, I ducked the volume and dropped the instrumental of Busta Rhymes, Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See, on Beat, Under Their Voices, remixing the room itself.

There was a half-second delay as their brains processed what just happened, and then they ignited like an energy rocket from floor to ceiling.

For eight bars, it felt like we'd all leapt into another dimension.

Okay, so in that moment when there's that half-second delay for everybody's brains to process what just happened, That must have felt like an eternity.

What does that feel like up there where you're taking a chance and trying something new?

You're not sure if the crowd is actually going to respond to it.

It's just,

it's such a visceral memory of all the times because there were, you know, thousands of times that I would do that.

You would drop the volume so the whole crowd is chanting, uptown, baby, uptown, baby.

And as they're chanting, that's all they're thinking about.

You drop,

the bus rhymes instrumental.

So they're still chanting.

There's a split second where they have to realize, oh my God, he's dropping this other song that we love even more as we're singing under it.

So you are literally remixing the room.

And whenever you do one of those mixes, we used to call them wordplay mixes where you go from like the line in one song.

There's a line in

Snoop's Gin and Juice where we got, and they ain't leaving till six in the morning.

And then on six in the morning, you go right into Nas Uchiwali because he's referenced that song.

So they ain't leaving till six in the morning morning is now Nas.

So you've just done this slick on beat transition from Snoop to Nas.

And of course, like, you know, it takes a half second for the brain to realize, but it's still on beat.

And you just get this like crazy like blowback, this charge from the crowd all going like, oh, at the same time, you know, they could call it the scream, the chant, whatever it is.

And it's like...

Clay or Play-Doh.

Like the whole crowd is this thing that you're able to mold together.

It's incredible.

It's kind of why I can't stop DJing.

It's like still a feeling that I only get from this one thing no matter sort of what else I do in my work as a producer.

Let's take a short break.

If you're just joining us, we're talking with Mark Ronson about his new memoir, Night People.

We'll continue our conversation after a short break.

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Okay, Mark, so the crowds that you're playing for in the early and mid-90s,

it was such a blend.

As you say, hip-hop hits and fashion kids and artists, but you also write about

being Jewish in hip-hop, often one of the few white faces and having advantages that most DJs didn't with your family money and your connections.

And I'm wondering, how did you balance being an outsider who, on one hand, you needed to prove yourself with being an insider who already had like certain doors open?

Yes.

Yes, of course, when I started off DJing, like coming from this nice family uptown with a stepdad who was a rock star, my mom who was just larger than life.

You know, she was out in the parties, out in the scene in New York, sort of amazing rock and roll artist mom.

I was horribly embarrassed of all of it, but it's probably like more in a teenage way when you're just like, oh, mom, like, do you have to come to the club when I'm DJing?

Meanwhile, everybody thought it was the coolest thing that my mom came to these like hole-in-the-wall basements and clubs.

But yes, I think in its kind of immature way,

I thought that that would make me like quote-unquote other in this scene,

where really like the scene was just about

showing improving.

I remember Funk Master Flex in an early article in the New York Times, and it was like, like,

I just remember being like, this is the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me.

It was like, he knows, it doesn't matter who his family is, where he's from, he knows how to rock a room, like blah, blah, blah.

And that was like, you know, obviously Flex at the time was the absolute biggest figure in New York hip-hop.

But yes, I did have advantages that other people really didn't.

have.

Of course, my mom bought me the turntables for graduation.

I had a stepdad who was a musician who nurtured like, you know, my musical

what I wanted to do as a kid.

So I had to really deal with that and address that really out in the open in the book because, of course, I had advantages and stuff like that.

But

I also, you know, worked my ass off, and that's kind of like the two sides of the book.

Aaron Powell, it also sounded like something you did, and stick with me here.

Like, it sounds like maybe that tension also pushed you to find your own lane to do something different.

I actually think I want to reference the ACDC Back in Black moment.

You talk about

this moment where you took some risks, where you brought in other types of music, not just old samples, but also like rock music that actually helped you develop your signature offering.

And to do this, I want to actually play a little bit of Back in Black so we remember what that sounded like.

Let's listen.

Back in black, I hit the slab.

I'm into known, I'm glad to be back.

I said that news from the news.

That's kept me hanging around.

And then another stop because you're giving me high.

I got the hurts calling every time.

I got nine lions, cat science.

Appreciate everyone and everybody.

That was ACDC's classic Back in Black.

And Mark, you tell this story of how you took this gamble to smuggle this song into what you call the hottest hip-hop party on the East Coast.

What did you do with it and how did you know it would work?

Well, I absolutely didn't know it would work.

So obviously just listening to that song now, it's like anybody with a pulse knows it's hot.

It's pretty undeniable, that record.

And

it had been sampled by Rick Rubin for the BC Boys.

KRS had sampled it for Boogie Down Production.

It wasn't completely foreign to hip-hop, but nobody played that record in the clubs at that time.

And I was at this club called Spy Bar one night, which was this very, like one of the first super trendy, exclusive ultra VIP lounges.

Like I remember being at the door sometimes and watching like Trump get turned away.

And it was just like it was this.

It was this place, Leonardo DiCaprio, whatever, the 90s, like

that was like the place everybody wanted to be.

And the the DJs there played a lot of rock and roll.

And half of the time I tried to get in and I couldn't get in.

But one night I'm in there and they play the song and everybody just starts going crazy and like dancing on the couches like at the fall of Rome.

And I just remember being hit by how powerful that record was.

And this was a crowd that was dancing.

It was very unlike the crowds that I DJ for.

But I remember starting to think, God, I really want to play this at Cheetah, which was the big party on the Monday night, which is where Mike Tyson and Janet Jackson and Missy Elliott, it really was the place.

So I worked out this mix all week where I could play

The Benjamins by Little Kim and Puff Daddy, which was the biggest song of the time, and go into this rock and roll remix as a transition

of that song, and then write

on the one as soon as Biggie's verse ended, play Back in Black.

And, you know, obviously, like, it was the kind of club that if I played and fallen on my face, like, it's the kind of place something could get, a bottle could be thrown at the booth.

Like, you don't really know.

Like, it wasn't, it wasn't a place where you really wanted to mess around too much.

So, I played the thing and I dropped the record, and there's a split second where it's like the crowd is just kind of like, huh?

But it's on beat, everybody's still dancing, and there's no chance to kind of be too judgmental when your body's still moving, right?

And it feels good.

And by the second time the riff came around, the club just kind of erupted.

Like, there was this incredible feeling, like the crowd

like just everyone knowing they were doing something they kind of weren't supposed to be doing.

Like this song that we weren't supposed to be hearing at Cheetah.

I wasn't supposed to be playing it.

They weren't supposed to be dancing to it.

And it was just this great moment.

And from that moment on, it did free me up and made me a little more brave.

And it's funny because, you know, the mashup era came quite soon after.

So it's almost a little ho-hum to think of like,

playing black and black in the club.

Like, of course, why not?

But at that moment, there was nothing like it, but it did help me find my own sound and identity.

And that's kind of when I really started to, I guess, get like crazy gigs and offers because I was doing something that nobody else was doing.

How many times can you pull out a trick like that all about the Benjamins with A C D C in the same club?

and then people identify it?

Or does it work no matter how many times you do it?

Like, how do you make that calculation?

Yeah,

you can't do it too much because then it sort of loses the, it loses the excitement, right?

It loses the surprise factor.

It's like if you're a stand-up comedian and you're going to do the same joke twice to the same crowd, it's going to be sort of,

it's going to lose its impact for sure.

So you kind of do it in different clubs or you kept finding new ways to drop it or surprise it.

You know, I'd be spending my whole days like practicing my mixes and the things that I wanted to do in the club that night.

The job does seem very similar to a comedian because you're responding to the crowd.

So you're coming with an established set, but are you also making decisions in the moment based on the reactions of the crowd and the dance floor?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes you're making the decision before, like just once you walk into a room and you kind of scan it, you're like, oh, I know what.

this crowd is going to be like or you know djs and stand-ups we both completely our talent and skills are useless without a crowd we can only do what we do in front of people we work nights.

You know, all my comedian friends are quite insular and, you know, obsessed with their craft and only hung out mainly with other comedians.

It was like the DJ community was totally the same.

You know, comics have timing.

DJs have rhythm.

We work clubs.

We call it killing when we do good.

It's like, it's actually funny how many similarities there really were.

Let's take a short break.

If you're just joining us, we're talking with Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson about his new memoir, Night People, which captures his early years as a DJ in 1990s New York City.

We'll be right back after a short break.

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In this era, people know you for the hits that you have produced for people like Amy Winehouse and Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga.

You write about in the book, though, your first real production success outside of DJing was like a feather with Nika Costa.

And it's this fusion of hip-hop beats and rock guitars, and of course, her soulful voice.

Let's play a little.

Coming out of my prison well.

But all the echoes on they hear my breath.

I come on around to bend it.

Cause my resistance been found to persist.

How come you thought of force it?

So what you're trying.

That was Nika Costa's Like a Feather produced by my guest Mark Ronson.

What did you learn about that type of collaboration?

Because DJing is also kind of a solitary endeavor as well.

It's like you and your mind and your tastes.

And in this instance, you're working along with musicians who have very strong opinions as well.

Yeah, we would have these crazy arguments, you know, and it was the first time that I really was like in a full collaboration with Nika and her husband, Justin, who was the co-producer.

And,

you know, she came out playing in live bands and like

she didn't

maybe love like hip-hop and the programmed drums as much as I did.

And, you know, I was trying to like force that hand.

And of course, Lauren Hill Misseducation had just come out.

That was just this incredible synthesis of live and programmed, and we all were enamored with that.

But yeah, it suddenly was.

I realized I wasn't the most important person in the equation.

And actually,

and I still hold that to this day.

Like, if I'm working with an artist, you know, of course, if they have an idea I feel passionate about, I'm going to fight for it.

But they're the one that has to go around singing that for the next two years or maybe the rest of their life.

So it's like, okay, at the end, I will, you know, give that artist the final say if I haven't, whatever,

pleaded my point strong enough.

But yeah, the collaboration thing was

that I learnt from that.

But to be honest, like growing up in a family of ten siblings and sort of like

constantly

practicing diplomacy or whatever the hell it was, I think that my childhood like made me a good listener and understander.

And that's kind of that's an important tool for a music producer.

What are some of the biggest DJing sins, in your opinion?

I'll just say, like, I hate

when a DJ does that, plays that horn, like,

oh, my God.

The claxin.

Yes, there's something about that that's sort of like, it's a little bit like

an extra explosion in a film, right?

It's like, kind of like, all right, if you're not making me feel it enough with the music, like, I don't need the horns to be bullied into having a visceral emotion to this music, but I also

kind of like the air horn.

I mean, it's there's something about it like that feels very New York radio.

Yeah, yeah.

The other ones are like, and I sort of talk about them because, you know, the book, I said how to be a DJ in 90s New York City as the title because it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

No one's ever going to be a DJ in nineties New York City.

So, but there are a lot of things in this book that I feel like at any era might

sort of like help out.

So, there's things like back in that era, my era, it was a cardinal sin to really play a record more than once in the night.

Like if there was a huge hit, to play it five times throughout the night was like this thing like, oh, you're not good enough to like to rock a night with only playing the big records once.

There was a bit of that sense.

There was this thing like

never play all the big records when you're the opener.

In fact, you don't play any big records when you're the opener.

I remember GJ and like radio hits.

Like any, yeah, any of the big club records.

Like I remember opening for Funk Master Flex and being so nervous to like play anything.

Like I like I didn't play anything from literally the past seven years or something.

And then the idea of like, you know, playing huge records to an empty room, like trying to ignite a room before it's ready.

Before the room is ready.

So timing just is such a thing.

Like you have to know it.

You have to be so attuned, which means you kind of have to be attuned to human behavior.

And it's a sense.

It's, is it something that can be taught?

It's, I mean, that's why they call it, you know, the expression reading a room.

Like, it's like, I don't know if it literally goes back to DJing, but it's like reading the floor, reading the room, reading the dance floor.

It's like, there's so much of it that's just, yes, that's the interplay between you and the crowd.

There's you could be in the best

nightclub in the world with the best sound system.

It doesn't matter if you if it doesn't if the crowd isn't with you and you don't have a relationship with them.

That's what it all comes down to.

Certainly for a great night.

Mark Ronson, it's such a pleasure to talk to you, and thank you so much for this fun read.

Thank you so much.

Mark Ronson's new memoir about DJing in the 90s New York club scene is called Night People.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, President Trump recently stepped up pressure on the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies.

One of them, former FBI Director James Comey, was indicted last week.

Legal scholar and former U.S.

Attorney Barbara McQuaid joins us to talk about what this means for U.S.

law and the precedent it sets.

I hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir.

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