{"id":114495,"date":"2025-10-11T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T00:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/114495\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T00:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T00:30:08","slug":"a-love-letter-to-more-humble-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/114495\/","title":{"rendered":"A love letter to more humble beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">The final chapter of Mark Ronson\u2019s memoir  Night People: How to Be a DJ in 90s New York plays it glassy-eyed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Strapping his daughter to his chest, he strolls downtown past the former venues where he cut his teeth, recognising faces he can\u2019t quite place and reflecting on records as \u201clife\u2019s most constant companions\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">He remembers allies in the booth who have passed away \u2014 DJ AM, Fatman Scoop \u2014 or those who traded the Big Apple for steady residencies in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">\u201cI wonder if Ruthie will ever get to see me DJ,\u201d he writes of his daughter. \u201cIt\u2019s unlikely I\u2019ll be doing this in 15 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">He describes how he\u2019s currently healing from tendons torn while wrestling with a monitor because \u201cthe venue\u2019s PA system was shit\u201d and sighs at how few parties happen in Manhattan anymore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Of course, he gets recognised. This is Mark Ronson: Producer and architect of Amy Winehouse\u2019s  Back to Black and Bruno Mars\u2019  Uptown Funk, Academy Award winner ( A Star is Born), and executive producer of the Barbie soundtrack.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Yet in  Night People he\u2019s intent on honouring \u201cthe old me\u201d \u2014 the hustler hauling record crates up apartment stairs, long before smartphones lit up dancefloors or every set was documented online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\n            There is little to nothing on the aforementioned accolades.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The subhead,  How to Be a DJ in 90s New York City, should come with a caveat: It helps to be a nepo baby.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Ronson is upfront about it \u2014 his stepfather is Mick Jones of Foreigner ( I Want to Know What Love Is), he interned at  Rolling Stone aged 12, and his childhood best friend was Sean Lennon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">The book is full of cameos, from Biggie Smalls to Robin Williams to Michael Jackson, though the most compelling moments aren\u2019t the brush-with-greatness stories but the graft.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Ronson recalls crate-digging for hours, studying Stretch Armstrong\u2019s sets, and obsessing \u2014 sometimes for pages at a time here \u2014 over stylus needles and slipmats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">It all coalesces into Ronson\u2019s eureka moment, mixing Notorious BIG\u2019s verse on  It\u2019s All About the Benjamins into AC\/DC\u2019s  Back in Black. The club pops.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">\u201cWe were all breaking some unwritten rule \u2014 what a DJ should play, what a crowd should dance to \u2014 and we didn\u2019t care. We were doing it together. I don\u2019t remember how I got out of it or what I played the rest of the night. But nothing was ever the same again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Suddenly Ronson is featuring on a Tommy Hilfiger-sponsored tour of malls alongside buzzy it-kids such as Aaliyah, Kate Hudson, and Rashida Jones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">He stars fleetingly in  Zoolander, DJing the \u2018eugoogoly\u2019 scene backdropped by the NYC skyline.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">He\u2019s on the cover of  New York magazine draped in an American flag and the headline The King of Spin. He helped define a new term: Celebrity DJ.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4810257_8_articleinline_Night_People_by_Mark_Ronson.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" class=\"card-img\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"\">But Ronson says he\u2019s most at home behind the decks, either spinning or talking to the DJ on a given night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Of course, Ronson doesn\u2019t shy away from indulgences \u2014 admitting he was overdoing it, mixing drugs like cocktails, even accidentally taking heroin one night \u2014 but it\u2019s the music that truly lingers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">He shares aphorisms learned along the way: \u201cThe chicer the spot, the more bullshit the DJ setup\u201d; \u201cLounge gigs are fun. With no pressure to make people dance, you\u2019re just playing records to show the world how cool you are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Ronson says he talked to 150-200 people to get the particulars of the scene right.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">It\u2019s reminiscent of Thurston Moore\u2019s detailed  Sonic Life and Anthony Bourdain\u2019s incendiary  Kitchen Confidential (celebrating its 25th anniversary this year).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">\n             Night People is about chasing the highs of a great mix while documenting a city that no longer exists.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu internal_BodyRagged\">Ronson may now be synonymous with global hits, but his memoir is a love letter to the nights that made him. And to the nightclubs and experiences that no longer exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final chapter of Mark Ronson\u2019s memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in 90s New York&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[34216,359,18,117,19,17,70594],"class_list":{"0":"post-114495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books-non-fiction","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-person-mark-ronson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}