{"id":53526,"date":"2025-09-09T18:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T18:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/53526\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T18:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T18:49:08","slug":"mark-ronson-talks-new-memoir-night-people-nineties-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/53526\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Ronson Talks New Memoir &#8216;Night People,&#8217; Nineties New York"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n<p>\t\t\tG<br \/>\n\t\thosts of late nights past haunt the streets of downtown New York. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/mark-ronson\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Ronson<\/a> can see them everywhere: In Tribeca, there are remnants of New Music Cafe, where Ronson made the jump to flyer-billed headlining DJ at a party called Sweet Thang in his early twenties. That same address, where Brooklyn legends <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/author\/jay-z\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jay-Z<\/a> and Notorious B.I.G. heard him play \u2014 and where he became the first DJ to drop \u201cHypnotize\u201d before its official release \u2014 became an oyster restaurant a few years back. That\u2019s gone now, too. But Ronson remembers it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cI have so many memories of pulling up to the club and seeing everybody already on line, excited for the night ahead,\u201d the DJ turned Grammy Award-winning producer recalls. Night after night, he came to understand the difference between people who enjoy a night out and night people \u2014 and he writes about it in his memoir <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/mark-ronson-memoir-night-people-1235304114\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Night People: How to Be a DJ in \u201990s New York City<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThese days, Ronson is a bit of both. Now 50, a husband, and a father of two, he carries the memories in his bones quite literally: He has chronic neck problems and inflamed joints from countless nights spent hunched over turntables. It\u2019s in the music, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cI hear Busta Rhymes \u2018Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,\u2019 and I\u2019m instantly back in this club called Rebar on 16th and Eighth. I can smell the fucking stale beer on the floor,\u201d Ronson says. \u201cMusic, even more than other forms of art, stays in your body because the bass and things like that somehow change the molecules in your body.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>You have so many memories tied to these locations that shuttered or that don\u2019t exist in the same capacity that they once did.<\/strong><br \/>The book is about a lot of things. It\u2019s about DJ\u2019ing, and it\u2019s about going out and partying and the ups and downs of that. And then it\u2019s all about New York in the Nineties. But it\u2019s very much like a ghost story in some ways, because it\u2019s a New York that doesn\u2019t exist anymore, especially downtown New York. It was so different in those days. Some of those clubs opened and shuttered five times, even in the course of the Nineties when I was DJ\u2019ing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tNew Music Cafe was the first place where I DJ\u2019d, and Biggie would come down. I remember the first time he brought Jay-Z down, and Jay-Z only had, like, two songs to his name. He was the prince of New York; Biggie was the king. It was all these amazing things. I was a 21-year-old kid, and the people from my record sleeves are coming to life and just populating the party. Whenever I walk past that building, it\u2019s really crazy because I have so many memories from it, no matter what\u2019s in there now. I\u2019ve lived in Los Angeles for a little while, I\u2019ve lived in London. Whenever I lived in New York, I\u2019ve never lived more than 10 blocks from this one place. It\u2019s always in my life. The very end of the book is me walking around downtown with my two-year-old daughter strapped to me in a BabyBjorn, seeing all these shuttered places and trying to remember names. Whenever I walk past that place I get a charge. It\u2019s like when you have that static cling and your T-shirt lifts. There\u2019s something about it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>What\u2019s it like when you recognize someone, but you can\u2019t place the face or the name? Are there people you wish you kept in touch with?<\/strong><br \/>For the book, I interviewed like 150 people, because I knew that there was so much exciting shit going on around me, but I was stuck in this fucking booth most of the time. Some of the clubs were just some weird-ass thing where you\u2019re in the corner, and you can\u2019t even really see past there. That night Biggie came in the club,\u00a0I could feel the energy, because it\u2019s almost like the whispers would just become deafening. And then I was straining my neck trying to fucking see where he is. Frank, who was at the door, [told] me this insane story that Biggie rolled up with 50 dudes, and they\u2019re holding all sorts of stuff. He\u2019s like [to Biggie\u2019s crew] \u201cPut that in the car\u201d \u2014 guns, swords, whatever the fuck. But Biggie was just so cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tHe knew that he wasn\u2019t gonna get 50 of his boys in right away, but he stood there for like an hour with a big wad of cash he\u2019d give Frank every five minutes to let a guy in. He waited till his entire crew was in. I wanted to paint that scene as vividly as possible. That meant talking to whoever was at the club that night. So I did reconnect with a lot of people from that era while writing the book, and it was nice. But yes, there\u2019s people that I walk past on the street and I\u2019m like, \u201cI remember that person, or do I even know them?\u00a0Do I just remember that they were dancing there all the time?\u201d It\u2019s a bit of a ghost story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>One of the standout scenes in Night People<\/strong> <strong>is when you dropped \u201cHypnotize\u201d for the first time in a club. What was that moment like? <br \/><\/strong>It was so crazy. Part of the reason I think that I wrote the book was because kids kept coming to me like, \u201cYou were in New York in the Nineties?\u201d This was maybe five to seven years ago, before Tyler, [the Creator] and a lot of people paid homage in their own ways. But I was just like, \u201cWhy are these kids obsessed with the Nineties?\u201d I was in the Nineties, and we thought the Eighties sounded so cool. The Nineties didn\u2019t even sound that great. But then I understand why it\u2019s fascinating, why it\u2019s important, in hindsight, because it was this era in New York of Wu Tang, Biggie, [A] Tribe [Called Quest], Lil\u2019 Kim. Even Missy [Elliott] and Timbaland, who were from Virginia, Pharrell and Chad [Hugo], they were all in the clubs and they were coming to New York to make records \u2014 oh, and this guy Jay-Z. New York was the epicenter at that moment. It was a really exciting place to be. <strong\/><\/p>\n<p>Biggie would be in the club sometimes because I was playing. It was at that same party on Canal Street. There was a promotion guy from Bad Boy Records. Because I had the hot party on Tuesday, he came through with this acetate \u2014 which is a straight-from-the-factory piece of vinyl that could only be played 10 times and fucking self-destructs or something. He was like, \u201cI got the new Biggie. You can\u2019t keep it, but I can let you play it right now, and then I have to take it to [Funkmaster] Flex.\u201d I put it on, heard a tiny bit of it in the headphones, and then just dropped it. The whole club was just like it had been hit by a meteor. There was something so sacred and special about this thing. It was maybe on the radio once, but for the most part, 400 or 500 people are hearing this song all at the same time for the very first time. When it\u2019s a fucking incredible song like that, you could feel the molecules in the room change. It was like this fucking 500-person orgasm or something.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>What was the catalyst for wanting to do this book in the first place?\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>I was worried that the longer I held on to these stories, the hazier they would get. Blu Jemz \u2014 my great friend who passed away four or five years ago, who the book is dedicated to \u2014 used to hang and DJ at this place called Le Bain. After he passed away, Le Bain wanted to throw a party. I was gonna DJ that night, and I remember sitting around in my room with all the records around. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy do I even keep these things?\u201d There\u2019s something that\u2019s still meaningful to me about these old hip-hop 12-inches. They were just instantly conjuring stories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>Early in the book, there\u2019s a moment where you mention your first club experience, which was Keith Haring sneaking you and Sean Lennon into Area. <br \/><\/strong>There was this really iconic club in downtown New York called Area in the Eighties, and it was where the art world and hip-hop and everything came together. I don\u2019t know how much they \u201csnuck us in\u201d \u2014 we weren\u2019t in his coat, but obviously we\u2019re 12 years old and not supposed to be there. Sean\u2019s mom, Yoko, was good friends with Keith. I do remember just being in this very dark room, this ashy carpet, crawling around on the floor, running in between grown-ups \u2014 just doing shit that we weren\u2019t supposed to be doing, but feeling the fun, mischievous energy of what nightclubs do. I wasn\u2019t sneaking cocktails and downing them or anything, but it just felt a little electric.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>You describe Sean moving away as your first heartbreak, in a really sweet way. What was the significance of being able to share these memories with him?<\/strong><br \/>Because the book is really about clubs and stuff, when I was writing I was like, who cares about my fucking childhood? Like, just skip to the club shit. But I realized I had to give a little bit of context, because I grew up in this crazy house. My parents were, God bless them, kind of party animals. I remember being a kid in England and waking up in the middle of the night, and there\u2019d just be 50 grown-ups in the house. Waking up to go to school at seven in the morning, my dad is still up playing chess with fucking Daryl Hall or some shit. When we moved to New York when my parents split, my mom married a musician, my stepdad, Mick [Jones], so kind of the same thing. I realized, I didn\u2019t just get this suddenly, this fucking draw to the night by myself. Part of the book being called Night People is exploring that. What makes us all drawn to the night?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tI used to play music with Sean; he was my best friend growing up. He went to go to this fancy boarding school in Switzerland and I was kind of like, what the fuck do I do now? I\u2019d put together this other band, and we just played high school parties and bars on Bleecker Street. But I wanted to get us this big gig for this thing called the New Music Seminar that used to happen in New York. It was a weeklong showcase where all the big bands would play. I ran up to this guy who threw this big night; he had Arrested Development and all these other people. I was like, \u201cYo, you should have my band play.\u201d We had the worst band name. It was called the Whole Earth Mamas. And he was like, \u201cWhat\u2019s your band called? Mother Earth Garden Bistro or some shit? No, sorry, you can\u2019t play our thing.\u201d And I [said], \u201cWhat if I get my friend Sean?\u201d \u201cSean who?\u201d I was like, \u201cSean Lennon.\u201d So he came up, but actually the gig was a bit of a disaster. I always felt bad because I sold out my friend to get this gig and whatever else happened. I realized I never told Sean this story. He was like, \u201cI don\u2019t remember if you really told me, but it\u2019s vaguely familiar, and I love you. It\u2019s so obvious why we\u2019re friends.\u201d So Sean forgave me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>When New York Magazine put you on its cover in 2000 and called you \u201cThe King of Spin,\u201d the profile mentioned a moment where Sean is telling this story about you both hanging out with Michael Jackson. The way that he tells it is so different from the way that you tell it in Night People.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>Really? What does Sean say?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>He\u2019s like, \u201cHe was in town during the Bad tour, and we got him to record this melody. We turned it into this song, and we showed it to Roberta Flack.\u201d It was this whole thing, and you\u2019re like, \u201cMichael Jackson wanted to throw wet tissue at the walls.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>He did. Michael Jackson was friendly with Sean, because Sean was Sean Lennon. He was so sharp and witty. He had this magnetism. People were drawn to him, and he had all these cool friends. I remember Steve Jobs would come over to the house and be like, \u201cI have to show Sean this new computer that I designed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tMichael Jackson was over during the Bad tour, slept over at Sean\u2019s, and he was running up and down the hallway at the Dakota. He just wanted to throw soggies out the window. Soggies are when you take a giant mound of wet toilet paper and then just chuck. Sean lived on the seventh floor. He wasn\u2019t chucking [them] at people, but it was hitting the street and sounding like bombs were going off. In my mind, I was like, \u201cThis is all really fun, but I just need to get a hit song out of Michael Jackson. That\u2019s all I care about. I was already, I guess, at that age more producer-minded.\u201d I remember me and Sean being like, \u201cMichael, Michael, sing us a bass line!\u201d I\u2019ll never forget, he did the whole thing, like the hand out with the snap, and started to sing this bass line. That\u2019s how he wrote music. He usually didn\u2019t write stuff down. He would have somebody come and he\u2019d sing them all the parts, at least that\u2019s what I heard. We went back to my studio the next day \u2014 my stepdad had his home studio \u2014 and we made this song. It was pretty much just seven minutes of [Michael singing the bass line]. Thinking about it now and while I was writing the book, I was like, \u201cOh, he just kind of gave us some \u2018Smooth Criminal\u2019 leftover.\u201d But whatever, it\u2019s still a bass line from Michael Jackson. We put some horns on it, some sample Eighties horns. That night, we went to the Michael show. And because Sean also lived in the same building with Roberta Flack, she took us to the show. I know these stories sound so fucking crazy. Sean was like, \u201cRoberta, listen to this song that we made! Michael gave us this bass line!\u201d After the third minute, she\u2019s just like, \u201cI mean, it\u2019s the same thing for a while, but James Brown did that. So you never know!\u201d She was just trying to be friendly. And I think after like one more minute, she [hit] eject.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Mark-Ronson_Sacha-Lecca_SIL_3751-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-lazy- data-lazy- height=\"1024\" width=\"683\" decoding=\"async\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotograph by Sacha Lecca<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>There are definitely certain moments throughout the book where it sounds like a Mad Libs, where you\u2019re just filling in the craziest name in the most ridiculous scenario.\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>I didn\u2019t even tell anyone at school the night that we hung out with Michael, because even I knew, at 13, at some level, that kids are just gonna fucking hate me. Even the fact that when the book started, Q-Tip is this hero, and DJ Premier is his hero, and I maybe brush shoulders with them in a record store or something. But they\u2019re just these gods. Then somehow, by the end of the Nineties in the book, Q-Tip and I are friends and DJ\u2019ing together. And DJ Premier, my producer hero, comes in the booth while I\u2019m playing this song \u2014 the first record I produced, Nikka Costa \u2014 and he was like, \u201cWhat is this?\u201d I really thought he was coming in to be like, \u201cWho made this? Who stole my whole style? What is this fucking shit?\u201d Because he was so influential to me, in my mind, it sounded like a disciple of his. And he\u2019s like, \u201cThis shit is hard.\u201d For three minutes he was bobbing his head. To even have those experiences that I had, even at that age, is really, I understand it\u2019s very lucky.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>You mention feeling like the elder people within this scene thought that you hadn\u2019t paid your dues because your rise happened so quickly. But then you get a moment where Kid Capri is DJ\u2019ing, and they want to take him off so you can get back on. What was that dichotomy like?\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>I started around 18, playing five nights a week and just being so devoted to it and ambitious. By the time I was 21 or 22, Puffy had completely changed the face of New York. There was no way not to talk about it, even with everything going on. To try and just pretend that that didn\u2019t exist and Puffy didn\u2019t have something to do with how New York changed at times, and even how it helped my career, would have been insincere, even though I didn\u2019t have a lot of personal interaction with him. I was hired by his guys, and as long as he was dancing, I knew I was good. [Ronson opened for Kid Capri at Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u2019 29th birthday party at the former Manhattan\u2019s Merchants Exchange.]<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThere was this moment that happened in New York, Jay-Z and Damon Dash just coming in. All these clubs downtown that were these kind of exclusive, boring, model-type hang spots just suddenly were on fire and so many hip-hop parties. I was there at that moment. The biggest DJ before my era was Stretch Armstrong, and then after me, there was this incredible DJ that a lot of people know, DJ AM. There was just this little moment in 1997 to 2001 or whatever the fuck. This was my zone. It was amazing to be playing sets with Grandmaster Flash and Funkmaster Flex and DJ Enuff and Kid Capri \u2014 legends, you know. I kind of forgot all about it, really, because I\u2019ve done a lot of other shit since then. I\u2019ve drank a lot, and I did drugs and my brain is a cloudy mess at times. But to go back and relive that thing and be like, \u201cOh, that was fucking cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>What was the process of going back and putting yourself into that headspace of these heavier moments? There\u2019s one scene where you\u2019re 20 and you think you\u2019re having a stroke. <br \/><\/strong>There\u2019s a lot of memories that I remember quite well. There\u2019s some that are a little more hazy. Luckily, all the ones where you think you\u2019re about to die stay in your head a little bit more. I would have this thing where I was so ambitious, I could keep all my partying under control to some extent. I never was fucked up at the gigs. I cared too much about it. But four o\u2019clock, lights on, I was off to the after hours to fucking \u2014 not every night \u2014 but definitely get fucked up and party. I started to have these weird, insane anxiety attacks. Especially because of family history and stuff like that, I\u2019d do drugs but then instantly have this weird guilt and shame and anxiety around it. I remember one night, some friends had drugs, and we all did it. I thought I was, 30 seconds later, having a heart attack. I found out the next day that it was talcum powder.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tI was clearly aware that this was psychosomatic. I didn\u2019t set out to make the book that personal. When I started, I was like, this is just a DJ book and it\u2019s gonna be about this time. Then I was like, I can\u2019t call this book Night People and talk about all the shit that makes us want to go out at night \u2014 not everyone was going out to get fucked up. People were going out to commune and be around other people. Some people just loved the music. They wanted to dance. But there were a lot of us who were going out because we were broken. Night gave some people an extra coat of armor, or swag, or whatever you want to call it. If your life was kind of fucked up, you could leave all your daytime shit behind and go out at night. I try to say in the book, there\u2019s people who enjoy a night out, and then there\u2019s night people. There\u2019s the balance. But for the people that I knew that really became my crew and my family at that time, we were all lovingly sort of derelict and a little cracked in our own ways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>There\u2019s a lot of grief attached to that, as well. Before you decided to put all of this in a book, how often were you sitting around and catching up with people and telling these stories?\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>Because each chapter is a different era, different people, I remember being like, \u201cOh, I\u2019m gonna call [this person] when I get to that chapter.\u201d And two or three people that I was really close to in that time passed away while writing the book. The book is dedicated to AM and Blu Jemz, who was the best night person I ever knew. He had a label called Night People, and the spirit of him is in this book. Fatman Scoop, DJ Neva, there\u2019s lesser-known DJs like my friend Paul Nice, Mister Cee \u2014 all these people that come in and out of the book were alive when I started it. There\u2019s something obviously sad about it. Hopefully, there\u2019s a way that they\u2019re celebrated and remembered through their music and what they did and maybe this book.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>There\u2019s one scene in the book where you throw a track on so that you can go see Missy Elliott and Timbaland with Aaliyah for a moment and then run back. Take me back to that and thinking, \u201cDo I risk messing up the flow of this crowd just to have this moment?\u201d<\/strong><br \/>When I met Aaliyah for the first time on a Tommy Hilfiger shoot, she had already made \u201cOne in a Million,\u201d and it was already one of my favorite records. I remember just being like, \u201cHoly shit, I\u2019m not even really gonna look at her.\u201d Even for the people that I had been around, she felt like another world. It wasn\u2019t someone I knew from the clubs around New York that happened to be famous. She was just so sweet and just radiated this amazing [energy].\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tWe started talking and a little bit later, we did the pictures. It\u2019s that one where she\u2019s behind the booth. We took a lunch break, and she came over and she wanted to fuck around with the turntables. They were still hooked up, so she was scratching. I think there\u2019s a picture of it that\u2019s an outtake. I just remember being like, \u201cI\u2019m gonna use this moment to ask her a thousand questions about Missy and Timbaland.\u201d I had started to make beats and stuff. I had no idea what I was doing, but they were like heroes. She was just like, \u201cThey\u2019re just cool,\u201d as if she\u2019s talking about her favorite aunt and uncle or some shit, not amazing alien geniuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tSo one time, a year later \u2014 I got to be friends with Aaliyah, we hung out on other occasions \u2014 I was DJ\u2019ing this party at the Manhattan Ballroom. I was on the balcony, and I see these two towering dudes coming towards me with this little person in the middle. And I was like, \u201cOh, my God, it\u2019s Aaliyah.\u201d I was like, \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d She\u2019s like, \u201cOh, I\u2019m going up to the studio.\u201d The studio that Missy and Timbland worked at that time was in Manhattan Center in that building. She was like, \u201cCome upstairs!\u201d I was looking down at 300 people dancing on the floor at some party I\u2019ve been paid to play, not just go take a 20-minute bathroom break to go meet some famous people. And I was like, \u201cI\u2019d love to, I can\u2019t.\u201d She walks away, and she turns back and gives me this one last look like, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tSo I\u2019d put the longest record that I had on. I think it was Donna Summer or Diana Ross, something. I was like, \u201cFuck it. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s gonna be long enough, but I\u2019m not missing this opportunity.\u201d I ran up and she took me in, just really briefly. It was my first time in a really big, fancy recording studio like that, like a modern one, other than maybe being with my stepdad. Timbaland was on a StarTech, and there was a beat playing super loud. Missy was on the couch, and Aaliyah just went and sat next to her. She started singing something in her ear, whatever the melody was. And then I was just like, this is fucking crazy. I hung for three minutes and ran back downstairs. I got back in time. No one knew. It is crazy to think that these people who feel so present \u2014 Aaliyah, you walk around New York and there\u2019s no way you\u2019re gonna make it to Fifth Avenue without seeing her on a T-shirt, and her music has just never been more relevant. Of course, we all wish she was here. It\u2019s amazing to think what she would still be doing if she was, but because of her music and how larger than life her legacy has been, it\u2019s like she also does still feel here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>You appeared in Aaliyah\u2019s \u201cMore Than a Woman\u201d video. What do you remember about shooting it<\/strong>?<br \/>I just remember I\u2019m wearing these really kind of cheesy tinted shades, but that I thought looked so cool at the time.<strong> <\/strong>I remember Aaliyah calling me and being like, \u201cI want you to come be in the video.\u201d I just remember being like, \u201cI really don\u2019t want to fly out to L.A. for the day, but it would be nice to see her. Fuck it. Why not?\u201d I think it was maybe a week or two later that the plane crashed. I\u2019m obviously so grateful that I did, because that was the last time that we got to hang out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>What was it like revisiting the music from that time?<\/strong><br \/>Music was almost my best friend and tool creating this. Some of these things are from 30 years ago. Some of the memories are hazy, but music just does something to your body. When I was trying to was trying to remember things, I\u2019d listen to a certain song, a Tribe song, or Busta song, and it was instantly like, \u201cOh, right, it was in that room, and there was this guy down there smoking a cigarette looking up at me when I dropped the record, and then he dropped his drink because he put his hands in the air.\u201d The records were so important. I didn\u2019t put the celebrities or the famous people stories in as a hook to draw people in. It was more just like, those are things that happened on that night. But the music was the most important thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tWith this book, there\u2019ll be people who will pick it up and be like, \u201cWhere\u2019s Amy? Where\u2019s Gaga? Where\u2019s Bruno? What is this fucking Mark Ronson book?\u201d It\u2019s obviously about a time before I was really successful in some ways, or certainly before I had any celebrity \u2014 I mean, at least outside of a little circle of New York. I really wanted it to be about the music. I remember some DJ said something funny that was like,\u00a0 \u201cWhen I try to talk to my grandmother about DJ\u2019ing, all she understands is a wedding DJ or Calvin Harris.\u201d But there\u2019s also this thing in between of what I was back then, which was a gigging DJ, going to work playing shit because you love music, and you need the check, and you\u2019re dealing with all the hassles and fucking cokehead club owners and lunatic drunk people making requests. But you just do it because you love it. And then some nights you go home having the best energy. Some nights you go home as lonely as you could ever feel. And just to get across that feeling of being a DJ, the music side was important to at least try and paint as well as I could.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>Is there an album coming? A Late Night Feelings follow-up?\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>I\u2019ve been working, so hopefully something.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>How much were you thinking about legacy while writing, or your oldest daughter and reading these stories?<br \/><\/strong>I didn\u2019t really think about that till I was nearly done, and then I was like, \u201cGod, is this something that I would want her to read?\u201d I\u2019m sure for her teenage years, she\u2019ll just be like, \u201cMy dad\u2019s lame, I\u2019m not gonna listen to or read anything he did.\u201d But I don\u2019t know. She\u2019s just obsessed with music now. She has a little record player with her 45s that she listens to. She\u2019s so into putting her records on, and she\u2019s transfixed by the whole thing. But, yeah, definitely not trying to breed a whole crew of DJs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"G hosts of late nights past haunt the streets of downtown New York. Mark Ronson can see them&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,18,117,19,17,39081],"class_list":{"0":"post-53526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-mark-ronson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53526","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=53526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}