Talks

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hosts of late nights past haunt the streets of downtown New York. Mark Ronson 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 Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. heard him play — and where he became the first DJ to drop “Hypnotize” before its official release — became an oyster restaurant a few years back. That’s gone now, too. But Ronson remembers it all. 

“I have so many memories of pulling up to the club and seeing everybody already on line, excited for the night ahead,” 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 — and he writes about it in his memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City. 

These 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’s in the music, too. 

“I hear Busta Rhymes ‘Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,’ and I’m instantly back in this club called Rebar on 16th and Eighth. I can smell the fucking stale beer on the floor,” Ronson says. “Music, 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.” 

You have so many memories tied to these locations that shuttered or that don’t exist in the same capacity that they once did.
The book is about a lot of things. It’s about DJing, and it’s about going out and partying and the ups and downs of that. And then it’s all about New York in the Nineties. But it’s very much like a ghost story in some ways, because it’s a New York that doesn’t 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 DJing. 

New Music Cafe was the first place where I DJed, 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’s really crazy because I have so many memories from it, no matter what’s in there now. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for a little while, I’ve lived in London. Whenever I lived in New York, I’ve never lived more than 10 blocks from this one place. It’s 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’s like when you have that static cling and your T-shirt lifts. There’s something about it.

What’s it like when you recognize someone, but you can’t place the face or the name? Are there people you wish you kept in touch with?
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’re in the corner and you can’t even really see past there. That] night Biggie came in the club,  I could feel the energy, because it’s 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’re holding all sorts of stuff. He’s like [to Biggie’s crew] “Put that in the car” — guns, swords, whatever the fuck. But Biggie was just so cool. 

He knew that he wasn’t gonna get 50 of his boys in right away, but he stood there for like an hour with a big wad of cash he’d 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’s people that I walk past on the street and I’m like, “I remember that person, or do I even know them?  Do I just remember that they were dancing there all the time?” It’s a bit of a ghost story. 

One of the standout scenes in Night People is when you dropped “Hypnotize” for the first time in a club. What was that moment like?
It was so crazy. Part of the reason I think that I wrote the book was because kids kept coming to me like, “You were in New York in the Nineties?” 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, “Why are these kids obsessed with the Nineties?” I was in the Nineties, and we thought the Eighties sounded so cool. The Nineties didn’t even sound that great. But then I understand why it’s fascinating, why it’s important, in hindsight, because it was this era in New York of Wu Tang, Biggie, [A] Tribe [Called Quest], Lil’ Kim. Even Missy 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 — oh, and this guy Jay-Z. New York was the epicenter at that moment. It was a really exciting place to be.

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 — 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, “I got the new Biggie. You can’t keep it, but I can let you play it right now and then I have to take it to [Funkmaster] Flex.” 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’s 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.

What was the catalyst for wanting to do this book in the first place? 
I was worried that the longer I held on to these stories, the hazier they would get. Blu Jemz — my great friend who passed away four or five years ago, who the book is dedicated to — 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’m like, “Why do I even keep these things?” There’s something that’s still meaningful to me about these old hip-hop 12-inches. They were just instantly conjuring stories.

Early in the book, there’s a moment where you mention your first club experience, which was Keith Haring sneaking you and Sean Lennon into Area.
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’t know how much they “snuck us in” — we weren’t in his coat, but obviously we’re 12 years old and not supposed to be there. Sean’s 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 — just doing shit that we weren’t supposed to be doing, but feeling the fun, mischievous energy of what nightclubs do. I wasn’t sneaking cocktails and downing them or anything, but it just felt a little electric. 

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?
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’d 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 Darryl 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’t 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? 

I 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’d 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 week-long 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, “Yo, you should have my band play.” We had the worst band name. It was called the Whole Earth Mamas. And he was like, “What’s your band called? Mother Earth Garden Bistro or some shit? No, sorry, you can’t play our thing.” And I [said], “What if I get my friend Sean?” “Sean who?” I was like, “Sean Lennon.” 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, “I don’t remember if you really told me, but it’s vaguely familiar, and I love you. It’s so obvious why we’re friends.” So Sean forgave me. 

When New York Magazine put you on its cover in 2000 and called you “The King of Spin,” 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.  
Really? What does Sean say?

He’s like, “He 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.” It was this whole thing, and you’re like, “Michael Jackson wanted to throw wet tissue at the walls.” 
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, “I have to show Sean this new computer that I designed.”

Michael Jackson was over during the Bad tour, slept over at Sean’s, 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’t chucking [them] at people, but it was hitting the street and sounding like bombs were going off. In my mind, I was like, “This is all really fun, but I just need to get a hit song out of Michael Jackson. That’s all I care about. I was already, I guess, at that age more producer-minded.” I remember me and Sean being like, “Michael, Michael, sing us a bass line!” I’ll never forget, he did the whole thing, like the hand out with the snap, and started to sing this bass line. That’s how he wrote music. He usually didn’t write stuff down. He would have somebody come and he’d sing them all the parts, at least that’s what I heard. We went back to my studio the next day — my stepdad had his home studio — and we made this song. It was pretty much just seven minutes of [Michael singing the bassline]. Thinking about it now and while I was writing the book, I was like, “Oh, he just kind of gave us some ‘Smooth Criminal’ leftover.” But whatever, it’s still a bassline 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, “Roberta, listen to this song that we made! Michael gave us this bass line!” After the third minute, she’s just like, “I mean, it’s the same thing for a while, but James Brown did that. So you never know!” She was just trying to be friendly. And I think after like one more minute, she [hit] eject.

There are definitely certain moments throughout the book where it sounds like a Mad Libs, where you’re just filling in the craziest name in the most ridiculous scenario. 
I didn’t 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’re just these gods. Then somehow, by the end of the Nineties in the book, Q-Tip and I are friends and DJing together. And DJ Premier, my producer hero, comes in the booth while I’m playing this song — the first record I produced, Nikka Costa — and he was like, “What is this?” I really thought he was coming in to be like, “Who made this? Who stole my whole style? What is this fucking shit?” Because he was so influential to me, in my mind, it sounded like a disciple of his. And he’s like, “This shit is hard.” 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’s very lucky.

You mention feeling like the elder people within this scene thought that you hadn’t paid your dues because your rise happened so quickly. But then you get a moment where Kid Capri is DJing and they want to take him off so you can get back on. What was that dichotomy like? 
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’t exist and Puffy didn’t 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’t 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 “Diddy” Combs’ 29th birthday party at the former Manhattan’s Merchants Exchange.]

There 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 in1997 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 — legends, you know. I kind of forgot all about it, really, because I’ve done a lot of other shit since then. I’ve 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, “Oh, that was fucking cool.”

What was the process of going back and putting yourself into that headspace of these heavier moments? There’s one scene where you’re 20 and you think you’re having a stroke.
There’s a lot of memories that I remember quite well. There’s some that are a little more hazy. Luckily, all the ones where you think you’re 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’clock, lights on, I was off to the after hours to fucking, — not every night — 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’d 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. 

I was clearly aware that this was psychosomatic. I didn’t set out to make the book that personal. When I started, I was like, this is just a DJ book and it’s gonna be about this time. Then I was like, I can’t call this book Night People and talk about all the shit that makes us want to go out at night — 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’s people who enjoy a night out, and then there’s night people. There’s 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.

There’s 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? 
Because each chapter is a different era, different people, I remember being like, “Oh, I’m gonna call [this person] when I get to that chapter.” 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’s lesser known DJs like my friend Paul Nice, Mister Cee — all these people that come in and out of the book were alive when I started it. There’s something obviously sad about it. Hopefully, there’s a way that they’re celebrated and remembered through their music and what they did and maybe this book. 

There’s 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, “Do I risk messing up the flow of this crowd just to have this moment?”
When I met Aaliyah for the first time on a Tommy Hilfiger shoot, she had already made “One in a Million,” and it was already one of my favorite records. I remember just being like, “Holy shit, I’m not even really gonna look at her.” Even for the people that I had been around, she felt like another world. It wasn’t 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]. 

We started talking and a little bit later, we did the pictures. It’s that one where she’s 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’s a picture of it that’s an outtake. I just remember being like, “I’m gonna use this moment to ask her a thousand questions about Missy and Timbaland.” 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, “They’re just cool,” as if she’s talking about her favorite aunt and uncle or some shit, not amazing alien geniuses. 

So one time, a year later — I got to be friends with Aaliyah, we hung out on other occasions — I was DJing 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, “Oh my God, it’s Aaliyah.” I was like, “What are you doing here?” She’s like, “Oh, I’m going up to the studio.” The studio that Missy and Timbland worked at that time was in Manhattan Center in that building. She was like, “Come upstairs!” I was looking down at 300 people dancing on the floor at some party I’ve been paid to play, not just go take a 20-minute bathroom break to go meet some famous people. And I was like, “I’d love to, I can’t.” She walks away and she turns back and gives me this one last look like, “What are you doing?” 

So I’d put the longest record that I had on. I think it was Donna Summer, or Diana Ross. something. I was like, “Fuck it. I don’t know if it’s gonna be long enough, but I’m not missing this opportunity.” 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 — Aaliyah, you walk around New York and there’s no way you’re 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’s 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’s like she also does still feel here.

You appeared in Aaliyah’s “More Than a Woman” video. What do you remember about shooting it?
I just remember I’m wearing these really kind of cheesy tinted shades, but that I thought looked so cool at the time. I remember Aaliyah calling me and being like, “I want you to come be in the video.” I just remember being like, “I really don’t want to fly out to L.A. for the day, but it would be nice to see her. Fuck it. Why not?” I think it was maybe a week or two later that the plane crashed. I’m obviously so grateful that I did, because that was the last time that we got to hang out.

What was it like revisiting the music from that time?
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’d listen to a certain song, a Tribe song, or Busta song, and it was instantly like, “Oh, 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.” The records were so important. I didn’t 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. 

With this book, there’ll be people who will pick it up and be like, “Where’s Amy? Where’s Gaga? Where’s Bruno? What is this fucking Mark Ronson book?” It’s obviously about a time before I was really successful in some ways, or certainly before I had any celebrity — 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,  “When I try to talk to my grandmother about DJing, all she understands is a wedding DJ or Calvin Harris.” But there’s 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’re 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. 

Is there an album coming? A Late Night Feelings follow-up? 
I’ve been working, so hopefully something. 

How much were you thinking about legacy while writing, or your oldest daughter and reading these stories?
I didn’t really think about that till I was nearly done, and then I was like, “God, is this something that I would want her to read?” I’m sure for her teenage years, she’ll just be like, “My dad’s lame, I’m not gonna listen to or read anything he did.” But I don’t know. She’s just obsessed with music now. She has a little record player with her 45s that she listens to. She’s so into putting her records on, and she’s transfixed by the whole thing. But, yeah, definitely not trying to breed a whole crew of DJs.