Mark Ronson is ready to make more hits

Mark Ronson is putting the finishing touches on a song he’ll record the next day with the radio host Howard Stern. Mark has produced music for Amy Winehouse, Bruno Mars, Adele, Lady Gaga, Queens of the Stone Age, worked with Diplo, and others both numerous and legendary. So why is he doing a song with Howard Stern? Because, he tells me, he grew up in New York City as a fan of Stern’s early radio show; now he says that listening to him in the car in L.A. is one of the things that makes living there more bearable. Also, Howard asked him to do it.Still, game recognizes game: Mark grew up obsessed with mainstream rock (AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses), rhythm-based funk, R&B, and then rap, and he’s always had a feel for the real thing. Even before this past year, when he won Grammys, a Golden Globe, and the Oscar for ‘Shallow’ from A Star Is Born (along with co-writers Lady Gaga, Andrew Wyatt, and Anthony Rossomando), Mark was considered a “go to” producer.[In 2006] His solo work got him noticed in England and eventually led him to work with the woman he calls “the most iconic female artist of this generation”—Amy Winehouse.Mark better never lose his phone. His contacts include every major singer, musician, rapper, and sideman in the business. Ever since working with Amy Winehouse in 2006 on the multi-Grammy-winning Back to Black—with the exception of a period in 2011 and 2012 that he describes to me as a down, dark time (“I was partying too much, stumbling out of clubs like I was [Oasis’s] Liam Gallagher”)—it’s been nothing but one amazing project after another. Among Mark’s work was a 2018 tribute single for what would have been Michael Jackson’s 60th birthday that combined several of the singer’s hits. (Mark didn’t comment on the renewed allegations against Jackson of child molestation.) He’s worked with musicians as diverse as Paul McCartney and Romy Madley Croft of the xx, and Queens of the Stone Age, whose leader, Josh Homme, says, “He appreciates talented folks without trying to change, fix, or judge them. He’s a positive guy—in attitude and optimism. He’s a great musician across the board, but his skill is hiding his own.”After many hours of conversation over two days at Electric Lady, Mark tells me: “I’m lucky that my real success didn’t happen until I was older. I’ve been up and down, and I was lucky that my big success came when I was 32, so I knew I wasn’t going to squander it away. Some of the things that have happened to me in music are beyond anything I ever could have imagined.” So, now that he’s checked off a lot of things on his wish list—Saturday Night Live, Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, an Oscar, huge solo success, working with amazing talents—what’s next? Well, he says, coming from a big family, he wants one of his own—so children will eventually be in the picture. But, he tells me, “as clichéd as it sounds, my true heroes are people like Quincy Jones, who’s made music that’s meaningful in people’s lives for 30 or 40 years. The only thing I wake up in the morning and care about and want to do is to be in the studio getting that feeling again: to make a good piece of music.”– With information from Vanity FairThe article was edited for the sake of brevity.

from The News International - Instep Today http://bit.ly/2G5K1Nf