To get away with the suit Mark Ronson is wearing today (blue stripes on white,
solid blue collar, bum-freezer jacket, cropped trousers tight as a
tourniquet), you must be able to tick a series of boxes. Young and Slim go
without saying. Handsome helps a lot. But to really carry it off on the
streets of London and not look like some affected fop, you need to have
Rich, Successful and Very Confident at your disposal, too. The record
producer, DJ and fashionable man of the moment, 32, is all of these things
and more, and hence carries his clothes with ease and style. “Do you like
it?” he asks of his ensemble (by the Swedish-born, New York-based designer
Patrik Ervell, and a recent purchase). “Who else cares enough to wear
seersucker in a light colour? It’s just me and Tom Wolfe, I think.”
Such casual self-absorption does not translate well to paper. But still
there’s something likeable, even charming about the man behind the albums
Back to Black (by Amy Winehouse), Alright, Still (Lily Allen) and Version
(his very own, but featuring guest vocals by a variety of artists, most
notably Winehouse on the hit reworking of a Zutons song, Valerie). And
that’s impressive, given that within the space of one year, his status here
has gone from that of relatively unknown DJ/producer to that of media
ubiquity (his very presence at festival turntables this summer is being
counted on to boost the bankability of one outdoor event after another).
Even so, Ronson knows his time is precious. Spending an hour in his company is
like hanging on to the coat-tails of someone living a life that Heat readers
can only dream of, as I discover on meeting him, on what is a whistlestop
visit back to the capital, and driving with him east from Notting Hill. No
sooner are we in gear than he proposes a detour. Today is the 21st birthday
of his half-sister Henrietta and there is a package he absolutely must drop
off. In fact, the first thing he did on arriving at Heathrow this morning
was to call Allen and ask her advice about a suitable gift. “Lily’s really
good and sweet like that. She said, ‘There’s this cool bag and I’m calling
Chanel right now. Just drop by and pick it up!’ Which I did. Right and then
first left please [he is now addressing the driver] and stop just where
those balloons are being delivered.” He reaches for the door handle. “I’ll
only be a minute,” he promises, and duly is.
Family is important to him, Ronson confirms, on rejoining me for the remainder
of our short journey to his Soho hotel. And how big is that family? “I’ve
got two full [twin] sisters. Then, after my parents split, Dad [Laurence
Ronson, one-time manager of Bucks Fizz and the brother of property tycoon
Gerald] remarried and had two more children with my stepmum, Michelle. And
Mum got remarried also [to Mick Jones, of the band Foreigner] and had
another two. Plus, my stepdad had two sons from a previous marriage. So the
answer to your question is, ‘Pretty big.’ Yet everyone really
gets on. It’s not like we’re all together every Christmas but, for example,
Henrietta here is close to Annabel, my half-sister in New York, even though
they don’t share a single parent.”
By the time he has explained this, we have arrived in Soho and Ronson has
climbed out, palmed the driver a thank-you £20 from his billfold, led me
into and across the hotel foyer and settled us at the quietest possible
table in a restaurant still busy at the fag end of lunchtime (some scraping
and bowing ensues, menus are proffered and quick choices made). The entire
negotiation has been conducted like a well-rehearsed dance routine, causing
me to wonder just how someone grows up to be as smooth, self-assured and
socially adept. Where does it come from, this quiet but clearly innate sense
of, well, entitlement? I blame the parents. Or more specifically Ronson’s
mum, Ann Dexter-Jones, who would appear to have effected her son’s ascent as
successfully as she did her own.
Profiles of her tend to be variations on the theme “From Southport schoolgirl
to New York socialite!”, charting as they do her reinvention as an
Upper East Side mover and shaker. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” he
notes languidly and in an accent largely untouched by a near
quarter-century’s habitation in New York. “She’s written about as someone
who’s constantly networking. But she’s not. She’s just extremely well liked.
She arrived in America as the new wife of this rock’n’roller, my stepdad
[Ronson was eight at the time] and I think it was the fact of her being a
very English, quirky, smart and stylish young woman that helped her become
big on the scene there.”
At ontheinside.info, a website offering visitors
“a personality-driven guide” to her adopted home city, Dexter-Jones is
described as, “a New York icon, rock-star wife, reiki master, mum to a
brilliant brood of talented DJs, designers and musicians, club-hopper,
tireless philanthropist and freelance writer”. Blimey! But her son bristles
at the more widespread use of the term “socialite”. “She doesn’t go to the
Met Ball. She’s not some vacuous butterfly who spends her time lunching at
places up and down Park Avenue. So yes, I get offended when people label her
as that. It’s insulting, and to me as well as her, because it makes me
sound like a spoilt brat, which I’m not.”
He carefully examines the contents of his newly arrived salad – evidence of
his religious faith? Ronson smiles, saying that while he avoids eating pork
and shellfish, he attends synagogue “only on high days and holidays”. But
the smile broadens to a grin when asked if, growing up, he had felt a weight
of expectation from his high-achieving, well-connected parents [New York
society aside, politicians Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Sir Leon Brittan figure
within his extended family]. “Of course I did. I’m the first-born son in a
Jewish family, so a lot was going to be expected of me, whatever field I
went into.” But, he insists again, he was never spoilt or coddled or given
an easy ride. “In fact the opposite. My mother definitely instilled in us
her pretty heavy value system.
“It kicked in as soon as we moved to New York. Such a culture gap. American
kids I knew were allowed to sit up all night drinking soda and eating
Twinkies. Not me. And when I was older and they could stay out till midnight
on the weekends, I’d still be expected home at 9.30pm. At the time I was
like, ‘She’s such a hard-arse! She really sucks!’, and a couple of times I
ran away from home in a vague, ill-conceived spirit of rebellion. But now
that I’m grown up I think, ‘F***, I’m glad she did that because look, I
didn’t turn out like an idiot.’” Dexter-Jones also insisted he take jobs
when on summer recess from his elite Manhattan school. Hard labour? “When I
was 12, 13 and 14 I interned at Rolling Stone magazine,” he replies
quickly, applying himself to his food.
Not quite the same as being sent up a chimney, but at least reflective of what
has been since childhood his abiding passion: music. Ronson inherited his
father’s love of classic soul and r’n’b, then as a teenager augmented his
tastes with contemporary sounds discovered on trips to London to visit
family. “And later, after I’d begun DJing [his mother’s little black book
can’t have harmed his early adoption by a gilded New York set], I’d come
over regularly to play the club night Yo Yo even though it only paid £250
and the plane ticket alone cost me double that. I needed it for my own
sanity, in-between doing all these cheesy gigs in Vegas or wherever. Those
five years of coming back have everything to do with where I am now. They
kept me excited. It was at Yo Yo that I first met Lily. Amy, too.”
Back in the US, Ronson’s workload as deckmaster of choice to fashionable
society was becoming heavier and more lucrative, and reached its zenith with
DJing at the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wedding. “I spent six years as ‘the
celebrity DJ’. People I admire would say, ‘You’re the best!’, which is all
very nice but not when you want to be known as the producer of records that
make a difference. I saw that I had to change the way I was living my life.”
Incrementally, and via talent, luck and some great, great tracks, he’s now
achieved his goal. So what is Ronson’s secret in the studio?
He shrugs. “You hear of these really antagonistic producers who rile artists
up to anger in order to get a passionate performance, but that’s not how I
am. For me there has to be some kind of rapport and mutual respect. And I’ve
been lucky in that everyone I’ve worked with [including Robbie Williams,
Christina Aguilera and, most recently, one of his own favourite bands, the
Kaiser Chiefs] has been cool. I haven’t experienced one diva or egomaniac.”
Clearly, he brings more than just engineering know-how and a love of music
to the table though. Empathy, for example (his protective silence on the
subject of Winehouse’s troubles, though frustrating journalistically, is a
credit to him), and an ability to translate an artist’s vision of themselves
into sonic reality.
