The genesis of the book really came to life here,” says Mark Ronson, towering over his collection of VMAs, Grammys, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar in his sun-drenched West Village home office. In Night People (Grand Central), Ronson offers a snapshot of ’90s New York City, reflecting on a time before he was halfway to an EGOT, hustling and spinning vinyl in clubs.
Holding up a 12 inch “Devil’s Pie” by D’Angelo, he says, “This was off the album Voodoo. The book is really just the nineties, but I kind of cheated. It ends January 13th, 2000, because I was DJing the album release party for Voodoo and there’s this moment that DJ Premier, who’s my absolute hero, comes in the booth to ask me about this record I’m playing, which is this record I produced. It was this really seismic moment.”
“The book starts, I’m nobody and I have all these heroes, and then it ends with this moment where my absolute hero has come in and told me that he likes this track that I’m playing that I made.”
“I’ve started playing vinyl again as a result of the book,” he says. “Records are like socks. You move 80 times and you just lose track of them. This new era of DJ’ing has been me hunting down old treasures.” Above his Ojas custom record player hangs a 2020 Wilhelm Sasnal portrait of saxophonist Ornette Coleman.
Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Ronson says, is “the best book ever about working in New York at night.” His reading diet while working on his own book also included Stephen King’s On Writing and Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir—the latter of which, he says, helped him come up with an organization system for his book, a storyboard on which he charted emotional themes, anecdotes, New York City history, atmospheric words. “I have some great, very vivid memories [from] that time,” he says. “I have some hazy memories [from] that time. Obviously I was drinking and doing drugs and partying at that time as well—not crazy, but those things definitely fuck up your memory bank.” His best Proustian madeleines proved to be music. “That was the craziest thing. I could listen to a song from 1997—Busta Rhymes, ‘Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See’—and I would suddenly flood back the memories of a club called Rebar on 16th Street where I could smell the sweaty room.” Apart from his own recall, he tapped into party flyers and phone calls to friends.
We move onto his awards, which, he admits, aren’t always just sitting atop the piano. “It is a little imposing, but it’s also—it’s insane. I mean, I remember when I was with Rashida [Jones] when we were together in the early 2000s, and going to her dad [Quincy Jones]’s house and seeing this closet. He had 37 Grammys.” (He has 27, but point taken.) Looking at his own impressive collection, he says, “If I had gone to anybody’s house and seen that, I would’ve been like, holy shit.”
Also arting his Steinway upright: A 2015 George Condo portrait of Ronson from his mother, Ann Dexter-Jones; a drawing of the blues group James Brown and the Famous Flames from his manager, Brandon Creed; and “Uptown Funk” icon drafts by Brian Roettinger. “I wrote most of the Barbie score on that piano,” he says. “I also meditate here.”
These days, his evenings sound a little different than his club nights of yore. “She likes to bang on the piano,” he says of his toddler, one of two daughters he shares with his wife, Grace Gummer. “Or I’ll play piano while she’s on the floor with her toys.”
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