Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Music producer and DJ Mark Ronson's new memoir, Night People, takes us back to a New York that no longer exists, before Mayor Rudy Giuliani's crackdown on nightlife, before camera phones and bottle service transformed the culture forever.
Chapter 2: What inspired Mark Ronson to write his memoir 'Night People'?
It's the story of how a young outsider with a British accent found his place in the 1990s club scene, learning how to read crowds, dig through crates, and create the perfect mix of venues where the city's tribes collided. Rappers and models and skaters and socialites, everyone glamorous and, as Ronson describes them, a little lawless.
Night people, as he defines them, are different than people who simply enjoy a night out. They become their best selves once the sun goes down, and daytime is just the warm-up. These formative years spinning records would shape everything that came after. Ronson is a nine-time Grammy Award winner, producing career-defining albums for Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga.
He's also behind hits like Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars, Shallow, From a Star is Born, and the Barbie soundtrack. But Night People takes us to Ronson's beginning, DJing in 90s New York and rubbing shoulders with artists that would go on to become hip-hop and R&B legends, like Biggie Smalls, Timbaland and Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Puff Daddy, and Aaliyah. Mark Ronson, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Tanya. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, you know, Mark, this was a really fun read, and it had me thinking that most of us experience the DJ from the dance floor. So this book really gives us a glimpse of what it's actually like for the DJ. And I actually think I want to start our conversation by you reading from the book.
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Chapter 3: How did Mark Ronson find his place in the 1990s New York club scene?
It's the opening scene right at the top, and it gives us a taste. Can you read it for us?
Absolutely. 2 a.m. You're at a house party, packed with people rolling up from the club, all trying to squeeze a few more hours out of Saturday night. It's not wild, but it could get there. In the kitchen, bodies huddle around a counter mixing bottom-shelf vodka with whatever's in reach. Capri Sun, kombucha, maybe both.
Out on the terrace, the diehards are smoking cigarettes like it's still 1999, ashing into a cereal bowl that's been sacrificed for the occasion. In the living room, speakers pump out a mishmash of bedroom pop and the occasional boy band classic. Somebody's go-to playlist. It's ironic, tolerable, and ultimately a bit lifeless. You can feel it, though. The party is on the verge.
It just needs someone brave enough to tip it over. You pull out your phone and cue up your surefire banger sliding over to the speaker. You hijack the aux cord like it's nothing and... A sharp electronic buzz rips through the room. Eyes snap towards you. The judgment is heavy.
But then your fingertip makes contact and the opening kick drums of fat man scoops be faithful tear through the room like blows from Thor's hammer. The shift is seismic. Cups slam to countertops.
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Chapter 4: What does Mark Ronson mean by 'night people'?
The sofa gets shoved back. Bodies flood the floor with raised hands. A collective... Finally overtakes the place. You stand by the speaker, cradling your phone like a trophy. The room is alive, buzzing, and somehow united. Your finger hovers over the screen to cue up the next heater. The crowd now trusts you. You're about to show them why.
That's my guest today, award-winning producer and DJ Mark Ronson, reading from his new memoir, Night People. Mark, I love this moment because it really is kind of a pure show of your power as a DJ. You're able to just make the room explode by the decisions that you make. And you describe in this book how nothing compares to the first time you feel it.
Take me back to the actual first time you actually experienced that rush.
Yeah. So the first time I had that feeling, I was at my mother's wedding to my stepfather. And I think I was 10 years old. And they had like a really small little wedding in the garden at this summer rental. And even though my stepdad was this really successful, huge rock star, he was in the band Foreigner and wrote all these songs, I Want to Know What Love Is, Waiting for a Girl Like You.
It seemed like the music at the wedding was almost an afterthought. I think they were playing a tape deck in the house that was wired to some speakers in the garden. And then one point, as the sun was going down, the music just kind of stopped entirely. You heard the cassette kind of snap. And Mick just looked at me and he was like, Ma, go put something on.
And, you know, obviously this felt like all the responsibility of the world in my hands, like this little kid obsessed with music, like my stepdad saying, like, you can control the music, you know, like at this wedding. ran in the house, and there were all these cassettes on the floor, and I remember, like, searching through them, and there was nothing that seemed right.
And then I saw Timepieces, the best of Eric Clapton, and I was like, ah! And even in my, like, 10-year-old brain, I saw the song Wonderful Tonight on there, and I was like, that is an appropriate song for now. That is, like, my mom looks wonderful in her dress, and it seems romantic, and I'm going to put that on. I quickly queued it up. They, you know, had some crazy...
80s cassette deck with an autocue and found the song hit play and I remember standing inside the house looking through the window as my stepdad pulls my mom in for like a slow dance and the moon and you know I even say in the book my memory here is blurry and it might be a little Hollywood it out but it was like he brought her and she's luminescent in this dress and I just stood there watching this scene slightly drunk off this feeling of like oh my god you know this is my music
playing out there, but also it was this thing. It was like the first time in my life I genuinely have a memory of having done something right. So, you know, obviously at that moment that wasn't like my Spider-Man Genesis story. It wasn't something like, ah, now I'm going to be a DJ.
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Chapter 5: What was Mark Ronson's first experience that made him feel the rush of DJing?
Nobody was coming with me. And those were the nights when, you know, I mean, I kind of write about it, like sometimes leaving my apartment would be like that riddle of the teacher in school, the fox, the farmer and the bag of grain and the fox and the chicken and the farmer has to take them across the thing. So I had three crates and
put one in my front door to keep the door open, call the elevator, put one in the elevator to keep the elevator door open, go back for the third one that was in the apartment, put that in the elevator, pick up the one that was in my apartment door, bring that over on the way and kick the one that's holding the elevator door open.
All the way downstairs, I'm already breaking a sweat and then repeat the whole thing in reverse. And that was like in the apartment. That was only one building where I ever had an elevator. The rest of it were like four or five-story walk-ups. So you were really like...
Yeah, you had broken a sweat before you were even in the cab on the way to the club, but I was 22, you know, my back could take it. It's a little bit different now.
Yeah, what's your back like today?
Yeah, it's not very grateful to that 22-year-old DJ. I have like, you know, listen, it's not like... Maybe being a chef or another intense line of thing where you're just like covered in cuts, bruises and calluses. But I still have, I only found out two years ago that I have this crazy arthritis in my right foot from 25 years. The doctor, when I went in, he was like,
Oh, I watched a YouTube video of you. I noticed you kind of, like, really aggressively tap your foot while you're DJing. And I had never thought about this because you're just tapping to the beat. He's like, yeah, that happens to musicians in the fill. Like, even just tapping your foot for 30 years, that's a thing. So I've named it DJ Foot because I just, like, want it to be, like, my own.
But no, it's... And then... I'm not proud of any of this, but terrible tinnitus. My back is completely messed up from 25 years of headphones on. You've got your neck crooked to one side.
Which looked kind of cool. That always is kind of the stance.
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Chapter 6: How did Mark Ronson's upbringing influence his music career?
Is it something that can be taught?
I mean, that's why they call it, you know, the expression reading a room. Like, it's like, I don't know if it literally goes back to DJing, but it's like reading the floor, reading the room, reading the dance floor. It's like, there's so much of it that's just, yes, it's the interplay between you and the crowd. You could be in the best... nightclub in the world with the best sound system.
It doesn't matter if the crowd isn't with you and you don't have a relationship with them. That's what it all comes down to, certainly for a great night.
Mark Ronson, it's such a pleasure to talk to you, and thank you so much for this fun read.
Thank you so much.
Mark Ronson's new memoir about DJing in the 90s New York club scene is called Night People. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, President Trump recently stepped up pressure on the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies. One of them, former FBI Director James Comey, was indicted last week. Legal scholar and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuaid joins us to talk about what this means for U.S.
law and the precedent it sets. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shurock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.
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