The Man Means Business

"I don’t have the eccentric genius gene,” Mark Ronson happily points out, and I believe him.

In fact, I believe everything the charming 35-year-old says during our time together. For all his finery, there’s not a trace of ego in this room, at least, not one big enough to fit the tens of millions of albums out there in the poposphere that bear his name. “I think I’m a good producer,” he shrugs, “I know how to get good performances out of people and every now and then turn something decent out.”
So, he’s not a musical genius, but Mark Ronson is a lot of other things. He’s the heir to the Ronson lighter fortune for one, just in case you thought there was anything less than inherently debonair about the man. He’s also Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones’ stepson, Sean Lennon’s best mate, Samantha Ronson’s brother and the only man Bob Dylan has allowed to remix his music. He’s been on a sleepover with Michael Jackson, a coked-up Robin Williams tucked him into bed as a child and Jay-Z, a fan, once called him “a nice nigga” – the more you read about Mark Ronson, the less you see him as a living, breathing person and the more he begins to resemble a curl of fly paper for madcap celebrities. Just this morning he woke up to a heap of Twitter abuse from ex-collaboratrix Amy Winehouse, who inexplicably ranted that he was “dead” to her.
Countless journalists have dubbed Ronson the best-connected man in music and talking to him now, I know why – he’s bloody easy to get on with. Once the howdy dos are out of the way, we get to laying down mutual love for smooth operator D’Angelo, who I agree deserves an award for Scream Of The Year for a squeal on Mark’s new track ‘Glass Mountain Trust’; “No-one else can do that,” he enthuses, “I mean Prince can do it, there’s a couple… but it’s so unusual, it’s like some weird, future space funk!
“I never had that cool, weird artiste song on my own album before,” he notes, reinforcing the lack of the elusive genius gene, “but I love the fact that he’s brought his eccentric magic to it.”
The exceptionally cheery Ronson played Belfast last night with his new line-up, (AKA the Business International), which includes rapper Spank Rock, Rose Eleanor Dougall of The Pipettes, Kyle Falconer from The View and Boy George who appeared in full, glittered suit.
“It was our very first gig with the new band so there were a lot of nerves” he tells me. “Most of the time I was just staring down at my keyboard desperately trying not to play the wrong note.”
It’s true that Ronson’s not a particularly dynamic performer, but then performing (unlike say, sartorial prowess, bags of money, an encyclopedic knowledge of soul music etc.) is not in his blood.
“I sang in a vocal jazz ensemble group when I was in 7th grade in America,” he laughs, “kind of like a low rent version of what you’d see in Glee. I think I harboured delusions for a minute that I was the singer in that group because I had one lead on a Stray Cats song.”
But here’s the rub. Ronson performs vocal duties on two tracks on the new album, Record Collection. Did he sing last night?
“I did.”
He sounds instantly panicked, so naturally I probe him even further. Well, how did it go?
“It was actually okay,” he muses. “It was the first time that I think I didn’t sound terribly off key. It’s so different, having to sing. Even to get it on the record I really didn’t want to do Auto-Tune or do anything to cheat, so I had to sing it a good 20 times. So now doing it live, staring at people - it’s so weird. I watched back the footage ‘cause they were filming some stuff for MTV and I looked so awkward and like, nervous when I was singing!”
The cringe is palpable.
“I looked a bit dead in the eye,” he fumbles, “like there’s nothing there. It’s one thing to hit the notes and it’s another to not put people to sleep while you’re doing it. The singers that I’ve worked with; Daniel Merriweather, Adele and obviously Amy, are such amazing singers and it’s so obvious that it’s a God given gift.”
I assure him I’ll move onto less upsetting matters in a minute (“No, no, it makes me feel like a singer, I love it!”) but before I do, how did he come to pick up the mic in the first place?
“I didn’t have too much of a choice,” he laments, “I’d written a song (‘Lose It’) with Jonathan from The Drums and he had sang on it and I loved it. Then he came back and was like; ‘Listen, I just talked to my band, they feel a bit weird about me coming out on your record as a vocalist before our band is known,’ which to me translated a bit like ‘We’re a cool indie band on the brink and we don’t need the stain of your pop album!’ But I understand that too, I might have said the same thing if I was their manager. I tried to get a few other people in bands I liked to sing it and it just wasn’t the same.
‘It’s not gonna go down in history,” he admits, in another flash of the modesty that’s becoming as synonymous with Mr. Ronson as patterned suits and hair gel, “but for what it is and what the song’s supposed to be, I think it works.”
With 2007’s Version, the maverick producer was very obviously ODing on Motown and Stax records, while on Record Collection, he’s made a distinct leap to the blip-happy ‘80s.
“I just became really obsessed with that song ‘Popcorn’ by Hot Butter,” he remembers. “There’s very few instrumental songs that enter the modern pop canon and I didn’t think we’d be making a classic, but every day we’d come to the studio and me, Alex Greenwald and Victor Axelrod who plays a lot of the keyboards would compete to see who could come up with the catchiest thing. I guess it was us trying to make a synth breakbeat record.”
With all this namedropping going on (exhibit Q: “We used a lot of ’70s analogue synthesisers, which I got inspired to do from working on the new Duran Duran album.”), I nearly forget to bring up Boy George, who lends an unexpectedly low bellow to stand-out track ‘Somebody To Love Me’.
Ronson recalls recording the song: “I could hear him warming up and he was singing a full octave lower than I imagined it in my head. I was like ‘Oh, this could be a wash!’ but the minute he sang the chorus he added so much, I don’t know, authenticity to all that pain and emotion. It suddenly became clear to me that the song had taken on a heavier meaning.”
Now I’ve uncovered a third side to Mark Ronson, a step beyond the paradox of a man in a paisley robe, desperately googling his own name. “I have a tendency, on my own records,” he continues, “maybe it’s my DJ background, to want to make everything really up and sound good in a club. Sometimes I don’t get those kind of emotional moments on my own.”

Record Collection is out now on Columbia Records. Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. play The Academy, Dublin on October 28 and a Heineken Green Spheres show on October 27 in the Clarence in Sligo. For a chance to get free tickets for the Heineken gig, log onto www.heinekenmusic.ie.