Mark Ronson On Loving Steely Dan And Finding The Funk With Bruno Mars

Producer Funked-up in his new single and music of Amy Winehouse would be doing if he had lived

Mark Ronson says there is something "big spookily" on his collaborator "Uptown Funk" Bruno Mars.

 

Mark Ronson is, at its core, a DJ and producer for other artists - who considers his four solo albums parallel projects. But for his latest work, the high concept special uptown, he and Bruno Mars have a number one, "Uptown Funk" - a Morris Day and retreat in time and only refers to the diversity of the album, with guest Kevin Tame Mystikal Impala Parker to Stevie Wonder. Ronson, 39, is happy with the success of the song, but after months of agonizing duration genesis, is even happier just finished. "What I'm really proud," he says, "is that there were many times that I would leave the studio and be like, 'Damn, man, I guess it was not meant to be." But we were going to get back together and try to save her. "

There is an atmosphere of Steely Dan some of this album, especially in the novelist Michael Chabon wrote lyrics for you. How has the band in mind?

Always the gold standard that triggers because if you are trying to make letters on interesting characters and strange antiheroes. I feel like Steely Dan's presence has never been more sense in music is considered hip and vital - you have records of Daft Punk, and I hear things like Ariel Pink.

Did you have a second option for a famous writer? Like, do you think he would have killed Jonathan Franzen?

[Laughs] Michael was the only person he thought. In my mind, it was an experiment to see if it worked. With a Pulitzer Prize winning author, it's like, "When is it OK to ask if he's down to rewrite anything?" But it was definitely okay with that. I was thinking of albums like "Auto" for the Pointer Sisters, which is an album of pop-R & B that has letters in verse as: "All I can manage to push my lips is a stream of absurdities.” I wanted to inject some twists occasionally.

This is his third hit with Bruno Mars, after "Locked out of Heaven" and "gorilla". Obviously there is some magic there.
There is something just big spookily about Bruno. It draws on fucking thing everyone - no artists who have times when they are in the area, and his music touches everyone. The same way as Michael Jackson. How come towards the end of his career, screaming kids outside their hotel, which were not even born when his latest massive log out?

How autobiographical is "Leaving Los Feliz", a song about a type of aging feeling out of place in the clubs?
I go out to clubs in New York and see my friends little brother and sister, who are, like, 15 years younger than me, and I basically feel like Uncle Marcos. I'm like, "What the hell am I doing here?" But it's not like I'm going in there drunk fall off and trying to pick up girls 20 years of age. As a DJ, I like going to listen to whatever the new type is spinning. But the song is also about what can only be a giant disco.

"I Cannot Lose" evokes so specifically eighty Jam and Lewis. Were you drawing particular songs they produced?
No, but I really love the sound of the radio black '79 to '84. With "Uptown Funk," too, everyone's like, "What song were you referring?" Nothing! Is that when me and Jeff [Bhasker] start to play with Bruno on drums, will not play, like, Mahler.

What was think was the peak of record production?
For hip-hop, I think of The Chronic, Midnight Marauders and fear of a Black Planet - which are all stylistically different. For pure freshness of solid gold, it's between '74 and '79, when multitrack recording was in full swing and got expensive records: Off the Wall, Aja, and Songs in the Key of Life.

What about the sound of pop now?
In the past, people use technology to drive the music forward, as Nile Rodgers and Duran Duran play around with vocal sampling, or Bowie and Eno using the first harmonizer to create strange sounds. Now, people use technology to make faster and easier records to cover up actions of shit. I still things recorded on tape, and takes this long to get performances, because I think it makes a difference. There is something in the subconscious brain knows it's a living, breathing thing.

Did you ever think about what Amy Winehouse could be doing musically if he had lived?
He could have made a record country-blues, you might have come to make records of straight jazz. I really do not know. I mean, his heart was always in jazz and those chords. I'm sure that if it came to me to produce the record or any other person who would have ended up pushing someone to create something new.

On a very different note, did you know that the Internet is convinced that - as a little child - wrote the theme song of the ThunderCats cartoon?

I know, that's a strange thing! I think someone came and went with my Wikipedia page. I just read aloud and thought it was so funny. I was like, "I'll just leave."