The producer and DJ helped launch the singer to superstardom with his retro-soul sound. Now, after period of self-doubt that led him to collapse, he is back with new album Uptown Special, featuring Stevie Wonder and Bruno Mars and a No1 single
It feels slightly odd to be meeting Mark Ronson on a rainy industrial estate near Caledonian Road, north London. A certain glitziness attached itself to his name even before he was famous – his mother is a New York socialite, his father a music business grandee, his stepfather a rock star – and glitziness is a commodity in fairly short supply in this particular area of King’s Cross. Now resident in London – handy for Paris, where his wife, model and actor Joséphine de La Baume, has most of her work – the industrial estate is where Ronson keeps his recording studio. Inside, it is substantially more alluring than its exterior suggests: gold discs and Grammy awards, framed vintage gig posters and flickering scented candles.
A courier arrives with a gift and a card from his record company, celebrating the arrival at No 1 in the charts of Uptown Funk, a collaboration with singer Bruno Mars that Ronson laboured over for six agonising months. He claims that he worked so hard on it that his hair started to fall out; at one point, the stress of trying to come up with a suitable guitar part caused him to vomit and faint.
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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian
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