STACK Feb Issue 124

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MUSIC visit
FEBRUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
COVER FEATURE
Mark Ronson’s new album
Uptown Special is a love letter
to the NYC clubs of his youth.
It also stars a Motown music
legend, an Australian, and a
Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist.
Jonathan Alley unravels it all.
M ark Ronson is a rare beast. Lionised
by serious music fans, his singles still
shoot up the charts. The man who
played a key role in the career the late Amy
Winehouse was born in the UK but grew up
in his beloved New York City. He grew up
around music – his stepfather was Mick
Jones of the band Foreigner – and his
collaborations have been steeped in a love of
music, making very little distinction between
the worlds of so-called ‘indie’ and so-called
‘mainstream’.
Who else but Ronson would cover The
Smiths and The Jam on an album called
Version, then go on to work with Robbie
Williams and play live with Duran Duran?
He’s also the only producer in history to have
been allowed to remix Bob Dylan.
Mark Ronson, in short, isn’t just a music-
head, he’s King Music Head, and his new
album Uptown Special could only be the
work of such a man. It’s a love letter to his
formative years in New York, the town that
spawned hip-hop culture, and unceasingly
distilled other key American music influences
into its own tough, edgy blender all through
the last six decades of the modern music era.
It happened on the streets (see: Grandmaster
Flash in The Bronx), it happened in the bars
(see: CBGBS in the mid ’70s), but for Ronson,
it all happened in the clubs.
“No matter how my taste in music and
DJ-ing veers over the years, I always find
myself coming back to that music I would
play out in hip-hop clubs in NY in the late
90s/early 2000s,” he said when launching
the album earlier this year. ”Biggie (Smalls),
Chaka Khan… Missy, Earth Wind & Fire …
The NY club scene was filled with girls, boys,
dancers, drug dealers, rappers, models and
skateboarders who came mostly for one
reason: to dance. And regardless of genre or
era, if it had dope drums, if it had soul to it,
they danced.”
It’s this tightrope walk – between the
purist and the unabashed fan – that Ronson
walks with effortless ease, and his ability
to make great sounding records that also
push boundaries attracts genuine talent to
work with him. Uptown Special features
a collaboration with Stevie Wonder, and
Australian Kevin Parker, the lead singer/
songwriter guitarist in Tame Impala, has also
played a huge role in shaping the album,