Pushkin. Before we get started, let's talk about Pushnick. Pushnick is a subscription program available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Subscriptions members will get access to bonus content like extended versions of Our Beastie Boys and Brian Eno episodes. You'll also get ad free listening to many of your favorite podcasts like Revisionist History, Cautionary Tales, The Happiness Lab, and Ours Broken Record. You can try it for free for seven days. Sign up for Pushnick and Apple podcast subscriptions. Mark Ronson's big break as a producer came from working with Amy Winehouse to find the perfect sound for her career to find an album Back to Black, I Have No Time to Champions with his same save. Since then, Ronson's gone on to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and seven Grammys for producing chart topping hits for artists like Lady Gaga, Adele and Bruno Mars. Ronson's sound is often associated with danceable, driving rhythm sections, which makes sense considering his background as a renowned DJ. Recently, Ronson's put his musical knowledge on display as the host of The Fader's new podcast Uncovered, and this month he'll start in a multipart documentary for Apple TV Plus that explores the evolution of music technology. In today's interview with Rick Rubin, we'll hear Mark talk about the day he met Amy Winehouse and how she might have confused him for Rick Rubin. Mark also talks about the night he fell in love with Djane, growing up with his stepdad and foreigner, and how being isolated from his studio during the pandemic caused him to think his days as a pop music producer might be over. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin and Mark ronson where did you grow up? I grew up in London. I was born in England and I lived there until I was eight, and then my mother remarried my stepdad. He was English a musician, but he lived in New York, so we all moved to New York. I definitely consider myself in New Yorker. I mean I spent time going back and forth now between London and New York, and I've sent blocks of time in England, and I feel very connected to England, but I do feel like a New Yorker. Do you remember much of your life from eight years old down. I don't think I remembered life in London is and I was taking it in geographically because you're you know, when your kid is just where you live. But I definitely have memories from even though my real father is not and i'd say real father it sounds like a slight to my stepfather. I mean, they're both really important figures in my life. At my dad was really into music. He wasn't the musician, and I just remember them throwing a lot of parties and waking up in the middle of the night, like four years old, going down and just seeing like all these grown ups in this room, as you know, waist high and sort of oblivious to like the hubbub and the mess. I would just go towards the speaker of wherever the music was coming from, and I would just sit in front of the speaker and I would play air drums. I would mime the drums and like, I have memories like that, a lot of formative memories about music. And then my dad did get me like a kid's drum kit, because when I would wake up in the middle of the night and go jam in front of the speakers, somebody was I mean, there was always like Nigel Elson who played drums with Elton John, or like Simon Kirk from Bad Company. Someone was always over like late night, and I think someone was like, you know, pointed and was like, hey, you should get your son a pair of drums. Like he's you know, he looks like he's really into it. So I remember playing along with a drum kit to the radio. Describe the household in England, like what was your room? Like, describe the place? You know, when I think about it, it does come back. So I remember a bunk bed. I had meningitis when I was a young kid, which is quite heavy. I didn't have the there's two, there's viral, and there's something else. So I had the one that you don't die from, obviously, but I had to be taken to the hospital and have like a spinal tap. I remember being in my bedroom having I think, like having to be held down and like, I mean, I don't have like the most pleasant memories. Also my house, childhood house growing up, was a pretty turbulent house. My parents were. They were like a young couple. They had me quite young. I remember fights and slamming doors and a lot of yelling and tears. That's how I mean. I hate to say it sounds like a downer and I love both of my parents, but that's how I remember growing up in London. Yeah, And did you have brothers and sisters? I had brothers and sisters. My mom and dad had three of us, me and two sisters who were twins. And then when we moved to New York, my mom remarried and had two more kids. My dad remarried and had three more in England, so I have a big family. And then two stepbrothers, so there's ten of us all together. Did you move to New York four based on your mom's relationship or did you move to New York and then your mom found the relationship. No, we moved based on the relationship. I see. We moved as she had fallen in love with my stepdad. They fell in love with each other, and he was like, come live with me in New York. I mean, that wasn't the easiest thing, I'm sure, because I know my dad didn't want us to leave. But you know, somehow we go out to New York. And would you say your relationship with both of them was decent with both my parents or both my dads, but let's say both your dad's first. Yeah, definitely my dad like a lot of like English guys, like growing up in the sixties, like he was like a soul fanatic, like he had forty fives of stacks winder k frog like not just that kind of obvious things and sorry, And I remember he loved like he loved horns and like soul music. And I even remember when I was like really young, he like gave me the CDs like I bought this. It was Day Last Soul, the first album three Ft High and Rising. He was like, I don't get it, Like you know, he bought it because somebody who knew that he liked soul or groove music said you should check this out. I remember he had grand Master Flash in the Furious five the Message and he played that all the time, Like so I got this. I think I got this great love of very rhythmic based music from him. And then my stepdad would let me, you know, around with his equipment. He had a ky little eight track recorders and I mean he even had like a synclavier, which is I'm sure you remember this crazy two hundred thousand dollars like programmable sequencer that yeah. I mean he must have been laughing when he was just like, yeah, go teach yourself how to use that. But I could, like very wrote, teach myself how to remake like turns trend Derby's wishing well on it. So anyway, the fact that I got this love of this music from my dad and then my stepdad sort of fostered my basically like wanting to be around equipment, wanting to play around with it, do that stuff. So they were both really important in that. Did you ever go on tour with your dad? I did when I was six or seven. I mean I guess Foreigner. That was foreign of four, you know, like Jukebox Hero on Urgin and Waiting for a Girl like you. They were playing these massive places and he took my mom and me and my two sisters on tour and it was amazing. I mean it was my first time going around America, going to like Texas and going to six Flags and just like this shiit like for a kid, And the drum riser was probably like twelve feet tall, like you know, these big kind of rock shows, and they would let me go backstage behind everybody and like crouch behind the drum riser and I would just play. I knew the set so well, I would mind what the drummer Dennis Elliott was doing. I definitely like that's just certainly an ongoing theme for me. Was there every time that you imagine being a musician like being a performer musician. I mean I played in school bands, you know, and in my high school band, and so it's like this New York era of that we were like in the band sort of mixed racially. There were two black musicians. There was me and two of my friends, and it was like the era of the black rock Coalition of like twenty four seven, Spies Living Color, Like we loved all those bands. And then I was super into the Black Crows. Who knows have played like two Black Crows covers in our set to I didn't even know. Hard to Handle was by Otis Redding. And then there was like this hip hops. I was discovering hip hop, so we'd sort of had rappers come on stage. So anyway, this is my band that I played with. We had opened for the spin Doctors and stuff at Wetlands and play The Bitter End. But I was the worst musician in the band, like they get to other musicians could shred and I like had feel, but I was just like I wasn't going to be slash. I wasn't gonna be Vernon Reid. But I got into DJing and I always was a fan of like liner notes, and i'd weirdly like read Billboard when I was six. So there's things started to happen that I started to amass a bit of a tool kit that was like, okay, well I'm not good enough at this one thing. I'm not really good enough at that thing. But if I amass this sort of like AmAm of things that I love and I'm interested in, and that's what led me to being a producer. Oh why did you play in the band? I played rhythm guitar, but like the other guy had like the like Cramer, like the Kip Winger like guitar. I was like shredding and like then it'd be like my time is still in the set and like pre like just playing like an average white band riff or something. But I did love it. I mean I actually remember my best friend from high school talking to him like in the you know, sixteen, plotting your dreams, and I was like, yeah, I think I'm going to be like a guitarist in a in a band and all these things. And Alex Kane he's still one of my best friends. He goes, I just see you as more of like a behind the scenes type of guy, and at that moment I was like, you know, I probably like hung up with him. I was like, fuck you dude, like you don't know where I'm going, and he was like completely right. Actually, how old were you with the first time he started going to clubs ader when I was thirteen or fourteen. I loved, like, I just loved all these like English but I had the good things as well about going back to England once or twice you to visit my dad. I would discover things like Blur and the Wonder Stuff and just EMF and just you know, things that were just like really cool. That was you know, back when it would take six months for a band like that to get to Americas. You know, now everything's so global and instantaneous. So I would get really excited when these bands would come over to play in New York at venues like the Marquis or the Ritz. But of course I was twelve thirteen years old. My mother wouldn't let me go to these shows. So I managed to get a job writing for this inter school music paper because I could tell her that I was going to review the shows and she would let me. She would let me go. And I interned at Rolling Stone Magazine in the summers when I was like twelve, thirteen and fourteen maybe, so I'd occasionally get like a freebee tickets and go to shows. And I loved, I mean, I loved going to shows. It was like, I remember the Marquis so well. I remember like different venues. What was the Rolling Stone office like when you were a kid? What did that feel like to go there? That was incredible? I mean I just felt like, I mean, I'm sure it was even more relaxed. It wasn't like it was in the seventies, but more relaxant was now. And I was just this kid. It was like, they just give me any job that could fit in, whether it's sometimes like manning the switchboard because you had to like answer the phone and like send people to different extensions. And I would answer the phone. I'm sure my voice for the first year or two like hadn't even broken yet, so I'd be like hello, and then I would run around, and it was back in the day when they compiled their own album chart by calling thirty mom and pop stores and doing a media and average and then deciding what the number one record was. So it would be my job to call. And there were people there like David Frick, like Legends, Sheila Rogers, Anthony to Curtis, David Wild, these really cool people that were just like thought it was like kind of funny though it was just like this kid running around and they could tell how into it I was. I realized how lucky I was, and how lucky I was how they treated me, like, yeah, absolutely. What would you say was the first music that you felt like with your music as opposed to your parents parents music? My parents were like quite. I can't remember if like my stepdad, even though it wasn't his music, like he was interested in like the stuff that I was into. But I definitely would say that early nineties hip hop in New York, things like Black Moon, Pete Rock and See like when I was fifteen sixteen, when I discovered those things, that was really like my own because even the heavier rock stuff wasn't that much of a far cry from my stepdad and foreign and the music. You know, he was shredding. So I would say that the New York hip hop seeing the stuff that I would hear on like Stretcher Armstrong. Yeah, would your friends in school have similar tastes? Would you say? I had two best friends in school, Alex Kane, who told me I was never going to be a guitar hero. And then my friend Daniel Sally, and he was. He was like the first one to have Eric b and rock him paid in full. And then there were like three or four black students that I was friends with in school that like if I would kind of put me onto stuff. And then if I heard a song on the radio that I'd taped on a radio show and I didn't know what it was, I would bring it into school the next day and be like, hey, like Conrad, can you listen to this and tell me what song this is? And you'd be like, that's NAS halftime, like you've never heard the song before. And then those comrade Michael and Jerry, who were the you know, three black students in my class. They were in a musical talent show and they knew that I had this equipment at home, These samplers that were like, I barely knew how to use and they were like, do you want to try and make us like a track for this talent show? It was like a judge by Reverend Al Sharpton. It was in Stuyvesant. It's like cool, And my understanding of how the samplers worked was so wrote that I had to make sure that the samples were the exact same tempo and hit play at the exact same time. I didn't know how to sink anything up. It was just like that. And then Michael Leo was like, you know, it's like what you're doing is very similar to DJ, like you know anything about DJ? And I was like, no, what's that? And he's like, well, you're taking records and you're mixing, you're blending tempos at the same thing. And I think that was one of the first things I ever put the seed in my head of like DJ, Like what's what is that? And how old we at that point in time? Sixteen and what was the first time that you went to a club to check out DJs, like where you were aware that there was a DJ controlling the music in the room. I remember it really well. My friends would all go to these raves that were put on by NASA because it was all ages and your acid, shrooms, ecstasy. You know, you'd be tripping and everyone go dance to techno and then there was you'd go and you'd like hook up in the chill out room. I keep hearing Ricky Palla my head saying, I kids say heckno to techno. He's like, you know his rapid he used to do before the VSTs went on, which is that's so funny. Yeah, But I just couldn't get with the techno. I wasn't like snobby or something. It was just because it was fast and it was like it was straight. And I would always end up in the chill out room where they'd be like an interesting DJ like Dmitri from Delight or somebody like that. And there was this DJ named Annie that was now I know him and his real name is Annie A and I but it was one like O n Dashy and he was killing it. It was like cutting doubles of something. And I went and I was just so transfixed, and probably because I was, you know, on some psychedelic drugs as well, and I was so captivated, and I really think that that was just like one of those moments where it's just like, oh, I want to do that now, because like not only did I love the music that he was playing, but obviously like watching you know, the hands and it was just so it was so interesting. So yeah, so that was kind of it. When you went to the NASA parties as kid. What with the venues. It was the shelter. It was that giant place down on varick On. I think it was like one seventy bar next really close to Wetlands, so it was this really big giant warehouse and you would sort of like wait online and it was crazy that the accessories that people were where. It was like you would take a dog toy of like Burt and Ernie the sesame street guys and put it on a on a necklace around like a shoe string around and then have like ski goggles and then you would have to like take your pumas like the Puma clides or like these classic shoes to like the guy that would put platform like rubber platforms. It was like, but yeah, everybody looked like this kind of like freak. I mean, I guess it wasn't that far from when you watch that HBO show that scares me so much because the kids are just getting so fucked up, and like, I'm like, a kids really like that. But I'm like, oh shit, we were like that. It's funny as you're describing it. I never made the connection before, but it sounds like we could be talking about glam and glitter rock, you know, like because it's definitely related like that, the while the look isn't the same. Yeah, platforms and yeah, yeah, and just looking like you wanted to know, like you were really like marking who your tribe was. Yeah, and it looked more almost like what you'd wear on stage as opposed to what you'd wear being an audience member. Yeah, it was. It was definitely like you were wearing stuff to draw attention to yourself. For Shure, it was like peacocking. Oh what was your first DJ gig? It was at a bar on the Upper east Side. I had my turntables for probably three weeks, and there was a guy that I knew that through parties where they let under h kids and on bars on the Upper east Side. There were places like that and the Upper west Side, and I just remember hassling him and calling him and I probably lied instead of in d DJing for three months as opposed to three weeks. And I had one crate of records, like about half a crate of hip hop and half a crate of like funk and soul. Had no idea what I was doing, really, and I hustled him like into giving me this gig, and I had to take my turntables, you know, in the back of a cab. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it was a snowstorm in New York. I'm sure, Like I'm sure the money I paid on the cab was more than I got and there were like nineteen people that showed up. But I do remember playing average white band love Your Life, which is the sample for check the rhyme by Tribe called Quest, which was like a big song at that time. And I remember like this guy coming up to me and being like, oh, that's cool, Like how do you know about this music? And I just remember, even when nobody was dancing this clear floor, just this feeling of like it wasn't so much the control, like from this Bengali thing of being like I could control what everyways listened to, but just this idea that what I play could affect the mood of the room, or if I'd played things in the right sequence, or I could you know, and I was really bad at that point. I could barely probably put two records together like and keep the tempo going. But I just I knew that that was what I wanted to do. We'll be right back with more from Mark. After a quick break, we're back with more of Rick Rubin's conversation with Mark Ronson. Do you think of yourself primarily as a DJ or a producer or is it both. I think I always wanted to make music, and then the djaying thing took off in a way I couldn't have really foreseen or imagine. The weird thing is that they're very separate, but they inform each other so so much, and sometimes not in a great way. Like back in the days when I was supporting myself by playing five six nights a week before I really made it as a producer, and you're playing like other people's records and Neptunes records in Timberland, and like coming into the studio and trying to like find your own voice. The next day when you're just clouded with like you know, seeing everybody lose their minds to like, you know, a Neptunes track, you're it's hard to find your own voice or it's hard to really just like cut those ties of all those influences, but they they really inform each other. I mean, I would definitely probably now at this point call myself a producer, but the DJ, I still DJ, and it's still what kind of got me here in some ways. You know, my first production gig I ever got was this girl Nika Kosta, and it was because her manager, Dominic Trenier, used to come hear me DJ and I would play Rufus and Chaka Khan EPMD and then an ac DC breakbeat and this thing. And I mean, I remember when I was TJ in this club life. I don't know if you remember, but the DJ booth was right up against the stairs, cramped, it really wasn't a booth, and you could see everybody coming down and it was such an amazing So you know, I would see you walk down with like Chris Rock and then Damon Dash and Jay Z and there was Puffy at one table and Jay and the other and they were doing like I would go bad Boy Rockefeller, bad Boy Rockefeller tuned song for song and they'd be like cheering and laughing and like talking shit to each other, like it was so wild to be there. But because I would play these things that were like, you know, some of my heroes and very influential people were at they would Dominic Trinier came up and I was like, I have signed this girl, Nica Costa. I don't know what her music should sound like, but it's supposed to feel like one of these DJ sets that you do, so you know, so much of it is just hard to kind of extrapolate from me in djaying, How much would you react to the room, Like to tell me about the mindset of djaying? How does the nights start and how do you choose what's going to happen? Well, I mean back in those days when I started, and I'm kind of grateful for this, Like you would play a six hour set sometimes, like you were booked from ten to four in the morning New York clubs, so you had to have this. You had to have like two hours of like classics and soul and disco that you would start the night where then you'd have your old school hip hop, which was like at that time, old school meant you know, an I think pre like ninety two classics, slick Rick, EPMD, whatever it is. Then you would play your newest bangers of the night. Then you had to have like a solid reggae set and R and B and then take it out maybe with a little house music or some dance classics. So you would go into this room, this empty room, and you would just watch it slowly fill up. And I always loved the first hour because I could play records I really loved, and it didn't really matter, and that could be like outstanding by the Gap band or something a little more obscure, and just slowly build the night, and you would just focus on one group of people. Because before camera phones and the smoking band and all these things and vip boots, everyone stayed on the floor. That's where you stayed. You couldn't find out someone texts you to tell you there's a better party across town, or you wouldn't see it on social media. Like if it was a good night, people came to the club and stayed all night, So you would focus on like one group of maybe girls dancing, and like you would that was your barometer. Like if one of the crew dropped off to go to the are something you're like, oh shit, I'm not killing it enough, like gonna and reacting to the crowd. And then if you played something like, you know, a breakbeat or something like that, that made all like the b boys suddenly form a circle and they'd start breaking or like kind of into it for a second. But then you're like, I got to play something else, though, because now like this turning into like wild style and I need like everybody dancing. And it's like there were just so many like tells and signals and things that you would read, and most of the time you're also feeding off the crowd. And I remember that I love to play things that were a little bit unexpected. So obviously something like back in Black by ACDC feels like a breakbeat, like it feels as hip hop as anything at this point, but they weren't really playing that in the clubs. And I remember when the Benjamin's came out by Puffy and Biggie and then there was a rock remix, So I was like, if I played the Benjamins and go straight to the rock remix on the downbeat of Biggie's verse, no one's gonna stop dancing. It's Biggie and then right on the down beat when big Self dis first, I can drop ac DC back in black and everyone's dancing, like doesn't realize they're still dancing. It's something that's unfamiliar. Like I loved being able to do that. And then when Seven Nation Army came out and a couple of songs that were not hip hop but like just felt very hip hop. I could get away with playing these that got very exciting and I was like, okay, and there was you know, DJ AM on the West Coast. It was incredible. The best of everybody me stretched like trying to push the limits of what you could get away within the hip hop club essentially. How different are the club scenes around the world. In the beginning, the only place I really went was Japan, Tokyo, because Tokyo had such a like a symbiotic relationship back and forth with New York with music, street culture groups, everything, So that was kind of amazing. And that was the first time going over there and people being really excited about you because you're from somewhere else. And then the Japanese crowds are it's such a you know, they're really grateful that you've come there as well, so you know New York, I would I was doing good and killing it, but like, nobody's going to make a fuss over you in New York, especially if they're seeing you three times a week. So Japan was really great. And I remember when my first album came out, I had this song on there that was like this sort of like minor hip hop hit with ghost Face and Nate Dog called Ui. And I went over to Japan where it was like big So I've been to Japan a couple of times, but this is me going over there now the first time with like a record that's popping. And I never got on the mic before because I always thought getting on the mic was like the provenance of like flex enough, big Cat, these people with these great booming voices. I just had this like unspoken thing that like white people should not be on the mic, like whatever it was, it just and it wasn't a thing. And I was djaying and I was doing my regular set in what I thought was killing it, and I could feel the crowd there was just like unspoken ten and then this hushed like they weren't losing their minds like other times that I'd gone there and I was like, you know what, like I have to establish a connection. Like as much as I hate it, there's this wireless mic right here to my left, and I'm gonna have to pick it up and say something to engage and make some kind of bond and acknowledge that there's this crowded to see me or it's going to stay in this weird zone. And I did, and I was like hey too, like so awkwardly, I'm sure, Tokyo, like just doing whatever i'd probably learned from like watching real rap DJs get on the mic, and from that moment they just lost their ship and it was amazing. They were just waiting for me to say like thank you and be like we're in this place together. And so I sort of learned after that like like any other place that I went, I didn't need to do that. And that felt very like, very foreign to me. At first. London I loved because it was so exciting coming back there having grown up in England but like until eight but the feeling like a total New Yorker and coming back. And I think the first time was Puffy brought me and he was like doing a you know, some kind of promo tour and getting to kill it in London was like really really wonderful, and it felt like and then as I started coming back to London more and more and rediscovering my roots there and going around record stores then and that's what led to me meeting Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse and these people like that was like another chapter. But at first I was just like whoa, this is great, Like I'm back in London and this thing. And I was so fucking New York at that point. I wasn't really in my head like feeling like I was London cool. Tell me about Amy. I never got to meet her. She was. I hate to sound corny, but she really changed my life. Like I was, I was not popping in industry parlance. And she came to my studio in New York and this is actually quite funny. This is literally what happened. And I came guy meet my friend who was at EMI Publishing was like, do you know Amy Winehouse? And I was like yeah, I like that. For her first record, she had this song in My Bed produced by salam Remy that he reused and made you look beat, and I was like, yeah, she seems cool, like He's like, she's in New York for a day meeting with a couple of people, Like, do you want to meet with her? And I was like sure. So she comes to my studio and you know, downtown Mercer Street, and I met her at the door and she was like, yeah, I'm going up to see Mark Ronson and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm Mark and she's like cool, yeah, So he take me up to see him and I was like no, no, no, I'm Mark Ronson and she was like, oh, I thought you had a long bed or something. I think in her mind maybe the fact that like she had heard my name for longer, because maybe in England, like she just assumed I was like somebody who'd been around for a while. But in my head I was always like, did she think I'm Rick Rubin? Like I have no idea. So we went up in the elevator and you know, I'm sure I don't know how you do it, but everybody has their own toolbox. And I was just like, what kind of record do you want to make? Like what do you what do you like? What are you listening to? And she played me a lot of girl groups stuff in the sixties, things like the Shan Garlas and like jukebox pop music and thinks I didn't really know that well except for like probably like movies like Good Fellas, you know, like like it was so before funk and soul and disco and the ship that I played. But I loved it. I mean it was cut from the same cloth. When I was like cool and she left and I was like, I just have a feeling. First of all, we really hit it off and I loved and there was something very familiar, and I suddenly felt very English and Jewish in North London, like she reminded me of all those things, and there's a shared humor, Like she was definitely much sharper with the width than I was, but but there was an instant rapport and I just remember her leaving that evening and being like, I gotta make something that like makes this girl like want to stay in New York for another day, Like I just like I want to make music with her. And I suddenly felt I wasn't even pressure, I was just inspired. So I came up with a little like piano and instrumental, like just very bare bones tractor back to black, and I played it for the next day when she came in and she dug it and then she stayed around. But she was in a really together part of her life when I met her. When we worked together, I remember she hadn't been for a little while before that, and I even remember some of my English friends being like, oh, you're working on Amy Wine. I was like, good luck with that one. Like I heard she's been working on that record for three years already, and you know, I think there was a long space between her two albums, And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about, because this girl comes in and she's fucking playing me these incredible songs. She's sharp as attack, she's hilarious. So that's why even when she told me the story about the song, Rehab came about because we were walking around Soho one afternoon and she was like, yeah, yeah, I wasn't always like this like I was. You should have seen me in bass like I used to see me a year ago. Like my family, they're also worried about me and my manager and like my dad came over and they tried to make me go to rehab and I was like no, no, no, And I remember thinking like, of course, if this was somebody who was in durest or. It seemed like not in a good way. I wouldn't have said, like that's hilarious, let's gonna make a somment because I'm looking at somebody who's like so together and this is such a closed chapter of their life, like you know what, Like I hate to do shit that's like gimmicky, but that is like very hooky. Just the way you said that, so like she was just she would like go back to the Soho Grand Hotel where she was staying every night. It was five blocks from my studio and like get on the treadmill for like an hour, like and then go to bed like we were. It was a lot of fun. I mean, we are rarely only in the studio six days probably that whole record, So I wish it was longer because there would be more memories. But then we you know, we were still friends and we hung after that. Would you describe that meeting an artist, getting the vibe what they're into, they go away, You make some thing play for them. Is that would you say typical of your process as a producer. Well, the way that I like kind of came up was like you sort of had like a beat tape, so you'd go to Anna offices and you would play beats and instrumentals like and that's kind of like what people. That's what I the world that I knew. So when when I met Amy and she told me what she liked, I was like, Oh, I don't have anything pre made that you will like. But I mean it's always different because some people come and they just have their songs already. Some people have a couple of songs, but then the jams. Sometimes I don't write anything, like I just there to arrange and feed. You know, our friend Richard Russell and your friends with Richard, like he says in his book, he's like to him being a good producers, Like it's serious of making the right decisions. Like it's so fucking mata and so like in the atmosphere of like what you can do on any given day that might make something good or help steer something to be better, or or just know to get out of the way. It's it's very it's very different, but it just depends I guess it's like depends on the artist. Yeah, that's why that's why I'm asking, because I you know, we technically do the same job, but I have no idea what that means and how you do it you do versus what I do it. You know what I say, it's impossible to know. It's such a it's such a particular thing that yeah, and it's you know, it's such a particular like you know, when I came up like you, Quincy q Tip, George Martin, Nigel Godrich, like I because I loved all these different things. I had like a wide array of people that I would like study, and I you know, I read things like well Farrell says like they don't say in this youdo past nine pm because like nothing good ever happened, so like maybe I was sort some that And then like you were so song focused. I remember whenever I read something about you, you'd be like maybe the songs aren't there yet, or just like it was so much about the songs. And I realize, like I've also got into trouble being into getting into projects because I have like, well it doesn't matter they have like great songs yet, but like they'll com or like we could bring them out and that isn't a given either. So I think that it's just just like magic toolbox and everybody has their different things. Would you say when you start on a project with an artist, you'll have an idea of where it's going to go or is it pretty much open to see what's going to happen in the moment and that's where it goes from there. I think that's what it is. I think it's just open to that first meeting. I mean I think that I have you know, sometimes when I'm working with like a band like that I've loved and grown up with, whether it's ghost Face or Duran Duran, Like, of course you have an idea, a little bit of an idea because you're like you're already a fan, so you have the sixth sense of like what do fans want to hear this person do? And then you just go like, what's this person's superpower? And a lot of the great artists have more than one superpower, Like how do I just like amplify that to you know, next level? But I think it's always you know, when we were working at your place with Gaga Chiangola, I remember like I had no idea what we're going to do, and I was like, I think she maybe thought even we're gonna do something a little more jazzy because everybody thinks because I like love horns, like I know a lot about jazz, I know nothing about jazz. And she just came in in like denim shorts and cowboy boots and like a hack and obviously like your studio is like one of the most idyllic places of all times, so you do feel really like in this wonderful zone. And it just felt like, Okay, well let's make something that's sort of like you know, organic or strip back or like I you know, whatever the reason. So I think that, yeah, I think I'm just always just like open to Like what's the Quincy says to is like you always need to leave room. You need to leave space to like God in the room or whatever you believe that thing is, like just have to be ready to go, and like any kind of instinct, do you still make tracks without having a particular artist in mind? You know, it's funny. I just kind of went back to that there's something I think over Lockdown I learned Ableton. I was like, I'm finally going to teach myself Ableton because like every I've been telling myself for eight years, every time I get on a flight to Japan. I'm like, this will be the time I never never done it. And it's getting to the point where like Diplo and people that I work with, or like Kevin from TAM and Poula and Ableton, they're like they're like, really, you're going to make me fucking bounce these stems again? So you can put this in pro tools, like can you just learn Ableton? So that got me back into a little bit into beat mode, and then I realized that what I was trying to do on Ableton was just recreate what I used to do on my MPC. So I'm like, Ma'm fuck this, Like I'm not going to be lazy. Let me just break the NBC out and start doing this thing, because I was trying to recreate feel and sound and it just wasn't doing it. So I got back into like NBC like making beats, and just like I've been in some sessions recently since shits kind of open back up again and I love getting there before the artists like four hours and just making like six instrumentals just so it's sort of like ready to go and like chopping drum breaks just so you know there's not that kind of dead moment where they're standing over you, where you're like chopping a snare drum. Like. I like the idea of just having a few things to get someone excited and inspired when they walk in the room. Are you ever surprised by how someone approaches vocally a tract that you've lived with for a little bit as an instrumental Yeah, definitely. I mean, I love that's the best thing where you're just so surprised and you're like, oh my god. I never would have thought of that. I mean, especially the probably more with Maladies and wrap Stuf because there's probably more room like experiment. But I also remember, like I worked on them like a third record. I had this song with Q Tip called Bang Bang Bang, and I remember him coming in because I was playing him a bunch of other beats and by accident, I started this one that was like already a song for somebody else. He goes, he wasn't that into the ship I was playing. It's like, what's that one? I was like, Oh that was this other thing is roll that back and watching like Q Tip like in his process, which was just like get out the room, I'm going to run pro tools I'm going to record this ship, puts his headphones on and just records first doing cadences Donna, Donna, and then starts to fill in the words and then like this whole ship is like coming to life and obviously has such a magic voice in this familiar thing that's like you know, I grew up with. But occasionally someone will just send you something back down and that's great too. But when you get to see this little people's processes and stuff, it's like, oh shit, that's how they do that. Yeah, it's so cool. It is? It very different from artist artists? Would you say? I feel like it's pretty like if someone likes something, when you play something and it gets them in the first like five or six seconds, which is really the only time. If you don't get them in the first five or six seconds, it is probably not gonna happen. It's usually like the thing like oh shit, let me get some headphones, and then it's like plug. They might run the track back and it's like just freestyling, like the first maladies and the things that come out, Like that's the most common process that I've seen. But you know, then there's somebody like Bruno who's just like ultimate like songcraft, and just like nothing goes down until like the best thing is written in his brain. You know, do you remember the very first time you were ever in a recording studio. I think I do. I think it was probably with my stepdad. I remember being in one of those studios in Midtown in New York that's not there anymore, like right Track or something, and I remember loving it. I remember, I mean, other than my stepdad's home studio, which had like a little a track and some stuff, and that feeling very homely. There was something about like studios are just so warm, and it's wood everywhere, and if it's not wood, it's like a christianie paneling and there's lights and they're all cool and it looks like some retro futuristic spaceship. And I just remember, like, you know, the black leather couch that's like in every kind of like stock like New York studio that time, like that just felt so good to me. That was like very like warm and fuzzy. We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with more from Rick Ruben and Mark Ronson. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with Mark ronson do you shouzam? I do I SHOs am quite a lot. Actually, I'm sure I shozam something today. It's this greatest invention ever. It's really it really is great. You know. When I first got it, it was always like if I was in a record store like HMV, some big record shop in England, like if a song was so bad, I had to know what it was. So like in the beginning, my thing was really like like I would have been horrified if anybody had ever looked through my think I'd be like, wait, you like that. I'm not going to call anyone out. But like the other day, I was in a taxi cab in England and I never and there's a song on it. It's got like this killing rhythm section, but it's like sounds like a psychedelic sixties song, like one of those songs that's on Nuggets. And it's right into the Sun by lou Reid. Like I had no idea lou Reid had made like a whole record with like this killer rhythm section, Like I just I love it. I just shazam. It's just so great changed our lives. Yeah, how often do you hear something that comes out new that you love like pretty often. I mean, I feel a little bit out of touch because that the way that I would stay in touch with new music before was from djaying, and I would have to because I'd want to like play new shit in my set and not look like I was kind of falling behind the times. But I do think there's been a few see changes in music that have just really gotten like to things that I don't understand as much anymore. Like I realized like the vitality and why things in new hip hop and new pop music are exciting. But I might not connect with him in this same way. And I think I used to connect with them because you'd go see it in the club and if you didn't quite get a record, then when you saw everybody lose their fucking shit to check West, you're like, oh fuck, this record is a monster. Like so I trying to think of the last There's still things that come out all the time that I love, and I always know like that feeling if there's like a pang of jealousy the second like the first second I hear it, like oh man, this is so good. I wish I did that or even like I don't know how to do that, but this thing that I still love that feeling. I just maybe I'm just a little bit more out of touch recently. When you would hear something new and decide to put it into a set, how often were your instincts about how the reaction would be if it was something less known, something maybe even unknown. Yeah, I think if you were good, it was like you knew where to sandwich it to just make sure it was like a trojan horse, you know, if I can dress it up and fit it between these two records and just and have something ready. I think I was probably so in sync with my crowds and the crowds that I was playing for, even though they would change every night, that I had a good feeling of like what would work. And you know, every now and then it just doesn't work. But most of the time it was it was great. And how often would you play something from a different genre than was expected beyond back in black? I mean I always hated the term mash up because DJs have been doing blends forever and it was just like it was like a very reductive and slightly gimmicky thing. But I mean it was also kind of exciting when it first happened, and I would take records that I love, like Blur a song too, and I was like, I can't just throw on Blur a song too. But if I throw a Biggie Nasty Boy over the top of it the a cappella, then everyone's kind of dancing and then we can see where we go from there, and then you know, every now and then, you know, some of the clubs that I was playing in there were like these you know, pretty like high end, powerful like drug dealers that were coming in to like spend two grand and have a good time and pop champagne and look like you know, ballers and so like. Occasionally I remember playing like one of those rock records in the middle of the night and the guy just like leaning over the booth because a club Cheetah, the booth was behind the there was a booth right next to the GD with this guy just leaning over and just being like, what the fuck are you playing White Boy, like very very seriously to me. So like, I think that most of the times it got over, And I think that New York crowds are quite open, like regardless of genre. But the reason that I sort of made my record version, which was like these covers of songs by the Smiths and Radiohead and the Jam and like the Zootones and these rock bands, was because I wanted to play those songs and I was getting a little burnt. I've been playing hip hop, R and B and dance hall for about ten years in clubs, and I was just like I couldn't quite play just by Radiohead and a club, and I couldn't play stop me if you think that you heard this one before for by the Smiths, like that was just going a little too far. There were cool rock and roll scenes like Justine Dee and the MisShapes happening in New York just about that time. That wasn't me. And so I was like, you know what, I'm going to make covers of these songs that I love and redo them in arrangements that I can kind of like get over with my crowd. And it was really just like I just made them to just play like I didn't ever think that they would come out. I didn't really. There wasn't even enough, and I thought in my head, I was just like, this is for my crowds, and this is something I can work on this Will Be Fun, and I did radiohead cover that I did started to get a lot of play by Zane Low and Giles Peterson on Radio one in England, and that's what got me signed to Columbia because I'd been dropped by Electra after my first record came out and sold like eighty copies. And suddenly I was sitting on this album of covers and this one that's ready on the radio. And so that kind of weird backfiring of the DJ set then inspired this other creative outlet, which was you know, I guess I never thought about it in those terms if it's interesting. So your career as an artist really was an offshoot of the djaying for real, Like it really was. Yeah, Like I was starting to produce records and I did the sneaker costs to record, but I never thought I never had any designs. There was no ego thing like I want to be the artist, I want to be in front. But there was this era of like although I wasn't as like I didn't have the same pedigree as like super hip hop like on the radio, like the level of DJ Clue or flex or stuff. This was this era that everybody was getting a deal to make a mixtape album, and Sylvie Aaron and Josh Deutsch like I was the guy DJing, like the kind of clubs that were like not as packed but still had this cool thing. It was its own downtown scene. And so I got this deal and I was like, cool, I'll make the DJ mixtape but with original music on it. But that except for that minor like ghost Face and a Dog record, really did nothing. And then the weird backwards way of going about having this radiohead and these covers records that led to me becoming a sort of accidental artist, like especially in the UK where that album, you know, was especially popular. It was very strange. But I've always thought about it like I don't really care if my name is in the artist slot the producer slot, Like I don't feel any different or any more proud or less proud of the record. It's just I think on my artist records, I get to do things that don't really have a place on anybody's record. Like I was working with Amy on Back to Black while I was making version, and I just said, hey, I'm making this covers record, is there a song that you like? And she played me the song Valerie by the Zootones, and I was like, oh, that's cool, let's do that. Like I think that she wouldn't have made a cover of Valerie for her own record. It wouldn't have cross her mind. But there's this fun thing that happens when people a little more free, they're a little less precious even, you know, like it's on your record, fuck it, Yeah, let's do something for fun. Sure, So that's kind of the only thing that that serves. Would you say your relationship to music has changed over the course of your life. Yes, If somebody like was like, okay, would you consider yourself more of a fan of music or somebody who actually creates music, I really wouldn't know how to answer that question. I still don't. I still get as excited. And if I had to, it's a really silly question because there's no war what that would happen. But if I had to choose between one or the other, being a fan and a listener or a creator, it would be very hard to imagine. I think I'm more patient, certainly in the studio as well, like I have less like ego running the show, and I love occasionally being wrong, like even if your pride hurts for like a second. When somebody has a great idea and they kind of win the argument, you're like, oh, yeah, this song is now better for that theyationship to music like though it's still I went through a period over lockdown and I didn't really have a studio to go to and I was making stuff in Ableton, and although I was excited about learning that thing, it's not quite I am a visceral person. I like having like my like keyboard and the drum machine and this thing, and my music was just suffering because of it, and it was getting kind of shitty. And I was suddenly starting to think, like, Okay, I'm forty five, like I'm already at the tell end of fringe of like what would be like an acceptable age for someone trying to make music for like young people or pop music or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I know there's yourself, is Quincy, there's people that you know definitely who have broken the mold there. But I was just starting to like really doubt my confidence, and I was thinking like maybe I'm phasing out of music, Like maybe that's it. Maybe I'm going to do some more interesting like educational stuff with music and maybe I'll whatever it is this Apple series I was working on with our friend Morgan Neville, like just the documentary. Maybe that's my thing now. And I think some of it was like a little bit of cowardice because I was like, Okay, well, if I don't try, I don't put myself up there on my head above the parapet, nobody can really fuck with me and tell me that I fell off. And then I got back in a studio for the first time like two months ago, and I just like had my shit around me and I said everyone, I was like, oh my god, I love this. Like this is whether I make successful records or not, that's going to be determined by somebody else, But this is my favorite shit to do. How could I kid myself like this is still my thing where I feel alive and like I can look up and oh shit, four hours has just gone by, you know. So I'm very grateful. I mean, my music has been like my fucking compassed noise star, my anchor through life. Like it's only now that probably through therapy work, whatever you want to call it, that I've made time for other things in my life. And I understand that they're important, but music is still this It's my best friend. Yeah amazing. We are blessed to be able to spend our lives with music. It's like that's what we do. It's yeah, so lucky that that's our We do it for fun and we do it for work and it's all the same, you know. Yeah amazing. Tell me about the project with Morgan. So when Apple started their TV division, Kim Rosenfeld, who was running like the nonfiction stuff, came to me and he had seen a ted talk that I had done about sampling and he liked it, and he was like, can we do something that's like that, but like expanded about music because it's sort of it teaches people who don't know anything about sampling and probably didn't care or think that they cared about it, like oh that's why that song I love is like that, and also do it properly. Hopefully it comes off in a way that like, people who do know the shit are also interested in you're not talking down anybody. So he put me with Morgan Neville, which was obviously on my first time at the rodeo being paired with this guy who's made some of my fucking favorite documentaries and incredible and knows so much about music as well. We just dreamed up this show and we figured, you know, there were a hundred ways we could have done it, but what we decided, because it was going to be six episodes, was to break it up into different technologies that have changed how you know, modern pop music and hip hop really evolved. So we broke it up into reverb, distortion, synthesizers, drum machine sampling, an auto tune. The ongoing theme of the show of all these technologies, it is when they first came out, people really didn't like them, or they were afraid of it, or somebody thought that this was going to ruin music. And then somebody uses it kind of in the wrong way, like Prince de tuning the snare on the lyndromes, so instead of sounding like a real lyndrum, it sounded like like, like what the fuck is that? Like all these things that were like not supposed to be done, then suddenly someone geniusly does it in the right way, and then it's wonderful, and then it gets kind of accepted and co opted by everybody, and then things that really came about that we're really lovely. Like I guess it ends up like it's really fun when it's about the technology, but then it really is like nice and gets very humane when it starts to be about the story as soon as beautiful creative people start talking or like, of course you're gonna go somewhere wonderful. That sounds great. I look forward to watching that. Thank you well, thank you for doing this. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's an honor and it's nicest conversation. Thanks to Mark Ronson for walking us through his journey from becoming a DJ to pop music producer. To hear his latest album, Late Night Feelings and our favorite Mark Ronson produced tracks, head to Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe chart YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Records produced help from Lea Rhodes, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from mc chafee. Our executive producer is Amia Lavell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review us on your podcast, act Our Theme Musics, Bay Canny beats on jer Richmond