BONUS: Music icon Mark Ronson talks hits, DJing & collabs with Ari Melber

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0:40Revolutionary Mavericks.

0:46Welcome to a very special edition of Mavericks with Ari Melber, because we are going to the club in our own way with a pioneer of the space. Mark Ronson is, of course, the DJ, producer, songwriter. You may know him from his iconic collaborations, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Miley Cyrus, of course, Bruno Mars. He's won a Grammy and Oscar, a Golden Globe and many other accolades. And in times of change, we know that people turn to culture for an escape, which sometimes then can rewrite the way we live. And so coming out of those straight Reagan years today, we look at the club culture of the 1990s. It was a break.

1:23It was fun. It was certainly a party, but also overlapped with other big changes, including broadening the scope of what we think defines humanity and how we are allowed to live. The soundtrack of that era was in a very real way set by DJs like Mark Ronson. He came to prominence in that era and he is revisiting it in a very interesting book, Night People, How to Be a DJ in 90s New York City. Making his debut on Mavericks is Mark Ronson. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. What a fun book. Thank you. Yeah, you know, it was like a confluence of reasons why I wanted to write this book.

2:07I felt like amazing DJs have written books for sure. I haven't read many of them, but I'm sure. But I thought that there's this, the idea of the gigging DJ, not like the superstar DJ, not like when you're on a festival playing for 10 ,000 people, but what it's like to be night in, night out in a club, in bars, in New York City at night, especially in the 90s, where it was this amazing time to be around. And that was it. And then if one more Gen Z kid came up to me and was like, you were in New York in the 90s? What was that like? I started to think, wow, it was an amazing time that we were all a part of.

2:45New York was the center of the musical universe in some way. You had Biggie, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang, Lil' Kim, Q-Tip. And then you had Missy and Timberland and the Neptunes, Pharrell, people that were all coming to New York to make their records. And they were all in the club every night. So as the DJ, I had this front row seat to it. And yeah, and I wrote a book. You wrote a book. I wrote a book about it. You mentioned people of a younger generation looking at this as a time capsule or a special time because it was before certain things changed. Yes. And while you couldn't have known that then, you also were not only riding that wave, but you were young and catering to and building that wave.

3:26Yes. You write, it's hard to stay present when your mind is constantly pairing tempos and keys instead of focusing on that person in front of you. but there was no off switch short of a lobotomy that you were really in it. And now you're able to look back on it. Are there reflections in here that came to you now that you didn't really know at the time? I mean, that's the thing about when you start. And this book took me, I mean, I had no idea how long it would take. It took me three years. So, of course, as you're writing, there's so many things suddenly kind of like, oh, of course, that was it.

3:57Like even something as obvious as the first time I ever really DJed, I was 10 years old at my parents' wedding. Now, when you're 10 years old, putting on Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight for your mom and stepdad to have a slow dance. You're not like, Eureka, this is the beginning of my career. But looking back at these moments, that rush of putting a song on and watching it kind of come out speakers and everybody listen to it and change the mood of a room. You know, the way that my stepdad pulled in my mom for slow dance. You know, that's sort of this weird. There's a power in that. There's all these different things.

4:32So anyway. Well, you write that you had that burst of childlike pride. Oh, I put that song on. Yeah, it was a mixture of that. It was this thing of it was really the first time that I had this sense of like I did something right. You know, there are so many things, you know, I came up. I was actually when I started to write this book, I was talking to my therapist. just kind of like tough Israeli dude. And I said, I'm writing this book. It's about DJing and, you know, connection and stuff like that. And he's like, are they you connection? I think it's more compulsion. You know, I started to realize there were all these things in DJing the way that I was.

5:10I love the feeling of this control. You know, I kind of grew up in this broken, kind of troubled home until I was five years old while my parents were together. and the idea of DJing was me in this DJ booth, this sort of like place where I was protected, right? Nobody could get to me here and I'm controlling the party. I love the idea of being in the party maybe without having to be like, you know, completely in the throng as well. And I was a terrible dancer. Does your therapist think that the discord or lack of control you felt as a small child was something you were compensating for in the DJ booth?

5:46Yeah, I think so. And I think that, you know, the DJ booth is literally just this place where you are alone. You're kind of the most solitary person in the most crazy, fun rooms. And listen, that's just my experience of DJing. I know there's people that get into it because they love being a part of the party. You do love music. There's all these different reasons. But mine was this kind of combination of all of those things. It's hard to capture the vibe, of course. but just to get us going we have some scenes from the 90s club scene that we're talking about let's take a look is this a lifestyle or just a moment in time it's a lifestyle and a moment in time back when the m and mtv stood exclusively for music sex and drugs and rock and roll live on such a new sound that i was like oh my god this is with rap and house music stirred into the mix the good times appear to be better than ever we got a wild place

6:49a lot of 20 people come here and you know just have a good time people were about the room getting into the room and being in the room is that how you remember it and how does that how does that differ from today it's amazing to see a video like that because that is my earliest experience of going to clubs because coming up i was probably 15 years old 15, 16, and 92, and there started to be these raves in New York. And I mean, I write about it because each chapter of the book is a different kind of club night. So 15, 16, being a fairly good, well-behaved kid, didn't really get into drugs or anything, going to these raves for the first time, which were just like, it was at this club called The Shelter in downtown New York City, just to think now that there was a place where every Friday night kids as young as 13 could get off of their face on acid and ecstasy and stay dancing until seven in the morning.

7:41It's like, it's crazy. I mean, it's not to, it was this sort of not no man's land, but this, this slightly more free time in New York city, right? Um, whether it was for better or for worse, I don't know. But I remember going to these raids where stuff looked like that. And, uh, they were playing techno on the main dance floor. And I just wasn't into the energy of techno. It was just too intense. So I went to this little room that they called the chill out room. And in there, I saw this DJ play this incredible hip hop set for the first time. You know, up to then, I listened to Stretch Armstrong and Font Max Reflex and DJs on the radio.

8:19But to see a kid my age, like doing this thing and tearing apart, like doubles of this record. And I was just, I was also flying off my face on acid probably, but I was just so transfixed. And I became obsessed. And then for six months, I just started to collect records. And for graduation, I got turntables. And I want to just show some of the songs. We just picked 93 as an example. Yeah. And you write in the book how breaking songs was a different issue and there were waves. But if we go mainstream, you got Whitney, I'll Always Love You. Everybody remembers, Wump, There It Is, UB40, Janet, That's The Way Love Goes, Dream Lover, Mariah Carey, Romschager, Informer, bringing in some of the Caribbean influences that have become more mainstream now.

9:03And when you look at what was on the charts and then what you were doing in the club, tell us about that interplay. I don't recognize. I mean, of course, I know all of these songs are amazing, but we didn't play one of those songs. To me, 1993 meant playing Dwyk by Gangstar and Scenario by Tribe Called Quest, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, They Reminisce Over You. There was like the first Biggie song, Party and B***h. So, and then I guess the chronic. So I guess that was the other thing, you know, growing up as a white kid, watching, you know, MTV Raps. Of course, I knew about the Beastie Boys and LL and Public Enemy.

9:39But then I started to fall in love with Black Moon and, you know, all these other things that I would hear on underground radio. And for that, you would have to you'd have to dig. You'd have to find the spots that had it. I mean, maybe you could go to Tower Records and get a cassette single. But really, for most of it, you had to find these underground like record stores. And that's how I sort of fell head over heels and over the music and became, you know, all about. And that meant something because you're you're conferring value and taste rather than receiving it. Right. And places like New York and the club culture as a slice of New York, people enjoy that if they are hip to it.

10:17It's the opposite of the flattened digital culture where you could walk into London or Oslo or L.A. and you see some of the same aesthetic motifs and the same music in the hotel lobby. And you kind of go, wait, did we all? It has kind of a coolness or an alleged coolness, but it's all the sameness. Do you know what I'm saying? To get you going, I know 93 to infinity might be closer to what you're talking about. You were considering that as a book title, right? I was. Let's take a listen to that. Yeah.

10:59wow yeah i actually don't even remember that video i've heard that song a thousand times i spun it last night it's amazing so that song i did start djing in 1993 and i you know it's such a beloved song 93 till infinity to a certain like you know kind of music fan that i was going to call the book that but it felt like borrowing maybe from somebody else's legacy and as I started to write the book as well and got a little bit deeper into um I guess some of the more I don't want to say the dark side but the addictions and compulsions and stuff of going out because I you know there I say it in the book there are people who enjoy a night out and then and there are night people.

11:42So my crew of people that I hung with and the people you would see out every night in all these clubs, there was something a little cracked and broken about these people. Like we're all running towards something or maybe running from something in the day. You know, maybe it was the way people grew up. Maybe it was something in their own lives. So I just felt like Night People was just, was a better title for what I was talking about. And then also the book is dedicated to a great friend of mine, this DJ who passed away named Blue Jams, and he had a label called Night People. So, yeah, but I do love 93 Filmfinity.

12:17Well, you mentioned that aspect of it, and we saw this in the 60s and 70s, had a version of the psychedelic experience was powering or interacting with the musical creativity. And in this club culture moment, you're talking about that yourself and others, and then you write in the book, the specter of addiction loomed large and he claimed close friends. I hated how junk drained the color from the people I loved. Alcohol could be just as damaging. I was lucky somehow. I never got completely swallowed up by those currents as some did. And was that a constant or you felt that as time went on, different things came in and out of the scene or it got more drugged out or it got more hardcore?

13:00I think there were different scenes and I was wildly ambitious and I wanted to do good. Like, I think there's a Tom Arnold quote. I saw someone that was like, good thing I never liked cocaine more than success. But I'm not saying that I was like some crazy drug addict, but I wanted to do good. I wanted to make my way up the scene more than I wanted to just like get wasted and have a good time. But there was definitely this, some of the clubs, the hip hop clubs, certainly in the 90s were more about the heaviest vices were just like weed and alcohol. And then you had these other pockets of clubs and after hours places and clubs like Limelight and maybe Save the Robots where people got out of their face.

13:44And I remember I wanted to write about this club Save the Robots where I used to go and DJ. And I think the club opened at 2 a.m., you know, went till 10 a.m. And it's where all the people who worked in clubs would go after. And I interviewed, you know, I interviewed 150 people for this book, maybe more. Nobody could remember Save the Robots. It's like everybody who was in there, anybody I talked to, like, I remember I say to robots, you're like, yeah, I just remember there was like a door. And then you went inside and you don't remember anything after that. But, yeah, it was it was intense. And I think that I was lucky that I never had a rock bottom fully.

14:24You know, I was always kind of skirting in it. And but for the most part, for some for the grace of whatever, I always kind of kept it together. Occasional rock, no rock bottom. Yeah. Yeah. Nineties rap culture glorified dealing more than using. I mean, that's another difference where certain dance club or, you know, outdoor rave culture. It's almost expected that everyone there or a lot of people there on something. Right. Yeah. Whereas you're saying hip hop was more like order drinks and try to be a boss. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Those are the clubs I was mostly playing at in the mid 90s. There were clubs like Cheetah and, you know, places where, you know, you'd see Biggie, Jay-Z, Fat Joe, Big Pun.

15:08Like it was insane. For real. Yeah. But yeah, that was mainly just people. And it was even before bottle service, you know, like I was writing about that in the clubs. What really changed the landscape of New York in the late 90s? 90s, there was Giuliani's War on Clubland. There was bottle service and there were suddenly like VIP things everywhere. You know, in the mid 90s, when I was playing at a club like Cheetah, you would walk in and just see like Jay-Z by the bar all night. Like everybody was in the room together, which was sort of a lovely thing. Again, keeping with the spirit of that vibe, Missy Elliott, Can We?

15:45I wanted to play that just for our mood. Let's take a look.

15:51Yes, I got the feeling filthy. No, don't ask me if I'm nasty. Freaky diggy, see, y 'all can't see me. Me too, man, and S-W-B. We hit you with the heat. That's it. Check it out. You have that vibe, and then we have the club in 90s fashion at the time, and you've shared some of these photos. Yeah. How did that all interplay into sort of the language of walking in and seeing how people are presenting themselves? You're this transplant. you talked about your home life you're also a white jew yes not an unknown group to like hip-hop yeah yeah yeah um and you're um go back far enough you're from england so how did all that work in terms of the look and and either studying it or integrating yourself with it well you know i just all the djs like we were just like in the booth you know this was before the era of djs being on the stage.

16:45Sometimes the DJ booth was in the corner. There was one club I played at where the DJ booth was literally nailed to the walls. You had to keep turning around to see if people were dancing or not. What I mean is the DJ wasn't really on display. We were just like, you know, t-shirt, jeans, Air Max. Like nobody had incredible style. Nobody was dressing like Missy or something like that. But it was an amazing time for fashion. And you think of those early Missy and Busta the rhymes in those videos, it was just every, the characters seemed larger than life. And sometime in the late 90s, I became the sort of DJ for Tommy Hilfiger, you know, and then that's how I got to meet Aaliyah.

17:22And, you know, the first time I met Aaliyah was on this photo shoot with this sort of now iconic picture of her behind the turntables scratching. And she was obviously just such a wonderful, like angelic person. But on that, when I met her on that shoot, I, as soon as I had a minute alone with her, I remember grilling her about Timbaland and Missy because I was just so fascinated with their music just sounded like it was from another planet. That song, Can We, that we played, the first time I heard that, I was just like, my mind was blown. And I remember her saying like, oh, you know, I'll introduce you to Timbaland and Missy sometime.

17:56I was like, that's never going to happen. One night I was DJing this random ballroom where there was a recording studio upstairs and I saw Aaliyah walk past me and she was like, I'm going up to meet, you know, Timbaland and Missy, come with. I'm like, DJ, you know, there's 400 people dancing. I'm like, I can't go with. Like, you know, I'm paid to come play this party. And so as she was leaving, she kind of looked back at me like, like, is it you coming? So I took the longest record that I had. There was some like Donna Summer, Diana Ross, like 18-minute disco song, like, and just threw it on. I was like, I don't know if I'm going to make it back in time, but there's no way I'm missing this opportunity.

18:36And I remember Aaliyah took me up and I quickly, you know, I went and shook everybody's hand and hugged Aaliyah and went back down to the gig. And you felt like you could just be yourself and enter these other worlds. I think I did. You know, I never made any, you know, I think I had some like hang ups. I remember because my mom was she was like this amazing. My stepdad was in this band Foreigner. You know, my mom was this amazing sort of like larger than life rock and roll. kind of, I hate the word socialite, but she was, you know, written about in a page six and stuff. And so when I started to come up trying to make my way in this scene, here I am trying to, you know, I guess make my own way and make my path in this underground downtown hip hop scene.

19:24And so I think I was embarrassed of it or maybe not embarrassed, but I wanted to like, I want to tout that I came from this sort of like privileged rock and roll thing. You wanted to play that down. I wanted to play that down because I thought like it would make people sort of respect me less or something like that. It was a very childish but like immature way. But when I was a kid, you know, you're just kind of whatever it is. So so I think but then my mom would just like come down to the clubs and my stepdad and they would show up like on the, you know, like my stepdad would be by the pool table in the back playing pool with like M.O.P., you know, and they just all loved him.

20:03I'm just like, I just that was the other thing about when I was writing this book, just like embracing and realizing how lucky I was to have family that, you know, when you're a teenager, you're just like insolent, embarrassed of your mom. Why are you showing up to the club? And then you just realize how lucky you were to have that. And you were in a new space. I mean, that type of embarrassment that you're talking about might make more sense if you were in exactly their lane. Yeah. And worried everyone's going to think you're getting a leg up in that exact lane. But you're in this new, you know, completely kind of gully, raw place, hauling your records in and out, barely making, you said you're playing for cab money sometimes.

20:46So it's not like there's some big immediate benefit you're getting. No, no, absolutely not. You mentioned Biggie. Let's take a look at Hypnotize.

21:07This was back when radio and DJs would help break songs. Yeah. Biggie was Biggie, so it wasn't that he needed it, but it shaped it. And you write, there was something about this 300-pound man from Bed-Stuy, how he made every New Yorker feel proud, even a rich kid from the Upper West Side like me. And then he showed up at my place of work to hear me spin. Often. I doubt he knew my name, but it didn't matter. It was the ultimate validation from a king. Yes. At that time, before his tragic assassination and before the industry changed so much, he did feel that iconic to you and your peers then. Yes, absolutely.

21:47I mean, he came to this party that I did on Tuesday night called Sweet Thing. And the first time he came, like it was like a visit from the Pope, you know, like the DJ booth sort of faced the other direction. So I didn't face the door, but it was the kind of thing like the whispers in the heart. Like I could feel the energy of like when Biggie had come in the club. And then he came. He came quite often. And one time he brought Jay-Z down. And this was when Jay-Z just had like one or two singles out, you know. So like, here's the king. He's bringing the prince with him. They were wearing these matching white, I'll never forget these matching white, like Homburg, like kind of American gangster amazing hats.

22:25Because I think it was Biggie's birthday. They went out there like, let's match and wear some whatever fly shit. So and then when Biggie, it was before he passed, but it was one of the guys from his record company, Bad Boy, came and brought me an acetate. of any acetates with the first test pressing of a new record you know and they were really fragile they were like glass you could only play them 10 times before they wore down so he comes to the club and he goes I got the new biggie joint um I gotta take it to flex I can't leave it with you but you can play it in the next 20 minutes of course it's the new biggie joint I've never heard it but of course it's going to be amazing so I cue it up in the headphones just enough throw it and it's hypnotized and it just drops.

23:11And there's 500 people in the club experiencing this song for the very first time. And it's just such a seismic thing to like, knowing that you're sort of almost experiencing like history in real time. I mean, nobody's probably thinking about in those terms or just like on the dance floor having a good time. And what was the reaction on the dance floor? It was crazy. I mean, it was like, it was just, it was, there's certain records in the way that you play them and the way they dropped and the way the crowd, like I still remember. There's records like Busta Rhymes, Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See that I can still have a visceral memory of like how the molecules in the room change when you would drop a record like that.

23:51But no, it was incredible. And you know, I remember there was a week that DJ Enough was the only DJ I knew that had Nas made you look. And before the internet and all this stuff, I went to all his gigs just to hear that song. I would go follow stretch just to hear certain songs because, you know, I hate to be that old grumpy guy going like it was better back there and it was more special. That's that's not the point. But there were kind of amazing things about the fact of how Howard you had to work and hunt and and, you know, dig for the things that you love. And when you're looking at Biggie and Jay-Z in that room, obviously nobody has a phone, so nobody's taking pictures or asking for pictures.

24:32What was their social dynamic like in a club at that time? I actually, because of those rooms and I was just so intensely focused on the dance floor, like I was just like in my world. You don't know. You just saw them at the bar and there they are. I saw them at the bar. They're hanging out. But what I did was in this in the book, because I'm there are all these amazing stories I hear from the clubs, like Biggie showing up with 50 guys at the door and like the guy at the door. I can't let him 50 dues right now. You know, totally mess up the ratio of the club and Biggie just waiting and handing over a hundred dollar bill each time.

25:06Every five minutes I let one of his guys and then Biggie just waited like it was nothing and then came in last. And so, of course, I had to talk to every bouncer and door guy and thing while I was writing the book because I wanted to paint. these are great stories they deserve to be painted as vividly as possible so yeah when i was doing the book i really like i tried to talk to everybody to get those stories what was it about hip-hop that could be so universal in the club at that time i just think it was it was it was the best dance music you know i played a lot of disco and r &b classics and soul there was a certain formula to to the to the night in new york in that era you played disco and r &b from like 11 to 1 then you played old school hip-hop slick rick and stuff then you played the new stuff then you played a little reggae in house and it's funny everybody kind of stuck to this playbook but managed to make it exciting and um i just there was just the hip-hop at that time it was just such exciting danceable club music you know i've been playing out lately again and it's like 25 years later the biggest song the other night was the other DJ played Candy Shop and these kids who were not even born when that song was out are losing their minds and whenever I DJ now you know I'm 50 like I text every DJ friend young DJ what's the new shit like tell me like you know all like feeling out of the loop and they're just like or just play your same set from 2002 that's what everybody's So funny.