Mark Ronson

It's like every time you have one of these, you're sort of - your lease is renewed another five years. And that's kind of great for me 'cause that's all I really want to be doing still at this point, like just making records and getting to work with, like, artists that I think are exciting.

I guess the best thing about having a successful record like this is, like, I know I'm at least good for another five years, like, before everyone starts to like - all the haters start to come out again. And that's really what it is.

And music is kind of a - it's like a finicky industry to be in of course. Like, tastes change. You're hot one minute; you're not - you know, I've been through it quite a few times, like, on both sides of it.

You know, like, there's songs like \'Valerie\' and \'Bang Bang Bang\' that I was so proud of. And, you know, the level of success that they had - if they were little cult hits meant that, you know, I could sellout Webster Hall or Williamsburg Musical Hall or the El Rey theater in LA. Like, that was having made it to me. So the thought of having a number one song in my own career, like, never even registered.

You know, it's weird. It's - it hasn't really changed my life in any kind of way that I can measure. I mean, it's obviously such an insanely amazing thing. You know, none of my other records I've ever had before even broke into the top 100.

I remember that the bass was turned up slightly more on the mix from last week, and I thought that was good - or whatever. Like, there were some little things in there that he said that he came to, like, really enjoy my opinion or at least, like, my little comments on the songs. So I was kind of destined to probably be a studio rat.

And sometimes, I'd be allowed to be hanging out in the studio, which I just loved kind of, like, being in the room with these big recording desks, with all these, like, buttons and knobs and watching the guys use them.

I really love something about being around the recording studios - you know, like, those days in the '80s they'd be, like, in the studio 'til 4, 5, 6 in the morning working on these songs.

I mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.

And I remember that about three years before that, her first record had come out. And I just remember really liking this one song off it called \'In My Bed\' and being a little bit enamored. This, you know, this young kind of Jewish girl from North London, you know, I have the same thing - from a Jewish family from North London - with this incredible voice.

Basically, there's a good friend of mine who works at EMI Publishing, a publishing company. He had asked me - he was like, you know, do you know this girl, Amy Winehouse? She's in New York for a day. She's kind of meeting people to maybe work with on her second album.

Dave Guy, the trumpet player, is an incredible musician. He came into the studio one day, and they had just cut a cover of \'Sign, Seal, Deliver\' for something with Sharon Jones, and I just was blown away by how they got that sonic. I mean, it was just so much the real deal.

You know, that was the first time [with Any Winehouse] that I probably ever used a baritone sax. And it's certainly the texture that, you know - it's all over the record 'cause it's a nice compliment to her tone.

So when I was working with Amy Winehouse on \'Back To Black,\' you know, she had all these beautiful songs, incredibly well-written and just her on an acoustic, nylon-string guitar. And she'd play them for me, and then I would kind of drum up my idea of what I thought - make a demo with what I thought the drums should be doing, the guitars - like, quite a crude demo.

You just pick up a little bit of whatever the ones you think are appropriate, and you try and, you know, combine them. And then you bring in other people that are great for the things that you're not so good at.

Then, you know, the other more-traditional role of the producer in, like, the kind of Quincy Jones sense is kind of part arranger. So you're coming up with, like, these - you hear these songs that are quite bare-bones, and you dream up what's the band doing? What's the rhythm section doing? What's the guitars, strings, pianos - that sort of thing. It's almost like a little toolbox.

So sometimes if I'm working with a rapper, like Ghostface Killah or Nas, producing usually means, in hip-hop, that you make the music. You make the beat, and you give it to them. And they write the rhymes.

I think, you know, for me, whatever I need to slot into to make that music the best it can be or help the artists, or whoever I'm working with, achieve whatever vision they have in their head for a song.

You have to put these hooks in it, you know? You've got to make sure you got all that ear candy in it to get it through the gate.

And then, also, when you're doing something that doesn't sound like anything else on the radio at the time, you almost need to, like, ironclad it to make sure it gets through, you know?

I think that that spirit, or at least the raucousness of maybe that, is in there. And then yeah, like, along the way, you fine tune it 'cause you're thinking, like, OK, we need to now turn this into a song.

I think that where it came from and the initial birth of it - it did come out of a jam at Bruno's studio, you know? He was playing drums. And Jeff Bhasker, who co-produced the record with us, is on synths, and I was playing bass.

I didn't really get that good at cutting because I didn't have those three years of gestating and nurturing my skills in the bedroom. I was kind of, like, out and playing in clubs after three of four months, because I was pushy with promoters. But I would just listen to the radio - Stretch Armstrong and Red Alert - and then I would go hang out with Mayhem, who did the WNYU hip-hop show.

I got into DJ'ing because I started to listen to New York radio a lot. Obviously, I knew the stuff everybody knew, like Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, but I heard \'Who Got the Props\' by Black Moon, and I went up to this kid in my school with the Walkman on and was like, \'What is this? You must tell me how I can get this now.\' Because there was no Shazam or googling lyrics.

Making music is a lifestyle; go to the studio and sit in front of your computer, drum machine or guitar for 10 hours a day. The good stuff will come.

My mother was pretty strict. I hated it, but maybe it made me a bit more sensible.

I think Katy B encapsulates young London in a way I never could. She reps London harder than anyone song-wise since Lily Allen.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.

Kids can make fun of you for having the wrong shoelaces: that's just kids. But I don't think I had any trouble making friends.

I rarely ever respond to misquotes and wrong information. Plus, it only serves to bring attention to the matter.