Book review: A love letter to more humble beginnings

Mark Ronson's 'Night People' is about chasing the highs of a great mix while documenting a city that no longer exists

In 'Night People' Mark Ronson’s intent on honouring 'the old me' — the hustler hauling record crates up apartment stairs, long before smartphones lit up dancefloors or every set was documented online. File picture:Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

• Night People: How to be a DJ in 90s New York City 
• Mark Ronson 
• Century, hb £25

The final chapter of Mark Ronson’s memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in 90s New York plays it glassy-eyed. 

Strapping his daughter to his chest, he strolls downtown past the former venues where he cut his teeth, recognising faces he can’t quite place and reflecting on records as “life’s most constant companions”.

He remembers allies in the booth who have passed away — DJ AM, Fatman Scoop — or those who traded the Big Apple for steady residencies in Las Vegas.

“I wonder if Ruthie will ever get to see me DJ,” he writes of his daughter. “It’s unlikely I’ll be doing this in 15 years.”

He describes how he’s currently healing from tendons torn while wrestling with a monitor because “the venue’s PA system was shit” and sighs at how few parties happen in Manhattan anymore.

Of course, he gets recognised. This is Mark Ronson: Producer and architect of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, Academy Award winner ( A Star is Born), and executive producer of the Barbie soundtrack. 

Yet in Night People he’s intent on honouring “the old me” — the hustler hauling record crates up apartment stairs, long before smartphones lit up dancefloors or every set was documented online.

There is little to nothing on the aforementioned accolades.

The subhead, How to Be a DJ in 90s New York City, should come with a caveat: It helps to be a nepo baby. 

Ronson is upfront about it — his stepfather is Mick Jones of Foreigner ( I Want to Know What Love Is), he interned at Rolling Stone aged 12, and his childhood best friend was Sean Lennon.

The book is full of cameos, from Biggie Smalls to Robin Williams to Michael Jackson, though the most compelling moments aren’t the brush-with-greatness stories but the graft. 

Ronson recalls crate-digging for hours, studying Stretch Armstrong’s sets, and obsessing — sometimes for pages at a time here — over stylus needles and slipmats.

It all coalesces into Ronson’s eureka moment, mixing Notorious BIG’s verse on It’s All About the Benjamins into AC/DC’s Back in Black. The club pops. 

“We were all breaking some unwritten rule — what a DJ should play, what a crowd should dance to — and we didn’t care. We were doing it together. I don’t remember how I got out of it or what I played the rest of the night. But nothing was ever the same again.” 

Suddenly Ronson is featuring on a Tommy Hilfiger-sponsored tour of malls alongside buzzy it-kids such as Aaliyah, Kate Hudson, and Rashida Jones.

He stars fleetingly in Zoolander, DJing the ‘eugoogoly’ scene backdropped by the NYC skyline. 

He’s on the cover of New York magazine draped in an American flag and the headline The King of Spin. He helped define a new term: Celebrity DJ.

But Ronson says he’s most at home behind the decks, either spinning or talking to the DJ on a given night. 

Of course, Ronson doesn’t shy away from indulgences — admitting he was overdoing it, mixing drugs like cocktails, even accidentally taking heroin one night — but it’s the music that truly lingers. 

He shares aphorisms learned along the way: “The chicer the spot, the more bullshit the DJ setup”; “Lounge gigs are fun. With no pressure to make people dance, you’re just playing records to show the world how cool you are.”

Ronson says he talked to 150-200 people to get the particulars of the scene right. 

It’s reminiscent of Thurston Moore’s detailed Sonic Life and Anthony Bourdain’s incendiary Kitchen Confidential (celebrating its 25th anniversary this year). 

Night People is about chasing the highs of a great mix while documenting a city that no longer exists. 

Ronson may now be synonymous with global hits, but his memoir is a love letter to the nights that made him. And to the nightclubs and experiences that no longer exist.