‘Mark Ronson reveals success cost him his marriage – and left him addicted to self-help books

As the afternoon sunlight slants through the window of London’s most infamous celebrity hangout, The Chiltern Firehouse, Mark Ronson is exuding the effortless cool of a man who belongs at the beating heart of the international A-list.

The 43-year-old DJ and musician, who grew up living between London and New York, is known in the record industry for his Midas touch. From producing Amy Winehouse’s 2006 Back To Black album, to being the only man allowed to remix Bob Dylan’s back catalogue, to writing and producing the biggest hit of the decade, Uptown Funk in 2014, Ronson’s career is pure gold. Last month he added an Oscar and Golden Globe for Lady Gaga’s Shallow to his seven Grammy trophies and he is about to release his fifth studio album, Late Night Feelings.

Mark Ronson. The 43-year-old DJ and musician, who grew up living between London and New York, is known in the record industry for his Midas touch

Ronson is sitting at the head of a large dark wood table, a glass of spring water in his hand. His manners are casually impeccable and he looks like a man who is fazed by nothing, as befits someone who grew up with famous family friends: he was saved from drowning off Long Island by Paul McCartney when he was six and had bedtime stories read to him by Robin Williams.

So what does it feel like to be Mark Ronson?

There’s a long pause and he looks me in the eye and delivers an answer absolutely no one would expect. ‘I guess I’m coming to terms with the fact I’m a f*** up , an emotional, neurotic mess, so I’m dealing with that…’ There is a pause. ‘And even though this is a little difficult, I’m deciding to be honest about it.’

 I dropped a few names to Miley Cyrus of people she liked and she just said: ‘Who are you again?’

I tell him people would be astonished to hear that a man at the top of his game – with a lifestyle of private jets, Oscar parties, Gaga and Adele on speed-dial, career success and critical acclaim – should feel like that. ‘What you see on the outside is not always how it is on the inside. I know I’m successful, but it doesn’t necessarily make me feel I’m successful, and if I’m confident in terms of my opinions on music, it doesn’t follow that I’m confident in my personal opinions or my emotions. I never have been.

‘Things that drive you can also cause you damage. I’m a workaholic, a perfectionist and I’m never satisfied. That combination can create success in an album or a song but not in a relationship. And because you know it’s all part of the reason you have hits or make a great album, you are hesitant to try to stop and fix it. But I got to a point where I did have to stop and have a look at myself.’

That point, he says, was the breakdown in 2017 of his five-year marriage to Joséphine de La Baume, whom he divorced last year. Joséphine is a model for the underwear label Agent Provocateur and has acted in films from Johnny English Reborn, to Rush. The couple met in 2009 and married in 2011. Last month, Ronson split from Rebecca Schwartz, his girlfriend of seven months. It had been his first serious relationship since his divorce.

His new album came out of the emotional turmoil of his divorce. ‘There were stages,’ he says, ‘when it was going wrong in my relationship. I had the classic immature reaction of: “Oh, I haven’t been having fun, so I’m going to go out and get drunk.”

‘I don’t lay blame on my ex-wife. Things are good between us. The problem has always been me'

‘I don’t lay blame on my ex-wife. Things are good between us. The problem has always been me’

‘Then the record company started knocking on my door for something new, so there was more pressure because I had anxiety about following up the success of Uptown Funk. So I went into a studio, because that’s my way of hiding behind other people.

‘I was all over the place emotionally and that’s where I can just bury myself in work. Every now and again I’d have moments of clarity. I’d read a self-help book or go to therapy, but then literally on January 1 in 2018 it was like I just woke up. I started to think about the way all my relationships would break down [he has also dated model Daisy Lowe and actress Rashida Jones] and the one common denominator is me.

‘I don’t lay blame on my ex-wife. Things are good between us. The problem has always been me. I’ve always been unable to express emotions until it’s too late.’

He looks up and gives a sudden smile. The last time we met – at Chateau Marmont in 2016 – he had just taken the decision to move from London to Los Angeles. Now he says: ‘I am going to sound like one of those guys who lives in LA and does therapy and Pilates – because I now am one of the guys who lives in LA and does therapy and Pilates. But I knew the time had come to sort myself out. I want to find out why I am like I am. I want to be emotionally in a place where I can trust myself. I want to have kids. But you can’t do those things until you sort yourself out.

Ronson with the Oscar for Best Song for the A Star Is Born hit Shallow with Lady Gaga, whom he has known since before she was famous when they were both wannabes on the club scene

Ronson with the Oscar for Best Song for the A Star Is Born hit Shallow with Lady Gaga, whom he has known since before she was famous when they were both wannabes on the club scene

‘So now I look at the reason behind my anxieties and the way that I am. I try to understand myself. I sit on planes with huge therapy books and tons of Post-it notes and people must think I’m working on some psychological thesis, watching me pepper these books with notes. I’m not – I’m just dealing with myself.’

Ronson is dressed as befits his style-icon status (he also has two Most Stylish Man in The World awards), wearing a trademark white vest under a black cotton shirt that clings to his lean frame; his back jeans are a retro drainpipe cut, a discreetly expensive gold watch is strapped round his wrist and on his feet are large white trainers. No detail is out of place but he doesn’t look like he’s tried too hard. He speaks in a low, sonorous transatlantic accent that’s neither New York (where he grew up) or London (where he was born) but carries with it the unmistakable sound of privilege.

His uncle is the multi-millionaire Gerald Ronson; his father, Laurence, is a music manager; his mother, Ann, a wealthy socialite and his stepfather, Mick Jones – his parents divorced when he was five – the guitarist with the Eighties band Foreigner. His childhood best friend was Sean Lennon (he remains his best friend) and his memories include play dates in David Bowie’s recording studio. His mother and stepdad held the best parties in New York and he once woke up, went downstairs and found Bruce Springsteen rummaging in his fridge.

It was his mother who told him that Paul McCartney had saved him from drowning when, aged six, he got out of his depth in the choppy waves off Long Island, New York, and the former Beatle ran in to rescue him. ‘That sounded like one of my mum’s crazy stories. But then I did a song with Paul and [after] a couple of days in the studio, he came in and said, “Your mum’s Ann, right? Me and Linda would always run into your parents on the beach in Long Island.” I told him about my mum’s story that he saved me from drowning one time, and he said he vaguely remembered something like that. So maybe he backed up her claim, which means I can’t really tease her about it.’

At the age of 12, he was doing work experience on Rolling Stone magazine, after legendary music editor Jann Wenner met him at one of his mother’s house parties and realised he was talking to a pre-teen music obsessive. Two years later he was hanging out at every hot gig in New York, writing reviews for a magazine that was handed out to school kids.

Music remains his obsession. When you talk to him it is the time he is most animated, describing the perfect guitar riff on the perfect track. He knows every British indie band and can discuss their albums. He talks of his fantasy sound (‘Stevie Nicks produced by [singer-wongwriter] Nick Lowe on quaaludes’). He can also pinpoint the moment when he disappeared into music, as his parents were going through a divorce in the early Eighties.

‘There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and me and my sisters used to hide in our rooms to get away from the noise. I’d first escape into music. From then on I’d listen to everything my parents had, everything I could hear on the radio. I was just totally obsessed.’

His own divorce has squared that circle. His decision to talk so openly is as conscious as his decision – for the first time – to write and produce all the songs on this album which he describes as ‘sad bangers’. ‘I’ve spent most of my life as a producer and DJ. As a producer you’re working with someone else’s emotions and as a DJ it’s your job to get a party going. I wanted to change that, channel those emotions and put them with voices I felt would suit all the beautiful, mixed-up mess of emotions.’

It is a humdinger of an album, blending all his old-school tricks with an eclectic gathering of female voices, from Alicia Keyes to Miley Cyrus to alt-country indie stars such as Angel Olsen, Swedish singer Lykke Li and his protégée King Princess.

I ask him why he chose to use female voices. ‘Because few male artists show their vulnerability,’ he says. ‘And I wanted to express vulnerability.’

Ronson suffered after the breakdown in 2017 of his five-year marriage to Joséphine de La Baume, whom he divorced last year

Ronson suffered after the breakdown in 2017 of his five-year marriage to Joséphine de La Baume, whom he divorced last year

Although he is easy company, he describes himself as ‘shy and anxious’. It is this – and his music obsessiveness – that drew him to the likes of Amy Winehouse, Gaga and Adele. There is a quirkiness to him and a depth. We talk about that Oscar night, stepping up to accept the award for Best Song for the A Star Is Born hit Shallow with Lady Gaga, whom he has known since before she was famous when they were both wannabes on the club scene.

‘Was that a blow-away moment!’ he says. ‘It felt so unreal to be up there in front of all those people, yet all I was thinking about was when she was a waitress in New York and practising her Oscar speech in the mirror and now it was happening. I watched her pure joy, and then she made me speak, which I wasn’t expecting. It was absolutely dreamlike.

‘The part I really remember was about half an hour afterwards, when everyone was looking for us. We sneaked out for a smoke next to the fire escape, and after all that I’m then watching her in her $30 million Tiffany diamond necklace and her punk-rock tattoos stubbing out her cigarette with the heels of her big black stiletto boots. That for me was my Oscar memory.’

He pauses. ‘Like with Amy, it’s different moments, like talking together as we are running on a treadmill or going to Starbucks in between tracks on Back To Black and no one even looking at us. Real moments.’

He is keen to dispel the myth that being Mark Ronson means everyone wants to work with him. He picks up his phone to show me his text history with Miley Cyrus. ‘I saw her sing Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover in this pure Nashville voice and after that I was obsessed with having her on this album, but I couldn’t get her to answer my calls. I contacted her management, I saw her at a party and went up and dropped a few names of people I knew she liked and told her I’d done Back To Black and she just said: “Who are you again?”.

Mark Ronson with Amy Winehouse at the Brits, 2008. Ronson says his memories of Amy are the little things like going to the gym or buying coffee together at Starbucks

Mark Ronson with Amy Winehouse at the Brits, 2008. Ronson says his memories of Amy are the little things like going to the gym or buying coffee together at Starbucks

‘But then I kept on and on until finally months later we were in a studio. She knew Ilsey Juber [one of the co-writers and vocalists on Late Night Feelings] and just came over. We had the first verse to Nothing Breaks Like A Heart and she sang it as a test, which made my hair stand on end. That was the emotion.’ The song went straight to number two in the UK charts.

Therapy and self-help books aside, Ronson has dealt with his emotional crisis by making a heartbreak album to signpost his divorce. Two years on, he is still unravelling emotions. ‘Writing songs and putting my feelings into them has helped me, but I’m still working on stuff. I’m making myself think more and be much more awake to myself.’

So does he want Late Night Feelings to be his biggest hit ever? He nods. ‘Of course. But whatever happens, it’s the biggest thing I have ever done.’ 

‘Late Night Feelings’ is out June 21 on Columbia Records. Ronson’s tour Club Heartbreak starts at The Scala, London on June 25

 

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