I don’t think any of us were like, we couldn’t have been nostalgic because it’s an era of music from before even both of us were born - but it’s just what I always loved. Even when I started DJ-ing I loved hip-hop and I loved old Motown and funk and soul so I can’t help it. And I’ve always got, you know, called like ‘the retro guy’. But you can’t really help what you love.
What helped you to discover the next phase of your music? A very talented Hawaiian gentleman by the name of Bruno Mars [laughs]. Actually Bruno, because I worked with him on his ‘Unorthodox Jukebox’ record and we worked on ‘Locked out of Heaven’ and some songs on that. And I remember the first time I met him, I didn’t know that much about Bruno I liked him, but I wasn’t honestly a fan yet but I’d like some songs he’d done.
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And of course ‘Uptown Funk’ went huge and broke all sorts of records, but what was it like making it? It was pleasant because it started from a jam like with my friends, Jeff Bhasker, Bruno, Phil [Lawrence] and we just had so much fun and it was like just in Bruno’s studio. We just jammed for six hours playing this silly groove and then we wrote these lyrics. So the first night, we wrote the first verse and then every time we tried to get back in to work on it, it never felt as exciting. So sometimes we go in the studio together for two/three days, Bruno was still on a world tour, touring ‘Unorthodox Jukebox’, meeting us in Memphis. We might go in the studio for two whole days and maybe just to get two lines out of it. So this went on for about seven months. Then I was like, ‘Hey, you guys remember that song?’ Just sweet talk everyone back into the studio. And then finally, some things just fell into place that just made us feel like it was there. And at the very end I remember Bruno was playing the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and I went up there with a five-string bass and we just finished it in this three-day spell.
On to another big collaboration with Lady Gaga on ‘Joanne’ and then ‘A Star Is Born’ came into the picture and you were introduced to Bradley Cooper. Tell us how ‘Shallow’ came about? I was such a fan of Bradley Cooper and his films, I think he’s a fantastic actor, all of it. So he came into the studio one day when we were working on ‘Joanne’ - Lady Gaga’s solo record that I was producing - and, you know, he’s like a movie star. He comes in, you’re kind of just like google-eyed, like ‘You’re Bradley Cooper!’ And we were working on this song ‘Joanne’ at that moment, which is one of my favourite songs from that record. And he didn’t ask for it for ‘Star is Born’. He just said, like, ‘Oh, I’m putting together…’ I think he was doing a sizzle reel or showing a preview and he was like, ‘Can I use this song in that?’ But I think it was always known that we were going to try and write something special and bespoke for the film. It was so important to Lady Gaga, of course, because she was going to play the lead. So we went in the studio and I said ‘Okay, let’s see if we can get something for the ‘Star is Born’ thing that you’re doing.’ And that’s how the seeds ‘Shallow’ started.
When you were writing ‘Shallow’ did you know from the script that it would be so integral to the plot, or did that just evolve? No, we had no idea. We didn’t even know it was going to be a duet. We just wrote this song, we really inspired by the script, Gaga has sung the entire vocal. Then they went on to write so many more incredible songs and as we were writing so early on, I didn’t even know if our song would make it. And then I saw a really rough cut of the film and I got just chills, I couldn’t believe it. As it starts to go and she says the, ‘Tell me something boy’, and they’re in the parking lot. And I was like, this song, he’s written this into and then turned it - that was Bradley’s real master stroke - to turn it then into this duet, that’s the story of them falling in love. I thought the verses were always more poignant, just maybe that’s my taste, than the chorus. And the song used to go verse chorus, verse chorus, then when it became a duet, because of how it works in the movie, it goes, verse Lady Gaga, verse Bradley Cooper, verse Gaga, then chorus and I feel like that just made the whole structure of the song. And that song becomes the soundtrack of them falling in love. So Bradley really like - he hooked us up [laughs].
Did you work at all with Bradley, who’s not a singer, in the same way you did with Ryan Gosling. ? Well, Lady Gaga, she produced all of Bradley’s vocals and performances so that you’d have to ask her. But I had worked with him in the beginning of the film. We were just like, ‘Yeah, let’s just record a few covers and have some fun and find where your voice and where you’re happiest’, because he has a lovely falsetto. I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble for this, but he has this lovely cover that we did of ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ by Radiohead, where he’s singing full on in like the Thom Yorke falsetto that I thought was so sweet. It’s like probably on like a hard drive somewhere. But yeah, he had a really lovely range.
Do the great artists you have worked with so far have anything in common? Yeah, they’re terrifying! [laughs] Yeah, I think they all have a sort of special, that’s what you’re there for as a producer, you’re just really there to sit in a room with someone who has a pretty special talent and hone in and just amplify that as much as possible. So yeah, everybody has a little bit of a superpower.
Some of the great people you have worked with, like Ami, have left us too soon. Do you think there is something in the pressure cooker of being in music that might result in that? I think it’s more that these people are so beloved and so special because they are maybe a little bit more emotionally raw or volatile than the rest of us. And that’s what goes into their music, a record like ‘Back to Black’ and what makes it so beloved. So for the same reason those are people that also struggle in other areas of life. It’s like that kind of emotional rawness that we love in their art is also what makes it tough sometimes.
Finally, you have a memoir coming out soon, despite being only 48. When you look back at all this stuff - It’s a pretty amazing story. What can we expect from the book? The book only goes up to 1999. I’m such a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain’s writing and I love ‘Kitchen Confidential’. It’s one of my favourite memoir books. And the way that he writes about New York and kitchens and he’s writing for the chefs and you feel every bit of grime on the surface and the energy of a New York kitchen. I was like, ‘I just want to do that for DJs’. I don’t mean like I think I’m as good a writer as Anthony Bourdain. But that idea of what the clubs were like at that time, the lunacy of it, the owners. And I love in Bourdain’s book, he’ll teach you a little bit about knives at the same time. It’s a little bit about what goes into DJing, what makes a DJ beat matching all these kinds of things mixed with this sort of like crazy era of New York that’s not really filmed or anything because it was before phones and all that.
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INTERVI EW MARK RONSON
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