Mark Ronson was born in St. John's Wood, London, England. His parents are both from Jewish families of Central/Eastern European origin. His mother, Anne Dexter, is related to the founder of the Odeon cinema chain, Oscar Deutsch and two British Conservative politicians, Malcolm Rifkind and Leon Brittan. Ronson's real estate mogul father, Laurence, managed the successful British pop quartet Bucks Fizz.
After Anne Dexter divorced Laurence Ronson, she moved to New York with Mark and his two younger twin sisters. She married there Mick Jones, the Foreigner guitarist and songwriter. The family lived in a 14-room San Remo apartment, an Art Deco building that counts Tiger Woods, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, Dustin Hoffman and Bono among its past or present homeowners.
His younger twin sisters are Samantha Ronson (singer and DJ, famous for being Lindsay Lohan's girlfriend) and Charlotte Ronson (clothing designer).
Ronson and Sean Lennon (the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono) lived two blocks away from one another when they were children. They learned to play guitar at the same time and have been close friends ever since.
Sir Paul McCartney once saved Mark Ronson from drowning in the Long Island Sound when the future producer was just a child. Ronson was too young to remember and heard the tale from his mother. He wasn't entirely convinced the story was genuine, but the ex-Beatle later confirmed it as being true.
Mick Jones told us that Ronson was fascinated by music from an early age: "Mark is my stepson. I've raised him from the age of 7," he said. "He always showed an intense interest in music right from the get-go, and I suppose growing up in that household with me, a lot of it rubbed off. I'd always play him the latest stuff that I was doing, and he was in some ways affected by that, I'm sure."
Jones added: "He started out with a little band that he had here in New York, and even though he's a very bright guy - he did very well at school - he still had the time to really concentrate on his music."
He started to play guitar in a New York band when he was 14. "We got to open for Spin Doctors at Wetlands; that was probably our biggest thing," Ronson told Billboard magazine.
By his late teens Ronson had become obsessed with hip-hop. "My heroes were DJ Premier and RZA. I was like, 'OK, I have to be involved with this music in some form.' But I can't rap. That's why I got a turntable," he explained. "I wanted to start DJ'ing. The minute I got turntables, that's all I really cared about."
Ronson started DJing in 1993. He was soon one of the most respected DJs and started being called on for celebrities' private parties and events such as Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's wedding in November 2006.
His first credit as a writer on a chart hit was Christina Aguilera's 2006 #19-peaking ballad "
Hurt."
Ronson has achieved much success as a producer working with a vast array of acts, from Nas to Christina Aguilera and Paul McCartney. His most important record was Amy Winehouse's
Back to Black LP, which earned him three Grammy Awards in 2008 (Producer of the year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Record of the Year for "
Rehab").
Ronson has had some success as a solo artist in the UK. Both "
Stop Me" and "
Valerie," reached #2 in the country of his birth. However, he had to wait until late 2014 to break into the Hot 100 with "
Uptown Funk," which went on to top the chart.
Mark Ronson's uncle is tycoon Gerald Ronson who became notorious in the UK as one of the Guinness Four for his involvement in the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s. The business scandal involved the manipulation of the stock market to inflate the price of Guinness shares to thereby fraudulently assist their £4 billion takeover bid for the Scottish drinks company Distillers. Ronson was fined £5 million and given a one-year jail sentence.
Mark Ronson shared with the Radio Times October 12-18, 2019 what a typical day entails for him when he's in Los Angeles:
"I wake up at 8 a.m., walk the dogs, go to the gym, then into the studio to work from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. I go home and watch TV for half an hour before I go to sleep."
Mark Ronson married French actress and singer Joséphine de La Baume in the French city of Aix-en-Provence on September 5, 2011. They divorced in 2018.
Ronson tied the knot for the second time with actress Grace Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep, in 2021.
Unlike many modern producers who thrive on spontaneously "cooking up" beats in the studio, Mark Ronson prefers to arrive overprepared. He'll spend hours beforehand fine-tuning drum sounds, adjusting snare tunings, and building loops, because he hates the idea of an artist sitting around waiting while he tweaks settings.
Though Ronson loves being prepared, sometimes an artist rejects everything he's brought to the session, leaving him scrambling to create something from scratch with them watching. He describes those moments as "terrifying," but says the adrenaline rush of having to impress someone in real time often leads to unexpectedly great results.
Ronson keeps digital folders full of loops, drum breaks and musical sketches, a personal vault of inspiration. When he walks into the studio, he can instantly pull up sounds to jumpstart a session. He calls it a safety net that keeps him from starting "from zero" creatively.
