Mark Ronson: ‘I Was A Fucking Idiot Before Success'

Renowned DJ Mark Ronson has admitted he is glad his success reached him later in his life as opposed to his early beginnings.

When discussing the career trajectory of frequent collaborator and one-time protégé Daniel Merriweather, Ronson reflected on his own success timing.

“Yeah, I'm probably lucky that it didn't happen when I was 21 or whatever. I think Adele seems pretty mature, but I was a fucking idiot at 21. I wouldn't say that I was an idiot,” he backpedalled. “You know, my mother she raised us fairly well and she was strict and stuff but, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have been probably that great at handling some of the other shit going on in the world and whatever else.”

On the topic of Merriweather, Ronson believes the Aussie singer can reach international heights, but like himself, may not happen till further into his career.

“I'm sure it'll happen for him”. “[For] some people it's not supposed to happen all at the same time. I think everyone has their own arc. It took me 'til I was 31, 32 to have my first success as a producer and I've been making records probably since I was 16. I mean, I kinda resigned myself, at 30, to thinking it was never gonna happen, 'cause I came up around these guys, like, I watched Kanye, I even watched Chad [Hugo] and Pharrell [Williams] from The Neptunes.

"Dangermouse was kind of like the last straw, 'cause he was one I met when he kinda wasn't big and then [he] just blew up and I remember thinking to myself, 'Maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this?' In a very realistic way, like, 'How long are you gonna fucking keep going to these labels?' And I had beat tapes to try and get on all these projects, and this thing and that thing, and I was thinking to myself, 'I should maybe think about another career option,' and then I think within a year I was lucky enough to meet Lily [Allen], and I was working on Version and Zane Lowe and Gilles Peterson started to play some of the stuff off of that on the radio – it was like a bootleg cover of Radiohead Just that I made so, yeah! It just happens when it happens.”

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