“My love letter to a vanished era that shaped not just my career but my identity”: Mark Ronson’s new memoir lifts the lid on his DJing career in '90s New York

Mark Ronson is to be the latest producer/ musician to pen an autobiography. Penguin Books has announced that his memoir, Night People: How To Be a DJ in 1990s New York, is to be published in September.

As the title suggests, it focuses on Ronson’s formative years as a mover and shaker in NYC.

Announcing the news on his Twitter/X account, Ronson said: “DJing in ‘90s New York City informed everything I ever did after, becoming the foundation for all my future work and creativity. In Night People, I wanted to capture that transformative period of my life and celebrate three of my great loves: the art of DJing, the thrilling energy of New York City after dark, and the wild and wonderful characters who populated our world and became my second family.

“This book is my love letter to a vanished era that shaped not just my career but my identity - a time when finding my craft put me on the path to finding myself.”

Despite being born into fame and wealth – his stepfather was Mick Jones from Foreigner and he counted Sean Lennon among his school friends – there’s no doubt that Ronson put the hard yards into developing his musical career.

It wasn’t just DJing in NY clubs, either. It’s often forgotten that his 2003 debut album Here Comes The Fuzz flopped and he was dropped by Elektra. It was his production work, and ease and fluency with which he moved between the worlds of hip hop, pop and soul, that proved crucial in his rise in the '00s.

Anyway, he seems to have nabbed some decent people to supply cover blurb. Lizzie Goodman, the author of Meet Me In The Bathroom, which covers much the same time period in New York music, says: “Mark Ronson tells his own sweet, intimate and sometimes extremely funny story of what it’s like to be inside an era of pure musical magic before anyone but you and your friends even know it’s happening.”

Meanwhile Griffin Dunne, the author of the acclaimed family memoir The Friday Afternoon Club, has supplied: “Mark Ronson’s transporting memoir is a New York bildungsroman about an uptown kid with a downtown heart that beats to hip-hop while longing for a sound that’s all his own.”