Music producer Mark Ronson has confessed he felt “embarrassed” by his family’s wealth when he was growing up as a rich kid in New York.
Mark Ronson felt “embarrassed” by his family’s wealth when he was growing up as a rich kid in New York.
The 50-year-old music producer was born in London but moved to the Big Apple at the age of eight after his parents divorced and his mother Ann married Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones – but Ronson admits he spent years “trying to hide” his privileged background when he was trying to break into the music industry.
He told The Independent newspaper: “I spent my teens and early twenties, when I was coming up in this [music] scene, a little bit embarrassed, or trying to hide the fact that I came from money.
“I was going into this downtown hip-hop scene where people did not come from the background that I did. I thought it would make me ‘other’.”
The family later went broke after Jones was scammed by a financial adviser.
Ronson opened up about his family history in his new book Night People, revealing he was close friends with John Lennon’s son Sean because they went to school together and it led to a bizarre encounter with late music star Michael Jackson.
In the book, he wrote: “I think Michael hung out at Sean’s house and then the next night we went to see the Bad Tour. And then Michael had a big after-party in his hotel room.
“He was just obsessed with throwing these soggies out the window – like taking big mounds of toilet paper and making them damp and then throwing them at parked cars. It’s so crazy to say it out loud.
“Even at that time I already loved being in the studio. That was my obsession. I wanted to get a cool hook from Michael Jackson to take back.
“Like: ‘You guys go play and run around like kids, I am going to use this Michael Jackson meeting to like get something, get a song out of it’.”
Prior to his death in 2009, Jackson was accused of abusing young boys – he always denied any wrongdoing and was acquitted at a trial in California in 2005 – but Ronson admits the accusations made him look back on the party differently.
He added: “Obviously with allegations that came later, of course it made me re-examine that event too many times. I wouldn’t say it’s a highlight of my childhood, but it was certainly one of the most memorable experiences.
“And of course I put it back through that lens a hundred times. I was like, for whatever reason, there was nothing weird or untoward on that night.”
Mark Ronson was ’embarrassed’ by his family’s wealth
