We could tell this interview with Mark Ronson would go just fine when a few minutes in, he admitted he was hungover.
The funk royalty is headed our way very, very soon for Splendour in the Grass, and a bunch of sideshows around Australia, presented by PEDESTRIAN.TV, triple j, Channel [V], and Spotify.
With or without booze flu Ronson is as eloquent as he is musically talented, even when faced with slightly ridiculous/challenging questions about musical plagiarism, Mariah Carey‘s rider, and why Aussie festivals seem to be dropping like flies.
On whether he believes homage and plagiarism are light years apart, or a fine knife edge:I think that it’s tough. I mean, with the Pharrell and Robin Thicke thing, from what I know about the case, they didn’t break the law technically. It’s just the way that the trial went down, and I think it probably sets a dangerous precedent for music. We know all the music we love comes from something before it. I mean, that’s just how music works. The Rolling Stones used to famously like jamming on Beatles’ songs, until they evolved into something else. Kurt Cobain would say all the time that he was just trying to write a Pixies song.
I don’t know… You have to be careful, whatever that is. I think as soon as we start restricting music, and music suffers for it, it’ll go back the other way.On the special live show he has in store for Australia:I mean, I don’t even know what to say. It’s just so important that I bring a great show, and when we come to Australia, we all get to come. We’ve always gotten so much support from fans and people that like the music over there. I remember coming over to tour the ‘Version’ album, before we had really any kind of popularity, and I remember the DJ Sasha, who was on the tour with us, said to me ‘Woah it’s amazing you brought all of these people with you, you must not be making absolutely no money right now’. I was like ‘Well yeah, but that’s more important to me!’ I mean, eventually the record got more well-known, and we could bring MNDR and Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow), then that’s how I met Kevin Parker (Tame Impala), because we were over there doing those shows. If I’d bought a half-assed show, that wouldn’t led to meeting the people I did, and maybe I wouldn’t’ve worked with Kevin Parker on this record.It’s a crazy ambitious thing, what we’re bringing over. We’re bringing over this insane stage show, with Andrew Wyatt, Kyle [Falconer] from ‘The Bike Song’, Kevin Parker and Keyone Starr, and all these crazy visuals and screens. We’ve never pulled off anything like it before. I’m very excited for it.On all the Australian music festivals that’ve been canned recently:I can’t comment on all of them, but I know they decided to call it a day with Future.P.TV: Yeah, that was a really sad moment for a lot of people, I think.
Yeah! I never quite figured it out, because they were doing so well. I think that when we came over to do Future Music Festival in 2011, there was all these crazy acts on the main stage, then there was us, MGMT and Tame Impala on the other stage. It was a dream to watch those acts every night before we went on. I’ve always had such a great experience at your festivals, but everyone’s always said that Splendour is the best; it has such a great vibe.On whether he asks for any weird shit in his rider, like how Mariah Carey allegedly demands her coffee be stirred anti-clockwise:No, it’s pretty low rent. A bottle of tequila and four cans of Coke Zero. And the Coke Zero’s not even for me! I once had this DJ gig in New York, and this girl asked me if I had a rider, and at the time I didn’t even know what a rider was. I told that I like, I needed all this shit, and the last thing I wrote was a hand painted dog bowl for my dog. I showed up to the gig and she’d actually done everything, including the hand painted dog bowl. She didn’t get that I was joking, it was really sweet.P.TV: You should make that your Mariah Carey thing – a hand painted dog bowl.Yeah, that’d be pretty great.
If you’re real amped to see Mark Ronson’s live show at Splendour in the Grass or one of his side shows, we highly recommend you watch our interview with him from earlier in the year, about the creation of ‘Uptown Funk‘:
Image: Dominique Charriau via Getty
