Nerdery triumphs over gossip in this earnest but compelling memoir of the 90s New York club scene
I
t is bizarre to learn that, despite a career spent desperately trying to fill the dancefloor, reading the room night after night to predict how he might make it pop off, Mark Ronson never dances – “unless you count standing around, bobbing my head, and reciting rap lyrics as dancing”.
Night People is intended as Ronson’s memoir but is as much an attempt to immortalise the people and scenes he came up in as it is a reflection on a childhood shaped by the late-night parties hosted by his parents – first in London, where a distant memory of Robin Williams tucking him in to bed with “Nanu nanu” floats through, then later in Manhattan, when his mother marries Mick Jones from Foreigner.
By his own, self-aware account, Ronson has led a gilded life. Elite schools (Collegiate, Vassar, NYU); sleepovers with Sean Lennon and a cast of New York’s nepo who’s who; hanging out with Michael Jackson; the abundant creative freedom gifted by the safety net of generational wealth. It would be enough to make many readers roll their eyes before turning a single page. Their loss.
