My drug habit was so bad I thought I’d had a stroke at 20… here’s reason I got sober decades later, says Mark Ronson

“REAL DJs don’t do mornings,” says Mark Ronson in his memoir Night People.

The book is all about his formative days on the Nineties nightclub scene in New York.

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So I’m surprised when his publicist suggests we meet at 11am at his hotel — by which time Mark has already had another meeting.

But after more than 30 years as a party-loving DJ, and now with two daughters aged under three with his actress wife Grace Gummer, his life is very different these days.

Mark says: “I do mornings now I’m a dad. I think part of me will always be a night person.

“Even when I’m in the studio, obviously I want to be home for the kids now. That is the most important thing.

“Old habits die hard. But now, no matter what, I really try to be home for bath and bedtime. And if it’s really important, I’ll go back to the studio.”

Mark, who turned 50 a week ago, admits a change of pace was much needed, despite managing to hold down a brilliant and prolific career.

‘Falling over the edge’

He has had huge global hits such as Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars, Nothing Breaks Like A Heart alongside Miley Cyrus and Oh My God with Lily Allen.

He produced Amy Winehouse’s entire Back To Black album, Adele’s Cold Shoulder and Lady Gaga’s Shallow.

But Mark tells in the book, out tomorrow, how even before his fame and fortune, his involvement in the party scene came hand in hand with taking cocaine, acid, ecstasy, opium, and on a couple of occasions at the age of 18, heroin.

At one point at 20, he even thought he was having a stroke after mixing drugs.

Mark writes: “One night, when I was out late and already flying on E, I took a bump of coke. Within minutes, my chest tightened and my left arm went numb. Could I be having a stroke? At 20?”

He said his mates found him “curled up in a corner” in the club and took him home. Things got worse decades later.

The book finishes in 2001 as Mark produced his first single, and his habits spiralled from there.

“My drug use and that side of things got even worse really, as I got older,” he says.

“Outside of the time of the book, I would say it was really in my late thirties, early forties and around [albums] Version and into Record Collection that I was really going the hardest.

“I’m not smart enough to know how addiction works. I don’t know if you can ever really fully navigate that path and keep yourself from falling over the edge, where I was just lucky.

One night, when I was out late and already flying on E, I took a bump of coke. Within minutes, my chest tightened and my left arm went numb. Could I be having a stroke? At 20?

“But there was just this time at which I knew that there’s nothing in this for me any more.

“I would lie to myself, you know, ‘I just work really hard. So this is how I blow off steam’.

“I just realised, no, this is whatever you want to call it, a weakness, or this is like a way to skirt reality.

“I clearly liked it more than a lot of people. And then luckily less than some other people.”

So by the time it was taking him “three days to recover” from a night out, he kicked the drugs for good. The buzz of DJing a party reverberates off the page as he talks about his favourite tracks and reminisces about the loudest, messiest and hippest places he played.

But it is those same blaring parties that have left him with debilitating tinnitus.

I’m not smart enough to know how addiction works. I don’t know if you can ever really fully navigate that path and keep yourself from falling over the edge, where I was just lucky

Lighting up as he talks about playing music, Mark says: “I’ve been going back to vinyl and it’s been so incredible. But I’m playing five-hour sets again. It’s really done a number on me.

“I’ve had to start wearing ear protection because the ringing is just so bad.

“I hope to be doing this into my sixties and seventies, still writing and composing music. And it’s actually a little scary. It’s so loud right now, even while I’m talking to you — the ringing.

“It does put a tiny bit of a dampener on this joy of DJing again. Waking up, and for the first few hours having a hard time deciphering what my wife was saying to me, is scary.”

Night People is packed with fascinating stories from childhood, such as how one of his earliest memories was finding actor Robin Williams in his room, after he wandered in from a party his parents were throwing.

Or how his step-dad, Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones, would wake him up at 3am aged 11 to come and listen to demo tracks, to see which he preferred.

His mum, Ann Dexter-Jones, was a socialite, while dad Laurence worked in music publishing and signed the writer of Bucks Fizz’s Making Your Mind Up.

So in Mark’s musical mind, how can we win Eurovision again like they did?

“Charli XCX should just do it,” he says.

“Do the whole country a favour and just bring the whole thing. Why would she? But that would be incredible.

“I do feel like it needs to be something a bit off the wall like that, you know?”

But the stories in the book will also inevitably bring up accusations that he is a nepo baby.

“When I was DJing Downtown and in these hip-hop clubs, I did have this complex or insecurity,” he says.

‘Life so different’

“I didn’t want people to know that I was from this privileged Upper West Side upbringing because I thought it meant that they wouldn’t take me seriously.

“People just care if you’re good at your job.”

There are plenty of name-drops in Night People, from DJing at parties for Jay-Z and Mariah Carey, and recalling how he was banned from playing Michael Jackson’s music at a party for his rival Prince.

Mark has revealed he is working on another movie soundtrack.

Given he was behind the monster Barbie soundtrack which spawned two No1 singles — Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For? and Dua Lipa’s Dance The Night — I have to ask: “What film?”

The music I’ve been making is definitely inspired by, and samples a lot, of things that are loosely referenced in the book, but modern and fresh. It just has to be great. I feel like I should only put it out if I think it’s the greatest thing ever

But he says with a grimace: “I can’t really say, not because I want to be coy, but I’m always paranoid that I’m going to get fired before it happens.”

On his forthcoming album, he adds: “The music I’ve been making is definitely inspired by, and samples a lot, of things that are loosely referenced in the book, but modern and fresh. It just has to be great. I feel like I should only put it out if I think it’s the greatest thing ever.”

It sounds like the book has taken a lot of work, so I’m surprised he didn’t secretly have someone else write it, like most celebrities do.

“At the very end, my American publisher was like, ‘You know, it’s just amazing because nobody ever does this without a ghostwriter’,” he recalls.

“And part of me was just like, ‘Why are you telling me now that I could have had a ghostwriter? That would have given me two years of my life back.”

Mark now lives in New York with Grace, who he married in 2021, and their daughters.

He says: “I’m so lucky to have met the person I did. My life is just so different.”

Pointing to a framed photo on the sideboard in his hotel room, he adds: “I never thought I’d travel with a family picture. Because it’s just so f***ing . . .  soppy.”

But there’s one more star I need to ask him about — his mother-in-law, three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep.

Is she into his music, and what got her on the dancefloor at their wedding?

He says: “We actually didn’t have a DJ at the wedding, but she’s an insanely good singer.

“Well, I guess everybody knows that from Mamma Mia! And she knows music so well.

“It’s both instinctual and, you know, brainy level. So I love playing music that I’m working on. I really respect and value her opinion when it comes to music.”

Could they do a song together? She could record with Mark’s best pal, rapper Q-Tip, I joke.

“They’ve hung,” he says with a smile. “Q-Tip is our eldest’s godfather, so, yeah.”

With Mark around, I really feel like anything could happen.

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WAIT GOES ON FOR BEY SONG

ONE mention that will excite fans is that of Mark hanging out with an up-and-coming singer from a group called Destiny’s Child . . . Beyonce.

When I ask why they have never collaborated, Mark teases: “I’ve worked on stuff for Beyonce. But it’s just never come to fruition.”

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It’s been a decade since he topped the charts with Uptown Funk and six years since he released heartbreak album Late Night Feelings

So where’s the music?

Mark, pictured with Beyonce at the 2016 Grammys, says: “I sort of wrote this book with the idea that there would be an album to go with it.

“That was the whole point. Then the book just took over my life in such a crazy way. And now I’m into doing another film soundtrack.”

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KENDALL JENNER means business having clearly mastered the art of office chic.

She looked ready for a day in the City while stepping out at New York Fashion Week in this tight grey dress.

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The model and reality star completed her look with a pair of glasses.

But proving she’s not let go of her party-loving ways, Kendall was carrying a glass of wine as she left.

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