mark ronson is producer and creator and host of a brand new show called watch the sound i can say this as a whole it's a you know it really is a wonderful watch mark i mean you're someone who's a good friend of mine i feel very comfortable saying that in front of the world um and i've known you a long long time now but uh hearing you being able to and watching you being able to kind of
dive into your passion to this degree was just a joy like watching you get get that involved in something that we hear the result of all the time but we don't really get to see how you feel in those private moments and it was beautiful and so my question to kick this off bro is is how was the experience for you making what i can only imagine was your dream
tv show i mean it that's exactly what it is it is my dream tv show and i think when we started out kim rosenfeld came to me as executive producer of the show was like i want to do a show a tv series apple had just launched apple tv i want to do a tv show that's a bit like he was he referenced his ted talk that i'd done about sampling because he was like you know obviously i
love music i know what sampling is but i never knew the minutia the ins and outs i never realized what a thread it is not only through music but just as a sort of like we live in a sort of sample based culture anyway right that's what ted talks to usually they take your thing and they lend it to some big picture and he was like i want to do a tv show
that somehow does that it's informative about music it's fun it's like the people the heads that know will still watch and enjoy it and then people who don't know anything will be you know engrossed and they'll feel like they learn something and it's entertaining so that's that was just where we started and so then he hooked me up with morgan neville this incredible director who had done a
lot of stuff i love like 20 feet from stardom and won't you be my neighbor and a lot of stuff and we just started to dream out this show what it would be how we could split it into episodes and after a lot of like hours and hours of brainstorming and rambling and talking around it we're just like let's do six episodes six subjects reverb distortion synth
sampling drum machines and auto tunes and talk about how they revelation revolutionize music and talk to the people who did your favorite stuff on them so what didn't make the cut out of if you if you've created a tight series of six you know we all know that there's there's a lot of ground that you could cover next or you could have covered on this series
so what was the one that didn't make this series that you really were excited about but just knew you just didn't perhaps have the time or the or the headspace to go to cover it as well i think that's probably so much like what i don't know about music could fill an anthology of tv series but i think these were the things that i could not necessarily talk the most
expert about but we could talk with the most passionate about because they've somehow threaded in and out so i don't know if there was anything that i mean we went to like obviously reverb is more of like a concept even than uh like we went you know probably a little bit more big pictures stuff on that um but there was nothing really that we're like crap
i wish we could have got this one in so i guess there's no season there's no season two so going back to the ted talk it's the kind of thing that i think thrusts people who have a certain level of experience and passion for a subject and it could be educational it could be social it could be activism it covers a lot of ground but it the one thread that throat flows through that is
i think that it encourages people who don't public speak to public speak and i and i want because because you want to be a part of it rather than like should i do it it's like well i have to it's a ted talk i'm of course i'm going to do it next thing you know you're doing it right was that the beginning of this you were there you were there in london and i had a different i remember
i you were the first person that i that you were like my first guinea pig audience because i had a different ted talk in my mind this is going back to 2000 early 2014 and you were upstairs for me in london in the studio i was like and you're like all right and you always just been like that with me like all right let me see what do you got like what are you gonna
do and i was like oh uh okay so i like set up this elaborate setup and i was gonna do something with like i don't know like samples and show people making and it was just like at the moment i was 20 seconds in doing it for you i was like this sucks apologizing already for the thing i was like this is gonna be so boring if i can't even keep zayn's attention he
knows how this works what am i gonna do so so that's right so that's when i really switched it up and it was like it was just a lot that was all it was just a lot you were taking you were doing exactly what i was just saying which was you were you were stepping into an opportunity and feeling the pressure of doing a ted talk rather than just doing the thing
that you know the best and you can really talk about the best yeah i was trying to be some combination of like macgyver and like bill nye it was just i think you were trying to build an akai s 1000 like on the stage like on the stage out of two potatoes and some like tripwire what's interesting about it is that is that i remember that too but i and i remember you being very nervous
but i understood why i'd be incredibly nervous that's my point it's a big deal and and since then i feel like you've become not only more interested but more comfortable discussing your process and leaning into proce the process itself you were genuinely quite quiet and weren't big to begin being interviewed before that um i feel like unless it was your own music
was that sort of the start of your like huh there's something i can really gain out of being a part of the conversation not just making the music that leads to the conversation i definitely i think when i started out there were kids in my class and kids i was friends with that were like really amazing at an instrument they could like shred ridiculously well
or something it was obvious like he's going to be a guitar player he's going to like i wasn't like i wasn't good enough at anything that there was like a signpost saying like go this way i wasn't any prodigy so i just i didn't even know if i was going to make music i just knew i wanted to be around it so i i wrote for metal fanzines i wrote three i did record reviews for like on the go and
like hip-hop fan scenes i interned at rolling stone i was like 12 13 14 so there's always been this side of my brain that's been as much fascinated music appreciation as somebody who who also makes music so this is this is kind of like this show is probably the best use of all those loves and and and manages to work them together because you're like i get to talk to
paul mccartney and like geek out over melotrons and the drums from tomorrow never knows but then we take like some little moog thing synth that he wrote and turn it into a song at the end of the episode as well so it's a little bit like it's it's just like the perfect part of equal parts fan and creator or something i'm glad you said that that's
exactly where i was going was you know you start out being a fan i think everybody does even people with this natural born gift who can pick up a guitar and instantly play like steve why do we always like use steve via as the example of like incredible guitar players i feel that's always where we go because he played a guitar with two necks that was like this
and nobody else can do that that's true and he he did really shred and in that like you're either going to pick in bay or joe satriani or steve buy and i'm going to go by every time you know you're going to be a fan and then if if you're lucky you find your way into the room and you start to find your role and what it is that you can contribute and then your life begins ultimately
this is the perfect balance this show watch the sound is the perfect balance of mark ronson the fan and mark rodson the player and so one of the things i've always found interesting when i'm talking to artists is i'm very much on the side of the fan and and you had to play that role a little bit in this show you couldn't just be the guy who produced paul mccartney
you had to approach paul mccartney with a different kind of reverence right absolutely um which is very natural like i actually don't have to really even pretend that much i mean it's the same thing with it's very it's it's funny like the amount of people whose music i was really really a fan of like really important to me like not just people as casually listen to an
album josh harmony q-tip uh beastie boys yeah bc boy stevie wonder these people that i've worked with throughout my career that it's almost like it's like pinch me you know it's like how is this person who literally made the stuff that made me want to make music so i'm still always half geeking out i mean at some point you got to like pull yourself together man and like
start producing and that's what that's what you're there for but interviewing someone like denzel curry who's from like a new generation and completely like tearing up the rule book and doing cool like i can't really assume that he knows anything i've done really i mean sure he's might have been to a wedding he's heard uptown funk but i think that
it's interesting as well just talking to somebody for their thing i don't know if thurston moore is especially well versed in like my catalog either like so it's kind of cool to go with those people that and just like there you're really just uh interviewer you know the humility is a part of of anyone who knows you well becomes accustomed to your unique brand
of humility and at first it's you put the human humility even though i know that that's not a hybrid word humor humorlity that's pretty good i went for it and you did it but the humility is is is real and so i it makes sense when you say you know for me you know slipping back into fan mode was natural so let me ask you this at what point and maybe it never will but at what point
did did you stop feeling like an imposter or a pretender when you're in a room with incredible musicians maybe early on in your career and you're recognizing wow you know i had this opportunity here somehow found myself in here i'm not a fan anymore alone i need to i need to figure this out i think usually it's like the first moment that you do something in the
studio that you can tell they're excited about because like you go in the studio with paul mccartney like not only are you working with one of the greatest minds musical minds of all time producer songwriter ranger musician all of it you're also in the in the you're in the room with the ghosts of george martin and nigel godrich and elvis is telling
anyone who even produced the paul mccartney record on top of it that's like one of the that's a very intimidating place to be so you always have a day grace period i feel like with him like he's like where everything in the studio looks like it's made from kryptonite you're just like breaking and dropping and then i think you have to get on with it the first time that
i have something that i can just tell that i've like engross them or turn them on same thing with like you know josh from queens of the stone age like they i just did something that they wouldn't have done by themselves so now i know i'm like in the room and they're and they're confident we're all confident that i deserve to be here but can you give us an example mark like i
mean either paul or josh a a specific example a memory you have of working on both of those records which are if you're a mart ronson fan a real production high points where you were like oh i got their attention and they know that that they're in good hands it hasn't happened yet no uh i think that i think yeah there was like actually paul mccartney said like one of
the coolest things that he was like i had a he was gonna put acoustic guitar down on this song alligator and i i said uh i had it all my tummy started playing and he was like it sounds like an acoustic guitar but i want it to sound like a record like as if you just put the needle down on the you know so we like ran it through this other mic and through the fairchild and whatever
but that quote has stayed with me more than anything and there's sort of like a bit of that that actually that quote from paul mccartney is almost the ethos of of watch the sound is a show because we talk about sound is is this thing in music that of course in music the most important thing is always going to be the song the vocal the the performance but
then you go to that next level where you talk about arrangement sonics the kick the snare the 808 and that's the thing that makes the difference between a you know really good song and an iconic recording like something we remember forever like when the needle goes down on track one you're like oh sh so that that that quote from paul um like definitely even though i hadn't
thought about before is kind of like the the you know the symbolic fortune cookie statement of the of the show almost one of my favorite episodes naturally i mean you know you can guess which one is one of my favorite episodes is the one about sampling is the one about um leaning into that era that really i think initially united you and i and put us on the path
to friendship which was we're of a similar age we were raised around similar hip hop we have similar tastes i love that record i love that record too what's your favorite song was first on that kind of thing so it's like you know hearing you go and dive deep into that world with some of the people who really were there at the very beginning of it was super fascinating for me
um i just wanted to ask you as an individual uh moving forward in your production work even today do you still feel like you have that mentality like even though you're working with queens of the stone age on a queens of the stone age album with kick-ass players and your job is to add another incredible record to their catalogue do you still have that hip-hop mentality
in a room like that i think yes i think that the thing about it's always about drums and beat and rhythm and syncopation first like that's just and that and where it's appropriate you know obviously like on a on a ballot or something like that but as far as like yes it's always drums and there's like i think that that's sort of what always gives me this sort of
kindred spirit thing with someone like josh or people that aren't from the hip-hop field so to speak kevin from tame impala like there's a rhythmic thing that's why they're like hard and and funky and whatnot but i think that it's weird because i'm coming back and i don't know it says as a result of doing the show or or or what but i've sort of come a bit full
circle in the past year and a bit or a couple years like i think that coming back to the npc in that style of production or even if i'm doing the same stuff in ableton just like that hip-hop feeling i think i went so far from it for a long time because it was what i did and i didn't get my break till my early 30s but i've been making that kind of music you know beat bass music hip-hop funk
whatever it was for 15 years before i made it isn't it safe to say that you were to some degree in the same space as daft punk were when they made random access memories that ultimately you can only sample so much of that at a certain point in your life then you want to try and make the music that you're sampling and ultimately try to see how close you can
get to the source whether you come back like you are today is sort of we'll get there but that's what i sort of always felt like uptown was about and and even to some degree your last album was getting to although that was more of a kind of electronic space but getting to that place where it's like hey this is the stuff i would sample yeah i think so you know it's funny i i
the first time i ever met ghee from uh daft punk it was like outside some bar in paris and he was like having this like you know he just looks so cool at the jacket smoking cigarette and uh i went up to him and i i was just like who the doesn't go up to that punk and ask some annoying questions or say how influential they are but it would be all
it would be stupid if i did and i was like yo i just i can't remember what record i was talking about this is before random access memories in uptown funk probably like 2010 and i was like man this you made he's like yeah but he's like but you made something back to black that feels classic like you like you make and i was like yeah but i'm like like retro guy like you literally made
like the new classic by the thing and he didn't want to hear it he really just like it's funny that they were making random access memories at the time because in my head that now makes sense because he was telling me like no but you made some the really soundy classic and i i just i always thought that was interesting because uh very like
humble of him he was well he was being humble with you was also kind of he was always kind of confessing what was to come to your point he was like you know you might think that i'm out here trying to search for this this kind of mineral that's never been discovered but i'm actually kind of more into gold and silver right now right yeah yeah i know i should have seen the signs
did it get you closer to understanding what that word retro has meant to you throughout your life because i've never and i've said this to you before i've never considered what you do to be retro i've called it i've called it hip-hop and funk and all those key genre words but not retro you make you work in a timeless space where those those sounds sound as good today as they
did back in the 60s 70s 80s it's not like you're dialing back and now you've been able to sort of pick that apart on this series are you better are you closer to understanding that yourself yes i think that there's always things that i'm going to be drawn to sounds from a certain era the way that tommy brennick you know from the buddhist band dap kings manahan street
band the way he plays guitars and riffs like it sounds like someone who is raised on steve cropper and wu-tang so like of course and that sound of that i love so much like i'm drawn to these sounds i have no i didn't grow up in the 60s or 70s i'm not it's not the sound of my youth i have no affinity i just i just don't know why i'm drawn to those
sounds so there's certain stuff i always used to you know feel for bruno i mean not that he was losing sleep over it but it would make me angry when people go to a show and be like yeah it's this retro thing it's like because 10 incredible like young musicians are on stage like jamming out playing the time of their life like i don't know if you could just say it's retro
it's just like a forgotten art form that they happen to be drawn to but yeah i don't i used to really bristle at it um and i used it's you know like anything after a while you're just like some people want to call me retro guy like that's cool i'll just put my bell bottom pants on one leg at a time and go make some nice music today so yeah you know one of the
the really great recurring conversations that happens through this tv series watch the sound is um [Music] you getting to connect with roger lin who is one of the great unsung heroes of modern music and i think that you've finally tipped the balance with this series for anyone who watches it will know now very clearly because you're hitting us around the head with it rightfully so
this piece of machinery and this individual is not only responsible for changing the sound of music but has actually it's been put into use and still to this day exists in the weekend's biggest hit record ever yeah no it's so crazy because roger lynn had first of all the lin drum which was the drum machine that was used on countless 80s records and prints
of course to like the greatest effect using it and then he invents the first or like the one of the most popular sampler drum machines in the mpc and like it's like a completely different like genre and then the arm of music that he completely dominates with that too so it's it's it's wild how his two inventions really just have their imprint on on wildly
huge amount of music that we love but i just love that he embraces it because you also point out you know um a discrepancy between and quest has some great things questlove has some great things to say about this the discrepancy between what was built for a purpose and how it ends up being used and the division that that created in a naive society
really interesting moment in the series i think when you're talking about the sp and how according to rumor that was rejected by the company that made it that it was being used in electronic music and specifically hip-hop and i love that you went there because we've talked about this off the record fans for a long time and you raised it to the surface yeah and you know
because i do i remember reading that in a book because i love the david byrne book how music works and i loved it so much that i read all the books that he referenced in that book so there was another book and i remember reading i was like i'm sure there's something about how the people that made the sp hated hip-hop and they were thinking of actually discontinuing the machine
because they just when they found out that what it was being used by public enemy in these things so and when we went time to edit because apple obviously has a very very thorough fact-checking thing you can't just say salacious rumors like labeling people as like sort of you know racially insensitive and they had to check that one and it did check out it was in the book
that these they were quoted they're like yeah we just didn't get hip-hop you know sorry or bad so it's and then that spins around and quest love really ties that to a lot of things like luxury brands that when that are kind of not very cool until they're embraced by street culture or whatever it is things like uh and music and hip-hop like things like
timberland and arminia i mean sorry armagnac is jay's brand but that was a direct reaction to him uh with the chris style when the people from crystal said something stupid like oh yeah i mean it's cool that the rappers drink it but that's not it's not really uh what where we want it at he was like oh really good oh okay stock price tumble and when and watch me yeah and just
watch my steps for the next three or four years so quests love you know draws the parallel to that which is really interesting and it is true it's like there's this thing of um that really is a common thread through our show which is the happy accidents like something comes out and everybody says uh this is kind of bullsh drum machine or it's going to replace
drummers and musicians or like you know throwing their arms up in the air and then someone like prince a genius comes along uses it you know in almost the wrong way from which it was intended tunes to snare down so it sounds crazy and then it's just incredible now we're still using it on records 40 years later and that's yeah that's a happy accident is a real running thread of our show too