Mark Ronson on Memoir 'Night People' and the Music That Made Him

When Mark Ronson began writing his debut memoir a few years back, he grossly underestimated the commitment. “It ate my life,” he tells Variety of “Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City,” an electric reminiscence of his days as a DJ on NYC’s club playground. “I’ve turned down production gigs left and right and whatever else it is, but I am proud of it in the way that it’s as good as I could have made it with my whatever, my writing talents.”

Ronson may be playing coy — at 50, he’s remarkably humble for someone who’s halfway to an EGOT and performed at the Super Bowl — but “Night People” explains why. Before producing canonical records with Bruno Mars and Amy Winehouse, he had humble beginnings as a teen discovering the art of deejaying, lugging records in cabs across town