Mick Ronson - Mick Ronson

  by Jon Rogers

published: 28 / 3 / 2010

intro

Jon Rogers examines the career and life of influential David Bowie and 'Ziggy Stardust' guitarist Mick Ronson, whose two own solo albums have recently been re-released

It is an image that has endured summing up not only the glam rock era but the whole band as a gang attitude. Whilst performing on stage at the time of ‘Ziggy Stardust’ singer David Bowie draped his arm around guitarist Mick Ronson – with not-so-subtle homo-erotic overtones - causing a bit of a furore at the time, especially when Bowie intimated fellatio on Ronson’s guitar. That might be the enduring image but Ronson’s musical career was far more extensive than playing with Bowie during his glam rock years. Playing in Bowie’s band and being a key element in the widely critically lauded ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ was undoubtedly Ronson’s moment in the spotlight, but he was far more than just a hired hand ready to help out whenever needed. Ronno, as he was affectionately known, came into Bowie’s orbit not that long after Bowie had got married to Angie at Beckenham registry office on 20 March 1970. Accounts vary as to who actually introduced the pair - Tony Visconti claims it was due to John Cambridge while producer Gus Dudgeon has also staked a claim to the credit – but either way Bowie was apparently interested in Ronson after having heard his playing on Michael Chapman’s album, ‘Fully Qualified Survivor’. Even at the time the Hull born 24-year-old Ronson, born in 1946, was starting to develop his guitar god status, developing his style of playing influenced by the likes of Cream and Jeff Beck. By all accounts Ronson was an instantly likeable if quiet person, although perhaps not exactly the brightest bulb but he came alive when playing. According to Dudgeon, “[Ronson] was an utterly charming fellow, I mean just a total sweetheart and desperately embarrassed at having to pull all those stunts every night during the Ziggy period. He hated doing it [...] I think maybe he wasn’t very bright, but I don’t want to use that word. I think maybe he was very shy. However, the minute he started to play the guitar he just went bazoooom! And he was happening, he was soaring.” Not only had Bowie found a talented guitarist but also a musical confrere and a good-looking sidekick and as time would show, adored by the fans as well as those who worked with him. There was though, according to Visconti in his autobiography ‘Bowie, Boland and the Brooklyn Boy’ a naivety about him: “He always looked a bit lost; he hardly had an ambitious bone in his body.” Despite Bowie and Angie having not been married that long Bowie’s band, including Ronson, all lived with the couple at Haddon Hall at 42 Southend Road, Beckenham in Kent. The cellar was turned into a practice room for the band while Ronson slept on the landing on a second-hand mattress. As did drummer John Cambridge and roadie Roger Fry. According to David Buckley’s ‘David Bowie: The Definitive Story’ the first recording the two artists did together was ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ for the album ‘The Man Who Sold the World’. Ronson though really came alive on nine-minute surreal thriller ‘The Width of a Circle’. The album, although not really up there as a classic Bowie LP, does set a sort of template of themes that Bowie would explore in later years – an interest in magic and the occult (‘The Width of a Circle’) as well as futuristic sci-fi imaginations (‘Saviour Machine’), a personality disorder (‘All the Madmen’) and a touch of German Romanticism with references to Richard Strauss. And then there was the blurring of sexuality. If listeners didn’t quite understand songs like ‘She Shook Me Cold’ then there was just the fact that on the cover (in the UK at least) Bowie was reclining in a dress. He famously claimed it was “a man’s dress.” With songs like ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ the album, released in 1970, sounds rather dated now and rather tame compared to the likes of Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’, the Doors’ ‘ Morrison Hotel’ and the Stooges classic ‘Fun House’ which were all released in the same year. Although dated now it was of its time and Ronson’s guitar work does manage to stand up against other ‘rock’ albums of the time. Although in a different class to the development of heavy rock with the likes of the first two Black Sabbath albums and ‘Led Zeppelin III’ as well as Deep Purple’s ‘In Rock’ Ronson does manage to hold his own in such company. The album though was a commercial flop selling poorly in the US and appallingly in the UK. Ronson was disappointed and returned to Hull to live with his parents and became a gardener as well as suffering from depression. Visconti, also disheartened, left the Bowie camp to concentrate on his work with Marc Bolan. Then came one of Bowie’s high water marks with the release of ‘Hunky Dory’ on 17 December 1971, drawing on some of his inspirations like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. Ronson was an essential part of that artistic vision adding guitar and piano parts to songs like ‘Life on Mars’ which are now widely considered classics. Initially the 1971 album was overlooked and largely ignored for more popular outings like T Rex’s ‘Electric Warrior’ and Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album and the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers’. It was only after Bowie got into his Ziggy guise and hit pay dirt did his newly acquired fans go back and pick up this unassuming bag of gems. The critics loved it though with the NME calling it “Bowie at his brilliant best”. While the ‘New York Times’ was also impressed saying he was “the most intellectually brilliant man yet to choose the long-playing album as his medium of expression”. The public took a while to catch up as the album only entered the UK charts in September 1972. Producer Ken Scott praised Ronson: “Ronno was an incredible guitarist. He was also a unique arranger strings-wise, orchestrally. As far as taking a rock band and doing the arrangements was concerned, he was very typical, very average. But as a guitarist and as an arranger – brilliant.” Bowie and Ronson were now on an artistic roll when they weren’t resuscitating Lou Reed’s career by producing ‘Transformer’ – apparently Reed couldn’t understand a word Ronson said during the sessions due to his thick Yorkshire accent so Bowie had to act as a sort of translator - they were defining the early 70s musical zeitgeist with ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, a glam rock concept album. It made its contemporaries like Slade’s ‘Slayed?’ and Yes’ ‘Close to the Edge’, when it was released on 6 June 1972, look positively pedestrian and dull. Even Tim Buckley hit a bum note with ‘Greetings from LA’. Only Roxy Music’s eponymous debut could match that other-worldly exoticism. Bowie’s persona of a troubled rock ‘n’ roll outsider hit a nerve and mixed that with sexual ambiguity and an outrageous (for the times) appearance. Ronson played a key part, adding some superb playing on the likes of ‘Moonage Daydream’ and the title track. Reviews on either side of the pond were almost unanimously positive. The American public were more cautious as the album only made #75 in the charts. In Britain the response was far more positive with the album reaching #5 and staying in the charts for over two years. While Bowie may have made better albums like ‘Hunky Dory’ and his Berlin trilogy, it is ‘Ziggy Stardust’ that has the cultural impact, turning Bowie into something of a household name and blurring the definitions between artist and performer and that relationship with the audience as well as helping to usher in a new theatricality into rock music. ‘Aladdin Sane’ picked up where ‘Ziggy Stardust’ finished and expanded on the latter’s themes of alienation and mental breakdown and disorientation. Ronson was, as previously, a key figure and even got a “co-arranger” credit and Bowie left the final mix process in his hands. The album while containing some gems in the form of ‘Watch that Man’ and ‘Panic in Detroit’ had a tall order to fill in rivalling Bowie’s previous album and never quite made it. With the break up of the Spiders in July 1973 Ronson embarked on what would be a rather underwhelming solo career. He returned to the French chateau Bowie had used for his album of covers, ‘Pin-Ups’ on which Ronson had also played. Certainly the potential was there and Ronson’s two solo albums suffered from people’s high expectations During his time with Bowie he had moved from being just the guitar player to a vital arranger of Bowie’s songs. And not only that but he was picking up the reputation of being something of a guitar hero. While Bowie may certainly have been the clear front man and star of the show Ronson was also drawing attention in his own right – he’d started to get his own fans and fan mail address specifically to him – as well as groupies. According to Buckley’s Bowie biography, the singer was, at least privately, annoyed that his sideman was taking the centre stage. Bowie was put out not so much with Ronson himself but with the situation that he was being launched on the back of his success. As Buckley puts it, for Bowie “he was the main man at MainMan [Bowie’s management company] and was somewhat taken aback when he saw [Tony] Defries putting quite a lot of effort into Ronson’s career.” Ronson teamed up with Mike Garson, Trevor Bolder and Aynsley Dunbar and started work on what would be ‘Slaughter on 10th Avenue’. The title track a cover version of Richard Rodger’s modern ballet piece. But Ronson never really lived up to the expectation or promise. Michael Gross’ review in ‘Circus’ of his debut album ‘Slaughter on 10th Avenue’ set the critical response to Ronson’s solo work by saying: “Ronson can sing, sounding at times like an androgynised Tony Bennett and at times like a macho version of La Bowie.” Well, it’s a compliment of sorts. And a cover version of Elvis Presley’s ‘Love Me Tender’ didn’t really help matters either. And an even worse move to kick off your debut solo album with it. But his debut did have some saving graces in the form of ‘Growing Up and I’m Fine’ and ‘Only After Dark’ which just about swung any good will in his favour and critics tended to give him the benefit of the doubt after highlighting some of its failings. As Gross summed up: “[He] may still be testing his ground, but who has released a marvellous solo album.” At best the album was adequate and showed what Ronson was capable of when it came to self-penned songs like ‘Pleasure Man’ even if the spectre of Bowie was ever-present. What many critics pointed to though, like Ron Ross writing in ‘Circus’, was the shortage of “straight-forward hard rockers”. The album got a warmer reception with the public as it reached #9 in the UK in March 1974 That good will had evaporated though by the time of his second album ‘Play Don’t Worry’ in January 1975 which, with hindsight, is a much more accomplished achievement. The album had started life during a sort of working holiday on the French Riviera and was finished up in England. The arrangements and production is much more polished and Ronson’s own compositions, like the opener ‘Billy Porter’ – a comical song about being mugged in New York – show a greater skill at songwriting. Once again though the spectre of Bowie is ever-present. Even the cover of the Velvet Underground’s ‘White Light/White Heat’ is an outtake from Bowie’s ‘Pin-Ups’ sessions and Bowie had used the song prominently in previous live sets. Charles Shaar Murray in the 'NME' laid into the album from the outset. “From where I’m sitting it seems as though you can’t go on saying that someone has potential for too long unless they actually start coming up with the Da Goods pretty sharpish [...] Ronno’s been filed under ‘promising’ for quite some time, but ‘Play Don’t Worry’ so manifestly fails to deliver.” He later went on to describe it as being “not over-endowed with character, and most of it, though quite pleasant, is singularly uninteresting.” Ronson was, according to the music weekly, “in considerable artistic trouble.” The album got a better reception on the other side of the pond with ‘The Washington Post’ calling it a much more assured effort and describing the mixing and production “almost faultless”. While Ronson thought “some of the album turned out really nice,” he admitted that “I still ended up with this problem of the lyrics and the music being inconsistent. It was all a bit of a mixture, you know, like ‘Slaughter’. It was a bit of a mistake not having more planned before I went into the studio. I was anxious to go out on to the road, and I wanted to have an album out when I did. As individual tracks, I think they all came out well. But I really need to get into a regular style of playing that’s consistent for a whole album.” Perhaps part of the reason for his relatively unsuccessful solo career was highlighted, unwittingly, by Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter when he was talking about the guitarist joining the band: “He [Ronson] becomes the frontman because he’s got someone to work off of.” When he was playing with Bowie or Mott the Hoople he had great talents to work with and the spotlight wasn’t entirely on him all the time. As a solo artist he was in the full glare of the lights and not having that creative partner to bounce ideas around with left him without a safety net. As Ronson told Ron Ross in 1975: “To get into writing properly, I need other people around me. I was never a writer before, and I’m just starting to do my own lyrics. I need other people as inspiration. I do need practice singing as well but that’s getting better all the time." “It’s nice to have other musicians because they spur you on with their own ideas. When there’s no one around, you can get lazy, and you don’t have enough input. Sometimes people will play little licks that really don’t seem much to them, but it can sound great to you. You work around those things, you pick all the good things out and mould them. Then the music comes out in one style.” Some have also pointed to Ronson being a victim of the hype machine constructed by his management company MainMan, run by Tony Defries, who also looked after Bowie. Critics argue that Ronson’s promise as a solo artist was blown out of all proportion with his first tour of England given the fanfare of an A-list star. When expectations were set so high, it was going to be difficult to live up to that standard. MainMan also tried to create a buzz about the album by renting one of New York’s most expensive billboards on Times Square to promote his debut album. As one critic observed: “He wasn’t ready for this big hype and he couldn’t sustain it.” The harshest critic on the two solo albums is actually Ronson himself. In an interview with Jonh Ingram from ‘Creem’ he stated: “I should have never have done those albums, because the songs are very personal, but I’m glad I did, because it got them out of my system.” Ronson then went on to join Mott the Hoople and had a hit with Ian Hunter in 1975 on ‘Once Bitten Twice Shy’ and then toured with Bob Dylan. In 1980 the Human League brought him back to attention with a cover of ‘Only After Dark’. But Ronson would never achieve the same level of fame as he did with his work with Bowie and his solo albums. Unfortunately Ronson would slowly suffer from liver cancer and face a slow decline that included seizures and blackouts. The disease finally got the better of him in April 1993.

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