Mark Ronson was “surprised” when he found out that Amy Winehouse had died because he thought she was overcoming her demons.
Having worked very closely with her when he made her album ‘Back to Black’, the 39-year-old music producer was stunned when told the singer had passed away in 2011, aged just 27, but he feels grateful to have got to know her.
Mark said: “I was surprised “when I got the call telling me Amy had died) because she’d been getting better; for the past year she hadn’t done drugs.”
Talking about the album that they worked on together - an LP which made Amy the first British female solo artist to win five Grammys - the ‘Uptown Funk’ hitmaker admits Amy was the driving force behind the incredible songs and he only guided her in the right musical direction.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Mark said: “She was a real student of jazz. I learned so much about chords from her, and except for [the song] ‘Back to Black’, which we wrote together, she had all the songs. We went for a walk, she told me the rehab story, and I said, ‘You should write a song about that.’ What we did together didn’t sound like anything whatsoever that was popular or on the radio; I thought it was a little too eccentric to be so successful - especially for America.”
