He was on CBS Sunday Morning. He produced, among other artists, Amy Winehouse. He was talking to her once, and she mentioned that her family wanted her to go to rehab. His response, basically: “Hey! Great idea for a song!” Not, “they might be right,” or “Let me know how I can help.”
Maybe he couldn’t have prevented her death, but his initial idea was commercializing her addiction. Asshole.
Well, it was a great idea for a song.
IMO, it’s rather silly to lay the blame him alone for not doing enough (and nobody but he and Amy knows what else came up in that conversation) to prevent something that happened five years after that conversation and was entirely of her own volition.
How do you know that he wasn’t pushing her to go to rehab? There’s only so much that others can do.
I’m not blaming him specifically, but the never mentioned urging her to get clean. And I tend to believe people when then show themselves in a bad light.
I saw the same story you’re complaining about. It was about Mark Ronson and the music he’s created or helped to create, not about Amy Winehouse and her addictions.
You know he told her it would be a great idea for a song.
How do you know he did not also urge her to change her ways, go to rehab, go to a shrink, go to church, join the Mormons etc…
I did not see the interview. So I don’t know what he said. But unless he tells he did not offer her any suggestions for help, we cannot know that he did not.
Unfair. He aped Bowie too much as a vocalist when his voice was really too weak to carry an entire album, but Slaughter On 10th Avenue was a terrific album: Only After Dark was a killer song.
I think anyone who knew Amy Winehouse would tell you that trying to get her clean was an uphill battle, and that’s putting it lightly. It was not Ronson’s responsibility.
I doubt Ronson has ever worked with an artist who couldn’t have used a stint in rehab.
It’s surely not coincidental, given the imminent release of the documentary about her, but I was struck by this part of the (explicitly tied-in) interview in Sunday’s Observer with her manager Nick Shymansky about the origins of Rehab:
I’ll admit it. I never pushed Amy to go to rehab either. Sure, I can make excuses; I didn’t know her, we never met, there was never any communications between us. But the bottom line is I knew she had a problem and I did nothing to help.
Great, now I feel like a piece of shit.
Hell, I even bought her album and bobbed my head along with her songs, *including *‘Rehab.’ I’m a fucking turd.
You bastard! You owe me all the great music she would have produced. Ante up.
The worst part is I learned nothing from this experience. I’m just going to go through the same thing again with Lindsay Lohan.
So?
I may be deaf to the sonic boom, but you’re talking about Mick, god rest his soul. This thread’s about another guy entirely.
As far as “Rehab” goes, it’s a truly great song. Whether she wrote that song or not probably has no bearing on whether she got help. Someone has to want help before rehab will work. I find it very hard to believe that a person who’s in a mindset to write that song is anywhere near the mindset necessary to be successful in rehab.
I was a big fan of Bonnie Raitt early in her career. I saw her in person back when she’d take a bottle from someone in the crowd and take a big hit. When she became more mainstream-popular she “cleaned up”. It seemed like her music suffered, and I was hoping for her to fall off that wagon.
I was praying for Bonnie to get clean so I am to blame. Sorry. As penance I have written and recorded some songs of mine which you should all listen to.
Like Eryka Badhu and Trombone Shorty?
Who else? Without digging too deep into the wiki pages, I’m finding:
Lana Del Rey
Solange Knowles
Sean Paul
Probably a lot more, these were people who’s names I recognized and didn’t have the words rehab or drugs on the wiki page. I didn’t click on names I didn’t know and didn’t count pages that mentioned drugs, but probably ‘couldn’t use a stint in rehab’. IMO, just because you use drugs, doesn’t mean you need to go to rehab. Amy Winehouse needed rehab, plenty of people can use drugs and not wreck their life.
But seriously, watch that video, it’s how I got to know who Mark Ronson was.
Oh, and blaming him for Amy’s death is like blaming Adele’s or Taylor Swifts or Alanis Morissette’s producer for their broken relationships. Sure, they might see $ signs when it happens, doesn’t mean their sabbotaging them just to make records. Way to take things way out of context, unless, you know, you have all the details.