Spanning David Bowie and Bob Dylan
THE INTENSE GUITAR OF MICK RONSON

Guitar Player
December 1976
By Steve Rosen

The three-word title of Mick Ronson's second solo album also happens to accurately describe his approach to the guitar: Play, Don't Worry. At nearly thirty, British-born Mick likes to perform music that challenges his skills as a guitar player, keyboardist, arranger, and producer. He claims not to be particularly concerned with audience reaction to either his choice of band or the type of music he decides to play. Perhaps this attitude accounts for his most recent stint with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, a folk-oriented band most people would not associate with Ronson's more widely known electric style, best demonstrated earlier in his career with David Bowie And The Spiders From Mars band.

It has taken years for Mick to develop his flexibility. At age three, he began playing an accordian given to him by a next-door neighbor. He remembers hearing his 'first real piece of music' when he went to see a Charlie Chaplin film called Limelight. The movie inspired him to return to the accordian with a fervor which so impressed his parents that they offered him piano lessons. The fledgling musician's talents were thwarted, however, by various teachers' inabilities to cope with so young an artist.

When he reached eleven years of age, he experimented with both violin and recorder, and found that the string instrument really sparked his interest.

'Violin was quite fun,' Mick remarks, 'but after about three years I got fed up with it, because people used to make fun of you if you carried a violin case. All the big lads were getting motorbikes, and I wanted to go out into the streets and into bowling alleys and things. I used to pay people to carry my violin because I was afraid to--there were some tough lads there.'

Childish ridicule coupled with an insensitive teacher ('He used to rap my knuckles all the time') led to such discouragement that Mick not only dropped his pursuit of the violin, but left music entirely for three years. Then when he was seventeen he bought a Rosetti acoustic guitar for L14, and soon after joined a local band.

'I think that was the best time ever,' Ronson reflects on the early stages of his career. 'Just learning how to play. Because it was a real thrill simply to switch on an amplifier and listen to it work. One of the amps had an echo chamber, and it was just amazing, all these sounds coming out!'

The band stayed together for about nine months and succeeded in landing a couple of jobs. Initially without a bass player, when one was finally obtained the time seemed right to switch to larger amps into which the microphones, guitars, and bass were plugged. 'I don't know what it sounded like out front,' he remarks, 'but onstage it was awful.'

Ronson spent time in various bands--with names like The Cresters and The Rats--but not until he ventured south to London, from Hull in Yorkshire, for the second time (the first such jaunt left him hungry and penniless) did he finally meet David Bowie. 'He wanted to put a band together, and I happened to be there,' explains Mick.

In his first years with Bowie, Ronson used small Fender amps both in the studio and onstage, but during Bowie's Ziggy Stardust days, the guitarist switched to Marshalls. 'That's when it started getting noisy,' he comments. On The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust he used a 100-watt top with one bottom. Unlike most guitar players, Mick didn't seem highly concerned about the particular brand of amplifier or guitar he used. 'Often I wouldn't even think of what I was plugging into,' he says. 'Sometimes it doesn't matter to me at all, as long as it works. I don't really have a preference for one amp over another.' Currently he plays through a Fender Pro Reverb, and in the studio switches to a Marshall 100-watt stack.

A Telecaster was the first 'really playable guitar' he owned (at age nineteen) but he changed later to a 1958 Les Paul Custom used throughout his Bowie period. He played the Les Paul in its unaltered state with Bowie, Ian Hunter, Mott the Hoople and most recently with Dylan and The Rolling Thunder Revue. Mick also has two other Les Paul Customs, but both are in various states of disrepair. Playing with Dylan has apparently rekindled Ronson's enthusiasm for exploring the potential of his instrument. 'I'm really looking forward to going out guitar shopping,': he says. 'It's always been somebody else going and getting it for me. this time, I'm just going to stand there with money in my pocket. I might buy a Stratocaster, or some new kind of guitar--I don't know yet, I'll have to see.'

If Mick's interest in guitars has been reignited, his feeling about strings and picks still run parallel to his attitude toward amplifiers: whatever is available will suffice. He once used hard picks for both electric and nonelectric playing, but found the flexibility of a soft plectrum better for smoother and livelier rhythms on acoustic. Otherwise, he claims, 'if it's hard enough' any pick satisfies him. His string arrangement changes occasionally, but he usually returns to a Rotosound setup reading: .009, .011, .015, .026, .038, and .046. He expresses little concern for pedals, although he has employed a fuzz box and a wah-wah with the Bowie band and a phase shifter for studio work.

The guitarist's lack of passion about the tools of his trade in no way reflects his attitude toward playing. His interaction with The Revue greatly stimulated his basic blues-rock roots. He has been learning the intricacies of a more country-flavored style, as well as finding other new things to try, and confides, 'I want to be able to play better than anyone else can.' He admits that he does not know what scales he draws from, but rather uses 'the same runs all the time.' He feels a reawakened interest in experimenting--a desire he believes was somehow stifled by the Bowie group.

'I'd never bring a guitar around to play,' Mick recalls. 'I'd only play it when I was in a studio or onstage. It started becoming secondary to other things I wanted to do: producing, arranging, or whatever. I should have played more than I did, but I used to have to force myself to take it out, which is a real strange way for a guitar player to be!

'I don't know what made me be like that,' he continues, 'but now that I'm getting deeply into guitar playing again, I find that it's really getting to me. That's why I'm going out to buy another instrument.'

He recalls a story to illustrate the changes he feels occurring in his musical patterns of behavior: 'I remember playing on the road once with a guitar that had a cracked neck, and we got gaffer tape to fix the thing up. So there I was onstage playing this axe with gaffer tape. I don't know how the hell I did it! If something went wrong with the guitar, I'd just ignore it, sort of bash it about a bit, tune it up, and never bother with much more than that. But now,' he observes, 'it's a real pleasure to pick up a good instrument, and I'm getting the hots for getting some fine guitars--the kind I have to put away carefully.'

From his earliest association with David Bowie, to his work with Mott The Hoople, and finally to his affiliation with Dylan and Roger McGuinn (Mick played several instruments on and produced McGuinn's LP, Cardiff Rose), Mick Ronson has maintained a bold and solid playing technique. He doesn't look back to see what people might say about his varied musical career.

'It doesn't matter what the public thinks about my playing,' he states firmly, 'whether it's Dylan or anybody--as long as I'm enjoying myself. Some people will like it and some people won't.

'Some,' he continues, 'will probably think to themselves, 'Why is he playing that hillbilly stuff; why doesn't he just go back to what he was doing?' And that is a good thing to do now and again; it's always good if you can keep up what you've done in the past as well as develop yourself in the present. It may really come in handy--you never know when you'll want to use what you've learned before some time in the future.

'Of course I hope everyone will like my music,' Mick concludes, 'but either way, I have to keep moving on.'