(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Fri 10 April 2026 8:00, UK
Glitz, glamour, grandeur: these aren’t words you would typically associate with a life that began in Hull.
That’s meant with no offence to the people that live there, of course, but it’s the same principle that applies to scores of working towns and cities all over the country where nothing much seems to ever happen. It takes someone with a special amount of power – and a certain element of sparkle – to break out of that mould. That person was Mick Ronson.
The fact that the Spiders from Mars guitarist went on to become one of the most electric and dazzling talents the rock scene has ever witnessed needs no introduction. His work alongside David Bowie was obviously the most prolific, but in also working with illustrious musicians from Lou Reed to Van Morrison to Bob Dylan, Ronson became somewhat known as the man with the Midas touch.
Certainly, whenever he laid his fingers on the fretboard, that much was clear for all to see. You could, of course, spend hours reeling off stories of the songs he created and albums he formed pillarstones of, but all of that seems to give a golden sheen to a life that started out, quite plainly, in rather ordinary circumstances.
While it would be strange to paint Ronson as some sort of 1970s glam rock Cinderella, it was true that his beginnings were as humble as they were always destined for greatness. On the face of it, he was the first son of a normal family, growing up to become a council caretaker who tended to the flowers in the local Queens Gardens.
In a lot of ways, he might have been quite happy with that, but with a musical upbringing, meaning that some sort of instrument was never far from being in his hand, it was clear that greater sights called. It was a chance headhunt after a series of local band recordings that led Ronson to Bowie’s side, a position that remained with him for the rest of his life.
It was quite an entertaining dichotomy to see Ronson, the working everyman from Hull, be thrust on a stage with Bowie, the effervescent chameleon who was never shaped by time, class, or gender. “He was very much a salt-of-the-earth type, the blunt northerner with a defiantly masculine personality, so that what you got was the old-fashioned Yin and Yang thing. As a rock duo, I thought we were every bit as good as Mick and Keith or Axl and Slash,” Bowie once said.
The pair may not have been as enduring, but the effect of the way the Starman said it was definitely the same as the greats. Indeed, Ronson exposed a little-known secret of the time: you didn’t need a luxurious start in life to be glamorous, and it was even more the case that the heart of glamour was in its rugged, no-nonsense appeal.
Metaphors like phoenixes rising from the ashes or diamonds in the rough seem trite in this context – Ronson may have been a gardener from Hull, but that was an integral part of the story that led him to rock and roll, not the springboard he flew away from, and you know what… Hull really is the heart of glamour.
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