Mick Ronson: sideman and Starman

"I don't think he ever appreciated how great he was, as people don't anyway when you're in the throes of it," Maggi Ronson says of her brother. But you don't have to be family to appreciate Mick Ronson. Take the words of one of the people who was there when he made his reputation as one of rock's most vivid and charismatic guitarists, the producer Tony Visconti: "Mick was sullen and cautious on the day David and I met him, not really sure of what he was getting himself into. Soon after, his guitar playing completely captivated us and his northern humour had us in stitches. For me, I expected this man to become a guitar hero."

Mick Ronson was a guitarist with a sound like no other. Between 1970 and 1974, he was the musical genius behind David Bowie's greatest run of albums, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, and Pin Ups. Not only did he play guitar, he wrote the arrangements, baroque soundscapes that perfectly complemented Bowie's vision. He co-produced and arranged Lou Reed's Transformer, the legendary album that earned Lou Reed the success he deserved. He was leader of Bowie's backing band, the Spiders from Mars, who, one Thursday night in 1972, along with Bowie, put homoeroticism front and centre in pop culture in three wondrous minutes while performing Starman on Top of the Pops. Not bad for a boy from Hull who had, not long before, been a gardener at the local park.

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He went on to release his own albums, Slaughter on 10th Avenue and Play Don't Worry, and for a while, was a serious contender, but he was too modest, and went back to what he loved best: being a sideman. He joined Mott the Hoople, played with Dylan, Van Morrison, and many others. He produced albums for other bands, and spent the later years of his life back with with Mott's Ian Hunter, with whom he worked until his death from liver cancer on 29 April 1993, at the age of 46. The 20th anniversary of his death will be marked by a tribute event, including a concert, from 27-29 April at the ICA in London,organised by Maggi, and Sweet Dreamer, a new album of her performances of his songs and others associated with him.

Sitting at home in north London, Maggi bears a striking resemblance to her older brother – she has long blonde hair, a lovely angular face, and she speaks with a soft Yorkshire accent. She was persuaded to record Sweet Dreamer by family and friends, and was joined by an extraordinary array of musicians, including two Spiders From Mars – drummer Woody Woodmansey and Bowie's long-serving piano maestro Mike Garson. Family is present, too: Mick's daughter Lisa, now singer of New York band Secret History, appears, as do Maggi's daughters, Hannah and Amelia. The songs use some of his own guitar parts, which have been transferred from original master tapes. As well as Ronson's original compositions, there are versions of Lou Reed's Satellite of Love and Perfect Day, for which he scored the strings and played the piano (he worked out the parts on the upright in the Ronson family home in Hull), and Bowie's Fill Your Heart. Ian Hunter plays piano on his own heartfelt Ronson tribute, Michael Picasso.

Maggi misses her brother terribly, but feels he is still with her somehow – the Mormon faith in which they were raised has a strong belief in an afterlife. Although she was 11 years younger, they were close, and she attended many of the Ziggy concerts, accompanied by her mother and father. "Dad would nip out to the foyer for a cigarette, claiming the sound was better out there".

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What he made of Bowie's simulated fellatio on Ronson's guitar is anybody's guess, but Ronson Sr was immensely proud of his son. Back in Hull, most people shared this pride, but occasionally Maggi would endure shouts of "Your brother's a poof," and a car he bought for the family had paint thrown over it. He took her to Rome during the recording of Bowie's covers album Pin-Ups and bought her beautiful clothes, but she often thought twice about wearing them. "We lived on an east Hull estate – it was a bit tricky sometimes."

At 16, she moved south to London to live with him. "He met me off the train and took me straight to Trident studios to record backing vocals on his cover of Love Me Tender."

She says they shared his flat in Hyde Park Gate, and I imagine a royalty funded pleasure palace.

"Mick never made any royalties," she says. For most of his career, in fact, he was living on a weekly sum that would make Iain Duncan Smith wince. But he was never bitter about his lack of money – with Yorkshire stoicism he would say: "I've got two arms and two legs and I can play the guitar."

He didn't bother with sponsorship or product endorsement either. "At the Freddy Mercury tribute concert, his final appearance," Maggi says, "the Guns N' Roses guys all said to him: 'Don't you get free guitars from all these different companies?' Michael was just not into doing that. His last car was an old Toyota Corolla that sounded like a hairdryer."

Maggi goes out of the room, and comes back with a folder of manuscripts – among them the chord sheet for The Man Who Sold the World, and the original, handwritten string arrangements for Life on Mars, which was his first stab at arranging after he'd had orchestration lessons with Maggi's teacher (and which was composed in the toilet of the flat in Beckenham he shared with the other Spiders).

Fans talk about Mick Ronson in the same hushed tones that schoolboys once discussed cricketers and astronauts. The Private Eye cartoonist Tony Husband says he recently attended a gig because he'd heard the band owned one of Ronson's old amplifiers. Morrissey's righthand man Boz Boorer recalls working with Ronson at a residential studio in Berkshire where he produced Morrissey's album Your Arsenal: "I can see him standing in front of a deafening Marshall head, dialling in a sound he could hear, he seemed to me like a master at work. Each morning, we would take the Racing Post, put on our bets for the day, then start work. When I felt I knew him well enough, I asked him if he was aware at the time he recorded these classics, how groundbreaking they were. He said: 'We knew they were good, but you just do your best.' Lovely, humble man."

Maggi shows me some letters written long before he met Bowie. They are to his girlfriend Sandra, who is still a close family friend. They reveal a warm, witty and gentle man. He says of Maggi, who was around eight at the time: "She's a good little lass, I wouldn't have anyone else for a sister." He describes a film he's just watched on TV, The Horn Blows At Midnight, about an angel sent to Earth to blow a horn that will end the world. Somehow he never gets round to it, but joins a band and falls in love. That seems fitting.

MickRonsonfest takes place at the ICA, London, 27 April, details here.