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Transcript

Moby · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast, the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: first live podcast ever here at the USC Festival of Books.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It's April twenty one, day before my birthday. You start
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: day again, and uh my special guest today is Moby
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and I thank you all for being here because we
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: had a hard time getting here. We did not connect,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: we went to diff It was like our own little
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: spinal tap moment. So I would we miss if I
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: didn't ask you, Moby that it being April twenty one,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the day after a VICI passed away, do you have
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: any thoughts about a VICI? Uh? Boy, oh boy. By
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the way, first of all, if tomorrow is your birthday,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: all I can say is like the thirties can be
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a challenging decade, but there's there's a lot of room
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: for growth. Well. I don't want to reveal how old
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I am as but you can look it up online.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Thirty was bad. I thirty was no big deal. Forty
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: was bad, Fifty was no big deal. You're you're fifty
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: point sixty? Really fucked me up. I'm still funning, okay.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Um So a VICHI, Well, I guess it's speaking of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: getting older or not getting older it's just, I mean,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: there's so much to say about that. When someone dies
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: so young, it's just I mean, I'm stating the obvious.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: But it's tragic, it's heartbreaking, it's unnecessary. It's just like
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the fact that death is the one unavoidable fact of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: our existence. Why hurry it along? You know? Like I
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: remember when I was a depressed teenager listening to joy
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Division and wanting to throw myself off a bridge. I
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: thought to myself, I was like, you know, I'm gonna
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: die eventually. Why not just stick around and see what happens?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: You know? Wow, But you have been part of this
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: world for decades to what degreed you believe the lifestyle
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: of DJs would contribute to their demise? Uh? I mean,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: certainly there's very little about being a traveling professional DJ
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: that's healthy. You know, even if you're sober and doing it,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: it's still pretty shitty, you know, like meaning like you're
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: an airport, you're eating garbage food in airports. You stay
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in hotels, and even like the nicest hotel is still
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: an artificial environment with recycled air. And especially like young kids,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and you know that you're old when you start referring
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to the youth as being something you're not. You know.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I remember hearing Obama say like young people, and I
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: was like, oh does that mean, like but but he's young,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: so okay. So so even without drugs and alcohol and whatnot,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: touring is unhealthy, you know, like it's very as you
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: know from a lifetime of being around on this, Like
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you look at anyone who's been touring for a while
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and they start to look like the crypt keeper Um
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: or Gollum in my case. And but then you add
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in all the free alcohol and the drugs that are
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: just thrown at you, like I've been sobered out for
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: about ten years. But pre that, thanks um, but pre that.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, like if if you're on tour and you're
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: playing a concert, you know, you play your concert, you
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: get on the bus and you leave, and so you
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: can be degenerate, but not that degenerate. Whereas the world
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of celebrity DJs, they have their own planes. They fly
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: to Abisa, they fly to Las Vegas, they fly wherever.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: They stay in huge palatial presidential suites. They do their
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: deejaying and then afterwards endless partying, which is great but
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: so destructive and so corrosive. So okay in your a
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: particular case, what caused you to get sober? Uh? So?
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: In nine two, do you remember the been Big Audio Dynamite.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: So I was opening up for Big Audio Dynamites Switter
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: group from the Clash, Yeah, Mick Jones and Don Let's
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I think um. So I was opening up for Big
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Audio Dynamite UM at Roseland and New York City, and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: we had dinner beforehand at a vegan restaurant called zen Palette,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and I ate a purple Japanese egg plant and it
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: disagreed with me. To this day, I've never eaten another
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: purple Japanese egg plant because I had a little upset
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: stomach as opposed to drinking, where I had thousands and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: thousands of soul destroying, debilitating hangovers. But I kept doing it,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and I think I realized that indicated that I had
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: a problem. You know, when you're hungover for the five
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: thousandth time, you're like, oh, why do I keep doing this?
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: When it's like it's just this I don't know, diminishing returns.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So was he just one day you woke up and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: said this is it? It was? I tried getting sober
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: multiple times and then this with the programmer by yourself.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Eventually it was just a UM, I mean it works
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: for me, if other people get sober without a God
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: bless there's no right way to do it. Um. But
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: it was October seventeenth, two thousand and eight. I had
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: played a fundraiser for Kristen Gillibrand, Um, she was running
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: to take Hillary Clinton's seat, and just had just a
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: stupid night not with her. I'm not trying to throw Kristin.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Jillibrand was like, we weren't you know, we weren't up
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning doing cocaine and talking
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: about how we should start a band. Yeah, that would
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: be now. She left early on good for her. And
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: then I found myself at like four o'clock in the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: morning at some dive bar and Hudson, New York, standing
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: on stage asking if anyone there could sell me drugs,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and then buying drugs and doing them by myself, and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: then at nine o'clock in the morning getting on amtrack
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and I hadn't slept, and I felt like death had
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: like put me in a bag and thrown me down
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: a flight of concrete stairs, like I just destroyed. And
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I thought you know this isn't getting better, and then
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: you have that decision to do immediately go with a yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I went to an a meeting and just sat there,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: started crying and said, I'm Moby, I'm an alcoholic. And
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that was day one. And what did you learn in
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the I used to drink and I stopped drinking for
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: a cornucopy of reasons, and for like the first thirty
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: days was a lifestyle change, like the things places I
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: would normally go, I will go. And then it was
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: earlier when a lot of people were not sober. It
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: was really quite a head speaking experience, irrelevant of not
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: waking up over well. Especially I lived in Lower Manhattan
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and so in New York. For anyone who's spent time
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: in New York, you know that it's paradise for degenerates
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: like it and something you can afford to live in Manhattan.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: But like the ethos of New York is just abject
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: debauchery and degeneracy. It doesn't matter who you are, like
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: where you are on the socio economic spectrum, Like if
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: you're not drinking and doing drugs in New York, you're
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: missing out on why you should be in New York.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Um so yes, So suddenly I was sober, living in
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the East Village and having my recording studio on the
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Lower East Side. So every day I would like walk
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: home from work past all the bars where I used
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: to get drunk, to go eat cereal and watch the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Daily Show, and which was good. I wasn't hungover, but
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I was missing out on everything. And to this day,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I still don't know how I stuck with it. You
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: know why on one of those walk homes, I didn't
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: just like go into a dive bar, get drunk and
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: try to convince some like, oh pair to go home
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: with me. Let's go back to the beginning. You grew
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: up in dry In, Connecticut, not far from where I
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: grew up in Fearfield, Connecticut. Darien is a very upscale
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: room community. Most people work in Manhattan. However, there are
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: other people of not of that economic caliber. So what
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: was your experience growing up in day? So I was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: born on a street in Harlem, and then my dad
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: died when I was two, and my mom happened to
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: know what. He died of alcoholism. He drove into a wall,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and so clearly it's we drove in a wall metaphorically
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: or literally literally, I mean, I guess it worked on
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: a metaphoric level, like no, he literally drove into a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: wall on a Jersey turnpike at a hundred miles an hour. Yeah,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: pre airbags. So it didn't work out too well. Um,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And so my mom moved us back to dry Enne
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: where she had grown up. But we were poor, white trash.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: We were on food stamps and on welfare. We lived,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and it was from dairy En. Did she come from
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: an upscale family? Her dad, my grandfather, worked on Wall Street,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And so she moved us back to Darien because the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: schools were good, it was familiar, and she had family around.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So what was your experience like constant shame because you
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: were not one of the wealthy people. Yeah, because we were.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: So my mom was a pot smoking hippie who dated
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Hell's Angels and Darien is the land of like Lily
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Pulitzer pants and golf country clubs and you know, like
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: my first serious girlfriend heard she came from the Rand family.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Sorry I don't, I'm I hope I'm not going to
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: get her in trouble, like, you know, the Rand Corporation,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Like that's her posse. Her family and her dad owned
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: a fleet of oil tankers. So that's my first serious girlfriend,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: my second serious girlfriend. Her grandfather was Bill Hewlett, who
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: started Hewlett Packard. So it's like a level of wealth
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: that you can't imagine. And my mom and I were
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: on food stamps and welfare and I would come home
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and she would be, you know, like smoking pot in
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the kitchen with her Hell's Angel's boyfriend. And was there
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: music in the house constantly? And what music did you hear? Everything?
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: My mom had the most remarkable taste in books, which
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: is Germaine. As we're at the l a Time festival books.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: That's what's called right yeah? Um? And so I mean
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: because she had been a literature major at Barnard, and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you graduated from Barnard, she eventually graduated from East Khan
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and Dan Barry. Um, so she went back. It shows
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a level of perseverance despite being a you know what,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Hell's Angel dating hippie. Yeah, when she was really aeradite
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and academic. She just liked bad boys. Um. So. But
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: her book collection, I mean, like I grew up reading
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Faulkner and Rambo and Dyukowski when I was twelve years old,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: just because she didn't turn them on to you just
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: saw him on the shelf and you pulled them down.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I was talking about this earlier with a nice man
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: at PBS. I was like, when you're twelve years old
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and your board in the middle of the summer and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: there's nothing good on TV. You go to the bookshelf
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: and you see as a as I lay dying and
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you're like, that sounds cool, or you know, like a
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Season in Hell by Rambo and you're like, oh, I
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: want to read that, or you know Bukowski, you know,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: like every book he wrote has an amazing title. So
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I just started reading compulsively. And her record collection was
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: everything from I don't know, divor Jack to Coltrane, Like
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: she still maintains that I was conceived. Well, my mom
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: and my dad were listening to Love Supreme now that
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: whether it's two or not, who cares? So yeah, So
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I mean Crossy Seals and Nash and Young to Stravinsky
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: to Bruce Springsteen too. She loved like a lot of
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: late sixties folk music like It's a Wonderful Day or
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It's a Beautiful Day, Beautiful's a Beautiful Day and Donovan
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and Jefferson Airplane and Nick Drake. So it was like she,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I grew up with an amazing record collection, just so eclectic.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: And what point did you start to play music? I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: started studying music when I was around nine. What was
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the impetus for that? That I loved music and I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just wanted to do anything I could to be around it?
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And was this private lessons? Were in school or by yourself? Well,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: my mom played piano and she dated a bunch of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: itinerant musicians, um one of whom was a pedal steel player.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And I tried to learn pedal steel at ten and
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I couldn't like it was just too like as your
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: feet are doing things. So one of her boyfriends had
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: left a guitar behind, and so I started playing guitar.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: And she had a friend who taught guitar lessons. And
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: he was the most idiosyncratic music teacher because he played
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: in a metal band. You know. He was one of
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: those like Deely Deally dud thinks Chris Rasola like a
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: phenomenal virtual so guitarist. But he loved music theory, bok
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and jazz fusion. So he instilled in me like we
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: would study scales and deconstruct Bach cantatas and then learn
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: how to play purple, Hayes, This is all on the guitar.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: On the guitar, that's not easy to do on the guitar. Yeah,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and so you learned how to we music, and you
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: still read music to this day about as well as
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I can read French, meaning like I can figure it
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: out if you hold a gun to my head. But
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: like like friends of mine who can cite read I'm
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: sure you know those people, like like you put rockman
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and Off in front of them, put them to the
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: piano and they start playing it. Like, there's absolutely no
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: way I could even begin to do that. It would
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: take me ten minutes to get like the first stanza. Well,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: in my family, we started with piano lessons, and then
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of course the folk are and the Beatles came along
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and we picked up guitar. But the issue was always practicing.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Did you practice? I practice constantly because I was untroubled
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: by much having much of a social life or a
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: dating life. Did you have friends. I had a few friends,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: but not too many, so I had a lot of
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: free time growing up, you know, especially summertimes, like you
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: know what's like in Fairfield County, Like all the rich
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: kids go to country clubs, they go to Switzerland, they
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: go to islands like Fisher's Island and Martha's Vineyard and
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Nantuckett and I stay home and watch TV, listen to records,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: play guitar, drive my bike to Johnny's Records to look
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: at records that someday I might be able to afford.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: So you're in school, your mother is highly educated. What
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: kind of track are you on? Are you thinking I'm
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: going to go to college? I can't wait to drop out?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: What's going through your head? Well? When I went, I
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: went to Yukon Stores and Stanford. I didn't know that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't graduate. And did you go for I went
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to Yukon Stores for a year, went to Yukon Stamford.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: This is means a lot to us um and I
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: went to study purchase for a little while. Let's let's
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: go back. You're at Yukon Stores. Yeah, isn't that like
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: a square peg in a round hole? Obviously that's why
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I didn't stay. I mean, also I was having I
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: was having terrible panic attacks and I had to leave anyway.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: But like Yukon Stores is known for basketball and agriculture,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and it's it's hard to say about but it's literally
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, Connecticut. Yeah, it's sort of
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: like the let's by way of comparison, like the outskirts
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of Fresno right now. Um So I was there and
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: this was the early eighties, and all I wanted was
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to be in New York or be in London or
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: be in Los Angeles and be a part of a
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: music scene. So I would listen to music and I
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: would go to classes. But being in this small farm town,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: it was very frustrating, and then you ended up going
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to purchase to purchase. I was a philosophy major the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: whole time, so if it weren't for music, I sort
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of thought that my life plan was going to be
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: teaching philosophy at some community college somewhere. So you went
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: to like three or four colleges. If you were to
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: go back today, like in the Bruce Springsteen record where
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: his mother says, never would you like to go back,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: how much would you have to do to graduate? I'll
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: probably take four years of classes. Like I don't know,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't even know, like because this was
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: this was back in the forties, so like you know,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: they kept records on parchment exactly. That's one of my
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: bad dreams. You gonna wake up one day and they'll say,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: we have no record if you graduate from college. You
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: did go, but um, so are you going consistently from
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: one college to another? I was like twenty Yukon stores
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: dropped out about a year of like drinking and learning
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: how to DJ, went back to Yukon, Stamford dropped out,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: went back to Sunny Purchase, and then at that point
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I started to have more of a job as a DJ.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: So I didn't let's say, so, if we're in the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: early eighties, Okay, what does it look like being a DJ?
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Then well, uh, it was not very glamorous. Remember port Chester,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: New York, of course, holl of the capital of the
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Capital Theater, which is now back up in the running.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Everyone's right over the border from Connecticut, and it had
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a very special place I'm assuming when you were growing
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: up as well, because the drinking age in Connecticut was
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: twenty one and the drinking age in New York was eighteen,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and port Chester was the first town over the border,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: so it was filled with kids from Connecticut like crashing
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: their cars and getting STDs. Um so I got a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: job djaying at a bar right by the Port Chester
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: train station on Monday nights for twenty five dollars a night,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: so I was working for six hours. No one was
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: there except like a couple of like bottomed out methodone
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: addicts and what would you play? I didn't even have
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: that many records, so I'd play the same things over
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and over again. So it was the Clash and Joy
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Division and some early New Order records and Hank Williams
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and Johnny Cash basically like whatever records I had access to. Okay,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: so you did that, You went back to college, and
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you're at Sony Purchase. At one point you say, I'm
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: done with school. I just because d jaying. I started djaying.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Time passed and I got a job djaying in New York,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and I realized, oh, a little bit slower. How did
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: you get a job dj in the city. Well, because
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: you know Saturday Night Fever, of course, And Saturday Fever
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: is a fascinating movie if you haven't seen it recently.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: It's unrelenting, lee dark like. It's how that became like
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a pop culture phenomena. I have no idea because it's
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: super bleak things. That was based on an article by
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Nick Cone in New York magazine and he was on Deadline.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: He completely made it up. It wasn't true whatsoever. Although
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a great article in a great movie, and but it's about,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you know, these kids in Brooklyn and Queens who just
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: longed to get to Manhattan. But that existed not just
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, Queens, but in Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: upstate New York. Like if you lived within the sort
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: of periphery of Manhattan, all you wanted to do was
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: go to Manhattan to hang out, to work, to live.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: At least that was the case with me. So in
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the late eighties, I started dropping off demo tapes at
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: different nightclubs in New York and rejected everywhere. And I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: started giving demo tapes to ray EO stations like Kiss
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and BLS same thing, I mean, like a skinny a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: little bit slower. They would be others. People's material to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the radio was material that you had created. Both. I
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: would drop off these cassettes that had like a hip
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: hop mix, a house music mix, and my own music.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And I also sent it to tons of labels and
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I got one response from Hollywood Records, the Peter Paterno
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and this is and I got a letter from Hollywood
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Records so clearly, and it said we do not accept
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: unsolicited Yeah, we'll take a quick break and come back
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: with more of my conversation with Moby, recorded at usc
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: as part of the l A Times Festival of Books.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: This week we're talking to DJ Moby. Last week we
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: had Chev Gordon supermnch For that, we had job Is
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Martin and Shirley Manson and so many other people. You
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: gotta go back into the archives. You haven't heard these things,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: so download from tune in the Apple podcast or your
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: podcast player of choice. Okay, let's get back to my
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: conversation with Moby in front of a live studio audience. Okay,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: but a little bit slower. When did you start to
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: record your own music? In early eighties? I stole a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: four track from the A V Department at my high school.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I gave it back, so okay. I bought the real
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: like a like a Fostex, very very like school had
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a FoST that's amazing, task camera Fostex. Well they were
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: two fostests. Was first intend to task cam, but people
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: were buying them. They certainly didn't. I did not go
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to a low rent school, but we didn't have that
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: kind of equipment. Yeah, somehow. Well. I was also in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the like when like if you watch family Guy, the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: nerdiest guy, it always has a hat that says A V.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: We were. I was in the A V Department, you know,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: like wheeling the film strip, you know, the overhead projector
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to classes and setting it up up and make sure
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it's clean. And I would eat my lunch in a
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: closet in the A V department, not get like, I
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: put joy Division on my walkman and eat my peanut
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: butter and jelly sandwich in a closet And it was great.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: But where were we? The fas? But for those people
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: don't know, it was a real breakthrough because there are
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: four trucks on a cassette and the fast Tex was
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the first machine that allowed you to seek up and
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: record on all four trucks, which was a huge break
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: It was egalitary, relatively egalitarian multitrack technology. And remember the
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: first time I turned it on and used it. Because
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I had a matel drum machine. Mattel made a drum
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: machine called the Simsonics. I forgot that and so I
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: had my Mattel Simsonics drum machine. My borrowed face text
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: a guitar and a microphone that I also sort of
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: borrowed from the A V. Department, and I was able
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to make music on my own and it was, you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: like the scales fell from my eyes and suddenly, you know,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I was like I could I don't need to wait
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: around for other musician, Like, can just do this by myself?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So yes, of the late eighties. Okay, So when you're
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: making music at first, what kind of music are you making? Uh,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: A little bit of everything, sort of inspired by some
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of the singer songwriter like Roddy Frame from ast at Camera,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: The Smith's The Cure, but also electronic music, you know,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: inspired craftwork by craftwork. Um. The demo tape that I
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: got sent around they got rejected was actually my singer
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: songwriter stuff, so it wasn't retrospect. How good was no?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: This is great, raving great back and forth in retrospect?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: How good was that stuff? Oh? Totally mediocre? Because that's
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: one of the things people send you stuff Originally they
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: think it's so great, and if they have to make it,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: they look back. Maybe I didn't deserve to make it
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: at that point. Well, then I had this sort of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: like that, like the Robert Frost moment Two Paths Diverge
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: and the Wood And I was playing demos to my
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: girlfriend and a friend of hers, and I was playing
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: my very earnest singer songwriter music and they were like, yeah,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that's okay. And then I was like, oh, but I've
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: also started making electronic music. And I played it for
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: them and they stood up and started dancing wow. And
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: at that moment, I was like, the audience has spoken, Like,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm not supposed to be the next Morrissey.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to make electronic music. Okay. While you're making music,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you talk about soliciting gigs in New York City, Yeah,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: so tell us more about that. So it's constantly sneaking
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: into New York on Metro North, like hiding in the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: bathroom on Metro North with a bag full of demo tapes,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: jumping turnstiles, getting cheap food at Dojo remember Dojo um,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and bringing demo tapes everywhere, every record label, every radio station,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: you know, waiting outside w n y U and the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: hope that maybe someone who worked at w n y
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: U would like be willing to take a tape. And
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I dropped off tapes at every nightclub, every bar. And
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: then there was this one club opening called Mars, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: it was on the West Side Highway in the Meatpacking District.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: And this was back when the meatpacking district was the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: meat packing District. Like they were like dead lamb carcasses
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: on the street and blood everywhere and prostitutes servicing all
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: sorts of people out in the open, like it was
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: really post apocalyptic and grim. In the middle of it
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: was this huge nightclub, Mars, and I went there to
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: drop off a demo tape and the HR person laughed
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: at me because they were taking applications for like bus boy, janitor,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: bar back, and I dropped off a demo tape. But
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the guy hiring DJs had never hired DJs before, and
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: he wondered why no one had dropped off demo tapes.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: So I got my job solely because I was the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: only person to drop off a demo tape. Do you
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: remember what year that was? And so you started to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: work there, how frequent work, first once a week, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: twice a week and three times a week, and then
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: um finally move back to New York and got this
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: apartment on fourteen and third with four other people. Okay,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: what kind of music are you playing when you're working
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: at bars um mainly house music and hip hop, but
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: also some dance, all reggae, which is really big at
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the time. And occasionally my boss his name was Yuki
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and he was Japanese and he was really interesting and
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: he would ask me if I could play certain genres
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: of music, and I would always just say yes, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: like so you remember one time in particular, he called
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: me up and said, oh, We're having a rare groove
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: party on the roof. Can you play rare groove? And
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I was like, of course I can. And then I
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: hung up the phone and I started calling people. I
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: was like, what is rare groove? And so the three
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: other people you're living with, how did you find them
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and find the apartment. One is a friend of mine
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: from Connecticut who was an artist named Damien loeb Uh.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Then he was dating a model named Ann And then
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: there's another DJ named Adrian came a very successful hip
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: hop DJ named Stretch Armstrong uh. And then my friend
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Lee also it's just an artist from New York who
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: now owns an art gallery in Connecticut. Okay, so you're
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: working at Mars. Ultimately, many nights a week. Based on
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the story you've just told, you're so obviously hustling your
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: demo tapes. Oh yeah. And then finally, this, finally, the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: moment came. I dropped off demo tapes everywhere and I
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: was DJing at Mars and this guy named Jared Hoffman
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: came to the DJ booth and he asked me a question.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: He said, well, do you make your own music? And
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I said, as a matter of fact, I do. So
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the next day I went to his apartment on fourteenth
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and seven and I gave him a demo tape of
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: my own music, and he called me up and he said,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: we would like to sign you to an artist contract
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: to our record label called Instinct Records. Put it in perspective,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: at that time, they actually didn't have a name, they
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: didn't have an office, they'd never made records, they had
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: no employees. It was an idea that he and a
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: friend of his head. So so I was signed to
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: a record label that at the time wasn't how to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: take you to figure that out. I kind of just
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: ignored that fact because someone had offered me a contract
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: like I and I never in my wild dreams thought
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I would sign a recording contract, even if it wasn't
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: technically with a record label. Here for a second, when
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: you're djaying, are you d jaying under the name Moby?
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: You can call Moby since I was born my legal
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: name is Richard Melville Hall. So in school, you never rich,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: You're never Rick, You're always Moby. Yeah, okay, So you
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: make this, you sign this record deal. They don't know
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: what they're doing. Do you actually make a record? Then
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: we take six months to make my first twelve inch
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: called Time's Up, oddly prescient for the Times Up movement
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: um because during this although I guess I can't in
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: any way late claim to it as assist endered heterosexual
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: white man, but nonetheless, uh. And that record did nothing.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: I just disappeared. And then I made my second record
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: under my own name, which came out and sold about
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a thousand copies. Which in high school I had been
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: in a punk rock band called the Vatican Commandos, and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: we had a seven inch that sold two hundred copies,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And that amazed me because I meant there were two
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: hundred people who had heard the music we made. But
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: now there were a thousand people who heard the music
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I had made, And I if my career had ended
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: in I would have been pretty happy. But then the
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: next single was a remix of the song Go, which
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: became a top ten record around Europe and around the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: rest of the world. I think sold half a million copies. Okay,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: but this is still with these two crazy guys. Yeah.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Now they had a label, they had Instinct, and they
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: didn't really have an office. They had Jared's apartment and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I was. I set up my equipment there, so I
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: ran the office like I would clean the kitchen, send faxes,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: take wreck words to ups and the post off. Yeah,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: like answering the phone like hello, Instinct records while I
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: was like hitting pause on my sequencer. Um, it was great.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: It was okay, joy full, joyful, happy time you may
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: go in your mind. Do you think it's a hit? No?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not, because I was. I was a super weird,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: obscure musician that no one had ever heard of, involved
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: in a genre techno that no one had heard of
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: or cared about. And I used music from Twin Peaks
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and I was like, well, people know Twin Peaks, but no,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't think anything was ever gonna happen. How did
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: it happen? It happened at the good Because this was
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine or ninety the rave scene in the
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: UK was exploding and Twin Peaks was exploding, an interest
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: in New York dance music was exploding. So some influential
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: DJ's in the UK found this record and started playing
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: it and it just sort of metastasized in a very
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: good way. And what was that like being at the epicenter.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: It's still possible that it didn't happen, you know, like
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it's still possible that right, and that like that I'm
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: it's and I'm cleaning oatmeal bowls in the kitchen at
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Instinct Records a K. Jared's apartment and somehow I'm having
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a stroke or something or dissociative like Joan of Arc
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: style moment where like all of a sudden, like my
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: brain is like secreting still aside and naturally on its own.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: And this is all a hallucination because the idea to
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: to go from selling a thousand records two then all
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, being on top of the pops multiple
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: times and traveling all around Europe and suddenly instead of
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: standing on stage in front of thirty people on Lowerie's
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: side standing on stage in front of ten thousand people
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: who knew of the songs that I had made, and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I it was wonderful, but so disconcerting. Disconcerting and what
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: was I've never expected it? Okay, But certainly when you
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: go from a club to a festival or a gig
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: of ten thousand people, you must add some level of
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: stage fright, fear, you know, authenticity figuring you know they're
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go up and then people gonna say, what
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: the hell is this? Yeah, oddly enough the stage fright thing.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: So my first ever real solo performance, and I think
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: you might appreciate certain aspects of this, was at the Palladium.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: The Palladium was the coolest club in New York and
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I had seen the Clash there, had seen Simple Minds
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: there and XTC. I've seen so many shows there. And
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: in nine or ninety I got asked to open up
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: for the band Snap. Remember Snap, I got the power
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Um rhythm is a dance, sir. So Snap were huge.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: The Power was the biggest song in the world. And
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I somehow, I think the booking agent was dating a
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: friend of mine, and so I was going to open
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: up for Snap in front of thousands of people at
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the Palladium. So I show up and I do my
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: sound check, and this is a lovely, odd little biographical detail.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: The end of my sound check, I hear two people,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: one person clapping, and I'm like, oh, someone's at my
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: sound check. And it was my boss, Yuki for Mars,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: happened to be at the Palladium. And I walked out
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: to say hi, and there was this very small man
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: standing next to him and he said, Moby, meet Miles Davis.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So my first ever solo show was to two people,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: one of whom was Miles Davis. You quit that too,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: And he wouldn't shake my hand, but he was wearing
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: a beautiful suit. And and then ten o'clock rolls around.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: The palladium is filled with bowl and the booking agent
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: comes to me and says, oh, bad news Snap didn't
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: make their flight, but you can go play. So I
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: walk on stage and the m C says, ladies and gentlemen,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: bad news Snap aren't here, but from New York. Moby.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: I hadn't made a record this point. People are booing
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and throwing things, and I walk over to my equipment
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and someone had unplugged it, and so I spent three
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: or four minutes in front of five thousand people plugging
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: in my equipment and rebooting discs, and they were booing.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: And then when it was finally done and the first
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: song started, I was like, oh, I don't care. Like
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is the worst experience, this is
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: like such a nightmare experience. But I went through it,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I was like, you were still again. By
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the end of it, they were actually kind of with me.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: And I realized that one thing that can serve for
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: armers really well is having a degree of contempt for
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: your audience where you can love them fascinating. I love
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: that where you can love them but you don't really
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: care if they love you in return. And that's when
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: you can just perform as opposed to like being some
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: like lap dog sick of fans, like saying like, oh
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: please love me, just being like, if you love me,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: that's fine. If not, that's fine too, Okay. From the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Giggots Palladium, how do you end up on top of
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the Pops? And in Europe? Just put that song go
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: with the Twin Peaks music on it, and it just
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: kept going and then all of a sudden, the rave
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: scene blew up in the United States. And at that point,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: as you know, a lot of the rave producers were
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: very faceless. You know, they would give themselves alter egos
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: and they wouldn't perform. And I was one of the
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: only people with a face. And I guess technically they
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: all had faces, they just chose not to show them.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: And so I started being on the cover of magazines.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And there weren't that many public figure tech no producers
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: in the United States. They were really a handful. And
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I kept touring and touring and touring and touring with
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: the Prodigy and with the Shaman, you remember the band
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and the Shaman, and and I just toured and toured
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and toured like old school Chitland circuit style, like just
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: me and a keyboard, okay, a couple of things. Were
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: you making any money? I remember I got I played
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: one show in the UK and I got paid six
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars and I was like, I just got paid
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: six hundred dollars. Like I was at that time, I
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: was being paid a hundred dollars to DJ, and I
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, I just got paid six nights of
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: djaying in one night. So up until about two that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: was the most I've ever made. And in retrospect, were
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: you being ripped off or that was absolute? Now, when
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I think of like, like Martin Garrick's, I like Martin Garrick's.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: I really like that Animal song quite a lot. A
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: young techno producer puts out one song. Six months later,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: he has a private plane and he's getting paid a
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty And I was like, oh, I had
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: a top ten single and I was getting paid six
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars and I clearly someone else was making a
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: lot of money. You're a pro janitor, and at this
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: point the act was solely you on stage with little
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: octoped and little Yamaha keyboard and a microphone that I
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: would yell into being an old punk rocker. Now is
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: it okay? And you're traveling? How does the record label
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: situation work? Eventually I left instinct because they were they
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: as often happens like structurally, they were quite small and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: things were going well for me. So then I signed
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: with Mute Records and Electra. So it was with Bob
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Krasnow in Electra here in the States and Daniel Miller
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and Mute everywhere else. And did that work for you? Yeah?
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: I mean Daniel Miller and Mute Records, you know, you know,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Mute Records like Depeche Mode, Nick cave Um, goldfrapp Et, cetera,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: on and on and on, like an amazing, amazing label.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Daniel has never dropped an artist. So what I signed
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: with Mute, I was like, I I'm set, like I
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: can do anything, and I know he's never going to
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: drop me because he's never dropped an artist. Electra, on
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the other hand, I think they signed me thinking, oh,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: he's going to be our techno wonder kins, like, you know,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: there's this whole genre of music and he's going to
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: be the progenitor of it and we're gonna sell millions
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: of records. And that never happened. And so I became
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: sort of the bastard step child at Electra, understandably because
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I wasn't selling records. But like as a record company person, Okay,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a bad way. As a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: I never really worked at a record companies, you don't
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: have to worry about offending as someone who has a
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: lot of experience around record companies. In I put out
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: an album called Everything Is Wrong, and Spin magazine that
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: autumn three or four months after it came out, said
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: this is going to be our album of the year.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: We went to Electra and said, guess what. Spin at
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the time was a real magazine with paper and everything,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and we went to them and said, Wow, it's going
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: to be the album of the year. And the response
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: from Electra was like, oh, sorry, it's already a catalog item.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: There's nothing we can do. And did it fail accordingly? Yeah, okay.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: So at this point in time, for most of the nineties,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: you're putting up music with Mutant Electra and you're touring.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: What kind of audience are especially where this music is
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: prominent in the UK and the continent. What kind of
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: gigs are you doing? Um? Clubs and raids every now
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: and then I would do a solo show, but that
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: up until the mid nineties, the solo shows didn't make
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: sense because like that genre of electronic dance music, people
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: wanted big events, you know, and so you'd played ten
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: thousand people and if I did a solo show on
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: people hundred and fifty people. Um, and yeah. I remember
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: because when I this album everything is wrong. I did
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: a solo tour and in some places we sold like
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: three d tickets and I was like, I can't believe
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: that's like three hundred people coming out to just see me, Like,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not part of a rave I'm not on tour
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: with thirty other people. So that was really exciting. And
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: are you getting frustrated because you're queer is at this
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: level or you still believe there's something beyond or is
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: just beyond your wildest dreams? So I mentioned earlier my
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: high school punk rock band, The Vatican Commandos sold two
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: hundred copies of a seven inch Everything beyond that has
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: been unimaginable success. Okay, but at one point you get
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: frustrated and to change your sound. Well then, then in
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the late nineties, I decided to make a punk rock
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: record because I think, like the artists you and I
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: grew up revering. I thought that part of being a
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: musician was to experiment and take chances, and to be
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: lou Reid making metal machine music, to be the Beatles
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: and making Revolution number nine, to be David Bowie and
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: go from like the Laughing Gnome to a Philadelphia disco artist.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Like I thought that's what musicians did. So I made
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: this very dark punk rock record because I thought it
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: was part of the job description of being a musician
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: to experiment, and it got crucified, like I got. Everyone
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: hated it except for a few people. Bono told me
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: he liked it as much as the First Class album.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Um Axel Rose, who now hates me, told me that
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: he would listen to it on repeat while driving around
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: l A. But the best is I got one piece
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: of fan mail from Terence Trent Darby on Tarrent Trent
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Darby Purple Stationary telling me how much he liked the record.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: So the three of them liked it. Okay, so the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: motivation was just about expanding your horizons. I just, I
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: just I been making electronic music and I really missed
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: playing guitar and screaming. And then after the reaction, generally
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: speaking is negative. What headspace does that leave you? Well,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: it was a very dark time because I've been sober
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: for eight years and then I started drinking again, started
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: dating a lot of professional sex workers, as you do,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: um my mom, when are we talking about literally professional
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: sex workers. We're talking about people in the nightlife sphere
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: who live that lifestyle, people who would get paid to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: have sex. Okay, what do we call that dating? Well,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: I guess I Luckily I was not a customer. I
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: was a boyfriend, you know. And then also like Dominatrix
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: is strippers, phone sex workers, you know. Now this is
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: a whole another aspect. I mean, for those of us
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: who haven't walked on the dark side of the street,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: how do you find these people? You live in Lower
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Manhattan in the nineties, Like, you know, it's like like
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: bagels and professional sex workers? Okay? Were these hookers were
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the heart of gold? Were they just low class people? Uh? No,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: they were what I found and m hmmm, sort of
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: like growing up really poor. I don't know. For some reason,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I've always been attracted to friends or dating people who
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: sort of wear their brokenness on their sleeve. You know,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: did you try to fix them? There's a little holding
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: cau Field is um going on there? Yeah? Like, you know,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: you stepped in these relationships with these broken people. They end,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: how usually with me having panic attacks and running away? Really,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: so do you still have panic attacks today? Only when
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I try to get close to anyone. But apart from that,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I'm fine? Yeah? Is that really pano deck just a
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: fear of intimacy? Oh no, it's full on. So what
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: did the professionals say about that. The professionals say that
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: because I've seen quite a lot of them that I
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: have panic attack. I mean, I was part of a
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: study on panic attack suffers at Columbia. I've seen a
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: lot lots of therapists been medicated. It doesn't. But what
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: we know about panic, because I used to suffer from bags,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: is if you wait long enough, the panic will evaporate. Yes,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: which largely is true. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed to Columbia's
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: having a very unique type of panic disorder. It's called
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: plateaued panic disorder. I once had a panic attack that
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: lasted for six months. And I'm not kidding. It started
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and it just when I went to sleep. I wasn't panicking,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: but I'd wake up and it would come right back.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Every waking minute I'd go to sleep, wake up, it
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: would come right back. And it only started waning about
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: six months into it. And but you could sleep with yeah,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: like I would pass out just through exhaustion. Okay, Then uh,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: let's wind it back. You go through the dark period
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: subsequent to your punk rock record, and then what are
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you the thoughts in your brain as far as moving forward?
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: So I make the punk rock cracker called animal rights
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: um starting again. My mom dies of lung cancer. I
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: lose that. Did your mother acknowledge and respect your success? Oh?
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: She loved it, She loved it. There's the most adorable
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: story is when I put out the album Everything is
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Wrong on a major label, Electric Records. She took a
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: review to the editor of the Dairy En News Review
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and she walked in the Dairy and News Review circulation
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: five ten, and she walked in. She said, my son
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: is a famous musician. You should write about him. Did
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: they eventually, like I think ten years later. Yeah, it
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: was a big deal. Like to an interview for day mother,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: your father's dead, your mother's passage, you were now an orphan.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Do you have any other family that you had connection with?
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Two aunts and uncles, some cousins who I love very much,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: but against a little Russian literature. On my mom's deathbed,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: she told me that I have a half brother somewhere, somewhere, somewhere.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: She got pregnant in high school, had a child put
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: up for adoption, and I found out about this right
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: before she died. And if you found that person, no,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: But fast forward to the year two thousand seven. Um
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Uh Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter, and I are in
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: d C. Hanging out with Nancy. At this point Nancy
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Speaker of the House. Um, so she was surrounded. I mean,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: she's third in line to the presidency, so it's a
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: she's a big deal, and he's always been a big deal.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: But I got very drunk and I was talking to
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: a journalist from Politico and somehow this came up that
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: I have a half brother, and I joking, he said,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: maybe it's Karl Rove and he then he wrote a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: funny little piece our Mobi and Karl Rove brothers. Keep
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: minding if you don't. I told this story once and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the person was like, who's Karl Rove. I was like, oh,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: that's right, you're young. Um so, so Karl Rove was.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: He's the one essentially was the architect of the Bush
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: white House. And so two weeks after this article comes out,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I get a letter on White House stationary, handwritten and said,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I haven't memorized, dear Moby, or is that Mr Moby?
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: It's not me. For one thing, I am seventeen years
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: older than you, and I have no musical ability. Have
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: you considered James Carville as he's bald and plays the guitar.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I haven't framed in my bathroom your pal Karl Rove,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: so of the three and a half billion men on
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the planet, I know that Karl Rove is not my brother,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: so you'll still be hunting. You're listening to my conversation
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: with Grammy nominated DJ Moby. We'll be back in a moment.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to see videos
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and photos of our guests, go to at tune in
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now more of Moby and
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: me in front of a live studio audience at the
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: l A Times Festival. Book on the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: So in this dark period, how do you decide to
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: make music again? And what music do you then make? Well?
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I was playing Glastonbury, do you know. Glastonbury's sort of
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: like one of the original biggest festivals in the world
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and in the UK. And um, I was playing Glastonbury.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: It was raining, it was muddy, and it was disgusting,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and they wanted me to play a dance music set
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: and I had and I this is after the Animal
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Rights the rock record, and I wanted to make a
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: darker punk rock record. I was like, Animal Rights wasn't
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: dark enough. It was pretty dark, and I wanted to
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: make like a super like Sepultura inspired dark punk rock record.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: And one of my managers said the simplest little thing.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: He said, well you could do that, he said, but
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: you know, your electronic music makes people happy, and that
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: was what reached me. He didn't say you could sell more,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: he didn't say it would be better for your career.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: He said it makes people happy. And all of a sudden,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I thought like, oh, if I have the ability to
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: put music out into the world, why not try to
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: make people happy? And so then, um, I lost my
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: deal with Electra and I made the album Play thinking
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: it was going to be my last album. Okay, you
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: thought it was going to be your last album for
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Elektra or his last album period period, because no one
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: was into I mean, I was such a has been
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: at this point, Like I was like, as has been
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: as it has been, could be. That record ultimately came
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: out in V two Richard Brimpson's and people. Yeah in
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: the US, um was the record done when they picked
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: it up? Yeah, one of the n r. People at
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: V two had heard somehow heard one of the songs
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: on NPR some college radio station upstate New York, and
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: they signed it for North America. Okay, a licensing deal,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: which is great because now I own it again. Okay,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: so the record you're making it, It had a number
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: of guests, spots, etcetera. For those looking at your career,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: this would be a larger step of broater thing than
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: you would have done previously. Oh it was. I mean
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: everything about it is baffling. And made it on old,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: broken equipment in my tiny little studio on Mott Street. UM.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Some of the songs are mixed onto cassette. There are
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: three songs on Play that are demos that were recorded
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: to cassette. UM. Made for a budget of exactly zero
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: dollars and released with no expectations Like I remember someone
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: at V two saying, you know what, we think Play
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: could sell fifty copies, and I was like, it was
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: m Richard Sanders, do you know Richard? Sir Richard said,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: you know what, we actually have high hopes for Play.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: We think it could sell fifty thousand copies. Fast forward
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: a year, it was selling two copies a week. With
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: that or alternately, that is not true and I am
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: just hallucinating somewhere and this is all okay, So you
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: make that record. There are a lot of legends about
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: that record. One that every track was licensed for commercials?
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: A is that literally true? Every track was licensed, but
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of the licenses were actually for like student
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: films because I'm tight, etcetera. So like there were a
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: lot of commercial licenses for which I was crucified over
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: and over and over and over and over once again
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: at the bleeding edge looking back at your career. Was
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: that your effort, the label's effort, the manager's effort. How
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: did those licenses come to first? Okay, so the album
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Everything is wrong, I had it. There's a song on
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: They're called God Moving over the Face of the Water.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: So it was used in Michael Man's Heat Thanks um.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Range Rover came to me and said, we want to
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: give you a hundred and fifty thou dollars to use
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: God Moving over the Face of the Waters in a
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Range Rover commercial. My knee jerk reaction was to say,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: fuck you, Range Rover. You know I'm an old punk rocker.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I don't even have a driver's license, like go funk yourself.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: But then but then I thought, I was like, well,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: if I go to if I go to Green Peace
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: and say I got offered a hundred and fifty thousand
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: dollars to license music to Range Rover, and I told
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: him to go funk themselves. Some my green piece would
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: say good for you. Or if I said, oh, here's
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they'd
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: be a lot happier. So I sort of decided to
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: enter this faustian robin hood slash bargain where I was like,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I will license my music as long as ultimately I
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: do good things with the money. All of the money
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: over time, yes, we look, yeah, absolutely over time. That
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: is the goal is to like any money that has
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: come in from licensing, I have to get rid of Wow.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: So in any event, you're like, I also would like
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: to say in the early two thousands, I did forget
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: about that for a while, you know, so now trying
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: to like maya culpa makeup for it. Okay, but the
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: record is not an instant here. It's successful, but it's
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: not mega. I mean, it's old. Four thousand copies the
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: week it was released, and then two thousand copies the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: next week and then a thousand copies the week after that,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: And the licensing to your question was mainly done because
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: music supervisors were the only people interested, like k CRW
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: here and people who wanted to use the music and
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: TV shows where that was the only attention the record
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: was getting. So we just said yes. And what was
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: the turning point to breakthrough on the record that blew
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: it up? In your mind? The turning point was Danny
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Boyle using porcelain in the movie The Beach, because The
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Beach with Leo DiCaprio's first movie after Titanic, so everyone
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: went to see it and they used porcelain when they
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: get to the beach, when they get to the island,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and you could just sense like that was the moment
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: where like it went from being a weird, little underground
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: record to all of a sudden like being so much
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: bigger than that. And then you're tied up with Gwen Stefani,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: You're all over MTV. What's it like being the either
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: hurricane on that? It was great because it was also
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: bad anthropologically baffling, because I thought this was going to
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: be my last record and I was going to move
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: back to Connecticut teach philosophy at community college, and you know,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: being a loveless marriage, um and and and part of
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: the player and die. And then all of a sudden,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: like there are movie stars coming to my concerts and
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: they want to date me, and I'm getting invited to
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: amazing parties and instead of playing too like the touring,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: for example, in the UK, the first show that I
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: did was at a place called the Scala on the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Play tour and we sold four hundred tickets, which I
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: thought was great. The last show was selling out Wembley
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: and adding a show at Brixton Academy Stadium the Arenas,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: which is like fifteen thousand. Um actually did end up
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: playing Wembley Stadium, but it's a much later and it
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: has not. It was I was playing a corporate event
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: and there were two hundred people there. And if you've
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: ever played two hundred people in a stadium that holds
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: sixty thousand, things are not working. These are these are
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: going up. You started off the playing the four hundred,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: now you're playing the fifteen thousand, and what are you thinking.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking that this is the answer to every problem
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I've ever had, and you ultimately learned that it's not,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, And then I was like, I was like,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just finished writing memoir too, And there's
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: this one scene. I mean, I feel very narcissistic quoting myself,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: but there's a scene where like I'm playing a concert
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: and I look over at the side of the stage
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and there's like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow Natalie Portman dancing
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: and and I imagine a conversation with myself, like me
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: with like the old eighteen year old punk rocker, and
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the eighteen year old punk rocker is like, fuck you,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: don't you know celebrity culture is facile and like you're
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: such a running dog, licks bittle accommodator to these paradigms
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: that you know are cheap and shitty. And I was like, yeah,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: but they're being nice to me. It's like Howard Sterring today. Yeah,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: so did you test the waters all of them? Yeah?
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Of course? And what did you learn witch waters? I mean,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: like the water. You know, you're saying the door opens up.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: You're a recognizable character. You talk about not feeling good
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: about yourself and therefore dating sex workers. Suddenly iconic people
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: are interested in you. Was that something that you then
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: proceeded to date those people, of course, and what was
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: that like? Uh interesting? Because you Okay, So we live
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: in a culture where and I'm stating the obvious, but
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: we live in a culture where we're all instilled with
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: the belief that if you have the right combination of
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: like fame, money, sex, etcetera, everything's going to work out.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: And I was given all of that times a thousand,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and I was never less happy. You know. So, like
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the more I drank, the more people I dated, the
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: more drugs I did, the more money I made. And
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not looking for sympathy, and I'm not complaining, but
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: it's just an old school object lesson of Like, you know,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: I found myself in a penthouse apartment on the Upper
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: West Side with Bono and Alec Baldwin as my neighbor,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: and I've never been less happy. I love Bonno and
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. I'm not I'm not involving them in my despair.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: But people also find out that really this roving jet
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: set are just not your people. Yeah, well that's the thing.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Like I grew up with the idea that like, if
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: you're going to a party, if you get invited to
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: a party with Bill Clinton and George Plimpton and Natalie Portman.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: There's lots of similar sounding last names, um, and there's
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: all these like luminaries and celebrities, you know, like the
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: most remarkable famous, even at times areadite people in the world.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Like you think, Wow, if I could just be friends
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: with them, things are going to be great. And then
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: you're at that party and you're like, oh, they're not
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: so great, you know, like you realize, like, oh, the
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: friends I grew up with are nicer and funnier, and
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the people I went to high school with actually are
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: a little more insightful and humble. I'm sure you've had
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: that experience mattersolutely. But then I asked, what did we am?
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I a writer and therefore inherently a loner. We all
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: like the experience when you're sitting there and you get
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: a letter from Bano or even Carl, etcetera. But then
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: you have enough experiences where you're in these environments, the
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: door opens and to go, do I really belong here?
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Is this fulfilling for me? Especially at first because it
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: was so exciting and you're like, there's Gwenny's and she's
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: being nice to me. And there's in such a movie
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: star who even wants to go on a date with me,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: And you're like, this is great, And then you take
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: a step back and you're like, but I haven't had
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: a meaningful conversation with anyone. And it's basically every public
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: figure I've ever met is this messy combination of entitlement
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: and terror. You talk about the terror. We certainly know
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the entitle the terrors that it's going to go away.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Speaking of going away, you have this gargantuan success with play.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: To what degree do you feel internal pressure to follow
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: it up? Do something different? Can I reach this level?
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: And if you look at someone like at the Pinnacle
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, he has his pinnacle with thrill and when
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: she tries to imitate ultimately badly. Okay, But you have
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: this iconic success, and except for maybe some of the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: people in your electronic world, it might be jealous. It
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: was a universally adored record and everybody loved the record.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: So moving forward, what were your thoughts moving forward? My
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: thought was, I want more fame. I want more of
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: everything I have. If I'm going out five nights a week,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I want to go out seven nights a week. If
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sleeping with ten people, I want to sleep with
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: twenty people. If I want if I sold ten million records,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: I want to sell twenty million records. Like I lost
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: my fucking mind. Like I wanted everything, but more of everything,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: and slowly things didn't work out, like you know, like
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: play was the peak, and then the subsequent records the
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: reviews got bad, started selling fewer tickets, etcetera. And I
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: panicked because I thought that fame and records say as
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: an all this. All I wanted was for everything to
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: stay at the peak of play every day for the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: rest of my life, and not to anthropomorphize the universe.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: But the universe had other plans in mind form So
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: but in your mind you tried to replicate the successful play.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean I tried to make music that
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I liked, but I tried to also tick as many
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: boxes as possible. I was like, well, I want to
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: I don't want to a complete lick spittle sell out,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: So I want to make music I like that. Also,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: radio programmers will like that, journalists will like that, the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: people at the record company will like that, the sync
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: agents will like that, the licensees will like And I
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: realized there are people who are good at that, like
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: they're as you know, Like there are tons of great
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: pop producers who know how to make great records that
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: also do well at radio, etcetera. I'm not that person,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: you know. And the more I tried, the worst the results.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: In retrospect, if you had to do it all over again,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: would you be able to make records that resonated more
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: or more successful or those those records just you know,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: it wasn't your time anymore. Um, everything is perfect. I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: mean at the time, I would have said, yes, like
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: show me how to make a more successful record, show
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: me how to produce a pop song that will give
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: me back the career, the pinnacle that I had with play.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: But now you and I are sitting here, We're ober
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: and healthy. I've got a nice bunch of people here, Um,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: and I have a perspective that's informed by success and failure.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: And if you like your perspective, you can't be too
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: upset at the circumstances that have led you to have
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: that perspective. Okay, let's go back to some of the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: highlights or low lights of that era. Eminem famously dissed
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: you in a song, Were you happy about that MORTI five. Um.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: At first I thought it was a joke, and then
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: I ran into him at the two thousand and two
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: MTV Music Awards and he tried to attack me. He
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: also attacked Triumph to insult comic dogs. So I was like,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: clearly he was having a bad day to go after
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: like a skinny, bald vegan and a puppet. Um. But
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: but up until that moment, I thought like, oh, this
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: is like because I actually I don't know Eminem but
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I like some of his music. Um, I think he's
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: a fascinating public figure. Uh. So I didn't know that
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: it was serious like that he really hated me. So
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: at this point in you've continued to make music, but
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the peak of your success is nearly two decades back.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: So what ignites you, what keeps you going? What do
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: you want to do now? Uh? The goal, I'm at
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: the risk of sounding too much like a vegan who
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: lives in Los Angeles who meditates. The goal is just like,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: it's the pursuit of beauty. It's the idea that every
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: day when I go into my studio there's an opportunity
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: to make something beautiful. Not that I do, but it's
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I've always admired the work ethic of like Flannery, O'Connor, Picasso, soldiers,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: and like the people who just day in, day out worked,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: you know, and you show up with the hope that
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: you'll be inspired and inspired in the old etymological sense
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: of inspired, to have like the breath of inspiration breathed
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: into And if I spend my entire life trying to
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: do that and it doesn't work out, at least I
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: loved the process of doing it. And do you make music?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: How frequently? Every day without every day? But you don't
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: release all that music either about six or seven thousand
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: unreleased songs. And but we live in an era where
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: theoretically you could release that, except a lot of it's
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: not good. So what do you feel? How do you
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: feel about all the changes in the music business? You
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: know there are issues of music monetization, but it used
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: to be especially you know, you were like the tail
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: end of this with play. We lived on a monoculture
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: and if you were successful, everybody knew you. Whereas a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Vici dies, I'm getting emails saying I never heard one
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: of his songs, even though weak Me Up five years
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: ago was one of the biggest records of all time.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: So what's it like being a musician in this era?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I mean to stomach, and I feel like I can't
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: speak to that experience, you know, because I'm fifty two
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: years old. I sold a lot of records a long
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: time ago. Um. So, like whenever I if I do
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: interviews and I talked about my opinions about the current
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: state of the music business, understandably, so will tend to
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: dismiss my opinion. They're like, I understand, I believe, we understand.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: And what gets you off now other than making music?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: What what turns you on? Uh? Well, so, But to
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: your question about the music business selfishly, personally, I love
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: the current state as the music business. I love how
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: egalitarian it is. Um. I love that anyone anywhere in
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: the world can make music and actually potentially have an
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: audience for it. UM, I don't love We'll think of
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: it like a qualitative gray goo. Do you remember the
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: concept of a gray goo? Don't know that at some
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: point automated technology would get to the point where like
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: just we're just spewing out stuff and the world would
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: be covered in gray goo. And I think musically we
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: sometimes are at risk of that we're like, it's very
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: easy to make okay music, you know, with Ableton without
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: and I love these software platforms. But it's easy to
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: make music that's pretty good. But what about imagine? You know,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: what about Cat Stevens, what about the Rolling Stones? What
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: about like when music is transcendent? I I don't hear
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: that much of it. I know it's being made, but
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like I do miss when you had, like
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: professional musicians who would like when Leonard Collin would write
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: to Suzanne and it took him three years to write
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: that song. I missed that, you know that the transcendence.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: But I also like how democratic and egalitarian, you know.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: I like that you know, all the barriers are done,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: everybody can play, but just as a fan, it's hard
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: to wait get through them. Morass, there's so much stuff.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, you go on Spotify, listen to the Spotify
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: Top fifty, and then you know there's all the genres.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: It's overwhelming. In any event, we've come to the end
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: of the feeling we've known, and I thank you all
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: for attending. Moby has been incredible. Very are unite intellectual
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: responses yourself. I could go on for another hour, but
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: they tell us our time is up once again. Mob.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: That wraps up this week's episode of the Bob Left
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: Sets podcast, recorded live on the University of Southern California
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: campus at the l A Times Festival of Books. I
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this fascinating conversation with Moby. As always,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: I welcome your feedback. Email me at Bob at left
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: sets dot com. Until next time, It's Bob left Sez
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: think me reas don't know exactly