Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Moby

Transcript

Moby · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin, Moby never stops working. His first taste of mega
0:24
Speaker 1: success came in the early yats after the release of
0:26
Speaker 1: his multi platinum album Play, which had a big hands
0:30
Speaker 1: in electronic music being embraced by the mainstream. In the
0:34
Speaker 1: two decades since, Moby's released nineteen more studio albums, including
0:39
Speaker 1: his latest Resound and YC, where he reorchestrates songs he
0:44
Speaker 1: recorded between ninety four and twenty ten. Moby's also spent
0:48
Speaker 1: a good deal of the last two decades unpacking his
0:50
Speaker 1: own unconventional upbringing and his meteoric rise to fame. He's
0:55
Speaker 1: released two extensive memoirs that detail his hard party in
0:58
Speaker 1: days and the low points that inspired him to get
1:01
Speaker 1: sober fifteen years ago. He's also directed and produced various documentaries,
1:06
Speaker 1: including the recent Punk Rock Vegan movie, which explores the
1:09
Speaker 1: connection between two of his greatest passions, punk rock and
1:13
Speaker 1: animal rights. On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Moby
1:17
Speaker 1: about his compulsive desire to make music and why he's
1:20
Speaker 1: cut out nearly all in person socialization as a result.
1:24
Speaker 1: Moby also reminisces about the massive party pad he bought
1:27
Speaker 1: an upstate New York that led to years of all
1:30
Speaker 1: out debauchery. This is broken record liner notes for the
1:36
Speaker 1: digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Lea Rose with Moby.
1:42
Speaker 2: I've spent the past couple of weeks trying to consume
1:46
Speaker 2: all things MOBI, and it's really really difficult to do
1:50
Speaker 2: because your body of work is just enormous. Twenty studio albums.
1:56
Speaker 2: You've written four books, two memoirs which are each over
2:00
Speaker 2: three hundred pages.
2:02
Speaker 3: And that's truncated. They were each about eight hundred pages
2:05
Speaker 3: before we got rid of all the unnecessary stuff.
2:09
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
2:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, two documentaries, and then you just released Punk Rock
2:15
Speaker 2: Vegan Movie a couple months ago. You have a record label,
2:17
Speaker 2: a photobook, restaurants, a podcast. I just wanted to ask you, like,
2:22
Speaker 2: where do you think your work ethic comes from?
2:25
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing. I don't know if it's a
2:28
Speaker 3: work ethic. I mean, it's kind of It makes me
2:31
Speaker 3: think of a couple of years ago. And this is
2:35
Speaker 3: as an old person. Forgive me because I speak in
2:39
Speaker 3: pointless tangents. But a couple of years ago, I was
2:44
Speaker 3: hiking with a friend in Angela's National Forest and there
2:48
Speaker 3: was this weird shelf by a waterfall and a rattlesnake
2:53
Speaker 3: had gotten trapped there, and for some reason, I'm not
2:57
Speaker 3: afraid of snakes, and I jumped in and I helped
3:01
Speaker 3: save the rattlesnake. I sort of shepherded it away so
3:03
Speaker 3: like it could get away from this weird shelf that
3:06
Speaker 3: it was trapped in. And my friend said, Wow, you're
3:10
Speaker 3: so brave. I'm like, no, it's not brave at all,
3:11
Speaker 3: because I wasn't scared, Like bravery only exists when you're
3:17
Speaker 3: confronting something you're afraid of, Like I'm afraid of humans.
3:20
Speaker 3: I'm just not afraid of snakes. So the same thing
3:24
Speaker 3: with a work ethic, like work ethic to me implies
3:28
Speaker 3: industrious labor around something that's a struggle, something you don't
3:32
Speaker 3: want to do, and everything you just mentioned it's all
3:36
Speaker 3: just stuff I love doing. So to me, it's, you know,
3:39
Speaker 3: again that old cliche of like if you find something
3:41
Speaker 3: you love and you do it every day, you'll never
3:44
Speaker 3: work a day in your life. Like I honestly feel
3:47
Speaker 3: that way because when I'm confronted with tasks that I
3:51
Speaker 3: don't want to do, oh, that's when my work ethic
3:55
Speaker 3: completely falls apart. Like I hate I'm such a I
4:00
Speaker 3: don't know, like stunted adolescent child. And the funny thing
4:03
Speaker 3: is the way I procrastinate is by working on music
4:07
Speaker 3: or writing, or doing some other form of creative expression.
4:10
Speaker 3: Like that's also how I procrastinate to get out of
4:13
Speaker 3: doing the stuff I don't want to do.
4:15
Speaker 2: What do you think is the thing that is powering
4:18
Speaker 2: the creative expression? What's the thing that's keeping you interested
4:23
Speaker 2: after all these years?
4:25
Speaker 3: You know it's I mean, selfishly, it's just it's joy.
4:30
Speaker 3: Like it's just the pure emotional satisfaction that I personally
4:36
Speaker 3: get from making things. And I mean, I could expand
4:42
Speaker 3: on that and say that there's perhaps a more esoteric aspect,
4:45
Speaker 3: which is by creating, by making music, by making anything,
4:50
Speaker 3: by writing, we are sort of and it's going to
4:53
Speaker 3: sound really new, agy but like we're sort of we're
4:57
Speaker 3: channeling whatever strange spirit might inhabit the universe, and we're
5:02
Speaker 3: also trying to make sense of it, and we're trying
5:04
Speaker 3: to share it with other people because maybe in so
5:07
Speaker 3: doing we create a better can action with them, and
5:10
Speaker 3: also by sharing with other people, it helps the dialectic
5:13
Speaker 3: that's contained in that process, we sort of understand everything
5:18
Speaker 3: a little bit better, But ultimately it's just the selfish
5:23
Speaker 3: joy of making things, and it's almost a compulsion because
5:31
Speaker 3: and this might sound really obnoxious, but I don't understand
5:34
Speaker 3: how people get through Quotitian life without having creative outlets. Yeah,
5:41
Speaker 3: and that's I'm sorry if that sounds really entitled or presumptuous,
5:46
Speaker 3: But I look at people's lives. I'm like, how do
5:49
Speaker 3: you make sense of the world? How do you like?
5:52
Speaker 3: How do you make sense of your life? How do
5:54
Speaker 3: you fill your life with even purported meaning? If you're
5:58
Speaker 3: not creating something?
6:00
Speaker 2: Right, it's interesting that you say that that it comes
6:04
Speaker 2: partially from a desire to share things with people. When
6:09
Speaker 2: I assumed that part of it was to learn more
6:13
Speaker 2: about yourself or make sense of, you know, your experience
6:17
Speaker 2: or your thoughts or whatever it is, I thought of
6:20
Speaker 2: it more as like an internal search.
6:23
Speaker 3: I mean, I assume that that's a part of it,
6:25
Speaker 3: but it's the age old thing of you know. Whoever
6:29
Speaker 3: the person is the artist, the writer. If I wasn't
6:33
Speaker 3: ashamed to use this term, I would say the sort
6:36
Speaker 3: of the shaman. I mean, I feel dirty that that
6:38
Speaker 3: word even came out of my mouth. But the person
6:42
Speaker 3: who goes away has an experience and then comes back
6:47
Speaker 3: and wants to share it. And that doesn't speak to
6:49
Speaker 3: the quality of the experience, you know, because I'll never
6:52
Speaker 3: and I don't mean to be like too self deprecating,
6:55
Speaker 3: but I'll never speak to the quality of my work.
6:58
Speaker 3: I'll never for a second say that anything I do
7:00
Speaker 3: is good. But there's a lot of it, you know,
7:03
Speaker 3: and hopefully some of it's good, and hopefully maybe if
7:08
Speaker 3: I keep working at it. Like that's the idea, is
7:11
Speaker 3: that you wake up every day and you keep working
7:13
Speaker 3: in the hope that someday you start to get there.
7:18
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's trying to get good.
7:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the one other aspect of that is like,
7:23
Speaker 3: for example, I never take days off. I work seven
7:26
Speaker 3: days a week, and I don't take vacations. I don't
7:29
Speaker 3: really socialize. I certainly don't date. Because when I'm doing
7:34
Speaker 3: any of those things, there's a little part like in
7:36
Speaker 3: the back of my head, I'm like, oh, what could
7:39
Speaker 3: I have been making, like like by going to this party,
7:44
Speaker 3: by going to such like a red carpet event, by
7:47
Speaker 3: going on vacation. I'm like, oh, I could have made
7:51
Speaker 3: something and it maybe maybe this would have been the
7:55
Speaker 3: work of greatness that everything else was leading to. But
7:59
Speaker 3: instead I'm at Disney World taking pictures with Mickey.
8:04
Speaker 2: What if though, like a comedian, what if that gives
8:08
Speaker 2: you material? What if going on you know, out to
8:12
Speaker 2: dinner or going to a party, whatever.
8:13
Speaker 4: It is a couple hours.
8:15
Speaker 2: What if that gives you some sort of new perspective
8:17
Speaker 2: and inspiration.
8:18
Speaker 4: Oh?
8:18
Speaker 3: Absolutely. That used to be the case all the time
8:22
Speaker 3: when I was living in New York, going out to
8:24
Speaker 3: bars and nightclubs. Yeah, especially pre sobriety, because I would
8:28
Speaker 3: go out and I would hear other DJs, and I
8:31
Speaker 3: would listen to bands, and I would hear what people
8:33
Speaker 3: were doing, and I would come home at two or
8:35
Speaker 3: three in the morning inspired and turn on my studio
8:38
Speaker 3: and channel that inspiration. So you're absolutely right, I am
8:42
Speaker 3: missing out on that that potential for we'll call it
8:47
Speaker 3: like real irl inspiration. But the problem there is it's
8:54
Speaker 3: a it's a tiny percentage of time that yields that inspiration,
9:00
Speaker 3: and more often than not, it's standing around awkwardly holding
9:05
Speaker 3: a bottle of carbonated poland spring, smiling inanely while someone
9:11
Speaker 3: tells me about a TV show they like, and I'm
9:13
Speaker 3: not maligning TV or sparkling poland Spring. I'm just saying,
9:17
Speaker 3: like I you know, most of the time, it's kind
9:19
Speaker 3: of banell.
9:21
Speaker 4: No, that's very true.
9:22
Speaker 3: Like one of the greatest gifts anyone can ever give
9:24
Speaker 3: me is canceling plans.
9:26
Speaker 2: But you're also someone who has done so much, and
9:29
Speaker 2: you've been everywhere. You've been a superstar and had everything
9:33
Speaker 2: that comes along with that. You know, you've been on
9:36
Speaker 2: the top, you've been on the bottom. You've been to
9:38
Speaker 2: a million parties, you've been to every club, every concert,
9:42
Speaker 2: you've been on stage, you've been in the crowd, so
9:45
Speaker 2: you've sort of like experienced it all.
9:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, being fifty seven
9:51
Speaker 3: years old and having had a very varied existence, you know,
9:55
Speaker 3: experiencing wealth, experiencing poverty, living in a five level quintuplex
10:01
Speaker 3: on Central Park West, but also squatting in an abandoned
10:04
Speaker 3: factory in a crack neighborhood. And I love every single
10:10
Speaker 3: thing I've experienced because it's given me perspective. And it's
10:14
Speaker 3: also like, I think one of the greatest facets of
10:19
Speaker 3: experiencing fame is that you can no longer romanticize fame. Yes, yeah,
10:25
Speaker 3: we live in a culture, and again, forgive me for
10:27
Speaker 3: stating the obvious, but we live in a culture where
10:30
Speaker 3: fame is the pinnacle. Everybody wants fame, and if they
10:34
Speaker 3: have fame, they want more fame, and it's people are
10:37
Speaker 3: obsessed with fame. And I had it, and it's not
10:41
Speaker 3: that great. Famous people, as you've probably experienced. Hopefully present
10:46
Speaker 3: company may be possibly excluded, but famous people just tend
10:49
Speaker 3: to be kind of like, more entitled, less interesting versions
10:52
Speaker 3: of our friends. And I've been to you know, famous
10:56
Speaker 3: people parties and birthday parties and politician parties, and like,
11:01
Speaker 3: I have yet to meet a famous person who is smarter, funnier,
11:07
Speaker 3: or more interesting than anybody else I grew up with.
11:10
Speaker 2: Do you think that's because of the time in your
11:12
Speaker 2: life when you met the people you grew up with,
11:15
Speaker 2: Since those people sort of mold us, they're like our
11:18
Speaker 2: archetypes in a lot of ways.
11:20
Speaker 3: Except that I'm still largely in touch with most of
11:22
Speaker 3: those people, and they still are, Like, my friends are
11:27
Speaker 3: so much funnier and more interesting and more engaging and
11:32
Speaker 3: more curious and less entitled than any of the famous
11:37
Speaker 3: people I've ever met. And I've met I don't want
11:39
Speaker 3: to malign any of the famous people I've met, like
11:41
Speaker 3: they're all fine, but they don't really offer that much,
11:45
Speaker 3: Like there is that, And I assume you've experienced this
11:49
Speaker 3: as well, like with real like the big famous people,
11:52
Speaker 3: like they do kind of feel like ninety percent of
11:55
Speaker 3: the time them just showing up is enough. Yeah, And
11:59
Speaker 3: the truth is, for most people it is like if
12:02
Speaker 3: you're Brad Pitt, you don't really need to be the
12:05
Speaker 3: greatest conversationalists in the world because if you show up,
12:07
Speaker 3: the room comes to a halt. So I will say
12:10
Speaker 3: that about fame, like I'm so glad I've experienced it,
12:13
Speaker 3: because one, I also appreciate that it's given me a
12:15
Speaker 3: platform to address issues that I care about. But also
12:20
Speaker 3: it makes it so easy to not fetishize fame when
12:25
Speaker 3: you've seen it up close.
12:27
Speaker 2: And it's something that you really do a good job
12:29
Speaker 2: in your memoirs of breaking that facade. And you know,
12:34
Speaker 2: you thought you would feel a certain way when you
12:36
Speaker 2: became famous or you had success, and you sounds like
12:39
Speaker 2: you even felt worse.
12:41
Speaker 3: Oh considerably worse. Because sorry to sound like a grad student,
12:48
Speaker 3: but like everything does have an existential subtext or an
12:54
Speaker 3: existential context. And what I mean by that is the
12:58
Speaker 3: human condition is terrifying, baffling, and at times kind of horrifying.
13:05
Speaker 3: Like best case scenario, you get old and die of
13:09
Speaker 3: sad diseases, you know. And I was just reading about
13:14
Speaker 3: how astronomers have discovered a super massive black hole. It's
13:19
Speaker 3: relatively nearby, and it's as big as one hundred and
13:22
Speaker 3: twenty billion of our sons And that's just one black
13:27
Speaker 3: hole out of trillions. And you put it in perspective
13:29
Speaker 3: and you're like, oh, so, here are these humans, these scared,
13:32
Speaker 3: little hairless, vicious monkeys, pretending that our lives have significance,
13:38
Speaker 3: pretending our lives have meaning. And maybe they do. I'm
13:42
Speaker 3: not saying our lives don't have significance or meaning, but
13:46
Speaker 3: there's a good chance the significance and meaning of our
13:48
Speaker 3: lives is not what we imagine it to be. It's
13:51
Speaker 3: certainly not material. So to that point of the existential
13:57
Speaker 3: subtext of fame is like, as we experience every time
14:00
Speaker 3: we look at the world around us, everyone's trying to
14:03
Speaker 3: exempt themselves from the human condition, or they're trying to
14:07
Speaker 3: win the human condition. And it's thinking that you could
14:10
Speaker 3: either accomplish that with fame, with money, with beauty, with accolades,
14:17
Speaker 3: with intelligence, even with cynicism, with drugs, with alcohol. It's
14:22
Speaker 3: it's all this attempt to somehow circumvent and conquer the
14:27
Speaker 3: human condition. And the reason I wrote those two memoirs
14:32
Speaker 3: is because that's what I kept trying to do, you know,
14:36
Speaker 3: to be like, Okay, when do you win, Like when,
14:39
Speaker 3: like at what point do you you know, accomplish enough,
14:44
Speaker 3: like whether through fame, materialism, accolades, what have you? When
14:48
Speaker 3: do you feel like you have finally, Like Ahab conquered
14:53
Speaker 3: Moby Dick. And there's a reason why I love my name,
14:56
Speaker 3: which I didn't give myself, but is at the end,
14:59
Speaker 3: Ahab is trying to conquer the unknowable, vast universe, and
15:04
Speaker 3: of course he's destroyed by it. It's like if the
15:08
Speaker 3: universe Las Vegas, the house always wins, like we as
15:12
Speaker 3: humans can never win the existential conquest, and so the
15:17
Speaker 3: only thing is to step back and have compassion for
15:20
Speaker 3: ourselves and for the other people who are struggling through
15:23
Speaker 3: the confusion of the human condition, and to learn from
15:27
Speaker 3: it and hopefully have a little bit of observational maybe bemusement.
15:33
Speaker 3: At least, this is after years of trying to beat
15:36
Speaker 3: the human condition with so many different ways. This is
15:38
Speaker 3: at least what I've come up with at this point.
15:41
Speaker 3: It could be I'm completely mistaken and the way to
15:44
Speaker 3: win the human condition is to go to Reno and
15:46
Speaker 3: get hair plugs and get married to a stripper. I
15:48
Speaker 3: have no idea.
15:49
Speaker 2: What about money though, just you know, fame aside as
15:53
Speaker 2: somebody who grew up with very little in poverty. You
15:57
Speaker 2: talk about that a lot in your memoirs. What about
16:00
Speaker 2: the point when all of a sudden you have money.
16:03
Speaker 2: I mean, as someone who doesn't have a lot of money,
16:05
Speaker 2: I don't. I feel like there are legitimate problems that
16:08
Speaker 2: have money can solve. Oh, and it could buy happiness
16:12
Speaker 2: in a way like it can buy some happiness.
16:15
Speaker 3: I mean, if it did buy happiness, then Kanye and
16:18
Speaker 3: Elon and Trump would be the happiest people on the planet.
16:21
Speaker 3: And they are mentally ill lunatics. So what I will
16:24
Speaker 3: say is having money, having a degree of money is
16:29
Speaker 3: great when you're able to like pay the rent, or
16:33
Speaker 3: you know, buy blueberries out of season, or take your
16:36
Speaker 3: friends out to dinner and not worry about picking up
16:39
Speaker 3: the tab like to be able to, you know, go
16:42
Speaker 3: to a good dentist who maybe doesn't accept health insurance.
16:45
Speaker 3: Like money, the practical application of financial security or financial
16:51
Speaker 3: stability is great, and no one could pretend otherwise the
16:55
Speaker 3: problem is going back to that idea of conquering the
16:59
Speaker 3: human condition. Is like when people expect money to enable
17:02
Speaker 3: you to transcend the human condition, that's when you end
17:06
Speaker 3: up in the White White House, eating hamberg or screaming
17:09
Speaker 3: at the television. You know, that's when you're elon on
17:12
Speaker 3: a private plane, microdosing acid and posting on Twitter eight
17:18
Speaker 3: hundred times a day about right wing conspiracy theories. Like
17:21
Speaker 3: money is great for practical reasons, but beyond that, and
17:26
Speaker 3: the evidence is everywhere if we're willing to look at it,
17:29
Speaker 3: beyond practical application, money doesn't fix anything.
17:33
Speaker 4: That's very true.
17:35
Speaker 2: Just seems like when you're when you don't have a
17:37
Speaker 2: lot of it, all problems, you know, do come back
17:39
Speaker 2: to money.
17:40
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean it's tricky because because I grew up
17:44
Speaker 3: very poor, everyone in my family was very poor. The
17:47
Speaker 3: weird thing, when I was growing up poor, there was
17:50
Speaker 3: almost never talk of money. Like my aunts, my uncles,
17:53
Speaker 3: my mom, all their friends, like everybody was like working
17:57
Speaker 3: New England poor, being a sculptor, being a painter, but
18:03
Speaker 3: never making more than minimum wage. And the weird thing,
18:08
Speaker 3: no one ever complained. And of course there was talk
18:11
Speaker 3: of like, oh, you know, I need to get snow
18:13
Speaker 3: tires from my car and I can't afford it. Winter's
18:16
Speaker 3: coming up. We need to go get winter jackets, so
18:18
Speaker 3: we're going to Salvation Army or Goodwill. But I was
18:20
Speaker 3: just like we all just sort of accepted it. So
18:24
Speaker 3: when I left home and I was as broke as
18:27
Speaker 3: anybody I know has ever been. I was living in
18:30
Speaker 3: an abandoned factory, making on average two thousand dollars a year.
18:34
Speaker 3: I didn't have running water, but it was okay. I
18:37
Speaker 3: was like, man, that's okay. I don't necessarily want to
18:39
Speaker 3: go back to it. But the strange thing, and I
18:42
Speaker 3: know this might sound like cliched public figure, relatively affluent narrative,
18:49
Speaker 3: but like, I was way happier with my friends in
18:52
Speaker 3: the abandoned factory when I was making two thousand dollars
18:55
Speaker 3: a year, then by myself in a quintuplex on Central
18:59
Speaker 3: Park West, bottoming out as a drug addict.
19:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I read also that when you bought
19:04
Speaker 2: the castle in La you at a certain point moved
19:08
Speaker 2: into a closet and just slept in there.
19:10
Speaker 3: Oh well, actually the closet. I have slept in a
19:12
Speaker 3: lot of closets, but the closet was. I had this
19:15
Speaker 3: crazy compound upstate in Kent, New York. It's in Putnam County,
19:21
Speaker 3: and it was my sort of degenerate Sylvan country party pad.
19:27
Speaker 3: And it was great for that. It had a disco.
19:30
Speaker 3: It was sixty acres adjacent to three hundred acre state park.
19:34
Speaker 3: It was a phenomenal party palace. And I built this
19:40
Speaker 3: bedroom that was roughly as big as the house I
19:42
Speaker 3: grew up in, this massive, you know, huge bedroom you
19:46
Speaker 3: could like land an airplane in. But I couldn't sleep
19:49
Speaker 3: in it. It was too big, and it was too bright
19:51
Speaker 3: because I had so much all these skylights and all
19:53
Speaker 3: this glass, and so I dragged my futon into the
19:56
Speaker 3: walk in closet and I had to sleep in the closet.
19:59
Speaker 4: How long was that place fun for?
20:02
Speaker 3: I mean, it was the most fun place in the world.
20:05
Speaker 3: At one am before I got sober, you know, and
20:09
Speaker 3: I had thirty people come up from New York, and
20:12
Speaker 3: there was the disco. There was a spa there. I mean,
20:15
Speaker 3: it was really flawless when it came to one am, drunken,
20:20
Speaker 3: drug fueled debauchery eight o'clock in the morning, when the
20:24
Speaker 3: sun came up and you felt like throwing up, and
20:27
Speaker 3: you realized that the hot tub in the spa was
20:31
Speaker 3: the color and consistency of split pea soup. And that's
20:34
Speaker 3: when you realize, oh, that's right. No matter how much
20:38
Speaker 3: fun one am is, you can't avoid the eight am,
20:44
Speaker 3: dark morning of the soul.
20:46
Speaker 2: Just thinking back on that period of your life, is
20:47
Speaker 2: there anyone that you keep in touch with from those days?
20:51
Speaker 3: Yeah? My actually, my girlfriend from that time. She and
20:55
Speaker 3: I are still really good friends. Like a lot of
20:57
Speaker 3: people from then I haven't stayed in that much touch
21:01
Speaker 3: with because some of them are like still out trying
21:04
Speaker 3: to live the dream, and you know, people who've moved
21:10
Speaker 3: to Miami and are really exploring where cocaine addiction can
21:15
Speaker 3: take you, Like it's kind of hard to stay friends
21:18
Speaker 3: with them. But like the people who've gotten sober, the
21:20
Speaker 3: people who sort of aged out of it, like some
21:24
Speaker 3: of my good friends definitely are in the same boat
21:28
Speaker 3: as me. Is, like we emerged relatively unscathed, where you know,
21:34
Speaker 3: we can be old people who meet up and drink
21:39
Speaker 3: smoothies and talk about what it used to be like
21:42
Speaker 3: to gobble xanax and vic it in at nine o'clock
21:45
Speaker 3: in the morning just to try and fall asleep after
21:47
Speaker 3: doing so much cocaine.
21:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you meet people or when you're recognized on
21:52
Speaker 2: the street, people come up and talk to you. Is
21:55
Speaker 2: there something that people ask you about that surprises you.
22:00
Speaker 3: I mean one of the main things that I've been
22:04
Speaker 3: asked lately is, you know, when I earned fifty I
22:10
Speaker 3: started getting vegan tattoos on my body, And so that's
22:15
Speaker 3: the main question. And it's not really even me being recognized.
22:19
Speaker 3: It's just random people saying, hey, why do you have
22:22
Speaker 3: Vegan for Life tattooed on your neck? Why do you
22:24
Speaker 3: have animal rights tattooed on your arms? So I guess
22:26
Speaker 3: that's not there's nothing surprising about that, because when you
22:29
Speaker 3: have giant letters tattooed on your body, it's not surprising
22:33
Speaker 3: that people would ask you about it.
22:35
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, do you wish that you got them like
22:37
Speaker 2: thirty years ago? Especially in the hardcore scene, in the
22:40
Speaker 2: punk rock scene.
22:42
Speaker 3: Well, so here's the thing in nineteen ninety five, I
22:46
Speaker 3: had my sort of we'll call it like my big
22:49
Speaker 3: alternative music year, and I went on tour with the
22:53
Speaker 3: Chili Peppers and the Flaming Lips and I did Lollapalooza
22:58
Speaker 3: with Sonic Youth and Beck and Pavement and my album
23:02
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety five, Everything is Wrong with Spin's Album
23:05
Speaker 3: of the Year, and like it was like this big
23:08
Speaker 3: indie year for me, because before that I'd just been
23:11
Speaker 3: like a sort of shy, retiring nerdy I was still
23:15
Speaker 3: a shy, retiring, nerdy techno guy. But suddenly I was
23:18
Speaker 3: on tour with the Chili Peppers, and everybody in the
23:21
Speaker 3: Chili Peppers and in their band and crew they all
23:23
Speaker 3: had tattoos, and I wanted to get tattoos. And what
23:27
Speaker 3: I really wanted to get were those tribal tattoos that
23:32
Speaker 3: bouncers at strip clubs have totally and so I'm there.
23:36
Speaker 3: So to your point, I'm thrilled that I did not
23:39
Speaker 3: get tattoos back then, because if I had, I would
23:43
Speaker 3: be one of those middle aged guys with faded tribal tattoos,
23:47
Speaker 3: which on some people it can be a good look,
23:49
Speaker 3: but it would not like as my old skin starts
23:52
Speaker 3: to sag. It would definitely not be all that attractive.
23:56
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break and then we'll
23:57
Speaker 1: be back with more from Lea Rose and Moby. We're
24:04
Speaker 1: back with Moby and Lea Rose.
24:07
Speaker 2: In your movie and punk Rock Vegan Movie. It was
24:10
Speaker 2: really interesting that you made the connection between punk rock
24:14
Speaker 2: and compassion, because I think for a lot of people
24:17
Speaker 2: when they think of punk rock, they think of skepticism
24:20
Speaker 2: and like middle Finger to the establishment. It's not usually compassion.
24:24
Speaker 2: That's one of the first ideas that is equated with
24:28
Speaker 2: punk rock, and you really made that point very beautifully.
24:31
Speaker 2: Can you talk about when you discovered that compassion was
24:35
Speaker 2: a part of that scene, well.
24:37
Speaker 3: Part of it. I remember my first exposure to the
24:40
Speaker 3: world of punk rock and veganism was in nineteen eighty two.
24:45
Speaker 3: My band the Vatican Commandos, with a whole bunch of
24:47
Speaker 3: other Connecticut hardcore bands, we drove to Akron, Ohio to
24:51
Speaker 3: play a show in a pizza parlor. It's like a
24:54
Speaker 3: twelve hour drive. There were more people in the bands
24:58
Speaker 3: than were in the audience at the pizza parlor, but
25:02
Speaker 3: we slept on the floor of what turned out to
25:05
Speaker 3: be a vegan squat. And I remember so clearly waking
25:09
Speaker 3: up on the floor of this squat and I didn't
25:12
Speaker 3: even know what a squat was. I was a fifteen
25:14
Speaker 3: year old suburban kid, and this guy was a blue
25:18
Speaker 3: mohawk walked into the living room of the squat and said, hey,
25:22
Speaker 3: welcome to Akron. We made lentils. And I didn't know
25:25
Speaker 3: what a lentil was, and he said, yeah, this is
25:28
Speaker 3: a vegan squat, you know, welcome. You're all welcome. And
25:31
Speaker 3: I'd never heard the word vegan before because I was
25:33
Speaker 3: a McDonald's eating kid, and I thought this was so
25:38
Speaker 3: weird that, like these punk rockers ate beans. Lo and Behold.
25:43
Speaker 3: Two years later, I became a vegetarian and nineteen eighty
25:45
Speaker 3: seven became a vegan. And my understanding in the eighties
25:51
Speaker 3: when I became a vegetarian and a vegan, the vegan
25:54
Speaker 3: world was weird punk rockers. You know, there were a
25:57
Speaker 3: few hippies, but for the most part it was you know,
26:01
Speaker 3: Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits and the Cromags and
26:05
Speaker 3: you know SIV so I had. I've always associated veganism
26:11
Speaker 3: with punk rock, and then Lo and Behold, it turns
26:13
Speaker 3: out most people weren't aware of that relationship, and the
26:17
Speaker 3: compassionate side is so easy to miss. Yeah, I brought
26:23
Speaker 3: some friends. I think it was like a Youth of
26:25
Speaker 3: Today show, maybe H two O were on the bill,
26:30
Speaker 3: these straight edge vegan bands, and I brought some friends
26:33
Speaker 3: to the show. And my friends were horrified because they'd
26:35
Speaker 3: never been to a hardcore show before, and they were
26:40
Speaker 3: genuinely taken aback, like it was so loud and screaming
26:44
Speaker 3: and stage diving, and I tried to tell my friends.
26:48
Speaker 3: I was like, no, those musicians are the most principled,
26:50
Speaker 3: ethical musicians I've ever met. And the lyrics are all about,
26:55
Speaker 3: you know, supporting your community and doing the right thing,
26:58
Speaker 3: and it's almost like nineteen fifties cliches about straight edge,
27:03
Speaker 3: you know, about like clean living. But my friends were like, no,
27:06
Speaker 3: they're just screaming and jumping off the stage. So I
27:08
Speaker 3: understand how it's very hard to get past the screaming
27:12
Speaker 3: and the stage diving to realize that, like a use
27:15
Speaker 3: of Today lyric is like beautiful and extolling and exalting
27:20
Speaker 3: the virtue of compassion.
27:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's funny with the vegan in the community
27:26
Speaker 2: and squats and stuff like that. I always associated that
27:29
Speaker 2: more with hippies and jam bands and that type of
27:32
Speaker 2: lifestyle and the connection between punk rock and maybe that
27:36
Speaker 2: hippie scene, other than maybe veganism vegetarianism. And I realize
27:42
Speaker 2: this watching your movie is a Hari Krishnas. It's like
27:45
Speaker 2: they were showing up everywhere.
27:47
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, use it today with you know, Ray
27:49
Speaker 3: and Purcell and the Cromags and then Shelter. There was
27:53
Speaker 3: a lot like the Krishna connection, especially in the East
27:57
Speaker 3: Village in the eighties. You know, you had prana foods.
28:01
Speaker 3: The word prana, I believe is Sanskrit for life, for
28:04
Speaker 3: us or breath. So yeah, there was definitely And I
28:09
Speaker 3: don't know anything about Krishna or I've never read the
28:13
Speaker 3: bog of Adgita. My friend Eddie and Mike Dee are
28:17
Speaker 3: very much into the Hindu yoga world. I don't know
28:21
Speaker 3: anything about it, but that definitely was a fertile ground
28:25
Speaker 3: for getting people like John Joseph from the Chromags and
28:29
Speaker 3: Ray and Purcell and some other people interested in yeah, philosophical,
28:36
Speaker 3: compassionate living. And I don't know, Yeah, honestly, without that encouragement,
28:42
Speaker 3: it's possible that the punk rock vegan connection wouldn't have
28:46
Speaker 3: been as strong.
28:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I remember seeing them in like Washington Square
28:51
Speaker 2: Park or you know. I used to live on First
28:54
Speaker 2: and First and there was some sort of like Krishna
28:56
Speaker 2: temple right there, like near East Village Radio.
28:59
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's where I got sober. Really, when I
29:02
Speaker 3: say that's where I got sober, I mean literally specifically
29:05
Speaker 3: in that building. There was an AA meeting on the
29:08
Speaker 3: third floor of that temple. And so when I finally
29:12
Speaker 3: bottomed out as an alcoholic and a drug addict, I
29:15
Speaker 3: went to the one PM Living Now AA meeting and
29:18
Speaker 3: it was non denomination on, nothing to do with Krishna
29:22
Speaker 3: or Krishna Murti or you know, any of the people
29:25
Speaker 3: they venerated, but it was every day for about two
29:29
Speaker 3: years I went to that temple and had to take
29:31
Speaker 3: off my shoes and sit to go to this AA meeting.
29:35
Speaker 2: Was there any feeling of I don't belong here, Well.
29:39
Speaker 3: That's funny. I've gone to some twelve Step groups that
29:42
Speaker 3: I don't belong in because there's so many different types
29:45
Speaker 3: of twelve Step groups and some of which I just
29:47
Speaker 3: I don't identify as being a part of them. But
29:51
Speaker 3: when I went to AA it was a puzzle piece.
29:55
Speaker 3: It was the Rosetta stone, it was you know. I
29:57
Speaker 3: was like, oh, yep, because from the first drink I had,
30:01
Speaker 3: I kind of knew I was an alcoholic. I had
30:03
Speaker 3: never once in my life drank in moderation. My father
30:07
Speaker 3: killed himself drunk every everybody. My grandfather drank every day
30:12
Speaker 3: of his life. Like, I don't remember being around sober
30:16
Speaker 3: adults until I was maybe in my twenties. So, you know,
30:20
Speaker 3: when I finally really sat down in a you know,
30:24
Speaker 3: at that living now meeting where you used to live,
30:28
Speaker 3: I was like, yep, this is me. I wish it wasn't.
30:30
Speaker 3: I wish I wasn't. I wish it was a way
30:32
Speaker 3: around this. I wish there was a way I could
30:34
Speaker 3: keep drinking and doing drugs and not body me out.
30:38
Speaker 3: But I was like, no, the last twenty years have
30:40
Speaker 3: proven to me just I'm just an old timey alcoholic.
30:43
Speaker 2: But that feeling of finding a puzzle piece must just
30:46
Speaker 2: be incredible.
30:49
Speaker 3: It's terrible when that puzzle piece means you can no
30:52
Speaker 3: longer go out and be a drunk, you know, Like,
30:58
Speaker 3: in some ways I'm glad because there's no wiggle room. Like,
31:01
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people, as I'm sure you
31:03
Speaker 3: do as well, who spend years trying to figure out
31:07
Speaker 3: if they're an alcoholic, a drug addict, or an addict
31:10
Speaker 3: of some sort. So there's there's something nice in having
31:14
Speaker 3: the certainty around that of just knowing, like, yep, I'm
31:17
Speaker 3: an alcoholic. So when I go to meetings and raise
31:19
Speaker 3: my hand and say, yup, I'm obi I'm an alcoholic,
31:22
Speaker 3: there's no doubt. You know, I have decades of evidence
31:27
Speaker 3: proving yeah, that I'm an alcoholic, so I never have
31:30
Speaker 3: to question it, which is there's a great comfort in that.
31:33
Speaker 3: But for years I was like, oh, isn't there some
31:37
Speaker 3: way around this? Isn't there some way I can keep
31:41
Speaker 3: going to Max Fish every night until four o'clock in
31:44
Speaker 3: the morning.
31:45
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing I found was that you, in
31:47
Speaker 2: all your years making music, you always made music sober.
31:51
Speaker 3: I tried once, and only once, to write music drunk,
31:57
Speaker 3: because I thought to myself, well, some of my favorite
32:00
Speaker 3: musicians pretty much only made music when they were drunk.
32:04
Speaker 3: I mean, some of the best records anyone's ever made
32:07
Speaker 3: are records that were made, you know, fueled by cocaine,
32:10
Speaker 3: fueled by heroin, whether it's you know, the Velvet Underground
32:13
Speaker 3: or Station to Station or exile on Main Street, physical graffiti.
32:17
Speaker 3: I guess all the gun Club records on and on
32:20
Speaker 3: and on, these amazing alcohol fueled, drug fueled records, and
32:24
Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, I'm going to try
32:26
Speaker 3: and write a song drunk. And it was bad. And
32:30
Speaker 3: it was bad in a way that made me nauseous.
32:34
Speaker 3: It was just it had a mediocrity that was like sludgy. Yeah,
32:40
Speaker 3: I was a falling down, bottomed out alcoholic drug addict,
32:43
Speaker 3: but I would never profane my studio by being drunk
32:49
Speaker 3: or high in my studio. Other people like Oasis on
32:53
Speaker 3: and on like made amazing drug fueled alcohol field records.
32:56
Speaker 3: I just could never be that person.
32:58
Speaker 2: It sounds like you wanted to protect the thing that
33:00
Speaker 2: was the most important to you and not bring the
33:03
Speaker 2: sludge into the thing you cared about the most.
33:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. That and veganism, like from nineteen eighty seven I
33:08
Speaker 3: went via and there was never a question like that
33:12
Speaker 3: was never compromised. So those two things, like working on
33:15
Speaker 3: music and being a vegan, those the only two things
33:20
Speaker 3: that never got compromised during all the years of egregious compromise.
33:26
Speaker 2: Was there a period of time where you made a
33:28
Speaker 2: jump from making punk rock music to electronic music or
33:32
Speaker 2: did they overlap?
33:33
Speaker 3: You know, and I think if you were to talk
33:35
Speaker 3: to Rick or anyone in the Beastie Boys, or even
33:39
Speaker 3: Madonna or anyone who used to hang out in dance Atyria,
33:45
Speaker 3: it's the danceteria eclecticism of you know, when I first
33:50
Speaker 3: went to Dance Atyria, I went there to see the
33:53
Speaker 3: Bad Brains or I went there to see a mission
33:55
Speaker 3: of Burma. But by being in this incredible space, this
33:58
Speaker 3: super cool space, you were exposed to hip hop, to
34:03
Speaker 3: burgeoning house. And this was nineteen eighty two, so five
34:06
Speaker 3: years before house music, but electronic music and all this eclecticism.
34:12
Speaker 3: You know, New York in the early eighties almost went
34:15
Speaker 3: out of its way to be eclectic. You know, you'd
34:17
Speaker 3: go to see a punk rock band and beforehand they'd
34:21
Speaker 3: be playing Johnny Cash and reggae, and that eclecticism was
34:25
Speaker 3: so cool and so interesting, and it didn't come naturally
34:30
Speaker 3: to me, but it was so interesting and so appealing
34:34
Speaker 3: that I embraced it, and it just sort of wove
34:36
Speaker 3: its way into my musical DNA. So then from that
34:39
Speaker 3: point on, it never made sense to me to focus
34:43
Speaker 3: on one style of music exclusively when there was so
34:48
Speaker 3: much to be gained from being weirdly eclectic totally.
34:54
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about the new album.
34:57
Speaker 2: So the new album resound NYC. So the little pr
35:02
Speaker 2: line that I have about it is it's reimagines and orchestra.
35:07
Speaker 4: It's fifteen of your most icon tracks.
35:10
Speaker 3: Even though half of them no one's ever heard before.
35:12
Speaker 2: But yeah, recorded in New York between ninety four and
35:15
Speaker 2: twenty ten, And looking at the liner notes, a lot
35:20
Speaker 2: of the songs, if not every song, you play percussion, keys, bass, guitar,
35:27
Speaker 2: add vocals on a lot of them. You recorded a
35:30
Speaker 2: lot of them yourself. So when you were sitting down
35:33
Speaker 2: to reimagine the songs, did you have to put yourself
35:36
Speaker 2: in sort of like the headspace of being back in
35:39
Speaker 2: New York in the nineties.
35:42
Speaker 3: I mean, there's that, and the same thing with writing
35:44
Speaker 3: those memoirs. It's a really odd contrast. Like, for example,
35:51
Speaker 3: the first memoir, like I was writing about like these
35:55
Speaker 3: as you read it, it's like these really grimy, degenerate experiences,
36:00
Speaker 3: while I was like sitting in my living room sober
36:03
Speaker 3: drinking organic white tea on a beautiful Los Angeles day,
36:07
Speaker 3: Like it was so odd comparing and contrasting here and
36:13
Speaker 3: now with there and then and with music like one
36:18
Speaker 3: of the most wonderful things. And it's not just my
36:21
Speaker 3: music for me, but the idea of music as it's
36:25
Speaker 3: like a time portal. It's like a little sonic wormhole
36:30
Speaker 3: and revisiting who we were when, like in my case,
36:35
Speaker 3: when I wrote something, when I released something, but even
36:38
Speaker 3: hearing songs from a certain period to state the obvious,
36:41
Speaker 3: whether it's the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, whenever, remembering
36:47
Speaker 3: like you know, what we were wearing, what the world
36:51
Speaker 3: looked like, who was president. And it's such an almost
36:55
Speaker 3: like somatic, tactile way of actually revisiting the past. Like
37:01
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but like if I listened to,
37:03
Speaker 3: like one of my favorite songs from ninet te let's
37:08
Speaker 3: say eighty seven, I can remember like it. It's not academic,
37:13
Speaker 3: it's not like a description of nineteen eighty seven. It's
37:17
Speaker 3: a physical memoryeah. And that's even enhanced when it's a
37:22
Speaker 3: song that you've written and you know, I remember, like
37:26
Speaker 3: what was going on in the world, what my studio
37:29
Speaker 3: looked like and it's it's such an interesting way of
37:32
Speaker 3: gaining perspective on who we are now. But there is
37:39
Speaker 3: and and this is the sad part, if I'm being
37:42
Speaker 3: really honest, there's a very depressing aspect to it, which
37:46
Speaker 3: is not just being old and one day closer to death,
37:50
Speaker 3: but the fact that and this is so depressing it's
37:53
Speaker 3: almost even like hard to address that. In the nineties
37:58
Speaker 3: everything was optimistic, and we it was so optimistic, we
38:02
Speaker 3: didn't even know it was optimistic. But like I look
38:05
Speaker 3: back at it, and like Bill Clinton was president, and
38:08
Speaker 3: like the Soviet Union had ended, and Russia was thinking
38:11
Speaker 3: of joining the EC, and China was enacting democratic reforms,
38:15
Speaker 3: and the Internet was going to be this wonderful force
38:18
Speaker 3: that brought us together and enabled the communication of great ideas.
38:23
Speaker 3: Climate change at that point wasn't even an al Gore book.
38:26
Speaker 3: Like the world was so optimistic, and culture was interesting,
38:31
Speaker 3: and sure there were bad things, but it seemed like
38:36
Speaker 3: history had gotten to the point where we had learned
38:39
Speaker 3: from the old mistakes and we were going to move
38:42
Speaker 3: past them, and we were going to have young, smart, progressive,
38:46
Speaker 3: educated leaders, and we were moving into this new future
38:51
Speaker 3: and boy, oh boy, were we wrong. So I don't know,
38:56
Speaker 3: even if you talk to Gen Z people and millennials, like,
38:59
Speaker 3: there just doesn't seem to be ough so depressing, but
39:03
Speaker 3: there doesn't seem to be much optimism if any you know. Yeah, yeah,
39:07
Speaker 3: I'm really glad that we grew up at a time
39:10
Speaker 3: when optimism was actually sort of empirically supported.
39:14
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you, like, are you happy
39:17
Speaker 2: that you were born when you were Yes.
39:19
Speaker 3: I'm very glad I was born in nineteen sixty five
39:23
Speaker 3: because being nine years old in the seventies and listening
39:28
Speaker 3: to AM radio in the morning and hearing every from
39:32
Speaker 3: the Eagle to Elton John to Queen to led Zeppelin
39:35
Speaker 3: to Paul McCartney to on and on and on, I'm.
39:38
Speaker 4: Like, wow, it's insane.
39:39
Speaker 3: That was great, and like, of course getting older is
39:43
Speaker 3: a little challenging, but at the same time, you know,
39:46
Speaker 3: to be in New York in the late seventies when
39:50
Speaker 3: hip hop and punk rock and indie rock and electronic
39:53
Speaker 3: music were all being invented, like that's and I feel
39:57
Speaker 3: bad for young people today for many reasons, like dealing
40:01
Speaker 3: with pandemics, climate change, the pressures of social media, et cetera,
40:06
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. But the other is like when
40:10
Speaker 3: I was growing up and you experienced this as well,
40:12
Speaker 3: Like we got to experience things as they were being invented,
40:16
Speaker 3: Like I mean, hip hop was invented, house music was invented.
40:20
Speaker 2: Techno and raven ever existed before. It hasn't always been here.
40:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, And another thing that makes me so grateful for
40:30
Speaker 3: I'll include you even though you're so very young, but
40:32
Speaker 3: like the fact that we when when we became adults,
40:38
Speaker 3: you know, twenty twenty one, we could move to any
40:41
Speaker 3: city in the world because every city was so inexpensive,
40:45
Speaker 3: you know, Like when I was twenty years old, I
40:48
Speaker 3: was like, Wow, you can move to any city in
40:51
Speaker 3: the world and not even have to worry about paying
40:54
Speaker 3: the rent. Like my first rent in New York was
40:56
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty dollars a month rent on fourteenth
40:59
Speaker 3: and third, And that was true for everybody, and as
41:02
Speaker 3: a result, there was no pressure. You're like, oh, if
41:05
Speaker 3: you want to be a filmmaker, spend five years figuring
41:08
Speaker 3: it out, because guess what, your rent is so cheap.
41:11
Speaker 3: Or a writer or a musician or a playwright or
41:14
Speaker 3: whatever you had that time, it was almost like apprenticeships,
41:18
Speaker 3: Like we all had extended creative apprenticeships facilitated by a
41:24
Speaker 3: lack of financial pressure because cost of living was so cheap.
41:28
Speaker 3: And it breaks my heart that like a twenty one
41:30
Speaker 3: year old today, there's nowhere in the world for them
41:33
Speaker 3: to live.
41:34
Speaker 1: We'll be back after another quick break with more from
41:37
Speaker 1: Lea Rose and Moby. We're back with the rest of
41:43
Speaker 1: Lea Rose's conversation with Moby.
41:47
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about a couple of the
41:49
Speaker 2: songs on the new album. When It's Cold I'd like
41:52
Speaker 2: to die. So there's a new vocalist on this song.
41:56
Speaker 2: It's so beautiful, it's so moving, it's sad, but it's
42:00
Speaker 2: so triumphant. So how did you find the vocalist and
42:04
Speaker 2: what usually draws you to a vocalist.
42:06
Speaker 3: Well, when I was really little, I desperate wanted to
42:09
Speaker 3: be a great singer, like it was my goal. When
42:13
Speaker 3: I was seven years old, you know, being in post
42:17
Speaker 3: corner pizza listening to Queen on the jukebox, I was like, Wow,
42:22
Speaker 3: how what a great life that would be to sing
42:24
Speaker 3: like Freddie Mercury or Paul McCartney. And then I started
42:28
Speaker 3: playing in bands and I learned very quickly. I'm not
42:30
Speaker 3: a great singer. I'm a solid B B minus white
42:35
Speaker 3: guy singer. And I learned in the early nineties, if
42:39
Speaker 3: I want to have beautiful voices on my records, I
42:41
Speaker 3: have to learn how to work with singers. And so
42:45
Speaker 3: that forced me to work with singers on my records
42:48
Speaker 3: and also produce and remix other people. I mean, I
42:52
Speaker 3: got to work with everyone from David Bowie to Ozzy
42:55
Speaker 3: Osbourne to Britney Spears to Chris Cornell, like you know,
42:59
Speaker 3: everybody from Chuck d to the Beastie Boys, and that
43:05
Speaker 3: exposure to voices made me fall in love with the
43:10
Speaker 3: process of It's frustrating because like you with technology, you
43:15
Speaker 3: can make technology do what you want it to do.
43:17
Speaker 3: The human voice is not technological like That's why it
43:21
Speaker 3: is so compelling and powerful, because it expresses that vulnerability
43:27
Speaker 3: and strengths. And it's such a challenge getting great vocal
43:32
Speaker 3: performances from people, but when you do, it's sublime and transcendent.
43:37
Speaker 3: So the original version of When It's Cold I'd Like
43:40
Speaker 3: to Die came out in nineteen ninety five with this
43:43
Speaker 3: amazing woman named Mimi Gaizy who had been in a
43:46
Speaker 3: band called Hugo Largo, and it was an obscure song
43:52
Speaker 3: that was at the end of a record that very
43:54
Speaker 3: few people had listened to. But somehow, weirdly, people kept
44:00
Speaker 3: discovering that song, like it was used in The Sopranos
44:03
Speaker 3: when Tony soprano spoiler alert, when Tony soprano it goes
44:07
Speaker 3: into a coma. People kept finding it and then lo
44:12
Speaker 3: and behold. Last summer, it was used in the season
44:16
Speaker 3: finale of Stranger Things So cool for about four minutes,
44:21
Speaker 3: and I had the very strange, disconcerting experience of watching
44:26
Speaker 3: Stranger Things. My song started playing and I started crying
44:30
Speaker 3: because I don't know if you've seen this last episode,
44:32
Speaker 3: but it's really intense and so emotional, and it created
44:38
Speaker 3: this very strange phenomena of really young kids on TikTok
44:43
Speaker 3: listening to this song and crying into their cameras.
44:47
Speaker 4: Wow.
44:48
Speaker 3: So it's this bizarre zeitgeist moment for an old guy
44:51
Speaker 3: like me, where like suddenly fifteen year old kids in
44:54
Speaker 3: New Zealand are having these emotional moments into their phones
44:57
Speaker 3: on TikTok. So long winded way of saying, I really
45:02
Speaker 3: wanted to find a great singer to sing the version
45:06
Speaker 3: of when It's Cold I'd Like to Die for this album.
45:09
Speaker 3: And I worked with a bunch of different people, you know, honestly,
45:13
Speaker 3: like quite a few people who great singers, who couldn't
45:17
Speaker 3: do it. They could deliver the technical perfection, but they
45:20
Speaker 3: couldn't deliver the emotion, the vulnerability. And so I just
45:25
Speaker 3: thought like, Okay, well, I guess that means it's not
45:27
Speaker 3: going to be on the record. But then last minute,
45:32
Speaker 3: Hail Mary, even though I don't know really what that means.
45:35
Speaker 3: And as someone who doesn't know sports, I shouldn't use
45:37
Speaker 3: sports analogies. But my friend Jonathan went to a wedding
45:41
Speaker 3: in Texas and he heard the wedding singer, this guy
45:45
Speaker 3: named Paul Banks, same name as the singer from Interpol,
45:48
Speaker 3: and he thought he might be good on when It's
45:50
Speaker 3: called I'd Like to Die. So he brought this wedding singer,
45:54
Speaker 3: Paul into his studio, and Paul the wedding singer, nailed
45:59
Speaker 3: it like so much better than anybody else I had
46:02
Speaker 3: worked with, and I was like, wow, so pt Banks,
46:06
Speaker 3: this wedding singer from the middle of ten Exis, ended
46:10
Speaker 3: up delivering the most vulnerable beautiful vocal performance and when
46:14
Speaker 3: it's cold, I'd like to die.
46:16
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, it is so moving.
46:19
Speaker 2: And I was wondering if you have any tricks as
46:22
Speaker 2: a producer for making a song anthemic, Like, is there
46:27
Speaker 2: anything that you can add or anything in your toolkit
46:29
Speaker 2: that you go back to that you know, if you
46:31
Speaker 2: add a little bit of this, it's gonna make it huge.
46:35
Speaker 1: You know.
46:35
Speaker 3: The tricky thing there is it all depends on what
46:39
Speaker 3: type of song, what's the genre, what's the instrumentation. But
46:44
Speaker 3: like with when it's called I'd like to die, like
46:45
Speaker 3: especially the version on Resound NYC, like, there're no electric
46:51
Speaker 3: electronic elements, So in a weird way, it's chord voicings,
46:57
Speaker 3: it's chord progressions. But it's also it's the juxtaposition between
47:03
Speaker 3: restraint and bomb bast, you know, and whether that's a
47:07
Speaker 3: hip hop track or a tech no track or in
47:09
Speaker 3: this case, like a piece of classical music with vocals
47:13
Speaker 3: on top of it, it's the restraint. It's letting the
47:17
Speaker 3: restraint be achingly vulnerable and letting the bomb bast be
47:22
Speaker 3: incredibly grand and creating the dynamic tension between those two things,
47:27
Speaker 3: but also ultimately using myself as the first sounding board. Like,
47:31
Speaker 3: if I'm working on a piece of music and I
47:34
Speaker 3: have a profound emotional reaction to it, that increases the
47:37
Speaker 3: chances that it might be worth playing for other people,
47:40
Speaker 3: and the hope that they'd have an emotional reaction to it.
47:43
Speaker 2: Do you listen to music really, really loud when you're
47:46
Speaker 2: making it?
47:47
Speaker 3: Do you know what's funny? I hate loud music. I've
47:51
Speaker 3: worn ear plugs since nineteen eighty two, maybe nineteen eighty one.
47:57
Speaker 3: I saw the Misfits play in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and my
48:00
Speaker 3: ears were ringing the next day, And so I've always
48:02
Speaker 3: worn ear plugs because I maybe shouldn't even admit this.
48:06
Speaker 3: I just don't like loud music. I love when I'm
48:10
Speaker 3: working in my studio. I can hear outside sounds way
48:14
Speaker 3: louder than I can hear anything i'm working on.
48:17
Speaker 4: So interesting. So how would you handle that?
48:20
Speaker 2: If you were djaying a huge party or a rave
48:23
Speaker 2: or something big and loud.
48:26
Speaker 3: I would wear I wear those yellow foam earplugs that
48:32
Speaker 3: the guys wear. Who wear who do jackhammers?
48:36
Speaker 4: Yeah? And so you would put your headphones over those?
48:39
Speaker 3: I try to, Yeah, I mean, like for a while
48:42
Speaker 3: and this is something else I shouldn't admit. My dad
48:45
Speaker 3: was a sharp shooter in the military, and I hate guns,
48:49
Speaker 3: and I think guns should be outlawed and banned. But nonetheless,
48:54
Speaker 3: I sort of grew up around a little bit of
48:57
Speaker 3: guns sport, not shooting animals, but like target shooting. And
49:02
Speaker 3: when I used to do target shooting a little bit competitively,
49:06
Speaker 3: I would wear those yellow foam plugs with shooters earphones
49:12
Speaker 3: on top of them because the noise is just like
49:14
Speaker 3: loud noises make my brain explode.
49:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, I read that.
49:19
Speaker 2: For the new album, you built bespoke orchestration around a
49:23
Speaker 2: lot of the tracks. Do you have to know music
49:25
Speaker 2: theory to do that? Like how do you write orchestral parts?
49:31
Speaker 1: Yeah?
49:31
Speaker 3: I mean I when I was very young, before I
49:33
Speaker 3: discovered punk rock, I actually studied music theory in a
49:37
Speaker 3: very idiosyncratic way with a weird music teacher in Connecticut
49:41
Speaker 3: when I was from the time I was nine until
49:43
Speaker 3: around thirteen, So, oddly enough, a degree of rudimentary music
49:49
Speaker 3: theory is kind of baked into my musical DNA. So
49:53
Speaker 3: when it came time to make the first record with
49:55
Speaker 3: Deutsche Grammophone, which is a much more traditional orchestral record.
49:59
Speaker 3: I wrote the basic orchestral parts, and then I didn't
50:03
Speaker 3: trust myself enough, so I handed them over to an
50:06
Speaker 3: orchestrator who turned them into something it could be played
50:10
Speaker 3: by an orchestra. And when I listened to what he did,
50:13
Speaker 3: and when I watched the process, I realized, oh, I
50:17
Speaker 3: can do that. I can't conduct, like I wouldn't know
50:19
Speaker 3: how to conduct an orchestra, but I can write. I'd
50:23
Speaker 3: say I can get orchestral parts to ninety five percent
50:27
Speaker 3: finished where they can be presented to an orchestra to
50:31
Speaker 3: be performed. And it's I love that process, Like writing
50:36
Speaker 3: orchestration and doing orchestral arrangement is so satisfying and so
50:41
Speaker 3: much fun. And what the use of the word bespoke
50:46
Speaker 3: in that press release, what that means is traditionally an
50:52
Speaker 3: orchestral album would have a conventional orchestra for each song.
50:57
Speaker 3: And what I did with this record and the Pandemic
51:00
Speaker 3: definitely encouraged this as well, is each song got its
51:03
Speaker 3: own orchestral approach. So in some instances that was just
51:06
Speaker 3: working with a quintet, maybe augmented with a mellotron, and
51:10
Speaker 3: other times it was actually working with a full eighty
51:14
Speaker 3: five piece orchestra. But that's clearly a bit hard during
51:18
Speaker 3: the pandemic, so we weren't able to do that much
51:21
Speaker 3: of that, whereas the first record was a lot of
51:23
Speaker 3: that big eighty five piece orchestra. Yeah, so that's the
51:27
Speaker 3: bespoke aspect of that. Like even in some songs, like
51:30
Speaker 3: the version of Helpless it's on the record, the Neil
51:33
Speaker 3: Young song.
51:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's beautiful, Oh.
51:36
Speaker 3: Thank you, But like the orchestration, there at times it's
51:40
Speaker 3: so pulled back because I was working with a quintet
51:45
Speaker 3: and you know, a French horn player and an English
51:47
Speaker 3: horn player as opposed to that full eighty five piece orchestra.
51:51
Speaker 3: Because when you have an eighty five or larger piece orchestra,
51:56
Speaker 3: you kind of want them all to be doing something,
51:59
Speaker 3: which is great for bombast but not so great for
52:04
Speaker 3: austere vulnerability.
52:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.
52:09
Speaker 2: Is it possible to capture the thrill of an eighty
52:12
Speaker 2: five piece orchestra on a recording.
52:16
Speaker 3: That's a great question, I mean, because you could almost
52:20
Speaker 3: expand it to say like recording and mixing, it's to
52:26
Speaker 3: state at the Abbeys it's trickery. Like John Bonham, how
52:30
Speaker 3: did they make John Bonham's drums sound so like with
52:34
Speaker 3: just a couple of microphones, how do you make them
52:35
Speaker 3: sound so big? You know, Yeah, it's a lot of
52:41
Speaker 3: trickery taking you know, John Bonham's drums, or taking a
52:44
Speaker 3: giant orchestra or a gospel choir and getting it down
52:49
Speaker 3: to a little file that's going to sound wonderful on
52:52
Speaker 3: two speakers or two earbuds on the L train during
52:55
Speaker 3: morning commute. Like, yeah, it makes me feel a little
52:59
Speaker 3: bit like a liar. That like part of my job is,
53:03
Speaker 3: you know, you start with something big, you make it
53:05
Speaker 3: really small, and then figure out how to try and
53:06
Speaker 3: make it big again.
53:08
Speaker 2: Speaking of trick, does Ozzy Osborne you said you worked
53:10
Speaker 2: with Ozzy Osbourne? Did he with those Black Sabbath albums?
53:14
Speaker 2: Did they do something to his voice in post production
53:17
Speaker 2: or is it doubled or is that just the way
53:19
Speaker 2: he sounds?
53:20
Speaker 3: His trick is very straightforward. It's doubling his voice. So
53:28
Speaker 3: when you say it's because when we were recording his
53:31
Speaker 3: vocals and really no one ever needs to listen to
53:33
Speaker 3: the song we did, I hate to say it's it's
53:36
Speaker 3: it's not either one of our best moments. It was
53:39
Speaker 3: on the Beavis and butt Head soundtrack. But I was
53:42
Speaker 3: just thrilled to be working with Ozzy and uh totally
53:46
Speaker 3: at that point he had this amazing band. But when
53:49
Speaker 3: he recorded his first vocal take, the engineer and I
53:53
Speaker 3: looked at each other, We're like, uh, oh, that was
53:56
Speaker 3: kind of uh, we're gonna have to work with that.
53:58
Speaker 3: That's it was not perfect, I say diplomatically. And then
54:03
Speaker 3: he said, okay, now let me double it. And when
54:06
Speaker 3: he doubled it, the engineer and I looked at each
54:07
Speaker 3: other and was like, oh my god, now now it's Ozzy.
54:10
Speaker 3: So that doubling of the vocal that I believe he
54:16
Speaker 3: I don't know at what point, whether it was Geezer
54:18
Speaker 3: Butler or whomever encouraged him to do that, but that
54:22
Speaker 3: is the azzy sound like that immediately registers as Ozzy
54:28
Speaker 3: and taking it sort of a little bit full circle
54:31
Speaker 3: back to the punk rock Vegan movie, there is one
54:36
Speaker 3: original hard rock vegan musician, which is Geezer Butler. Geezer
54:42
Speaker 3: has been vegan longer than anybody on the planet. He's
54:45
Speaker 3: been vegan since the late sixties. Very cool and unfortunately
54:49
Speaker 3: now I do have to get going in just a minute,
54:51
Speaker 3: but Can I leave with a story about one of
54:55
Speaker 3: my favorite musical, personal, professional, spiritual, existential anecdotes about the
55:03
Speaker 3: greatest singer who's ever lived.
55:05
Speaker 4: Yes, please, And it's actually.
55:06
Speaker 3: In the memoir. So I apologize for plagiarizing myself. But
55:11
Speaker 3: David Bowie in the late nineties became my neighbor. He
55:15
Speaker 3: was on Lafayette and Mulberry and I was on Mott
55:19
Speaker 3: Street and we would wave to each other from our balconies.
55:22
Speaker 3: We became friends, and we agreed to play a fundraiser
55:26
Speaker 3: for Philip Glass for his Tibet house. And so David
55:31
Speaker 3: Bowie came over to my apartment one morning and brought
55:33
Speaker 3: coffee from Gitan, and just the two of us sitting
55:37
Speaker 3: in my living room, and I worked up all my
55:40
Speaker 3: nerve and I asked him, I said, what if we
55:42
Speaker 3: do an acoustic version of Heroes? And I really thought
55:46
Speaker 3: he was going to finally spit on me or something like.
55:52
Speaker 3: I was like, have I crossed a line? But because
55:55
Speaker 3: he was so delightful, he said, yeah, sure, let's give
55:57
Speaker 3: it a try. So the two of us sitting in
56:01
Speaker 3: my living room on Mott Street on a Saturday morning,
56:03
Speaker 3: drinking cafe Gitan coffee playing heroes on acoustic guitar, and
56:09
Speaker 3: it was very special. But then towards the end he
56:13
Speaker 3: brought his voice up an octave. It was so transcendent
56:18
Speaker 3: and like, it's possible that on my deathbed, that's what
56:23
Speaker 3: I'm going to try, and like when I go out,
56:25
Speaker 3: that's what I'm going to try and remember.
56:28
Speaker 4: Yeah that's beautiful. Wow.
56:31
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I
56:33
Speaker 2: know I've held you way too long.
56:34
Speaker 3: Oh no, this has been great. Like I feel like
56:37
Speaker 3: this has been like like a gestalt therapy session, Like
56:40
Speaker 3: I need to venmo you a couple hundred dollars for therapy.
56:45
Speaker 2: No need, Thank you, and congratulations on the album. It
56:48
Speaker 2: sounds fantastic.
56:49
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, And yeah, this was really wonderful, and thank
56:52
Speaker 3: you for taking the time. And please say hi to
56:55
Speaker 3: Rick for me if you see him or speak to him.
57:00
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mobi for a thoughtful consideration of all aspects
57:04
Speaker 1: of his career. You can hear all of our favorite
57:06
Speaker 1: Mobi songs on a playlist at Broken record podcast dot com.
57:10
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot
57:13
Speaker 1: com slash broken record Podcast, where you can find all
57:16
Speaker 1: of our new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help
57:20
Speaker 1: from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holliday, Nisha Venkat, Jordan McMillan,
57:25
Speaker 1: and Eric Sander. Our editor is Sophie Crem. Broken Record
57:31
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57:34
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Speaker 1: Anna Beats on, Justin Richie