Moby

spinal tap moment. So I would we miss if I didn't ask you, Moby that it being April twenty one, the day after a VICI passed away, do you have any thoughts about a VICI? Uh? Boy, oh boy. By the way, first of all, if tomorrow is your birthday, all I can say is like the thirties can be a challenging decade, but there's there's a lot of room for growth. Well. I don't want to reveal how old I am as but you can look it up online. Thirty was bad. I thirty was no big deal. Forty

was bad, Fifty was no big deal. You're you're fifty point sixty? Really fucked me up. I'm still funning, okay. Um So a VICHI, Well, I guess it's speaking of getting older or not getting older it's just, I mean, there's so much to say about that. When someone dies so young, it's just I mean, I'm stating the obvious. But it's tragic, it's heartbreaking, it's unnecessary. It's just like the fact that death is the one unavoidable fact of

our existence. Why hurry it along? You know? Like I remember when I was a depressed teenager listening to joy Division and wanting to throw myself off a bridge. I thought to myself, I was like, you know, I'm gonna die eventually. Why not just stick around and see what happens? You know? Wow, But you have been part of this world for decades to what degreed you believe the lifestyle

of DJs would contribute to their demise? Uh? I mean, certainly there's very little about being a traveling professional DJ that's healthy. You know, even if you're sober and doing it, it's still pretty shitty, you know, like meaning like you're an airport, you're eating garbage food in airports. You stay in hotels, and even like the nicest hotel is still an artificial environment with recycled air. And especially like young kids, and you know that you're old when you start referring

to the youth as being something you're not. You know. I remember hearing Obama say like young people, and I was like, oh does that mean, like but but he's young, so okay. So so even without drugs and alcohol and whatnot, touring is unhealthy, you know, like it's very as you know from a lifetime of being around on this, Like you look at anyone who's been touring for a while and they start to look like the crypt keeper Um

or Gollum in my case. And but then you add in all the free alcohol and the drugs that are just thrown at you, like I've been sobered out for about ten years. But pre that, thanks um, but pre that. I mean, like if if you're on tour and you're playing a concert, you know, you play your concert, you get on the bus and you leave, and so you can be degenerate, but not that degenerate. Whereas the world

of celebrity DJs, they have their own planes. They fly to Abisa, they fly to Las Vegas, they fly wherever. They stay in huge palatial presidential suites. They do their deejaying and then afterwards endless partying, which is great but so destructive and so corrosive. So okay in your a particular case, what caused you to get sober? Uh? So? In nine two, do you remember the been Big Audio Dynamite.

So I was opening up for Big Audio Dynamites Switter group from the Clash, Yeah, Mick Jones and Don Let's I think um. So I was opening up for Big Audio Dynamite UM at Roseland and New York City, and we had dinner beforehand at a vegan restaurant called zen Palette, and I ate a purple Japanese egg plant and it disagreed with me. To this day, I've never eaten another purple Japanese egg plant because I had a little upset stomach as opposed to drinking, where I had thousands and

thousands of soul destroying, debilitating hangovers. But I kept doing it, and I think I realized that indicated that I had a problem. You know, when you're hungover for the five thousandth time, you're like, oh, why do I keep doing this? When it's like it's just this I don't know, diminishing returns. So was he just one day you woke up and said this is it? It was? I tried getting sober multiple times and then this with the programmer by yourself.

Eventually it was just a UM, I mean it works for me, if other people get sober without a God bless there's no right way to do it. Um. But it was October seventeenth, two thousand and eight. I had played a fundraiser for Kristen Gillibrand, Um, she was running to take Hillary Clinton's seat, and just had just a stupid night not with her. I'm not trying to throw Kristin. Jillibrand was like, we weren't you know, we weren't up at four o'clock in the morning doing cocaine and talking

about how we should start a band. Yeah, that would be now. She left early on good for her. And then I found myself at like four o'clock in the morning at some dive bar and Hudson, New York, standing on stage asking if anyone there could sell me drugs, and then buying drugs and doing them by myself, and then at nine o'clock in the morning getting on amtrack and I hadn't slept, and I felt like death had like put me in a bag and thrown me down

a flight of concrete stairs, like I just destroyed. And I thought you know this isn't getting better, and then you have that decision to do immediately go with a yeah. I went to an a meeting and just sat there, started crying and said, I'm Moby, I'm an alcoholic. And that was day one. And what did you learn in the I used to drink and I stopped drinking for a cornucopy of reasons, and for like the first thirty days was a lifestyle change, like the things places I

would normally go, I will go. And then it was earlier when a lot of people were not sober. It was really quite a head speaking experience, irrelevant of not waking up over well. Especially I lived in Lower Manhattan and so in New York. For anyone who's spent time in New York, you know that it's paradise for degenerates like it and something you can afford to live in Manhattan. But like the ethos of New York is just abject

debauchery and degeneracy. It doesn't matter who you are, like where you are on the socio economic spectrum, Like if you're not drinking and doing drugs in New York, you're missing out on why you should be in New York. Um so yes, So suddenly I was sober, living in the East Village and having my recording studio on the Lower East Side. So every day I would like walk home from work past all the bars where I used to get drunk, to go eat cereal and watch the

Daily Show, and which was good. I wasn't hungover, but I was missing out on everything. And to this day, I still don't know how I stuck with it. You know why on one of those walk homes, I didn't just like go into a dive bar, get drunk and try to convince some like, oh pair to go home with me. Let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in dry In, Connecticut, not far from where I grew up in Fearfield, Connecticut. Darien is a very upscale

room community. Most people work in Manhattan. However, there are other people of not of that economic caliber. So what was your experience growing up in day? So I was born on a street in Harlem, and then my dad died when I was two, and my mom happened to know what. He died of alcoholism. He drove into a wall, and so clearly it's we drove in a wall metaphorically or literally literally, I mean, I guess it worked on a metaphoric level, like no, he literally drove into a

wall on a Jersey turnpike at a hundred miles an hour. Yeah, pre airbags. So it didn't work out too well. Um, And so my mom moved us back to dry Enne where she had grown up. But we were poor, white trash. We were on food stamps and on welfare. We lived, and it was from dairy En. Did she come from an upscale family? Her dad, my grandfather, worked on Wall Street, And so she moved us back to Darien because the schools were good, it was familiar, and she had family around.

So what was your experience like constant shame because you were not one of the wealthy people. Yeah, because we were. So my mom was a pot smoking hippie who dated Hell's Angels and Darien is the land of like Lily Pulitzer pants and golf country clubs and you know, like my first serious girlfriend heard she came from the Rand family. Sorry I don't, I'm I hope I'm not going to get her in trouble, like, you know, the Rand Corporation, Like that's her posse. Her family and her dad owned

a fleet of oil tankers. So that's my first serious girlfriend, my second serious girlfriend. Her grandfather was Bill Hewlett, who started Hewlett Packard. So it's like a level of wealth that you can't imagine. And my mom and I were on food stamps and welfare and I would come home and she would be, you know, like smoking pot in the kitchen with her Hell's Angel's boyfriend. And was there music in the house constantly? And what music did you hear? Everything?

My mom had the most remarkable taste in books, which is Germaine. As we're at the l a Time festival books. That's what's called right yeah? Um? And so I mean because she had been a literature major at Barnard, and you graduated from Barnard, she eventually graduated from East Khan and Dan Barry. Um, so she went back. It shows a level of perseverance despite being a you know what, Hell's Angel dating hippie. Yeah, when she was really aeradite

and academic. She just liked bad boys. Um. So. But her book collection, I mean, like I grew up reading Faulkner and Rambo and Dyukowski when I was twelve years old, just because she didn't turn them on to you just saw him on the shelf and you pulled them down. I was talking about this earlier with a nice man at PBS. I was like, when you're twelve years old and your board in the middle of the summer and

there's nothing good on TV. You go to the bookshelf and you see as a as I lay dying and you're like, that sounds cool, or you know, like a Season in Hell by Rambo and you're like, oh, I want to read that, or you know Bukowski, you know, like every book he wrote has an amazing title. So I just started reading compulsively. And her record collection was everything from I don't know, divor Jack to Coltrane, Like

she still maintains that I was conceived. Well, my mom and my dad were listening to Love Supreme now that whether it's two or not, who cares? So yeah, So I mean Crossy Seals and Nash and Young to Stravinsky to Bruce Springsteen too. She loved like a lot of late sixties folk music like It's a Wonderful Day or It's a Beautiful Day, Beautiful's a Beautiful Day and Donovan and Jefferson Airplane and Nick Drake. So it was like she, I grew up with an amazing record collection, just so eclectic.

And what point did you start to play music? I started studying music when I was around nine. What was the impetus for that? That I loved music and I just wanted to do anything I could to be around it? And was this private lessons? Were in school or by yourself? Well, my mom played piano and she dated a bunch of itinerant musicians, um one of whom was a pedal steel player. And I tried to learn pedal steel at ten and I couldn't like it was just too like as your

feet are doing things. So one of her boyfriends had left a guitar behind, and so I started playing guitar. And she had a friend who taught guitar lessons. And he was the most idiosyncratic music teacher because he played in a metal band. You know. He was one of those like Deely Deally dud thinks Chris Rasola like a phenomenal virtual so guitarist. But he loved music theory, bok

and jazz fusion. So he instilled in me like we would study scales and deconstruct Bach cantatas and then learn how to play purple, Hayes, This is all on the guitar. On the guitar, that's not easy to do on the guitar. Yeah, and so you learned how to we music, and you still read music to this day about as well as I can read French, meaning like I can figure it

out if you hold a gun to my head. But like like friends of mine who can cite read I'm sure you know those people, like like you put rockman and Off in front of them, put them to the piano and they start playing it. Like, there's absolutely no way I could even begin to do that. It would take me ten minutes to get like the first stanza. Well, in my family, we started with piano lessons, and then of course the folk are and the Beatles came along

and we picked up guitar. But the issue was always practicing. Did you practice? I practice constantly because I was untroubled by much having much of a social life or a

dating life. Did you have friends. I had a few friends, but not too many, so I had a lot of free time growing up, you know, especially summertimes, like you know what's like in Fairfield County, Like all the rich kids go to country clubs, they go to Switzerland, they go to islands like Fisher's Island and Martha's Vineyard and Nantuckett and I stay home and watch TV, listen to records, play guitar, drive my bike to Johnny's Records to look at records that someday I might be able to afford.

So you're in school, your mother is highly educated. What kind of track are you on? Are you thinking I'm going to go to college? I can't wait to drop out? What's going through your head? Well? When I went, I went to Yukon Stores and Stanford. I didn't know that I didn't graduate. And did you go for I went to Yukon Stores for a year, went to Yukon Stamford. This is means a lot to us um and I went to study purchase for a little while. Let's let's

go back. You're at Yukon Stores. Yeah, isn't that like a square peg in a round hole? Obviously that's why I didn't stay. I mean, also I was having I was having terrible panic attacks and I had to leave anyway. But like Yukon Stores is known for basketball and agriculture, and it's it's hard to say about but it's literally in the middle of nowhere, Connecticut. Yeah, it's sort of like the let's by way of comparison, like the outskirts

of Fresno right now. Um So I was there and this was the early eighties, and all I wanted was to be in New York or be in London or be in Los Angeles and be a part of a music scene. So I would listen to music and I would go to classes. But being in this small farm town, it was very frustrating, and then you ended up going to purchase to purchase. I was a philosophy major the whole time, so if it weren't for music, I sort of thought that my life plan was going to be

teaching philosophy at some community college somewhere. So you went to like three or four colleges. If you were to go back today, like in the Bruce Springsteen record where his mother says, never would you like to go back, how much would you have to do to graduate? I'll probably take four years of classes. Like I don't know, I mean, I wouldn't even know, like because this was this was back in the forties, so like you know, they kept records on parchment exactly. That's one of my

bad dreams. You gonna wake up one day and they'll say, we have no record if you graduate from college. You did go, but um, so are you going consistently from one college to another? I was like twenty Yukon stores dropped out about a year of like drinking and learning how to DJ, went back to Yukon, Stamford dropped out, went back to Sunny Purchase, and then at that point I started to have more of a job as a DJ.

So I didn't let's say, so, if we're in the early eighties, Okay, what does it look like being a DJ? Then well, uh, it was not very glamorous. Remember port Chester, New York, of course, holl of the capital of the Capital Theater, which is now back up in the running.

Everyone's right over the border from Connecticut, and it had a very special place I'm assuming when you were growing up as well, because the drinking age in Connecticut was twenty one and the drinking age in New York was eighteen, and port Chester was the first town over the border, so it was filled with kids from Connecticut like crashing their cars and getting STDs. Um so I got a job djaying at a bar right by the Port Chester train station on Monday nights for twenty five dollars a night,

so I was working for six hours. No one was there except like a couple of like bottomed out methodone addicts and what would you play? I didn't even have that many records, so I'd play the same things over and over again. So it was the Clash and Joy Division and some early New Order records and Hank Williams and Johnny Cash basically like whatever records I had access to. Okay, so you did that, You went back to college, and you're at Sony Purchase. At one point you say, I'm

done with school. I just because d jaying. I started djaying. Time passed and I got a job djaying in New York, and I realized, oh, a little bit slower. How did you get a job dj in the city. Well, because you know Saturday Night Fever, of course, And Saturday Fever is a fascinating movie if you haven't seen it recently. It's unrelenting, lee dark like. It's how that became like a pop culture phenomena. I have no idea because it's

super bleak things. That was based on an article by Nick Cone in New York magazine and he was on Deadline. He completely made it up. It wasn't true whatsoever. Although a great article in a great movie, and but it's about, you know, these kids in Brooklyn and Queens who just longed to get to Manhattan. But that existed not just in Brooklyn, Queens, but in Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey,

upstate New York. Like if you lived within the sort of periphery of Manhattan, all you wanted to do was go to Manhattan to hang out, to work, to live. At least that was the case with me. So in the late eighties, I started dropping off demo tapes at different nightclubs in New York and rejected everywhere. And I started giving demo tapes to ray EO stations like Kiss and BLS same thing, I mean, like a skinny a little bit slower. They would be others. People's material to

the radio was material that you had created. Both. I would drop off these cassettes that had like a hip hop mix, a house music mix, and my own music.

And I also sent it to tons of labels and I got one response from Hollywood Records, the Peter Paterno and this is and I got a letter from Hollywood Records so clearly, and it said we do not accept unsolicited Yeah, we'll take a quick break and come back with more of my conversation with Moby, recorded at usc as part of the l A Times Festival of Books. This week we're talking to DJ Moby. Last week we had Chev Gordon supermnch For that, we had job Is

Martin and Shirley Manson and so many other people. You gotta go back into the archives. You haven't heard these things, so download from tune in the Apple podcast or your podcast player of choice. Okay, let's get back to my conversation with Moby in front of a live studio audience. Okay, but a little bit slower. When did you start to record your own music? In early eighties? I stole a four track from the A V Department at my high school.

I gave it back, so okay. I bought the real like a like a Fostex, very very like school had a FoST that's amazing, task camera Fostex. Well they were two fostests. Was first intend to task cam, but people were buying them. They certainly didn't. I did not go to a low rent school, but we didn't have that kind of equipment. Yeah, somehow. Well. I was also in the like when like if you watch family Guy, the nerdiest guy, it always has a hat that says A V.

We were. I was in the A V Department, you know, like wheeling the film strip, you know, the overhead projector to classes and setting it up up and make sure it's clean. And I would eat my lunch in a closet in the A V department, not get like, I put joy Division on my walkman and eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a closet And it was great.

But where were we? The fas? But for those people don't know, it was a real breakthrough because there are four trucks on a cassette and the fast Tex was the first machine that allowed you to seek up and record on all four trucks, which was a huge break It was egalitary, relatively egalitarian multitrack technology. And remember the first time I turned it on and used it. Because I had a matel drum machine. Mattel made a drum machine called the Simsonics. I forgot that and so I

had my Mattel Simsonics drum machine. My borrowed face text a guitar and a microphone that I also sort of borrowed from the A V. Department, and I was able to make music on my own and it was, you know, like the scales fell from my eyes and suddenly, you know, I was like I could I don't need to wait around for other musician, Like, can just do this by myself? So yes, of the late eighties. Okay, So when you're

making music at first, what kind of music are you making? Uh, A little bit of everything, sort of inspired by some of the singer songwriter like Roddy Frame from ast at Camera, The Smith's The Cure, but also electronic music, you know, inspired craftwork by craftwork. Um. The demo tape that I got sent around they got rejected was actually my singer songwriter stuff, so it wasn't retrospect. How good was no? This is great, raving great back and forth in retrospect?

How good was that stuff? Oh? Totally mediocre? Because that's one of the things people send you stuff Originally they think it's so great, and if they have to make it, they look back. Maybe I didn't deserve to make it at that point. Well, then I had this sort of like that, like the Robert Frost moment Two Paths Diverge and the Wood And I was playing demos to my girlfriend and a friend of hers, and I was playing my very earnest singer songwriter music and they were like, yeah,

that's okay. And then I was like, oh, but I've also started making electronic music. And I played it for them and they stood up and started dancing wow. And at that moment, I was like, the audience has spoken, Like, I guess I'm not supposed to be the next Morrissey. I'm supposed to make electronic music. Okay. While you're making music, you talk about soliciting gigs in New York City, Yeah,

so tell us more about that. So it's constantly sneaking into New York on Metro North, like hiding in the bathroom on Metro North with a bag full of demo tapes, jumping turnstiles, getting cheap food at Dojo remember Dojo um, and bringing demo tapes everywhere, every record label, every radio station, you know, waiting outside w n y U and the hope that maybe someone who worked at w n y U would like be willing to take a tape. And

I dropped off tapes at every nightclub, every bar. And then there was this one club opening called Mars, and it was on the West Side Highway in the Meatpacking District. And this was back when the meatpacking district was the meat packing District. Like they were like dead lamb carcasses on the street and blood everywhere and prostitutes servicing all sorts of people out in the open, like it was

really post apocalyptic and grim. In the middle of it was this huge nightclub, Mars, and I went there to drop off a demo tape and the HR person laughed at me because they were taking applications for like bus boy, janitor, bar back, and I dropped off a demo tape. But the guy hiring DJs had never hired DJs before, and he wondered why no one had dropped off demo tapes. So I got my job solely because I was the only person to drop off a demo tape. Do you

remember what year that was? And so you started to work there, how frequent work, first once a week, and twice a week and three times a week, and then um finally move back to New York and got this apartment on fourteen and third with four other people. Okay, what kind of music are you playing when you're working at bars um mainly house music and hip hop, but also some dance, all reggae, which is really big at

the time. And occasionally my boss his name was Yuki and he was Japanese and he was really interesting and he would ask me if I could play certain genres of music, and I would always just say yes, you know, like so you remember one time in particular, he called me up and said, oh, We're having a rare groove party on the roof. Can you play rare groove? And I was like, of course I can. And then I hung up the phone and I started calling people. I

was like, what is rare groove? And so the three other people you're living with, how did you find them and find the apartment. One is a friend of mine from Connecticut who was an artist named Damien loeb Uh. Then he was dating a model named Ann And then there's another DJ named Adrian came a very successful hip hop DJ named Stretch Armstrong uh. And then my friend Lee also it's just an artist from New York who now owns an art gallery in Connecticut. Okay, so you're

working at Mars. Ultimately, many nights a week. Based on the story you've just told, you're so obviously hustling your demo tapes. Oh yeah. And then finally, this, finally, the moment came. I dropped off demo tapes everywhere and I was DJing at Mars and this guy named Jared Hoffman came to the DJ booth and he asked me a question. He said, well, do you make your own music? And

I said, as a matter of fact, I do. So the next day I went to his apartment on fourteenth and seven and I gave him a demo tape of my own music, and he called me up and he said, we would like to sign you to an artist contract to our record label called Instinct Records. Put it in perspective, at that time, they actually didn't have a name, they didn't have an office, they'd never made records, they had no employees. It was an idea that he and a

friend of his head. So so I was signed to a record label that at the time wasn't how to take you to figure that out. I kind of just ignored that fact because someone had offered me a contract like I and I never in my wild dreams thought I would sign a recording contract, even if it wasn't technically with a record label. Here for a second, when you're djaying, are you d jaying under the name Moby? You can call Moby since I was born my legal

name is Richard Melville Hall. So in school, you never rich, You're never Rick, You're always Moby. Yeah, okay, So you make this, you sign this record deal. They don't know what they're doing. Do you actually make a record? Then we take six months to make my first twelve inch called Time's Up, oddly prescient for the Times Up movement um because during this although I guess I can't in any way late claim to it as assist endered heterosexual

white man, but nonetheless, uh. And that record did nothing. I just disappeared. And then I made my second record under my own name, which came out and sold about a thousand copies. Which in high school I had been in a punk rock band called the Vatican Commandos, and we had a seven inch that sold two hundred copies, And that amazed me because I meant there were two

hundred people who had heard the music we made. But now there were a thousand people who heard the music I had made, And I if my career had ended in I would have been pretty happy. But then the next single was a remix of the song Go, which became a top ten record around Europe and around the rest of the world. I think sold half a million copies. Okay, but this is still with these two crazy guys. Yeah. Now they had a label, they had Instinct, and they

didn't really have an office. They had Jared's apartment and I was. I set up my equipment there, so I ran the office like I would clean the kitchen, send faxes, take wreck words to ups and the post off. Yeah, like answering the phone like hello, Instinct records while I was like hitting pause on my sequencer. Um, it was great. It was okay, joy full, joyful, happy time you may go in your mind. Do you think it's a hit? No?

Absolutely not, because I was. I was a super weird, obscure musician that no one had ever heard of, involved in a genre techno that no one had heard of or cared about. And I used music from Twin Peaks and I was like, well, people know Twin Peaks, but no, I didn't think anything was ever gonna happen. How did it happen? It happened at the good Because this was nineteen eighty nine or ninety the rave scene in the UK was exploding and Twin Peaks was exploding, an interest

in New York dance music was exploding. So some influential DJ's in the UK found this record and started playing it and it just sort of metastasized in a very good way. And what was that like being at the epicenter.

It's still possible that it didn't happen, you know, like it's still possible that right, and that like that I'm it's and I'm cleaning oatmeal bowls in the kitchen at Instinct Records a K. Jared's apartment and somehow I'm having a stroke or something or dissociative like Joan of Arc style moment where like all of a sudden, like my brain is like secreting still aside and naturally on its own.

And this is all a hallucination because the idea to to go from selling a thousand records two then all of a sudden, being on top of the pops multiple times and traveling all around Europe and suddenly instead of standing on stage in front of thirty people on Lowerie's side standing on stage in front of ten thousand people who knew of the songs that I had made, and I it was wonderful, but so disconcerting. Disconcerting and what

was I've never expected it? Okay, But certainly when you go from a club to a festival or a gig of ten thousand people, you must add some level of stage fright, fear, you know, authenticity figuring you know they're I'm gonna go up and then people gonna say, what the hell is this? Yeah, oddly enough the stage fright thing. So my first ever real solo performance, and I think you might appreciate certain aspects of this, was at the Palladium.

The Palladium was the coolest club in New York and I had seen the Clash there, had seen Simple Minds there and XTC. I've seen so many shows there. And in nine or ninety I got asked to open up for the band Snap. Remember Snap, I got the power Um rhythm is a dance, sir. So Snap were huge. The Power was the biggest song in the world. And I somehow, I think the booking agent was dating a friend of mine, and so I was going to open up for Snap in front of thousands of people at

the Palladium. So I show up and I do my sound check, and this is a lovely, odd little biographical detail. The end of my sound check, I hear two people, one person clapping, and I'm like, oh, someone's at my sound check. And it was my boss, Yuki for Mars, happened to be at the Palladium. And I walked out to say hi, and there was this very small man standing next to him and he said, Moby, meet Miles Davis. So my first ever solo show was to two people,

one of whom was Miles Davis. You quit that too, And he wouldn't shake my hand, but he was wearing a beautiful suit. And and then ten o'clock rolls around. The palladium is filled with bowl and the booking agent comes to me and says, oh, bad news Snap didn't make their flight, but you can go play. So I walk on stage and the m C says, ladies and gentlemen, bad news Snap aren't here, but from New York. Moby.

I hadn't made a record this point. People are booing and throwing things, and I walk over to my equipment and someone had unplugged it, and so I spent three or four minutes in front of five thousand people plugging in my equipment and rebooting discs, and they were booing. And then when it was finally done and the first song started, I was like, oh, I don't care. Like I was like, this is the worst experience, this is like such a nightmare experience. But I went through it,

you know, I was like, you were still again. By the end of it, they were actually kind of with me. And I realized that one thing that can serve for armers really well is having a degree of contempt for your audience where you can love them fascinating. I love that where you can love them but you don't really

care if they love you in return. And that's when you can just perform as opposed to like being some like lap dog sick of fans, like saying like, oh please love me, just being like, if you love me, that's fine. If not, that's fine too, Okay. From the Giggots Palladium, how do you end up on top of the Pops? And in Europe? Just put that song go with the Twin Peaks music on it, and it just kept going and then all of a sudden, the rave

scene blew up in the United States. And at that point, as you know, a lot of the rave producers were very faceless. You know, they would give themselves alter egos and they wouldn't perform. And I was one of the only people with a face. And I guess technically they all had faces, they just chose not to show them. And so I started being on the cover of magazines. And there weren't that many public figure tech no producers

in the United States. They were really a handful. And I kept touring and touring and touring and touring with the Prodigy and with the Shaman, you remember the band and the Shaman, and and I just toured and toured and toured like old school Chitland circuit style, like just me and a keyboard, okay, a couple of things. Were you making any money? I remember I got I played one show in the UK and I got paid six hundred dollars and I was like, I just got paid

six hundred dollars. Like I was at that time, I was being paid a hundred dollars to DJ, and I was like, wow, I just got paid six nights of djaying in one night. So up until about two that was the most I've ever made. And in retrospect, were you being ripped off or that was absolute? Now, when I think of like, like Martin Garrick's, I like Martin Garrick's. I really like that Animal song quite a lot. A

young techno producer puts out one song. Six months later, he has a private plane and he's getting paid a hundred and fifty And I was like, oh, I had a top ten single and I was getting paid six hundred dollars and I clearly someone else was making a lot of money. You're a pro janitor, and at this point the act was solely you on stage with little octoped and little Yamaha keyboard and a microphone that I would yell into being an old punk rocker. Now is

it okay? And you're traveling? How does the record label situation work? Eventually I left instinct because they were they as often happens like structurally, they were quite small and things were going well for me. So then I signed with Mute Records and Electra. So it was with Bob Krasnow in Electra here in the States and Daniel Miller and Mute everywhere else. And did that work for you? Yeah?

I mean Daniel Miller and Mute Records, you know, you know, Mute Records like Depeche Mode, Nick cave Um, goldfrapp Et, cetera, on and on and on, like an amazing, amazing label. Daniel has never dropped an artist. So what I signed with Mute, I was like, I I'm set, like I can do anything, and I know he's never going to

drop me because he's never dropped an artist. Electra, on the other hand, I think they signed me thinking, oh, he's going to be our techno wonder kins, like, you know, there's this whole genre of music and he's going to be the progenitor of it and we're gonna sell millions of records. And that never happened. And so I became sort of the bastard step child at Electra, understandably because I wasn't selling records. But like as a record company person, Okay,

I don't mean that in a bad way. As a I never really worked at a record companies, you don't have to worry about offending as someone who has a lot of experience around record companies. In I put out an album called Everything Is Wrong, and Spin magazine that autumn three or four months after it came out, said this is going to be our album of the year.

We went to Electra and said, guess what. Spin at the time was a real magazine with paper and everything, and we went to them and said, Wow, it's going to be the album of the year. And the response from Electra was like, oh, sorry, it's already a catalog item. There's nothing we can do. And did it fail accordingly? Yeah, okay. So at this point in time, for most of the nineties, you're putting up music with Mutant Electra and you're touring. What kind of audience are especially where this music is

prominent in the UK and the continent. What kind of gigs are you doing? Um? Clubs and raids every now and then I would do a solo show, but that up until the mid nineties, the solo shows didn't make sense because like that genre of electronic dance music, people wanted big events, you know, and so you'd played ten thousand people and if I did a solo show on people hundred and fifty people. Um, and yeah. I remember

because when I this album everything is wrong. I did a solo tour and in some places we sold like three d tickets and I was like, I can't believe that's like three hundred people coming out to just see me, Like, I'm not part of a rave I'm not on tour with thirty other people. So that was really exciting. And are you getting frustrated because you're queer is at this level or you still believe there's something beyond or is

just beyond your wildest dreams? So I mentioned earlier my high school punk rock band, The Vatican Commandos sold two hundred copies of a seven inch Everything beyond that has been unimaginable success. Okay, but at one point you get frustrated and to change your sound. Well then, then in the late nineties, I decided to make a punk rock record because I think, like the artists you and I

grew up revering. I thought that part of being a musician was to experiment and take chances, and to be lou Reid making metal machine music, to be the Beatles and making Revolution number nine, to be David Bowie and go from like the Laughing Gnome to a Philadelphia disco artist. Like I thought that's what musicians did. So I made this very dark punk rock record because I thought it was part of the job description of being a musician to experiment, and it got crucified, like I got. Everyone

hated it except for a few people. Bono told me he liked it as much as the First Class album. Um Axel Rose, who now hates me, told me that he would listen to it on repeat while driving around l A. But the best is I got one piece of fan mail from Terence Trent Darby on Tarrent Trent Darby Purple Stationary telling me how much he liked the record. So the three of them liked it. Okay, so the

motivation was just about expanding your horizons. I just, I just I been making electronic music and I really missed playing guitar and screaming. And then after the reaction, generally speaking is negative. What headspace does that leave you? Well, it was a very dark time because I've been sober for eight years and then I started drinking again, started dating a lot of professional sex workers, as you do, um my mom, when are we talking about literally professional

sex workers. We're talking about people in the nightlife sphere who live that lifestyle, people who would get paid to have sex. Okay, what do we call that dating? Well, I guess I Luckily I was not a customer. I was a boyfriend, you know. And then also like Dominatrix is strippers, phone sex workers, you know. Now this is a whole another aspect. I mean, for those of us who haven't walked on the dark side of the street,

how do you find these people? You live in Lower Manhattan in the nineties, Like, you know, it's like like bagels and professional sex workers? Okay? Were these hookers were the heart of gold? Were they just low class people? Uh? No, they were what I found and m hmmm, sort of like growing up really poor. I don't know. For some reason, I've always been attracted to friends or dating people who sort of wear their brokenness on their sleeve. You know,

did you try to fix them? There's a little holding cau Field is um going on there? Yeah? Like, you know, you stepped in these relationships with these broken people. They end, how usually with me having panic attacks and running away? Really, so do you still have panic attacks today? Only when I try to get close to anyone. But apart from that, I'm fine? Yeah? Is that really pano deck just a fear of intimacy? Oh no, it's full on. So what

did the professionals say about that. The professionals say that because I've seen quite a lot of them that I have panic attack. I mean, I was part of a study on panic attack suffers at Columbia. I've seen a lot lots of therapists been medicated. It doesn't. But what we know about panic, because I used to suffer from bags, is if you wait long enough, the panic will evaporate. Yes, which largely is true. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed to Columbia's

having a very unique type of panic disorder. It's called plateaued panic disorder. I once had a panic attack that lasted for six months. And I'm not kidding. It started and it just when I went to sleep. I wasn't panicking, but I'd wake up and it would come right back. Every waking minute I'd go to sleep, wake up, it would come right back. And it only started waning about six months into it. And but you could sleep with yeah, like I would pass out just through exhaustion. Okay, Then uh,

let's wind it back. You go through the dark period subsequent to your punk rock record, and then what are you the thoughts in your brain as far as moving forward? So I make the punk rock cracker called animal rights um starting again. My mom dies of lung cancer. I lose that. Did your mother acknowledge and respect your success? Oh? She loved it, She loved it. There's the most adorable story is when I put out the album Everything is

Wrong on a major label, Electric Records. She took a review to the editor of the Dairy En News Review and she walked in the Dairy and News Review circulation five ten, and she walked in. She said, my son is a famous musician. You should write about him. Did they eventually, like I think ten years later. Yeah, it was a big deal. Like to an interview for day mother, your father's dead, your mother's passage, you were now an orphan. Do you have any other family that you had connection with?

Two aunts and uncles, some cousins who I love very much, but against a little Russian literature. On my mom's deathbed, she told me that I have a half brother somewhere, somewhere, somewhere. She got pregnant in high school, had a child put up for adoption, and I found out about this right before she died. And if you found that person, no, But fast forward to the year two thousand seven. Um Uh Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter, and I are in

d C. Hanging out with Nancy. At this point Nancy Speaker of the House. Um, so she was surrounded. I mean, she's third in line to the presidency, so it's a she's a big deal, and he's always been a big deal. But I got very drunk and I was talking to a journalist from Politico and somehow this came up that I have a half brother, and I joking, he said, maybe it's Karl Rove and he then he wrote a funny little piece our Mobi and Karl Rove brothers. Keep minding if you don't. I told this story once and

the person was like, who's Karl Rove. I was like, oh, that's right, you're young. Um so, so Karl Rove was. He's the one essentially was the architect of the Bush white House. And so two weeks after this article comes out, I get a letter on White House stationary, handwritten and said, I haven't memorized, dear Moby, or is that Mr Moby? It's not me. For one thing, I am seventeen years

older than you, and I have no musical ability. Have you considered James Carville as he's bald and plays the guitar. I haven't framed in my bathroom your pal Karl Rove, so of the three and a half billion men on the planet, I know that Karl Rove is not my brother, so you'll still be hunting. You're listening to my conversation with Grammy nominated DJ Moby. We'll be back in a moment. I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the

Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to see videos and photos of our guests, go to at tune in on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now more of Moby and me in front of a live studio audience at the l A Times Festival. Book on the Bob Left Sets podcast. So in this dark period, how do you decide to make music again? And what music do you then make? Well? I was playing Glastonbury, do you know. Glastonbury's sort of like one of the original biggest festivals in the world

and in the UK. And um, I was playing Glastonbury. It was raining, it was muddy, and it was disgusting, and they wanted me to play a dance music set and I had and I this is after the Animal Rights the rock record, and I wanted to make a darker punk rock record. I was like, Animal Rights wasn't dark enough. It was pretty dark, and I wanted to make like a super like Sepultura inspired dark punk rock record. And one of my managers said the simplest little thing.

He said, well you could do that, he said, but you know, your electronic music makes people happy, and that was what reached me. He didn't say you could sell more, he didn't say it would be better for your career. He said it makes people happy. And all of a sudden, I thought like, oh, if I have the ability to put music out into the world, why not try to make people happy? And so then, um, I lost my deal with Electra and I made the album Play thinking

it was going to be my last album. Okay, you thought it was going to be your last album for Elektra or his last album period period, because no one was into I mean, I was such a has been at this point, Like I was like, as has been as it has been, could be. That record ultimately came out in V two Richard Brimpson's and people. Yeah in the US, um was the record done when they picked

it up? Yeah, one of the n r. People at V two had heard somehow heard one of the songs on NPR some college radio station upstate New York, and they signed it for North America. Okay, a licensing deal, which is great because now I own it again. Okay, so the record you're making it, It had a number of guests, spots, etcetera. For those looking at your career, this would be a larger step of broater thing than you would have done previously. Oh it was. I mean

everything about it is baffling. And made it on old, broken equipment in my tiny little studio on Mott Street. UM. Some of the songs are mixed onto cassette. There are three songs on Play that are demos that were recorded to cassette. UM. Made for a budget of exactly zero dollars and released with no expectations Like I remember someone at V two saying, you know what, we think Play could sell fifty copies, and I was like, it was

m Richard Sanders, do you know Richard? Sir Richard said, you know what, we actually have high hopes for Play. We think it could sell fifty thousand copies. Fast forward a year, it was selling two copies a week. With that or alternately, that is not true and I am just hallucinating somewhere and this is all okay, So you make that record. There are a lot of legends about that record. One that every track was licensed for commercials?

A is that literally true? Every track was licensed, but a lot of the licenses were actually for like student films because I'm tight, etcetera. So like there were a lot of commercial licenses for which I was crucified over and over and over and over and over once again at the bleeding edge looking back at your career. Was that your effort, the label's effort, the manager's effort. How did those licenses come to first? Okay, so the album

Everything is wrong, I had it. There's a song on They're called God Moving over the Face of the Water. So it was used in Michael Man's Heat Thanks um. Range Rover came to me and said, we want to give you a hundred and fifty thou dollars to use God Moving over the Face of the Waters in a Range Rover commercial. My knee jerk reaction was to say, fuck you, Range Rover. You know I'm an old punk rocker. I don't even have a driver's license, like go funk yourself.

But then but then I thought, I was like, well, if I go to if I go to Green Peace and say I got offered a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to license music to Range Rover, and I told him to go funk themselves. Some my green piece would say good for you. Or if I said, oh, here's a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they'd be a lot happier. So I sort of decided to enter this faustian robin hood slash bargain where I was like, I will license my music as long as ultimately I

do good things with the money. All of the money over time, yes, we look, yeah, absolutely over time. That is the goal is to like any money that has come in from licensing, I have to get rid of Wow. So in any event, you're like, I also would like to say in the early two thousands, I did forget about that for a while, you know, so now trying to like maya culpa makeup for it. Okay, but the record is not an instant here. It's successful, but it's

not mega. I mean, it's old. Four thousand copies the week it was released, and then two thousand copies the next week and then a thousand copies the week after that, And the licensing to your question was mainly done because music supervisors were the only people interested, like k CRW here and people who wanted to use the music and TV shows where that was the only attention the record was getting. So we just said yes. And what was the turning point to breakthrough on the record that blew

it up? In your mind? The turning point was Danny Boyle using porcelain in the movie The Beach, because The Beach with Leo DiCaprio's first movie after Titanic, so everyone went to see it and they used porcelain when they get to the beach, when they get to the island, and you could just sense like that was the moment where like it went from being a weird, little underground record to all of a sudden like being so much bigger than that. And then you're tied up with Gwen Stefani,

You're all over MTV. What's it like being the either hurricane on that? It was great because it was also bad anthropologically baffling, because I thought this was going to be my last record and I was going to move back to Connecticut teach philosophy at community college, and you know, being a loveless marriage, um and and and part of

the player and die. And then all of a sudden, like there are movie stars coming to my concerts and they want to date me, and I'm getting invited to amazing parties and instead of playing too like the touring, for example, in the UK, the first show that I did was at a place called the Scala on the Play tour and we sold four hundred tickets, which I thought was great. The last show was selling out Wembley and adding a show at Brixton Academy Stadium the Arenas,

which is like fifteen thousand. Um actually did end up playing Wembley Stadium, but it's a much later and it has not. It was I was playing a corporate event and there were two hundred people there. And if you've ever played two hundred people in a stadium that holds sixty thousand, things are not working. These are these are going up. You started off the playing the four hundred, now you're playing the fifteen thousand, and what are you thinking.

I'm thinking that this is the answer to every problem I've ever had, and you ultimately learned that it's not, of course. Yeah, And then I was like, I was like, I mean, I just finished writing memoir too, And there's

this one scene. I mean, I feel very narcissistic quoting myself, but there's a scene where like I'm playing a concert and I look over at the side of the stage and there's like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow Natalie Portman dancing and and I imagine a conversation with myself, like me with like the old eighteen year old punk rocker, and the eighteen year old punk rocker is like, fuck you, don't you know celebrity culture is facile and like you're

such a running dog, licks bittle accommodator to these paradigms that you know are cheap and shitty. And I was like, yeah, but they're being nice to me. It's like Howard Sterring today. Yeah, so did you test the waters all of them? Yeah? Of course? And what did you learn witch waters? I mean, like the water. You know, you're saying the door opens up. You're a recognizable character. You talk about not feeling good about yourself and therefore dating sex workers. Suddenly iconic people

are interested in you. Was that something that you then proceeded to date those people, of course, and what was that like? Uh interesting? Because you Okay, So we live in a culture where and I'm stating the obvious, but we live in a culture where we're all instilled with the belief that if you have the right combination of like fame, money, sex, etcetera, everything's going to work out. And I was given all of that times a thousand,

and I was never less happy. You know. So, like the more I drank, the more people I dated, the more drugs I did, the more money I made. And I'm not looking for sympathy, and I'm not complaining, but it's just an old school object lesson of Like, you know, I found myself in a penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side with Bono and Alec Baldwin as my neighbor, and I've never been less happy. I love Bonno and Alec Baldwin. I'm not I'm not involving them in my despair.

But people also find out that really this roving jet set are just not your people. Yeah, well that's the thing. Like I grew up with the idea that like, if you're going to a party, if you get invited to a party with Bill Clinton and George Plimpton and Natalie Portman. There's lots of similar sounding last names, um, and there's all these like luminaries and celebrities, you know, like the most remarkable famous, even at times areadite people in the world.

Like you think, Wow, if I could just be friends with them, things are going to be great. And then you're at that party and you're like, oh, they're not so great, you know, like you realize, like, oh, the friends I grew up with are nicer and funnier, and the people I went to high school with actually are a little more insightful and humble. I'm sure you've had that experience mattersolutely. But then I asked, what did we am?

I a writer and therefore inherently a loner. We all like the experience when you're sitting there and you get a letter from Bano or even Carl, etcetera. But then you have enough experiences where you're in these environments, the door opens and to go, do I really belong here? Is this fulfilling for me? Especially at first because it was so exciting and you're like, there's Gwenny's and she's

being nice to me. And there's in such a movie star who even wants to go on a date with me, And you're like, this is great, And then you take a step back and you're like, but I haven't had a meaningful conversation with anyone. And it's basically every public figure I've ever met is this messy combination of entitlement and terror. You talk about the terror. We certainly know the entitle the terrors that it's going to go away. Speaking of going away, you have this gargantuan success with play.

To what degree do you feel internal pressure to follow it up? Do something different? Can I reach this level? And if you look at someone like at the Pinnacle Michael Jackson, he has his pinnacle with thrill and when she tries to imitate ultimately badly. Okay, But you have this iconic success, and except for maybe some of the people in your electronic world, it might be jealous. It was a universally adored record and everybody loved the record.

So moving forward, what were your thoughts moving forward? My thought was, I want more fame. I want more of everything I have. If I'm going out five nights a week, I want to go out seven nights a week. If I'm sleeping with ten people, I want to sleep with twenty people. If I want if I sold ten million records, I want to sell twenty million records. Like I lost

my fucking mind. Like I wanted everything, but more of everything, and slowly things didn't work out, like you know, like play was the peak, and then the subsequent records the reviews got bad, started selling fewer tickets, etcetera. And I panicked because I thought that fame and records say as an all this. All I wanted was for everything to stay at the peak of play every day for the rest of my life, and not to anthropomorphize the universe.

But the universe had other plans in mind form So but in your mind you tried to replicate the successful play. Oh absolutely, I mean I tried to make music that I liked, but I tried to also tick as many boxes as possible. I was like, well, I want to I don't want to a complete lick spittle sell out,

So I want to make music I like that. Also, radio programmers will like that, journalists will like that, the people at the record company will like that, the sync agents will like that, the licensees will like And I realized there are people who are good at that, like they're as you know, Like there are tons of great pop producers who know how to make great records that also do well at radio, etcetera. I'm not that person, you know. And the more I tried, the worst the results.

In retrospect, if you had to do it all over again, would you be able to make records that resonated more or more successful or those those records just you know, it wasn't your time anymore. Um, everything is perfect. I mean at the time, I would have said, yes, like show me how to make a more successful record, show me how to produce a pop song that will give me back the career, the pinnacle that I had with play. But now you and I are sitting here, We're ober

and healthy. I've got a nice bunch of people here, Um, and I have a perspective that's informed by success and failure. And if you like your perspective, you can't be too upset at the circumstances that have led you to have that perspective. Okay, let's go back to some of the highlights or low lights of that era. Eminem famously dissed you in a song, Were you happy about that MORTI five. Um. At first I thought it was a joke, and then I ran into him at the two thousand and two

MTV Music Awards and he tried to attack me. He also attacked Triumph to insult comic dogs. So I was like, clearly he was having a bad day to go after like a skinny, bald vegan and a puppet. Um. But but up until that moment, I thought like, oh, this is like because I actually I don't know Eminem but I like some of his music. Um, I think he's a fascinating public figure. Uh. So I didn't know that

it was serious like that he really hated me. So at this point in you've continued to make music, but the peak of your success is nearly two decades back. So what ignites you, what keeps you going? What do you want to do now? Uh? The goal, I'm at the risk of sounding too much like a vegan who lives in Los Angeles who meditates. The goal is just like, it's the pursuit of beauty. It's the idea that every day when I go into my studio there's an opportunity

to make something beautiful. Not that I do, but it's I've always admired the work ethic of like Flannery, O'Connor, Picasso, soldiers, and like the people who just day in, day out worked, you know, and you show up with the hope that you'll be inspired and inspired in the old etymological sense of inspired, to have like the breath of inspiration breathed into And if I spend my entire life trying to do that and it doesn't work out, at least I loved the process of doing it. And do you make music?

How frequently? Every day without every day? But you don't release all that music either about six or seven thousand unreleased songs. And but we live in an era where theoretically you could release that, except a lot of it's not good. So what do you feel? How do you feel about all the changes in the music business? You know there are issues of music monetization, but it used to be especially you know, you were like the tail end of this with play. We lived on a monoculture

and if you were successful, everybody knew you. Whereas a Vici dies, I'm getting emails saying I never heard one of his songs, even though weak Me Up five years ago was one of the biggest records of all time. So what's it like being a musician in this era? I mean to stomach, and I feel like I can't speak to that experience, you know, because I'm fifty two years old. I sold a lot of records a long

time ago. Um. So, like whenever I if I do interviews and I talked about my opinions about the current state of the music business, understandably, so will tend to dismiss my opinion. They're like, I understand, I believe, we understand. And what gets you off now other than making music? What what turns you on? Uh? Well, so, But to your question about the music business selfishly, personally, I love the current state as the music business. I love how

egalitarian it is. Um. I love that anyone anywhere in the world can make music and actually potentially have an audience for it. UM, I don't love We'll think of it like a qualitative gray goo. Do you remember the concept of a gray goo? Don't know that at some point automated technology would get to the point where like just we're just spewing out stuff and the world would

be covered in gray goo. And I think musically we sometimes are at risk of that we're like, it's very easy to make okay music, you know, with Ableton without and I love these software platforms. But it's easy to make music that's pretty good. But what about imagine? You know, what about Cat Stevens, what about the Rolling Stones? What about like when music is transcendent? I I don't hear

that much of it. I know it's being made, but I feel like I do miss when you had, like professional musicians who would like when Leonard Collin would write to Suzanne and it took him three years to write that song. I missed that, you know that the transcendence. But I also like how democratic and egalitarian, you know. I like that you know, all the barriers are done, everybody can play, but just as a fan, it's hard to wait get through them. Morass, there's so much stuff.

I mean, you go on Spotify, listen to the Spotify Top fifty, and then you know there's all the genres. It's overwhelming. In any event, we've come to the end of the feeling we've known, and I thank you all for attending. Moby has been incredible. Very are unite intellectual responses yourself. I could go on for another hour, but they tell us our time is up once again. Mob. That wraps up this week's episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast, recorded live on the University of Southern California

campus at the l A Times Festival of Books. I hope you enjoyed this fascinating conversation with Moby. As always, I welcome your feedback. Email me at Bob at left sets dot com. Until next time, It's Bob left Sez think me reas don't know exactly