Moby: About Last Night

NYC-based electronic producer breaks down his new album and disputes the public perception of him, but admits: "If I weren't me, I'd probably be annoyed by me too."

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Songs from Last Night

He's one of music's easiest punching bags.

But, with a new album, Last Night, in stores now, Moby says the public notion of him as a joyless, militant vegan is misguided.

Still, he understands its basis.

"If I weren't me, I'd probably be annoyed by me too," he told us in an interview.

The New York City-based electronic producer is famous for many things: his political stances, his lush, commercial-ready beats, and his much-publicized spat with Eminem. But he says one thing has escaped the public's eye: He parties like a rock star, even at 42 years of age.

In fact, he's built Last Night around the concept of an epic night out, and has been getting rave reviews for the record. Moby spoke to MP3.com about his album, the public's perception of him, and what he'd say to President George W. Bush on an elevator.

Hi, Moby. Hi. How're you? Good. How're you doing? Oh, pretty good. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. I appreciate it. My pleasure. I guess the easiest place to start is that it sounds like this new record, which I've been listening to all morning, it's fantastic, is a bit of a concept album built around the structure of an epic night out--starting from the beginning, maybe building a buzz and getting the energy pumping, and then kind of taking it through the course of the night. Out of curiosity, do you still have many epic nights out yourself? Yes. I mean I'm 42 years old. And almost all of the people I grew up with are now married and have kids. You know they're all responsible functioning members of society. [Laughs] Right. And I still spend way too much time going out until 5 o'clock in the morning; and drinking too much, and doing stupid things, and being hung over the next day. So I figure at some point I'll learn how to comport myself with a degree of dignity. But for now, you know, I'm still going out and stumbling around the Lower East Side on Tuesday nights. [laugh] Right. Is it a case of having to tap the next generation to keep up with you? Or are you able to find enough of those responsible parents out there that might be willing to slag off a Tuesday night and see what happens? Well, no, it's interesting. One of the reasons why I still live in New York and still live in the Lower East Side is--and I wish I could sort of give it a more intellectual spin or a more philosophical spin--I just really love going out, you know? I just love the randomness of it and the chaos of it.

On Monday night, I went out with a couple of friends just to have a few drinks. And then before I know it, it's 7 o'clock in the morning and I'm at a squat in Bed-Stuy surrounded by all these strangers. It's that randomness. It's through going out that you get exposed to different types of music and different people. I love that random chaos of it. Right. That energy that comes from that, the randomness that takes you through the night. Yeah. And to an extent I wanted to just sort of almost take that archetype or that template that comes from a long, crazy night out. And in a fairly loose way try to recreate that with the record. Got you. It flows exactly like that. There is some randomness thrown in. But there's generally a build and then it stretches out. I'm wondering, at 42, is excess still an option? Or is moderation kind of the MO of the day, or somewhere in between? No. I have very little interest in moderation. That's what most of my friends will say. They're like, "Oh, can't you just go out and have like a glass or two of wine and be home by midnight?" And my response to them is, "Well, I could." Right. But you won't. But honestly what's the point? Not to try and justify it in terms of historical precedent, but most of my heroes were people who were sort of prone to excess. Like people like [Charles] Bukowski or somebody like that? Yeah. Well, my mom was a literature major, and she loved Bukowski and she loved Arthur Rimbaud and [William] Faulkner. And so from a really young age, I was sort of exposed to these poster children of excess. For better or worse, at an early age, it was imprinted upon me that like if you aspired to be an interesting artist, you can't stay home. Right. Got you. You stay home and work. But you go out and you run the risk of getting destroyed by the maelstrom, but by the same time hopefully get some inspiration from it. Exactly. As opposed to, picking out like new wallpaper or floral patterns on a Tuesday night kind of thing. And there's nothing wrong with wallpaper and floral patters, but I'd much rather be having a conversation with a complete stranger at Mars Bar. The converse of that is that a lot of those people lived short lives. They didn't make it past a certain age because of the excess or maybe a number of other things. Does that matter to you at all? Of course I like leading a relatively healthy life. And I try to find a balance between excess and health. But at the same time, not to either sound morbid or overly New Age, but there is, from a human perspective or from a universal perspective, there is no such thing as a long life. We consider 80 years to be a long life. And 80 years is like the pre-adolescence of a tree. [Laughs] Right. That's an excellent way of looking at it. So, the best you can hope for is maybe you'll live to be 100? And who knows? My biggest fear is that, I'll live this life of excess and suddenly I'll be 65 years old and diagnosed with cancer of everything. And then at that moment they figure out the secret of immortality. [Laughs] Right. Yeah, that's it right there. That pretty much is the worst-case scenario. Yeah. But basically, it does seem like from a human perspective you'll either live a short life or a very short life. Right. Exactly. And I don't know. That's a good perception of it. Maybe it's just an alcoholic justifying abuse. Right. [Laughs] There's always two sides of the coin. I wanted to also ask about perception in another sense Moby. I wanted to ask about your public perception. There's always been this broad sense that you're this joyless, vegan militant who makes fun music but doesn't really have much fun yourself. And everything that we're talking about now is the exact opposite of that. And this record is very much a reflection of that. I'm curious if you care at all about public perception? In a perfect world, no one would hate me. I recognize that there are a lot of people out there who have very negative impressions of me. What's strange is, I don't have really much of a problem with people disliking me or disliking my work. But it does sort of vex me when people have this an egregious misperception of who I am--and base their opinion on that.

My ex-girlfriend was out one night, and some people were talking about me and they were talking about how much they hate me. And she just sat there quietly and didn't say anything, because she didn't want to ruin their fun by saying she's actually my girlfriend. And she came back and told me about it, and she said that the consensus among them was that I was this hippie who did yoga, and was really smug and took himself too seriously. And she wanted to interrupt and say like, "Actually, you know what? He's kind of a self-loathing drunk!" [laugh] [Laughs] Completely turn that on its ear kind of thing. I don't know. Part of the problem was that when I first started making records a long time ago, in 1991-1992, I did take myself pretty seriously. And I was more of a joyless militant. And the problem with doing an interview is, you do an interview in 1992 and then six months later, you change your mind. But that interview lives forever. Right. And people always go back to that. And a lot of those people sort of defer to their first perception. And so I think some people in the press or whatever, their first perception of me was as this overly serious, joyless militant.

And I understand. I do. I am kind of opinionated about certain things. And I have been annoyingly outspoken about a lot of issues. So I kind of understand. If I weren't me, I'd probably be annoyed by me too. [Laughs] That's an excellent way of putting it. I also wanted to ask specifically about the record, in particular, your connection to Grandmaster Caz, who appears on the song "I Love to Move in Here." Have you known him over the years? Or was it a connection just for this record? I had a really weird musical upbringing. When I was very young I studied music theory and classical music. When I was about 13, I started playing in punk rock bands. My friends and I would come into the city to go see different shows. And more often than not the shows would take place at a place like Danceteria or Peppermint Lounge. And so you'd have a punk rock band preceded by a hip-hop DJ, or an alternative band proceeded by a disco DJ. Nobody was stuck in boxes, basically. No. Not at all. And that's really where I got my education from, my musical education.

'Cause I was an uptight punk rocker living in the suburbs. And I still remember this sort of this transformative night where my friends and I came in to see the Talking Heads play. And it was when the album Remaining Light came out, which goes to show how old I am.

And we loved Fear of Music. So we were expecting this sort of like angular, edgy, new wave band. And all of a sudden there are nine people on stage and they were like a funk band. Right, completely different, yeah. And it was actually surprisingly good. And then after that we all went down to Danceteria to see Mission of Burma play, and we wandered from floor to floor and were exposed to all this different music. And I think that's when, at least I and a lot of my friends recognized that we'd liked a lot of different types of music. All over the place. And so when I started deejaying--this is my long-winded way of answering the question--I played a lot of obscure new wave, like things off Postcard label like Orange Juice and Joseph K. And a lot of things off Factory, like early A Certain Ratio and New Order and Joy Division. But then I'd also have to play hip-hop and early electronic music and dance music, just because that's what people wanted to hear. And the more I played it, the more I ended up really liking it.

And at one point, I guess around '85 or '86, I found myself almost exclusively playing hip-hop. I had a few records that Caz had made. One in particular was this bootleg record that DJ Mark the 45 King put out, I think in about like '88, that I used to play a lot of.

So when it came time to make that, the song on the album "I Love to Move in Here," I really wanted this great old-school vocalist on it. And Caz was always one of my favorites. So I called him up and he was really gracious and agreed to do it. Great. And it fits perfectly. It's kind of funny. When you first hear that the two of you worked together on it, it's a bit of a head-scratcher. But it works perfectly in terms of the progression of the concept of the album. There's this club in the city called Mars and I used to deejay there in the late '80s. And it was this very eclectic place where you'd have like house music on the first floor, and hip-hop on the second floor. And for a while all the rappers used to hang out there. Big Daddy Kane hung out there, and Run DMC and Third Base and Ultramagnetics.

And when I deejayed, I would always plug a microphone in the mixing disc. And the rappers would get drunk and want to impress their dates. So I would play instrumentals and they would rap. I wish I'd recorded it 'cause some of it was great. The Ultramagnetics in particular were just the best free-stylers. That would be priceless material right there. And in some ways it's good I didn't videotape it, because at that time I had hair down below my shoulders. And it was really not such a good look. [Laughs] A look that would not normally be associated with Moby at this point. Yeah. But I have a history with hip-hop. I did a song with Public Enemy and I've done remixes for like Nas and lots of different people. So from my perspective it was a big part of my upbringing, but I guess not one that people are that aware of. Yeah. Again, back to the whole public-perception thing and that kind of thing.

So one last thing: I want you to suspend disbelief with me for one second. You and George Bush just happen to enter an elevator at the same time. Just the two of you. Are we looking at 30 to 40 seconds of awkward silence? Or what? Well actually, I would love to have a dialogue with him. One of my questions would be, if I could have an honest conversation with him, I'd say, "You call yourself a Christian, but yet you're pro death penalty." "And you call yourself a Christian but yet there're a few hundred thousand people in the Middle East who are dead because of your actions. Innocent people!"

But as odd as this sounds I actually have this weird WASPy connection to his family. So if we had 40 seconds in the elevator ...the first time I left home, I ended up living in a garage on this estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. And the estate was right next to the Bush family compound. Wow. This was when George Bush Sr. was president. So every now and then you have like these long motorcades of black cars and limos driving to the Bush family compound. And I grew up in Connecticut, so I do know for better or worse some people in his family. So we'd probably just talk about WASP-y Connecticut stuff. [Laughs] Right. Keep it real simple. And then I'd ask him how he feels about calling himself a Christian and being responsible for a few hundred thousand deaths. It depends how many floors you were going up in the elevator I guess. Yes. If you get a couple floors you focus on the family stuff. If you get maybe you're going up 30, 40 floors you could squeeze it all in. Yes. If we're in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur! Right. Exactly. Well Moby, I really appreciate the time. Oh it was my pleasure. It was nice talking to you. Good talking to you too. Take care.