WEBVTT - Moby - Summer Staff Picks 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.760 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:08.119 Thing from My Heart Radio. It's summer and that means 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.119 it's time for our tradition and Here's the Thing, where 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:15.200 the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:19.759 our Summer Staff Picks series. Our last pick is from 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:21.360 engineer Frank Imperial. 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.680 Thanks Alec. When I think back to the late nineties 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.480 and early two thousands, it's impossible not to hear Moby's music. 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:34.440 His album play was everywhere in films, commercials, on the radio, 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.519 and yet it never felt manufactured. It felt intimate, like 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.040 he had cracked open his own world and invited everyone in. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.000 What makes this conversation so compelling is that Mobi doesn't 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:49.839 just talk about the music. He opens up about the 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.920 struggles that fueled it, the questions of identity and faith 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.560 that have followed him, and his passion for activism from 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:01.320 animal rights to environmental issues. Sense of an artist who 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:04.920 always has tried to connect the personal with the political, 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:08.560 the beats with the bigger picture. Listening back, I was 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:12.880 struck by how candid he is about fame, sobriety, what 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:15.920 it means to try to live authentically in a world 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.760 that doesn't always make it that easy. And of course 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:21.920 you hear the humor and self awareness that makes him 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:27.679 such a singular voice. Here's Alex twenty nineteen conversation with Boby. 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.920 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Ooh, 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:38.400 lone trouble so ham ooo lone. 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:45.000 Treboshan don't about and do a job God. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.960 In nineteen ninety nine, your cool friends put on Moby's 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.760 play at parties. In two thousand, it was on the radio. 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:59.360 Popularity snowballed into ubiquity. In two thousand and one, Play 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:04.320 was in and Volkswagen Ads. It became the biggest selling 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:17.200 electronica album of all time. To fans outside the electronic 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.400 music world, Moby seemed like an overnight success, but he 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:23.960 was thirty three in nineteen ninety nine and had been 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:29.520 recording since the eighties. Play was actually his fifth studio album. 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:32.320 It never occurred to him it would break even, let 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:38.079 alone break records. The self described loner and nerd succumbed 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.120 to the worst sort of rockstar excess. As his fans 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.560 filled stadiums and models showed up in his dressing room. 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:50.400 Moby was euphoric but spinning out of control. It's a 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:54.240 story he shares in his new book Then It Fell Apart. 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.320 I spoke to Moby last month in the early chapters 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.520 of his book. Moby is coming to terms with the 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.520 album going platinum. What do you think happened inside the 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:08.840 music in that album that was different and something click did? 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.880 Something changed all of a sudden. You're a monolith in 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:12.800 the music business. 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:16.320 Yeah, And to contextualize it, before that album Play came out, 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.720 my career had essentially ended. I'd lost my record deal. 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:21.680 It was a very dark time. My mom had died, 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:27.040 I was I was living on Mott Street and I 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.720 recorded Play where in my bedroom on Mott Street? 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:33.120 Of course you did, and. 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:35.839 Well, actually I slept in the closet and I had 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.200 my bedroom had been turned into an ad hoc recording 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.040 studio and I saw it. So I'd made Play. My 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:45.320 last album had failed completely, and I'd lost my record 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.520 deal with who. I was signed to Elektra, and then 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:50.320 I was signed in the UK to a label called 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.680 Mute and they hadn't dropped me. But to put it 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.560 in perspective, they'd never dropped anyone. That was their claim 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.360 to fame is they'd never dropped an artist in the case. Yeah, 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:01.080 So I was like I could didn't really take too 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.040 much comfort in the fact that I hadn't lost my 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.440 deal with Mute when they'd never ever dropped an artist. 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:06.960 So play who released Play? 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.600 Well, Richard Branson started a label called V two, and 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.200 someone working at V two somehow heard one of the 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:18.200 songs on play I still don't know how, and he 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.760 offered me a deal. But yeah, I mean before it 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:26.240 was released, I thought, Okay, I'm an alcoholic bald has 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:28.240 been I'm going to release this one last week in 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:36.120 my closet. Well, the building was from the mid nineteenth 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:39.560 century on Mott Street, and it had been a slaughterhouse. 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:41.680 So the space I was living in this is weird 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.240 as an animal rights vegan. The floors all sloped to 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.080 central drains because when it had been a slaughterhouse, they 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:49.880 would just hose the floors out and all the awful 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:52.360 would just get washed down the drains. So I'm in 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.760 that environment thinking I'm going to move back to Connecticut. 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:57.960 I'm going to get a job teaching community college. I'd 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:00.840 probably be a philosophy professor to students who just had 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:03.719 no interest in paying attention to philosophy, and then this 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:08.080 album comes out and rather than failing, it kept doing 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:11.159 better and better. So to your question of, like, musically, 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.039 why that happened, I still to this day have because 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:15.920 a lot of the vocals on play were like old 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:19.480 African American vocals from the mid twentieth century, And if 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:23.479 I look at there's just no precedent for a middle 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.280 aged musician making a record in his bedroom at the 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:31.120 end of his career, involving vocals from people who've been 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.520 dead for a few decades. Like, that's not a recipe 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:36.920 for a hit record. I remember at some point it 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:39.520 sold fifty thousand records because I thought it was going 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.600 to sell nothing. I was amazed that my album had 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:45.919 sold fifty thousand records and then six months later it 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:47.760 was selling one hundred thousand copies a week. 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.400 What do you attribute that to? What did people respond 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:55.200 to the only people are listening to your music and 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.279 buying your music in a world that is choked with music. 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:01.000 There was so much stuff out there they can listen to, 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:03.919 and they buy ten million copies of your album. Why 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:05.080 do you think you know? 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.159 I was recently doing an interview with Larry King, and 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:11.080 he asked me that question, and he sort of asked 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:13.520 me like, if you could replicate it, would you? And 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.120 I was like, oh, I tried, like the following like 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.159 the next three twos I kept I was like, how 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.000 do I recreate that? And I never really could, Like 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:24.919 that one sort of weird lightning in a bottle moment. 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:28.440 I don't I mean, I don't want to answer promorphize 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.960 the universe too much, but I almost feel like the 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:37.520 universe was in a sort of lighthearted educational way saying like, Okay, 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:40.440 we're going to give you everything you ever wanted times 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.960 a million, and it's going to come close to killing 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.080 you and you're going to hopefully learn something from it. 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:50.920 So there was like, and again, that might sound very narcissistic, 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.839 like I've just answer promorphized a thirteen point eight billion 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:57.000 year old universe, but it felt like if at the 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.480 end of the day, more than anything else, educational, like 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:01.240 the universe is going to say like, Okay, you live. 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:03.920 In a crime. To anthropomorphize the university part of the 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:05.240 human condition. Let's go from there. 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:05.360 Then. 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.000 So the album comes out nineteen ninety nine. It's difficult 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.440 for some people to say this is his style. You've 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:12.440 let a lot of different you know, kind of tones 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:14.440 and a lot of different variety to the sound of 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.360 your music. And what was music in your childhood? Were 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.600 you in a chorus, was a church, was a music school? 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:23.680 It was weird. 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:26.320 I started playing guitar. I guess when it was are 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.120 a nine or ten because one of my mom's boyfriends 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.800 had gone to jail and left a guitar behind. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.520 But your mother is kind of from a privileged background Connecticut. 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.920 Quasi, I mean, like my grandfather worked on Wall Street, right, 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:44.320 But then my mom sort of rejected that the sixties 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:48.520 progressed and she fully embraced the hippie lifestyle. 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:50.720 But your dad passed away when you were how I 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:52.600 was two? So when you were two? And how long 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:54.920 did you stay in New York? After he passed away. 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:57.760 My mom moved back to Connecticut to get her undergraduate 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:00.840 at East Cones. Is that he is even still a school. 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.760 And then we went to San Francisco in nineteen sixty nine, 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:06.520 where everything sort of fell apart. 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.440 And then three so right after your dad passed away, 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:10.720 she finished school at Fish School. 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:15.360 We went to San Francisco and she sort of I 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.040 guess was very torn, like the counterculture was happening, and 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.280 she really desperately wanted to be a part of it, 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:22.320 you know, And. 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:24.840 So did you have any ideas why? I have a. 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.720 Feeling half of it was rejecting like growing up in 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:31.200 day in Connecticut, being encouraged by her parents to sort 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:35.360 of be very conservative and very traditional. So it was 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.800 a rejection of to an extent her family, but also 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:43.319 just wanting to be a part of this new, exciting paradigm, 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.600 you know, I mean nineteen sixty nine original paradigm. 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.360 That's why that's been copied since then. Yeah, that was it. 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.360 She's twenty three years old and she wanted to be 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:55.520 this free spirit artist, but she also had a three 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.959 year old child, and that's where things, a lot of 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:01.880 tension and trauma really came from. 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:03.160 What did your dad do for a living? 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.000 He was a chemistry professor at Columbia, but he had 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.840 been in the military and he was It's funny people 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:11.720 don't really talk about it that much. I think he 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.760 was either an assassin or a sniper, because I've asked 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:17.319 people in my family. I'm like, oh, what did my 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.080 dad do in the military, And they're like, well, he 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.959 did a lot of things, and never so I think 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.480 because he killed himself and he was a. 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:25.960 He drove a car off the Arizona. 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.040 He drove I don't know where exactly, but he got 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.480 very drunk. My mom had threatened to take me away 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:33.920 from him, and so he got drunk and got in 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.280 his car and drove one hundred miles an hour into 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.280 a bridge somewhere and died. 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.120 Now what would people tell you, if at all? Did 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.160 you do any investigation or did you have some curiosity 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:47.160 as to what your dad was like? Did you learn 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:49.160 a little bit about him later on in life? Well, 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.280 it's only beyond the CIA credit. 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:57.520 Only in adulthood did I realize how little I knew 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.640 about my father. Like, for example, if I had a 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.960 child with a woman and she died, as the child 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.200 grew up, I would do everything in my power to 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:08.520 make sure the child knew who his mom had been. 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.160 You know, we would talk about it. And after my 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:16.160 dad dies, he was never mentioned. His mother never mentioned 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:19.840 it to me, and all I knew was that he'd 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:24.040 been in the military and I had photos. But again, 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.880 it was only after my mother died that the rest 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:28.400 of the people in my family sort of let me 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:31.560 know that my father had been a professor and he 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:33.680 had a good sense of humor, and the. 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.080 Brother had to die before people were allowed to introduce 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:37.720 you to your dad. Kind of yeah. 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:41.160 And I found and it sort of had this quasi 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.920 like almost like a check off play quality, like I 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.840 found out after my mother had died. I found out 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:48.679 that my father had killed himself because my whole life 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:50.840 up until that point, I thought he had just died 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:53.600 and no one ever explained how or why. And I 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.840 also found out I have a half brother somewhere, which 0:10:58.440 --> 0:10:59.760 can I tell you a story about whom I have 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.480 half brother? Is not I think you'll appreciate. I was 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:07.440 in DC in two thousand and seven with Alexandra Pelosi, 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:11.320 Nancy's daughter, and we were with Nancy. Nancy was the 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.240 Speaker of the house, and this is pre sobriety. So 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.480 I got very drunk and ended up talking to a 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:20.120 journalist from Politico and telling this journalist that I have 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.720 a half brother, and I jokingly said, maybe it's Carl Rove. 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:27.920 The journalist wrote a little Politico piece saying, our Mobi 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.839 and Karl Rove brothers. Two weeks later, I get a 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.560 letter on White house stationary, It says, dear Moby, it's 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.440 not me. For one thing, I'm seventeen years older than you, 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.000 and I have no musical ability. Have you considered James 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:41.360 Carville as your long lost brother because he's bald and 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.680 plays the guitar too, your pal Carl Rove? And I 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:46.800 was like, so, I know, as far as I know, 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:48.360 Carl Rove is not my half brother. 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:49.840 You have one. Did you ever meet the half brother? 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.080 I have no idea who or where he might be. 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.599 You know your story, and we'll get to some of 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.240 the details of this in the book. That the self destructiveness, 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.560 but an impression I get of you, the way you live, 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:04.760 as you like to isolate, and you talk about this 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.760 panic plateau thing or whatever the terminology is, which which 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.120 which kind of hampered or impacted relationships you would have 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:11.680 with people as. 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.520 Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm fifty three and I've never 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:19.120 had a serious relationship, and over time trouble you it 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.840 used to, but then over time I've sort of made 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:28.200 peace with it. I mean, I guess there's almost in 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:31.440 a way not to overstate it, but like there's a 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:36.120 there's a sort of utility to being incapable of having 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.480 real relationships, which is I get to work on other things, 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:42.600 you know, like I get to be to spend the time. Yeah, 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:45.280 I get to spend more time doing activism. I get 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:50.680 to spend more time I don't know, reading, working on music, 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.000 working on art. I have a weird little production company 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:54.960 in La so I can work more on that. So 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:57.920 I had always thought that the key to happiness, at 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:00.120 least growing up, was like you find your perfect per 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:02.920 and you build a life with them. And at some 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.960 point I realized, oh, that's just not in the cards 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.120 for me, and so there's so far, so far. But 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.840 at the same time, I don't I don't have any 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.720 longing for it. You don't which not that you know of, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:17.840 not that I mean, maybe I'll meet them, you know. 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:20.960 Maybe you just it's it's you don't know. Do you 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.199 want to venture where it comes from? Does it come 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:30.120 from certain obvious childhood signals? I think so. I assume 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.280 so that because you were left alone a lot as 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:33.600 a child. 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.640 I was left alone, and I was also raised you know, 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.120 I grew up very very poor in a very wealthy 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:41.240 town in Darien, Connecticut, and my mom dated Hell's Angels. 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:42.439 There was a lot of when you went back to 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:44.720 Darien and you were how old when I was five? 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.319 So you were you were in San Francisco just a 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:49.760 couple of years. Yeah, so your mom's smoking pot and 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:53.920 the taking actresses and taking acid and and everybody like, 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.240 you know, kind of cavorting around the hate or whatever 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:57.840 they were doing. You were only there for a couple 0:13:57.880 --> 0:13:58.480 of years and. 0:13:58.520 --> 0:13:59.840 Then we moved back to Connecticut. 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:00.600 How long? 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.960 Well, I lived in Connecticut from the time I was 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.320 five until the time I was twenty one. 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:08.600 You basically grew up there. 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.439 Yeah, I'm just an inbred white trash kid from Connecticut. 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:13.520 The San Francisco thing was a brief period of cod. 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.040 That was just brief and traumatic, right and well traumatic. 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.640 There was sexual abuse my mom, and I don't want 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:24.240 to throw her under the bus posthumously, but she wanted 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:25.760 to hang out with her friends. She was twenty three 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:27.800 years old. So they put me in this very low 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.240 rent daycare center and I was sexually abused there. 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:32.840 What did she do during the day? Did she work? 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:33.520 Not? 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:35.760 In San Francisco. There she was supported by her family. 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:37.360 They were all dependent on somebody. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.600 A lot of kids from Connecticut who in nineteen sixty 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.680 four had been playing lacrosse. Nothing wrong with lacrosse. I 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:47.840 just was never very good at it. And they had 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:51.040 short hair, wearing eyes ods, you know, going to Webern 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:53.520 country Club, drinking gin and tonics. Then all of a sudden, 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.480 they're living on hate Ashbury with fringe jackets and hair 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:59.400 down to the middle of their back, taking acid. And 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:01.280 I sort of got caught up in the middle of 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:03.440 that as a three year old. 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.480 Yeah, when you got back to Connecticut and you grew 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:11.360 up there, did your mother develop as a parent and 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:13.520 she was getting older, what did she become a better parent? 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:16.440 Was there a continued period of isolation and kind of. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.560 Not good childcare for you both an equal measure, Like, 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.120 we had a good support system of my grandmother had 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.440 aunts and uncles, so there was a lot of support. 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.480 But did you spend a lot of time with their mother's. 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:36.760 Parents, Yeah, but also a lot of time alone because 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.240 also we were very poor. We were on food stamps 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:41.000 and welfare and we were in dairy in Connecticut, which 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.080 is per capital, one of the wealthiest places in the world, 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:48.360 And so I had this constant sense of shame, you know, 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:52.400 So when I went to school, it was pretending that 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:54.600 I didn't live in the garage apartment, and that we 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.360 weren't on food stamps and welfare. You know, if I 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.320 had the flu, I would come back and say, oh, 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.960 we went to Switzerland, because that sounded like something that 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.520 wealthy people would say. So just this the sense of 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.320 shame and the sense of inadequacy, and not again not 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:13.360 to overstate it, but like when you grow up with that, 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:17.200 it's hard, even in adulthood, when your circumstances change, it's 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.920 hard to move past how you were formed. 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.120 When did you start to get this idea that you 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:26.640 were going to write music? 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:33.000 I think, well, my mom, who was an aspiring musician pianist. 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.880 I mean, I remember my mom had the most odd 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.640 eclectic record collection. So she had Crosby, Stiells, Nash and 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:45.160 Young and Divorge Ack and Lightnin' Hopkins and Baba O 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.440 Latunji and so I just grew up with this constant 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.720 soundtrack of weirdness and it made sense to me. And 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:57.560 she dated musicians. My uncle was a musician. My great 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:03.600 grandmother actually taught classical composition to Arthur Fiedler. She was 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.080 Arthur Fiedler's mentor. So I grew up in this weird, 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:12.480 idiosyncratic musical household. So I never thought as I was 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:14.600 growing up that I would have a career as a musician. 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:17.640 I just knew that I loved music and I wanted 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:19.359 to be a part of it. And I had a 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.280 lot of free time because I wasn't very good at 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:22.560 sports and. 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:25.720 Did you do well in school? I did okay. 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.440 So my name Moby is a nickname that I've had 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.800 since birth because I'm related to Herman Melville. So what 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.320 I learned was when teachers found out that I was 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.240 descended from Herman Melville, they just would add fifteen IQ points. 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:42.320 They would assume, like, oh, he's got to be like 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.360 aerodyite because he's descended from Herman Melville. 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:45.679 Same thing. 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:47.520 I went to college and I was a philosophy major, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:49.600 and I was not a good student. But I realized 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.159 the moment you tell someone you're a philosophy major, they 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.879 think you're way smarter than you actually are. So, like, 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:59.680 descended from Herman Melville philosophy major, Like that just added 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:05.399 thirty bonus points to my IQ, totally unwarranted. So I 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:07.800 had growing up, had a lot of free time, had 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:11.600 access to instruments, and was raised in this odd creative family. 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:13.440 So I just started writing music when I was around 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:18.280 ten or eleven, and i'd also my uncle had given 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:20.639 me some hand me down photo equipment, so I started 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:24.679 taking pictures. And here's an odd, little funny story. My 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.800 best friend when I was nine years old was Robert 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:31.040 Downey Junior, and so his dad gave us because his 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:36.240 dad was a filmmaker and Darien he lived there. Darien 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.920 has a baffling array of odd public figures like and 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.400 Coulter and Gus van Zant and Robert Downey Junior and 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:47.760 Chloe sevig Yee and Steve O from Jackass and the 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:50.800 author Rick Moody from this little town of fourteen thousand people. 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:53.240 Very odd people. Yeah, in the fact that and. 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.280 Culture and Zant went to the same high school. Yes, 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:00.359 So Robert and I made with his this superak camera 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:02.360 his dad when we were eight and nine years old. 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:06.159 We started making little films long since disappeared. But it 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.560 was just part of the ethos of just go out 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:12.760 and make things, with no expectation that there would be 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.560 a career or that you'd even make anything good. But 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.240 I just started writing and taking pictures and making little 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.199 movies and writing songs and doing all this. 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.560 They make little movies. How if you were broke super 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.400 eight camera you got your hands on a Super eight camera? Yeah, 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:32.480 like in a pawn shot. Yeah, right, like a really cheap, shitty. 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.160 Superand camera, and you could develop film, you know, like 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.879 two and a half minutes of Super eight film, and 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.320 then you edit it on your kitchen table tape. 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:45.680 Yeah, we used a dracula and I'm emerging from the coffin. 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.399 And then you develop it and you show it on 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:48.800 a sheet. 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.800 Yeah, you're ready to get a can. What's the first 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:56.520 song you wrote? Do you remember? Do you remember a boy? I? 0:19:56.560 --> 0:20:00.080 Well, so I started playing guitar, and then I I 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.600 had a very odd music teacher. He played in a 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.800 heavy metal band, but he also loved jazz fusion and 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:10.440 classical music. So one day we would learn name Chris Rosola. 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:12.639 He would teach me a van Halen song, even though 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:14.399 I never really liked Van Halen that much, and then 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.919 we would do a Larry Carlton or weather Report jazz 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:20.719 fusion thing, which I also didn't like that much, and 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:24.280 then do a Bach cantata, which I love and I 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.560 still to this day love. And then I broke his 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.880 heart because when I was thirteen, I discovered punk rock, 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:34.479 and so I sort of cast aside, like music theory 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.639 and the sort of idiosyncratic but formal music education. I 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:40.359 had to play clash covers and because he thought I 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:42.639 was going to go on to be this virtuoso guitarist. 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.920 And the irony, Yeah, and the irony is by embracing 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:52.119 punk rock and non virtuosic, if that's the word, I 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.920 disinvented music. I ended up coming back to the world 0:20:55.920 --> 0:21:00.440 of classical music and have since started playing with orchestras. Yeah, 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.119 I just I just did a performance with Dudamel in 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:05.160 the LA film. 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:07.160 Did You Wouldn't Know? What? Did you guys play? We? 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:11.640 Well, it was two programs. The first program was LA Composers, 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:15.200 and they put a piece of music of mine in there. 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.200 It's a song that I'd written for a Michael Mann 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:18.960 movie years ago, which. 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.200 Film for Heat. Yeah, you wrote a song for Heat. 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.639 It's a very end when Al Patino and Robert de 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.320 Niro finally had I don't want to spoiler alert, so 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:30.359 they did that as part of the first program, And 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:32.879 the second program was all orchestral versions of my music. 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:33.840 Oh wow. 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:36.159 During the rehearsal. There was I don't know one hundred 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:37.720 and eighty of us on stage because we had a 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:42.080 huge choir, full orchestra. And I realized, like, okay, we're 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.720 doing my music, and I'm without question the least talented 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.199 musician on the stage right now, Like I'm the person who, like, 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:51.000 if I stopped playing, no one will notice. But in 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:52.719 God Moving over the Face of the Waters, there's this 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:57.680 big crescendo, you know, it's like timpany and symbols. And 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:02.480 I got so annoyed because the percussion had come in early, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:05.160 and I was like, what, like this is the La Fel? 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.840 How did they screw up? And I realized there was 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:12.240 a thunderstorm and I was like, so this song is 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:13.840 called God Moving over the Face of the Water. Keep 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:16.600 in mind this is in September. This is sort of 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.479 good theological argument for the existence of God, that he 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:21.480 plays percussion during classical music. 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.560 Do you did this recently with the La Fell? What's 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:26.600 the first time you did that? Well, the first time 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:29.959 was actually Michael Mann for Heat. Yeah. 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:34.679 I had written some classical pieces. He heard them and 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:36.320 this was nineteen ninety. 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.640 Foudy, how did he unpublished? 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:41.080 I they were no, I'd put them as a B 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:43.800 sides on they were out there and somehow he had 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:46.280 heard them. And we then had one of the weirdest 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:48.959 phone calls. Do you know, Michael, I'm sure. I so 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:53.680 we're friends. I used that word loose leakause I don't 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:56.160 know if in my mind he and I are friends. 0:22:56.240 --> 0:23:00.199 But he's a odd, wonderful creative man. But like our 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:04.000 first phone call was, he got my number and he 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:07.320 called me up and he spent forty five minutes telling 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:09.280 me the story of heat and hung up the phone. 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:10.280 I didn't say one. 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:12.280 Word apart from hello, so I was like, hello, he said, 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:16.119 mobe this Michael Man forty five minutes soliloquy, telling me 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:18.800 in great detail everything about heat, like the archetypes that 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:21.480 are going on for like the classical element, the moment 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:23.040 he's done, he just hung up, and I was like, 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:28.680 what just I'd never spoken to like an esteemed film 0:23:28.720 --> 0:23:30.280 director before, and I was like, is this is how 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:32.239 film directors talk to people? He just call up and 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:34.040 talk for forty five minutes and to hang up the phone. 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:37.280 That was the first time you had provided score for 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:37.720 a film? 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:42.199 Well, I went to Sunny Purchase briefly, and I had 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:45.439 some friends in the experimental film program there, and so 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:49.919 my friend Paul made an experimental movie called me I 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:54.760 the Onion in nineteen ninety or ninety one, So technically 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:57.920 that would have been my first foray in the film composing. 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.040 Beyond me I the Onion, Yeah made it. Michael Mann 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:02.840 was the first. Yeah. Did it lead to how many? 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:05.600 How many other films have you contributed music to other 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:08.160 than sourcing your I also I have. 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:10.920 A weird website called mobigradis dot com and it gives 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:15.880 free music to independent filmmakers, nonprofits, film students. So if 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:20.399 we count that ten thousand films. But those are like 0:24:20.920 --> 0:24:24.600 three minute short films where people hired you hired, I 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:27.479 wouldn't know hundreds thousands. 0:24:27.520 --> 0:24:30.080 I mean like, oh, you're not not accessing your music 0:24:30.119 --> 0:24:33.040 you published, they hired you to do score four oh films. 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:38.280 Oh, because there's the licensing music. I'm licensing music, and 0:24:38.320 --> 0:24:40.800 that's like, it's the greatest thing in the world because 0:24:40.840 --> 0:24:42.560 all you have to do is say yes, you don't 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:46.520 there's no work involved apart from that actually writing music. 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:47.320 So when I moved to. 0:24:47.359 --> 0:24:50.840 La after I got sober the first time, this most 0:24:50.960 --> 0:24:52.720 like ten years ago, I got sober. 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:53.960 And I got sober twice. 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:58.680 Yeah, once in nineteen eighty seven, followed by a glorious 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:00.720 thirteen year long relapse. We're going to get to that, 0:25:00.920 --> 0:25:04.199 and then again in two thousand and eight. And so 0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:06.520 then I moved to LA and I thought, Okay, I'm 0:25:06.560 --> 0:25:09.640 middle aged, I'm sober, I'm in Los Angeles. I need 0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:12.560 to fully commit myself to film composing. And then I 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:17.120 realized I really don't like film composing, Like it's. 0:25:17.400 --> 0:25:21.159 What about it? Don't you like? Uh? What I like? 0:25:21.200 --> 0:25:23.399 When I work on my own music, it's just me 0:25:23.400 --> 0:25:27.040 in the studio. There's no music supervisor, there's no director, 0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:30.320 there's no producer. I can kind of I have some 0:25:30.520 --> 0:25:33.000 complete self sufficiency. I don't have to respond to other 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:35.840 people's comments, and as an only child who doesn't do 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:39.040 well with people, that's nice. And my friends who were 0:25:39.080 --> 0:25:42.560 great film composers, part of their skill set is knowing 0:25:42.600 --> 0:25:45.520 how to deal with twenty different executives at the same time. 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:49.399 And I just it was too skill have Yeah and 0:25:49.480 --> 0:26:00.800 a lot of X acts. Yeah, this is God moving 0:26:00.880 --> 0:26:04.240 over the face of the waters. The piece Moby wrote 0:26:04.280 --> 0:26:07.560 for Heat after a lot of input from executives at 0:26:07.600 --> 0:26:11.879 Warner Brothers and director Michael Mann. Stephen Daldry is another 0:26:12.080 --> 0:26:15.800 great film director with strong opinions about how everyone should 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:16.600 do their jobs. 0:26:17.040 --> 0:26:19.399 I find it really crazy when actors come in self 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:22.199 prepared because they've done some journey that they getting in 0:26:22.200 --> 0:26:24.800 this comment my character and you go, look, it's not 0:26:24.880 --> 0:26:27.080 your character. Okay, it's ours, and we're going to make 0:26:27.119 --> 0:26:27.520 it up there. 0:26:27.680 --> 0:26:30.200 Interesting, I'm going to remember that it's ours. Well, my 0:26:30.280 --> 0:26:31.080 character wouldn't do that. 0:26:31.119 --> 0:26:32.680 Well, let's change the character. Then. 0:26:34.160 --> 0:26:37.080 The rest of my conversation with Stephen Daldry can be 0:26:37.160 --> 0:26:40.920 found in our archive a Here's the Thing dot org 0:26:47.800 --> 0:27:02.120 more Moby in a minute. This is Alec Baldwin and 0:27:02.160 --> 0:27:10.440 you were listening to Here's the Thing. Moby never would 0:27:10.480 --> 0:27:12.919 have ended up so low if he hadn't been so 0:27:13.080 --> 0:27:17.399 desperate to be lifted up. He craved the affirmation of fame. 0:27:18.000 --> 0:27:20.560 I loved it, you did, and I just wanted more. 0:27:20.680 --> 0:27:24.000 This guy that was this isolated guy that was left alone. 0:27:24.200 --> 0:27:25.280 You can't get enough of that. 0:27:25.920 --> 0:27:29.000 Yeah, I mean, all of a sudden, I was being 0:27:29.040 --> 0:27:34.080 invited to fancy parties, meeting heads of state, being flown 0:27:34.119 --> 0:27:35.600 around the world, on private. 0:27:35.280 --> 0:27:37.919 Play and freeing clothes to wear in public. I mean 0:27:37.960 --> 0:27:39.080 I still have them, sure. 0:27:39.240 --> 0:27:42.680 You know, it's like suddenly like people are competing about 0:27:42.720 --> 0:27:44.960 who gets to dress you for the Red carpet, and 0:27:44.960 --> 0:27:47.680 you know, it's like Versace and Calvin Klein are like, oh, 0:27:47.880 --> 0:27:50.679 let us send you free tuxedos. I was like, you know, 0:27:51.320 --> 0:27:54.840 before this record, I was buying clothes at Salvation Army 0:27:54.880 --> 0:27:56.440 on the corner of Lafayette. 0:27:55.960 --> 0:27:57.160 In Prince A, Republic. 0:27:57.320 --> 0:28:01.399 Yeah, like it was great, And then of course it 0:28:01.440 --> 0:28:03.480 wasn't great. You know, like my narcissism got out of 0:28:03.520 --> 0:28:07.320 control of my entitlement because I felt at the time, 0:28:07.440 --> 0:28:09.560 like two thousand and two thousand and one, two thousand 0:28:09.560 --> 0:28:11.440 and two, I felt that all I needed to be 0:28:11.600 --> 0:28:15.159 happy was constant love and attention from every person on 0:28:15.200 --> 0:28:18.240 the planet, to make ten million dollars a year for 0:28:18.240 --> 0:28:21.199 the rest of my life, and to make sure that 0:28:21.240 --> 0:28:23.520 I could be as promiscuous as possible, do as many 0:28:23.600 --> 0:28:28.600 drugs as possible, and drink as much as possible without consequences. 0:28:28.600 --> 0:28:32.560 So like, obviously, in hindsight, I recognize how absurd and 0:28:32.600 --> 0:28:34.879 unrealistic it is, but at the time I just wanted, 0:28:34.920 --> 0:28:39.600 like every night to be like this indulgent festival of 0:28:39.720 --> 0:28:42.200 narcissism and the mobsters. 0:28:42.440 --> 0:28:44.280 Can you tell me some of these stories that were 0:28:44.280 --> 0:28:44.720 in the book. 0:28:44.840 --> 0:28:47.080 Yeah, that was a weird one. We took helicopters to 0:28:47.120 --> 0:28:50.160 Staten Island and had this weird dinner with the guy 0:28:50.200 --> 0:28:52.600 who apparently invented the cabbage patch doll and then went 0:28:52.640 --> 0:28:55.400 on to produce Steven Segall movies. And then we left 0:28:55.400 --> 0:28:58.120 and I went to a party on Park Avenue, very drunk. 0:28:58.400 --> 0:29:00.400 We show up and I met some friends and they 0:29:00.400 --> 0:29:02.800 were talking about this game that they played in college 0:29:02.800 --> 0:29:06.400 called knob Touch. And what knob touch is You take 0:29:06.440 --> 0:29:09.080 your flaccid penis out of your pants and you brush 0:29:09.160 --> 0:29:12.120 up against people and you win by the number of 0:29:12.120 --> 0:29:14.280 people you can brush up against. And I'd never done this, 0:29:15.320 --> 0:29:18.960 and my date, Miss new Hampshire, challenged me to play 0:29:19.000 --> 0:29:21.120 knob touch. And there's only one human being on the 0:29:21.120 --> 0:29:24.160 planet I have brushed my flaccid penis against. That man 0:29:24.200 --> 0:29:25.959 is currently the President of the United States. 0:29:26.560 --> 0:29:28.840 Now, yes, where was this being held? 0:29:29.160 --> 0:29:31.240 Some bar in park like one of those big restaurants 0:29:31.280 --> 0:29:32.800 on Park Avenue, And like twenty first it. 0:29:32.880 --> 0:29:35.080 Was like in public and this isn't a private party. 0:29:35.480 --> 0:29:37.840 I mean it was like a one of those New 0:29:37.920 --> 0:29:41.440 York style parties where maybe it was like Ralph Lauren 0:29:41.600 --> 0:29:44.120 was launching a new paint color or something, you know, 0:29:44.240 --> 0:29:46.360 those things that you just go to. Yeah, and you're 0:29:46.360 --> 0:29:47.040 not I don't know why. 0:29:47.040 --> 0:29:48.840 I have a couple of drinks. Yeah. So I was 0:29:48.920 --> 0:29:50.160 very famous. 0:29:49.800 --> 0:29:52.520 People, and I brushed my flacid piece against that of. 0:29:52.520 --> 0:29:54.360 Your penis against Donald Trump brush. 0:29:54.680 --> 0:29:58.200 He didn't know it was dark, he was. And what's 0:29:58.200 --> 0:30:00.520 funny is the publisher of the book said, like, in 0:30:00.560 --> 0:30:02.560 this climate, I don't know if you should include that. 0:30:02.680 --> 0:30:05.200 I was like, you know what, I think Donald Trump 0:30:05.240 --> 0:30:07.480 being able to say that, I me tooed him. 0:30:08.040 --> 0:30:15.800 Yeah. So you're there and you're this big superstar. When 0:30:15.840 --> 0:30:17.200 did you begin to think. 0:30:17.320 --> 0:30:19.120 We really should get back into the studio and make 0:30:19.120 --> 0:30:19.760 another album. 0:30:20.120 --> 0:30:23.040 So then the tour for Play was supposed to be 0:30:23.080 --> 0:30:25.280 three and a half weeks long, and it ended up 0:30:25.320 --> 0:30:28.720 being twenty six months long. But the whole time, because 0:30:29.320 --> 0:30:34.040 I've always compulsively written music, I have now probably like 0:30:34.200 --> 0:30:36.880 eight or nine thousand pieces of unreleased pieces of music. 0:30:37.000 --> 0:30:42.040 So even at the bottom of my like alcoholism, drug addiction, narcissism, entitlement, 0:30:42.120 --> 0:30:46.240 self destruction. I was at break. I kept writing music. 0:30:46.280 --> 0:30:49.040 So the problem break, Yeah, the problem with albums was 0:30:50.240 --> 0:30:52.480 to look at like a thousand songs and figure out 0:30:52.520 --> 0:30:54.600 how do you get fifteen to put on an album? 0:30:54.720 --> 0:30:56.640 Doesn't mean they're good. And when I say eight thousand 0:30:56.840 --> 0:30:59.640 pieces of unreleased music, I'm not speaking to the quality 0:30:59.680 --> 0:31:01.960 of them, like a lot of it's garbage. But I 0:31:02.080 --> 0:31:05.920 just it's this weird almost like you know there's that 0:31:05.960 --> 0:31:09.480 word laggeria. I have that of music where I just 0:31:09.640 --> 0:31:12.600 keep making it without any concern for whether it's good 0:31:12.680 --> 0:31:15.000 or bad. I just keep writing and so. 0:31:15.360 --> 0:31:16.520 It's like a broken pipe. 0:31:16.680 --> 0:31:18.840 Yeah, yeah, just like you turn on the faucet and 0:31:18.880 --> 0:31:22.640 just leave it on. So the next album was called eighteen, 0:31:24.480 --> 0:31:27.480 and I thought like, okay, this is like Play was big. 0:31:27.520 --> 0:31:30.240 I want this to be bigger, and so like I think, 0:31:30.280 --> 0:31:33.240 the promo tour for the next album was five months long, 0:31:33.400 --> 0:31:35.520 like five months of just like you've done it as well, 0:31:35.520 --> 0:31:37.520 like traveling around the world, sitting in hotel rooms, going 0:31:37.560 --> 0:31:40.320 to every country, every TV show, everything, And I just 0:31:40.360 --> 0:31:43.080 wanted to be more famous, have more money, sleep with 0:31:43.120 --> 0:31:45.600 more people, drink more, do more drugs tour more just 0:31:45.600 --> 0:31:45.920 for the. 0:31:45.880 --> 0:31:49.239 Guy that was isolated. Are you sitting there saying this 0:31:49.320 --> 0:31:51.560 is more like it? Now? Everybody wants to take their 0:31:51.560 --> 0:31:52.960 clothes off and jump in bed with me. 0:31:53.080 --> 0:31:56.920 And it seemed like fame was going And this is 0:31:57.560 --> 0:31:59.680 when I say it out loud, it just sounds so 0:31:59.720 --> 0:32:02.800 obs heard I honestly, and I wouldn't have admitted this, 0:32:02.880 --> 0:32:05.720 but deep down, what I believed was that fame was 0:32:05.760 --> 0:32:07.400 going to fix everything. 0:32:07.520 --> 0:32:09.200 Like every all. 0:32:09.080 --> 0:32:13.880 The trauma from child really be the senses of all 0:32:14.000 --> 0:32:16.440 that fear, you know, the self centered fear. 0:32:16.200 --> 0:32:18.240 But self centered narcissistic fear is the root of all 0:32:18.240 --> 0:32:20.840 of our problems. And living in a constant state, living 0:32:20.960 --> 0:32:23.880 in a constant state of agitation, worrying about am I 0:32:23.880 --> 0:32:25.200 going to get this? This is going to be taken 0:32:25.240 --> 0:32:29.040 away from me? Which defines my life. They say in 0:32:29.120 --> 0:32:33.800 a twelve step literature, they say that our greatest fear 0:32:33.880 --> 0:32:36.960 is to lose something we already have or not get 0:32:37.000 --> 0:32:37.880 something that we want. 0:32:38.680 --> 0:32:42.680 I just thought, oh, fame will fix it as long 0:32:42.720 --> 0:32:45.080 as I can keep getting invited to great parties and 0:32:45.160 --> 0:32:47.760 drinking and doing drugs, and as long as I get 0:32:47.800 --> 0:32:52.040 good reviews. But then the universe, with its sense of humor, 0:32:53.160 --> 0:32:55.040 took away all the things. 0:32:55.000 --> 0:32:58.440 That I do. You know, why do you have a sense? Why? 0:32:58.680 --> 0:33:03.080 I think because on a sort of artistic level, there 0:33:03.120 --> 0:33:05.320 came a time and I'm so ashamed to admit this, 0:33:05.600 --> 0:33:07.680 and around two thousand and two, two thousand and three, 0:33:07.760 --> 0:33:11.480 I wanted to make great music, but I wanted music 0:33:11.600 --> 0:33:14.160 to be a means to an end where I wanted 0:33:14.160 --> 0:33:17.560 it to like sustain my career. So before my life 0:33:17.600 --> 0:33:20.960 had just been spent it going yeah, and I had never. 0:33:20.840 --> 0:33:22.200 Thought I don't want to go backwards. 0:33:22.280 --> 0:33:25.120 Yeah, I was like and before that, all I wanted 0:33:25.160 --> 0:33:27.120 to do was make music that I loved, you know, 0:33:27.160 --> 0:33:30.720 that music that somehow was like it was just beautiful, expressive. 0:33:31.200 --> 0:33:32.960 Two thousand and two, two thousand. 0:33:32.640 --> 0:33:34.640 And three, years after the release of Play, I. 0:33:34.600 --> 0:33:39.160 Still wanted it to be beautiful, but first and foremost 0:33:39.400 --> 0:33:40.240 commercially viable. 0:33:40.320 --> 0:33:42.360 But it was a little less beautiful and it sold 0:33:42.360 --> 0:33:43.680 more copies. That was okay with. 0:33:43.680 --> 0:33:46.720 Me, Yes, And I started thinking, oh, okay, well, if 0:33:46.760 --> 0:33:49.720 I produce this type of song, it'll get on the radio. 0:33:49.760 --> 0:33:52.240 And if I produce this it'll sell more. And like 0:33:52.880 --> 0:33:56.240 the paradox, the wonderful In hindsight, the wonderful paradox is 0:33:56.280 --> 0:33:59.440 the more of an effort I made to be famous, 0:33:59.680 --> 0:34:01.520 the less famous I became here. 0:34:01.640 --> 0:34:04.640 You were very open with the press, You courted the press, 0:34:04.680 --> 0:34:06.800 You would speak to anybody, you know. For me, the 0:34:06.880 --> 0:34:09.440 problem has always been the you know, the press is 0:34:09.560 --> 0:34:13.640 never it's a sad. It does sometimes make me sad. 0:34:13.680 --> 0:34:15.400 I get I get over it, and then every now 0:34:15.440 --> 0:34:17.920 and then it comes up in blackjacks me again. After nowhere. 0:34:17.920 --> 0:34:19.279 It's like it's like in an alley where I get 0:34:19.360 --> 0:34:22.279 mugged by it again, which is they're never going to 0:34:22.680 --> 0:34:24.320 interpret who you really are to the public. 0:34:24.400 --> 0:34:24.560 Never. 0:34:24.760 --> 0:34:29.560 They don't have that ability. It's so painful, the misunderstanding 0:34:29.600 --> 0:34:31.880 that goes hand in hand with it, especially. 0:34:32.360 --> 0:34:34.360 Because I when I don't know if you had this experience, 0:34:34.400 --> 0:34:38.080 but when I started getting press attention, I loved it. 0:34:38.560 --> 0:34:40.799 And in the beginning they were so nice, and the 0:34:40.880 --> 0:34:43.920 reviews were gentle, and then the reviews were great, and 0:34:43.960 --> 0:34:45.719 then you have this sweet spot where you have like 0:34:46.320 --> 0:34:50.040 fame and you're lauded in the press, and then it 0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:52.399 turned and then all of a sudden, the reviews got bad, 0:34:52.480 --> 0:34:54.960 the articles got bad, and I felt so betrayed. I 0:34:55.000 --> 0:34:56.959 was like, why why can't you guys just be nice? 0:34:57.360 --> 0:35:00.719 But then time passes. I'm like, in a like god, 0:35:00.800 --> 0:35:05.799 bless them for turning because I've since then like when 0:35:05.840 --> 0:35:10.319 when you're rejected, when the press rejects you, then, at 0:35:10.400 --> 0:35:12.160 least for me, I had to sort of look like, Okay, 0:35:12.200 --> 0:35:14.239 well who am I without that? 0:35:14.960 --> 0:35:15.239 You know? 0:35:15.400 --> 0:35:18.680 And where does my worth and sense of self come from? 0:35:18.840 --> 0:35:23.480 And like realizing, oh, if it comes from the opinions 0:35:23.520 --> 0:35:26.960 of people I've never met, there's something really unstable and 0:35:27.040 --> 0:35:29.840 unhealthy there, you know. I had this epiphany recently. I 0:35:29.880 --> 0:35:33.120 was in la middle of February hiking and Griffiths Park 0:35:33.920 --> 0:35:35.759 and it was one of those beautiful days, like the 0:35:35.760 --> 0:35:39.560 sun is shining, coyotes are running around, hummingbirds are flying by, 0:35:40.440 --> 0:35:43.640 and I suddenly thought like, Okay, if my last album 0:35:43.680 --> 0:35:47.160 had sold ten million copies, and if every journalist on 0:35:47.160 --> 0:35:49.480 the planet loved me and wrote great things about me, 0:35:49.680 --> 0:35:52.360 and if I was dating the most beautiful woman on 0:35:52.400 --> 0:35:56.399 the planet, how would this moment be better? And I'm 0:35:56.440 --> 0:35:59.640 like it wouldn't like, you know, good reviews, good press, 0:35:59.680 --> 0:36:01.719 all this stuff doesn't And I don't know, I sound 0:36:01.760 --> 0:36:04.320 like a crazy New age hippie, but like it wouldn't affect. 0:36:04.440 --> 0:36:07.480 It's like that moment of like the public radio, like 0:36:07.520 --> 0:36:11.960 standing in the sun wearing a T shirt, smelling sage 0:36:12.080 --> 0:36:15.160 and lavender, watching the hummingbirds fly by. I was like 0:36:16.239 --> 0:36:20.080 the universe in that moment was so benign and indifferent 0:36:20.200 --> 0:36:22.239 to anything that I cared about, and there was some 0:36:22.320 --> 0:36:25.719 there's sort of like a transcendent liberation, almost like Emersonian 0:36:25.800 --> 0:36:27.800 style liberation in that moment. 0:36:28.400 --> 0:36:31.640 I'll take that feeling. At this point, I just turned 0:36:31.680 --> 0:36:34.000 sixty one, and I'll take that feeling wherever I can 0:36:34.000 --> 0:36:37.680 get it now, and at my age, I have to 0:36:37.719 --> 0:36:41.319 accept that my creative energies may or may not come 0:36:41.360 --> 0:36:44.440 to the foe here, and if they don't, I have 0:36:44.560 --> 0:36:48.080 to find something else to do to get off creatively, 0:36:48.080 --> 0:36:50.800 which is what I do. I completely segregate my creative 0:36:51.040 --> 0:36:52.879 from my commercial in a way that I never thought 0:36:52.880 --> 0:36:53.480 it was possible. 0:36:53.600 --> 0:36:57.560 And there's one because you reference the twelve and twelve earlier. Yep, 0:36:58.000 --> 0:37:00.839 I don't know if that's a twelve steps is part 0:37:00.840 --> 0:37:01.480 of your life? 0:37:01.680 --> 0:37:04.360 Yes? Oh, okay, I'm thirty four years sober. Oh right, 0:37:04.360 --> 0:37:04.759 eighty five? 0:37:05.360 --> 0:37:08.560 Yeah, so it's I mean, and again I feel like 0:37:08.560 --> 0:37:10.279 such a middle age cliche saying this, but like the 0:37:10.280 --> 0:37:14.320 Twelve Steps really, if all the therapeutic things I've been through, 0:37:14.640 --> 0:37:18.480 the Twelve Steps really saved me. And one of the 0:37:18.480 --> 0:37:20.239 things I learned, as you mentioned, was like the role 0:37:20.280 --> 0:37:23.000 of fear and trying to sort of like deconstruct fear 0:37:23.040 --> 0:37:26.879 and learn from it. But the other thing that when 0:37:26.880 --> 0:37:30.279 I did the Twelve Steps that I really loved was 0:37:31.040 --> 0:37:33.520 all of my judgment up until that point was sort 0:37:33.560 --> 0:37:37.399 of based on the misperception of omniscience or fake omniscientce. 0:37:37.480 --> 0:37:39.719 Like when I had an album that failed, I was 0:37:39.920 --> 0:37:43.239 furious because I knew that it should have succeeded, because 0:37:43.400 --> 0:37:45.279 if it had succeeded, it would have been better for me. 0:37:45.800 --> 0:37:47.319 And then all of a sudden I realized, like again, 0:37:47.320 --> 0:37:50.160 in a thirteen point eight billion year old universe, I 0:37:50.200 --> 0:37:54.719 don't have omniscients. I don't know causality. If I want 0:37:54.719 --> 0:37:58.000 something to work out and it doesn't work out in 0:37:58.040 --> 0:38:00.920 a way, I'm like, who am I to judge? In 0:38:01.040 --> 0:38:03.200 politics as well, because I got really involved in politics 0:38:03.239 --> 0:38:05.600 for a while, it was like the vast majority of 0:38:05.600 --> 0:38:08.279 people on the planet, their goal is to keep the 0:38:08.360 --> 0:38:11.480 lights on tomorrow, you know, like they're like they want 0:38:11.719 --> 0:38:14.440 a job, they want to keep. 0:38:14.239 --> 0:38:15.799 Their understand where they're coming from. 0:38:16.040 --> 0:38:19.880 And I have to be like, okay, that's It's like 0:38:19.920 --> 0:38:21.920 with the press as well. If to remind myself, like 0:38:21.920 --> 0:38:24.239 most of the people I know were journalists, like they're 0:38:24.280 --> 0:38:26.920 barely able to pay the rent. And I don't want 0:38:26.920 --> 0:38:29.000 to be patronizing or judgmental, but I have to sort 0:38:29.000 --> 0:38:32.960 of say, like, Okay, my job is not to rely 0:38:33.160 --> 0:38:35.919 on them form my sense of happiness and well being, 0:38:35.960 --> 0:38:36.840 you know, like my sense of. 0:38:36.800 --> 0:38:40.080 Strength or my creative Yeah, output the same. 0:38:39.880 --> 0:38:43.960 Thing, and creatively, if they're too much of a hindrance, 0:38:45.120 --> 0:38:47.279 you move on. You sort of say like okay, God 0:38:47.320 --> 0:38:49.640 bless you know, like have healthy boundaries. And I just say, 0:38:49.680 --> 0:38:52.560 like it almost makes me think of like that like 0:38:52.600 --> 0:38:54.719 the Rudyard Kipling poem is that. 0:38:54.760 --> 0:38:57.799 If I remember reading when like eight or nine years old, 0:38:58.120 --> 0:38:58.600 and it's. 0:38:58.440 --> 0:39:03.760 Sort of that idea of just keep I just keep going, 0:39:04.239 --> 0:39:06.759 not even from strength and fortitude, more just sort of 0:39:06.800 --> 0:39:10.440 like like a post apocalyptic cockroach, just keep plowing forward, 0:39:10.520 --> 0:39:12.759 like someone steps on you. Okay, you stepped on me. 0:39:13.480 --> 0:39:15.160 Have a good day. I'm going to keep going. 0:39:15.239 --> 0:39:17.440 But this is also if I really became the biggest 0:39:17.440 --> 0:39:19.400 movie star in the world and made hundreds of millions 0:39:19.440 --> 0:39:22.000 of dollars in private plans, who the fuck knows what 0:39:22.040 --> 0:39:23.560 I would have done with that. No, I would have 0:39:23.560 --> 0:39:24.040 screwed that up. 0:39:24.040 --> 0:39:26.600 I mean, luckily i'd be dead in a way, like 0:39:26.760 --> 0:39:33.120 as as sober middle aged guys. I feel like, maybe 0:39:33.120 --> 0:39:35.239 this is an indelicate thing to say, but like a 0:39:35.320 --> 0:39:38.600 lot of people have done the work for us, Like, 0:39:38.640 --> 0:39:42.440 for example, yeah, twenty years ago, I would look at 0:39:42.480 --> 0:39:45.400 Michael Jackson and say, like, wow, look at that. The 0:39:45.480 --> 0:39:49.040 wealth and the fame and the adulation. Boy, oh boy, 0:39:49.360 --> 0:39:50.200 I'm glad. 0:39:50.960 --> 0:39:52.600 I'm glad hanging out with him. 0:39:52.719 --> 0:39:54.480 Yeah, and I'm glad that I was cut off to 0:39:54.560 --> 0:39:58.080 an extent from the access to like excessive wealth and 0:39:58.080 --> 0:40:00.399 fame that he had and me. Again, it's a hard 0:40:00.400 --> 0:40:02.200 thing to talk about because I don't want to malign anyone, 0:40:02.360 --> 0:40:05.759 especially if they're dead or struggling. But like we know, 0:40:05.840 --> 0:40:08.480 I mean the number of public figures who have had 0:40:09.000 --> 0:40:13.160 profound success, profound wealth and it destroys them. I mean, 0:40:13.200 --> 0:40:15.279 like people like you and I are the ones who 0:40:15.360 --> 0:40:21.880 sort of like hopefully emerge unscathed and chastened, with hopefully 0:40:21.880 --> 0:40:24.719 an understanding that we can almost use in the form 0:40:24.719 --> 0:40:27.040 of service, you know, to go out and be like, Okay, 0:40:27.480 --> 0:40:30.520 I've learned a lesson. That's an odd, rare, unique lesson. 0:40:30.760 --> 0:40:32.040 Let me try and do something with it. 0:40:32.320 --> 0:40:35.640 Yea, was there an epiphany? What was the bottom? 0:40:35.960 --> 0:40:38.799 The bottom was do you remember a restaurant in New 0:40:38.880 --> 0:40:42.880 York called zen Palette, vegan Chinese restaurant. So this is 0:40:42.880 --> 0:40:46.759 a little analogy. New Year's Eve nineteen ninety two, I 0:40:46.800 --> 0:40:49.120 went to the zen Palette on Ninth Avenue, Sure, and 0:40:49.160 --> 0:40:52.560 I ordered fourties. Yeah, and I ordered purple Japanese egg plant, 0:40:52.719 --> 0:40:55.880 and it disagreed with me. And I never ordered purple 0:40:55.920 --> 0:40:58.520 Japanese ig plan again because I had one bad experience 0:40:58.560 --> 0:41:03.800 with it. Vodka, cocaine everything. I would do it every 0:41:03.920 --> 0:41:06.400 day and it would kill almost kill me and make 0:41:06.480 --> 0:41:11.120 me sick. And I kept going back. And basically the consequence, 0:41:11.160 --> 0:41:14.960 what I mean is like the rational response to vodka 0:41:15.000 --> 0:41:16.640 and cocaine if you have a night out and the 0:41:16.680 --> 0:41:20.399 next day you want to blow your miserable, is to say, wow, 0:41:20.440 --> 0:41:23.160 that was bad. I shan't do that again, as opposed. 0:41:22.840 --> 0:41:24.520 To it's a great definition of addiction. Act. 0:41:24.640 --> 0:41:27.560 Let's give me more every day for the next fifteen 0:41:27.600 --> 0:41:28.960 this thing that's making me sick. 0:41:29.160 --> 0:41:29.600 Yeah. 0:41:29.920 --> 0:41:34.279 And as I got older, because you got sober young. 0:41:35.040 --> 0:41:35.360 Yeah. 0:41:35.920 --> 0:41:41.200 I got sober at forty three and basically to ride 0:41:41.239 --> 0:41:45.160 the range and the hangovers just got worse and worse, 0:41:45.200 --> 0:41:46.480 and it got to the point where I was having 0:41:46.480 --> 0:41:48.000 hard time streaming sentences together. 0:41:48.280 --> 0:41:50.080 Yeah. I got sober because I moved to LA and 0:41:50.080 --> 0:41:51.840 I was driving a car, and I thought, well, the 0:41:51.880 --> 0:41:53.640 consequence is caught up with Yeah, I thought I came 0:41:54.040 --> 0:41:56.120 and I still drove around shiitface for two years before 0:41:56.160 --> 0:41:59.799 I got I got smart. I want to talk, when 0:41:59.840 --> 0:42:01.960 did pure vegetarianism take hold with you? 0:42:02.440 --> 0:42:05.080 When I was growing up, I had that weird paradox 0:42:05.160 --> 0:42:08.960 of loving animals and loving Burger King, you know, when 0:42:09.000 --> 0:42:11.360 I was in junior high school high school, like, we 0:42:11.400 --> 0:42:14.200 had a bunch of rescue animals and I loved them unconditionally, 0:42:14.840 --> 0:42:18.000 But I also loved Pepperoni pizza. And I had this 0:42:18.080 --> 0:42:20.600 one rescue cat named Tucker who had found it the 0:42:20.680 --> 0:42:24.120 dump in Dairia in Connecticut, and I loved Tucker even 0:42:24.200 --> 0:42:27.799 more unconditionally than I unconditionally loved the other animals. And 0:42:27.840 --> 0:42:30.400 when I was nineteen, I had this like Saw on 0:42:30.440 --> 0:42:33.480 the Road to Damascus moment where suddenly I looked at 0:42:33.520 --> 0:42:35.520 Tucker and I was like, he has two eyes, a 0:42:35.560 --> 0:42:38.799 central nervous system, and a profoundly rich emotional life and 0:42:38.840 --> 0:42:41.560 a deep desire to avoid pain and suffering. And in 0:42:41.600 --> 0:42:45.320 that moment I sort of extrapolated and realized every animal 0:42:45.360 --> 0:42:47.480 with two eyes and a central nervous system has a 0:42:47.560 --> 0:42:50.759 rich emotional life and a deep desire to avoid pain 0:42:50.800 --> 0:42:53.279 and suffering. So that's when I became a vegetarian, and 0:42:53.280 --> 0:42:56.840 then eighty seven became a vegan, and my only vegan 0:42:56.880 --> 0:43:00.400 relapse was in ninety two I had yogurt once. So 0:43:00.440 --> 0:43:02.240 now I've got thirty one years. 0:43:02.880 --> 0:43:06.000 What is your diet basically something you cook at home 0:43:06.120 --> 0:43:07.239 or you how you eat well. 0:43:07.239 --> 0:43:10.000 Actually I own a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles called 0:43:10.040 --> 0:43:13.319 Lil Pine and where it's in Silver Lake, And what 0:43:13.400 --> 0:43:15.719 makes it unique is that one hundred percent of the 0:43:15.719 --> 0:43:18.479 profits go to animal rights organizations. Because at this point 0:43:18.480 --> 0:43:22.480 in my life, I don't I mean, I still am 0:43:22.520 --> 0:43:25.879 selfish and probably pretty narcissistic, but all of my work 0:43:25.960 --> 0:43:29.239 one hundred percent of the money I make professionally goes 0:43:29.239 --> 0:43:31.759 to the charities I work with, because I'd rather live. 0:43:31.880 --> 0:43:34.560 You were sort of addressing this, like live a simple life, 0:43:34.719 --> 0:43:38.719 like live very much within my means and make art 0:43:38.800 --> 0:43:39.920 and music for the love of art. 0:43:40.000 --> 0:43:43.320 Amazing. I had a couple of them. 0:43:43.200 --> 0:43:46.759 And like I had this crazy sixty acre compound up 0:43:46.800 --> 0:43:50.000 in Putnam County, and when I moved to La I 0:43:50.080 --> 0:43:55.560 moved to a castle. But arms I wasn't happy in 0:43:55.600 --> 0:43:58.000 these places. And I was just asked myself, like why 0:43:58.760 --> 0:44:01.920 am I having this sort of like Gatsbesque excess, the 0:44:02.000 --> 0:44:05.759 citizen cane style, like overcompensation if the end result is 0:44:05.800 --> 0:44:08.000 like I've tied up my resources in real estate and 0:44:08.040 --> 0:44:10.840 I'm miserable and no one's benefiting. So like now I 0:44:10.880 --> 0:44:13.080 live in a much simpler house, got a little simple 0:44:13.080 --> 0:44:16.360 apartment in Park Slope, and I can just work for 0:44:16.480 --> 0:44:19.320 the causes that I care about. Freedom, yeah, and freedom 0:44:19.400 --> 0:44:23.080 and that freedom to like make art, music, books, et cetera. 0:44:24.000 --> 0:44:28.160 And if there's money, just give the money to different 0:44:28.320 --> 0:44:28.759 very causes. 0:44:28.840 --> 0:44:31.719 That's amazing to do that, but that's rare. That's rare. 0:44:32.840 --> 0:44:37.480 One of the benefits of my weird attachment issues. Is like, 0:44:38.120 --> 0:44:39.960 I'm not married, I don't have kids, so like I 0:44:40.000 --> 0:44:44.000 have this odd autonomy, so I'm able to be relying 0:44:44.000 --> 0:44:48.439 on you, and so there's it is like that there's 0:44:48.480 --> 0:44:52.680 a luxury to that, like almost like a monastic independence 0:44:53.760 --> 0:44:54.960 more after. 0:44:54.719 --> 0:44:59.759 The break this is I can't think of any better 0:44:59.760 --> 0:45:01.319 way to ask this, and I'm sure there's a better 0:45:01.360 --> 0:45:02.960 way to ask this, but I want to ask, like, 0:45:03.000 --> 0:45:05.040 who cares for you? Where is love in your life? 0:45:05.080 --> 0:45:08.200 If you're so autonomous and you don't have the fans 0:45:08.280 --> 0:45:10.160 and the public and the press, which is a form 0:45:10.200 --> 0:45:13.719 of love, it's like an energy that simulates love. It 0:45:13.760 --> 0:45:16.239 isn't really love. But in your life, where is the 0:45:16.320 --> 0:45:19.400 love and the care in your life? Who's caring for you? Okay, 0:45:19.480 --> 0:45:23.719 well a few friends, so close friends are there for you. 0:45:24.040 --> 0:45:29.200 I have a few family members. But there's the answer 0:45:29.360 --> 0:45:33.160 that I'm uncomfortable giving because it's one of the hardest 0:45:33.200 --> 0:45:36.319 things to say in our world. Is so when we 0:45:36.360 --> 0:45:38.800 do the twelve steps. When I got to the third 0:45:38.840 --> 0:45:41.239 step and the third steps has made a decision to 0:45:41.280 --> 0:45:42.839 turn our life and our will over to the care 0:45:42.920 --> 0:45:45.800 of God as we understood God, and I really wrestled 0:45:45.840 --> 0:45:47.640 with this because I was like, I was like, the 0:45:47.680 --> 0:45:50.040 care of God is I understood God? Like I don't 0:45:50.120 --> 0:45:53.080 understand God. And that was my epiphany. I was like, oh, 0:45:53.120 --> 0:45:55.520 the God of my understanding is a God that I 0:45:55.560 --> 0:46:02.319 do not understand. And I was like, but I evidence again, 0:46:02.400 --> 0:46:05.200 not to answer promorphize, but I see evidence of divinity 0:46:05.880 --> 0:46:12.319 in kindness, in forgiveness, in the gentleness of puppies. 0:46:11.920 --> 0:46:15.560 In the redacted parts of the molor reports in our 0:46:15.880 --> 0:46:18.520 immune systems, like I see in my eyes. 0:46:18.640 --> 0:46:21.920 This is all evidence of the divine, and so in 0:46:22.040 --> 0:46:25.520 nature and all these things. And so my honest answer, 0:46:25.560 --> 0:46:29.960 that's an uncomfortable, secular twenty first century answer, is divine 0:46:30.200 --> 0:46:31.440 love is. 0:46:31.400 --> 0:46:35.799 What I search your oxygen. That's but also and it's 0:46:35.800 --> 0:46:37.640 a component of it other people in yours. And if 0:46:37.640 --> 0:46:40.359 I die and someone says, oh, guess what, there's no God. 0:46:40.520 --> 0:46:43.919 We live in this empty existential cipher void, like you're 0:46:43.960 --> 0:46:46.120 just a bunch of like weird molecules that have come 0:46:46.160 --> 0:46:50.520 together arbitrarily. That's okay too, But I do somehow, in 0:46:50.560 --> 0:46:55.000 my dim I don't know naive way see evidence of 0:46:55.040 --> 0:46:58.760 the divine. And so it's always trying to move towards that. Again, 0:46:59.239 --> 0:47:03.360 not religious, denominational, no gender. It's just simply this idea 0:47:03.400 --> 0:47:07.680 of the divinity of like forgiveness and puppies and immune 0:47:07.680 --> 0:47:13.160 systems and the unredacted MOLA reports and etc. So that's 0:47:13.200 --> 0:47:16.200 a huge That's where I get a lot of comfort from. 0:47:16.280 --> 0:47:18.760 What's music in your life? Now? You continue to write? 0:47:19.000 --> 0:47:21.680 Yeah, I mean I work on music mainly for the 0:47:21.680 --> 0:47:24.359 love of music. I refuse to tour. I hate touring 0:47:24.440 --> 0:47:27.200 unless it's going to do orchestral things. I had this 0:47:27.640 --> 0:47:30.640 wonderful realization. I guess it was about eleven years ago, 0:47:31.200 --> 0:47:33.520 the first time I met David Lynch, and we've since 0:47:33.520 --> 0:47:36.600 become pretty good friends. LA has that going for it. 0:47:36.800 --> 0:47:39.279 I live around the corner from David Lynch. But when 0:47:39.360 --> 0:47:41.880 I first met him, he was being interviewed at BAFTA 0:47:42.560 --> 0:47:46.080 in London and he said something so reductive and simple, 0:47:46.160 --> 0:47:49.440 and it really struck me is he said, very simply, 0:47:49.480 --> 0:47:52.919 he said creativity is beautiful, And all of a sudden 0:47:52.960 --> 0:47:55.279 I was like, oh my god, he's right, Like, why 0:47:55.320 --> 0:47:58.960 am I compromising my creativity in the interest of like 0:47:59.040 --> 0:48:02.239 commercial game, for saking that and for worldliness? I was like, 0:48:02.600 --> 0:48:07.799 as we know, like music is that ineffable beauty, like 0:48:07.960 --> 0:48:12.040 it can communicate love and transcendent and beauty. That should 0:48:12.040 --> 0:48:14.239 be my goal, not that I'll ever reach it, not 0:48:14.360 --> 0:48:17.880 that I'll ever make beautiful, ineffable, wonderful music, but like 0:48:18.160 --> 0:48:20.200 if every day I wake up with that as the 0:48:20.239 --> 0:48:23.920 goal and not in the interest of worldliness and other people. 0:48:23.960 --> 0:48:27.440 I mean, you've written a book, You at points in 0:48:27.480 --> 0:48:29.480 your life have conquered the music business. Have you ever 0:48:29.480 --> 0:48:31.279 wanted to try other media? Have you ever wanted to 0:48:31.280 --> 0:48:31.800 make films? 0:48:32.000 --> 0:48:34.000 Yeah, I'm actually I have a weird production company. I 0:48:34.040 --> 0:48:36.000 feel like I use the word weird too much, but 0:48:36.040 --> 0:48:38.719 I have a production company in LA. We're working on 0:48:38.760 --> 0:48:42.320 some documentaries. You've got some scripted features, an animated feature 0:48:42.360 --> 0:48:43.440 that we're trying to develop, but. 0:48:43.480 --> 0:48:45.720 Have your hand in that too. Do you like making films? 0:48:46.719 --> 0:48:50.879 I love it as long as I have to your 0:48:50.960 --> 0:48:54.360 point the recourse of autonomy, meaning like some of the 0:48:54.400 --> 0:48:56.840 projects we're working on, like sure, it would be great 0:48:57.200 --> 0:49:00.040 if we have financing, if we get people attached to it, 0:49:00.400 --> 0:49:02.839 but we also have projects that we can do one 0:49:02.920 --> 0:49:06.120 hundred percent ourselves. And because as we know, like how 0:49:06.160 --> 0:49:10.360 much time have our friends spent waiting you know, waiting 0:49:10.360 --> 0:49:13.280 for the financing, waiting for this to be greenlit approval, 0:49:13.600 --> 0:49:16.600 and with the production company again. My goal is to 0:49:16.760 --> 0:49:19.160 never make personally, never make money from it. So if 0:49:19.200 --> 0:49:21.560 money is generated, it goes to my foundation, or it 0:49:21.560 --> 0:49:22.799 goes to causes I work with. 0:49:23.480 --> 0:49:26.880 And if you say upfront, I'm going to be involved 0:49:26.880 --> 0:49:29.239 in projects in the film business and I never want 0:49:29.280 --> 0:49:31.000 to make money with them, You're not going to have 0:49:31.000 --> 0:49:33.000 a lot of meetings in LA You're not going to 0:49:33.040 --> 0:49:35.600 get to make money from it. 0:49:35.600 --> 0:49:37.799 Like like the guy who runs my production company and 0:49:37.800 --> 0:49:40.120 my head of development and some of our partners, I 0:49:40.160 --> 0:49:45.000 want them to be fabulously wealthy. I would rather be 0:49:45.480 --> 0:49:49.520 like live in a shitty apartment in Hollywood or I 0:49:49.560 --> 0:49:52.960 don't know, in bedsty and work for causes that I 0:49:53.040 --> 0:49:53.520 care about. 0:49:53.560 --> 0:49:54.040 I just don't. 0:49:54.080 --> 0:49:56.040 I don't want to personally benefit from it. 0:49:56.960 --> 0:49:59.480 I would like to do a documentary film, and I'd 0:49:59.520 --> 0:50:01.640 like to put you together on a project. I'd like 0:50:01.680 --> 0:50:04.719 to couple you on a film project with someone equally 0:50:05.360 --> 0:50:08.400 maniacally creative and independent as you. I'd like to do 0:50:08.440 --> 0:50:10.319 a film where we get you in a in a 0:50:10.360 --> 0:50:13.040 studio and you're gonna do like a little project with Coppola. 0:50:13.600 --> 0:50:16.480 Two people who don't want to collaborate with other people really, 0:50:16.640 --> 0:50:19.160 and you force them to do. They agree to collaborate 0:50:19.200 --> 0:50:21.279 for this one time and see what the result would be. 0:50:21.320 --> 0:50:24.640 I watched that. Yeah, I want to produce that. And 0:50:24.680 --> 0:50:26.360 by the way, you don't have to make any money. 0:50:26.400 --> 0:50:30.600 My kids are expensive. I'm keeping all the money. I 0:50:30.640 --> 0:50:31.120 think we're done. 0:50:31.160 --> 0:50:46.319 Then we have a deal than you. 0:50:51.480 --> 0:50:57.640 Moby composer, musician, recovering addict and proud ex celebrity. Didn't 0:50:57.640 --> 0:51:08.759 you think he's cool with that? Okay? Moby's new book 0:51:08.880 --> 0:51:12.360 is called Then It Fell Apart. It's very funny and 0:51:12.560 --> 0:51:16.880 very sad. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought 0:51:16.880 --> 0:51:41.560 to you by iHeart Radio.