WEBVTT - Moby on Living Large and Falling Hard 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:03.360 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing, 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:12.800 O Lot, Travel so hard, Oh love so hid, don't 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:21.120 know that God in You're Cool. Friends put on Mobi's 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:25.040 play at parties in two thousands, it was on the radio. 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:30.960 Popularity snowballed into ubiquity. In two thousand one, Play was 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:35.560 in malls and Volkswagen ads. It became the biggest selling 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:48.440 electronica album of all time. Two fans. Outside the electronic 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:52.640 music world, Moby seemed like an overnight success, but he 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:56.680 was thirty three in and had been recording since the eighties. 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:01.800 Play was actually his fifth studio album. It never occurred 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:04.800 to him it would break even, let alone break records. 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:09.959 The self described loner and nerd succumbed to the worst 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:14.679 sort of rock star excess. As his fans filled stadiums 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.440 and models showed up in his dressing room. Moby was 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:22.240 euphoric but spinning out of control. It's a story he 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:26.120 shares in his new book, Then It Fell Apart. I 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:29.640 spoke to Moby last month. In the early chapters of 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.160 his book. Moby is coming to terms with the album 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:37.120 going platinum. What do you think happened inside the music? 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.000 In that album that was different. Did something click? Did 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.120 something changed all of a sudden, You're a monolith in 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.360 the music business. Yeah, And to contextualize it, before that 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.920 album Play came out, my career had essentially ended. I'd 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:52.360 lost my record deal. It's very dark time. My mom 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:57.840 had died, I was I was living on Mott Street, um, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:03.840 and I recorded Play where in my drum on Mott Street, 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:06.840 And well, actually I slept in the closet, and I 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:08.799 had my my bedroom had been turned into an ad 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:11.560 hoc recording studio, and and I thought, so I had 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.760 made Play, my last album had failed completely, and I'd 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.600 lost my record deal. I was signed to Elektra, and 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:21.360 then I was signed in the UK to a label 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.760 called Mute, and they hadn't dropped me. But to put 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.520 it in perspective, they'd never dropped anyone. That was their 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:30.640 claim to fame is they'd never dropped an artist like Yeah, 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:32.560 So I was like, I couldn't really take too much 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:34.519 comfort in the fact that I hadn't lost my deal 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.680 with Mute when they had never ever dropped an artists. Well, 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.280 Richard Branson started a label called V two, and someone 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.840 working at V two somehow heard one of the songs 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.919 on Play. I still don't know how, and he offered 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:53.560 me a deal. But yeah, I mean before it was released, 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.960 I thought, Okay, I'm an alcoholic bald has been I'm 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:04.560 going to release this one last closet. Living in my closet. Well, 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.919 the building was from the mid nineteenth century on Mont Street, 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.760 and it had been a slaughter house, so the space 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:13.440 I was living in this is weird as an animal 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.560 rights vegan. The floor is all sloped to central drains 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:19.519 because when it had been a slaughter house they would 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:21.360 just hose the floors out and all the awful would 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:23.560 just get washed out in the drains. So I'm in 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.959 that environment thinking I'm going to move back to Connecticut. 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:29.440 I'm gonna get a job teaching community college, like probably 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.160 be a philosophy professor to students who just had no 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.400 interest in paying attention to philosophy. And then this album 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:40.000 comes out and rather than failing, it kept doing better 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.680 and better. So do your question of, like, musically, why 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.480 that happened? I still to this day because a lot 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:47.920 of the vocals on play were like old African American 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.160 vocals from the mid twentieth century, And if I look at. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:55.960 There's just no precedent for a middle aged musician making 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.560 a record in his bedroom at the end of his career, 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:02.800 involving vocals from people who have been dead for a 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:06.640 few decades. Like, that's not a recipe for a hit record. 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.680 I remember at some point it's sold fifty thousand records 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:11.440 because I thought it was gonna sell nothing, and I 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:15.600 was amazed that my album has told fifty thou records 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:17.880 and then six months later it was selling a hundred 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:24.080 thousand copies a week. What did people respond to the 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:27.080 only people are listening to your music and buying your 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.680 music in a world that has choked with music. It 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:31.880 was there was so much stuff out there they can 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:34.800 listen to, and they buy ten million copies of your album? 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.960 Why do you think you know? I was recently doing 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:41.400 an interview with Larry King and he asked me that question, 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:43.760 and he sort of asked me, like, if you could 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:45.760 replicate it, would you? And I was like, oh, I tried, 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.640 like the following, like the next two I kept. I 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:51.960 was like, how do I recreate that? And I never 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.320 really could Like that one sort of weird lightning in 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.520 a bottle moment. I don't I mean, I don't want 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.239 to anthropomorphize a universe too much, but I almost feel 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:07.360 like the universe was in a sort of lighthearted, educational 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.400 way saying like, Okay, we're going to give you everything 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.120 you ever wanted times a million, and it's going to 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.520 come close to killing you and you're gonna hopefully learn 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.320 something from it. So there was like and again that 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.720 that might sound very narcissistic, like I've just anthropomorphized a 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.600 thirteen point eight billion year old universe, but it felt like, 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.600 at the end of the day, more than anything else, educational, 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:32.360 like the universe is gonna say like, okay, you live 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.120 in a time to ANTHROPOMORPHI the universe part of the 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.119 human condition. Let's go from there. Then, so the album 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.160 comes out, it's difficult for some people to say this 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.920 is his style. You've had a lot of different, you know, 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.039 kind of tones and a lot of different variety to 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.839 the sound of your music. And what was music in 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:51.839 your childhood. We went a chorus with a church with 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:56.760 a music school. It was weird. I started playing guitar. 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:58.919 I guess when those are a nine or ten because 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:01.880 one of my mom's boyfriend friends had gone to jail 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.040 and left a guitar behind. But your mother is kind 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.400 of from a privileged background Connecticut quasi, I mean, like 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:12.560 my grandfather worked on Wall Street. But then my mom 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:17.479 sort of rejected that the sixties progressed and she fully 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:21.000 embraced the hippie lifestyle. But your dad, your dad passed 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.200 away when I was too, so when you were too 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:25.120 And how long did you stay in New York? After 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:27.800 he passed away? My mom moved back to Connecticut to 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:31.360 get her undergraduate at East Khan if that is even 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:33.839 still a school, and then we went to San Francisco 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:38.000 in nine where everything sort of fell apart. And that 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.360 three so right after your dad passed away, she finished school, 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:46.120 say school, we went to San Francisco, and she sort of, 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.159 I guess, was very torn, like the counterculture was happening, 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.520 and she really desperately wanted to be a part of it, 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.240 you know, And so did you have any ideas why? 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.200 I have a feeling half of it was rejecting, like 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.440 growing up in Dary in Connecticut, being encouraged by her 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:06.200 parents to sort of be very conservative and very traditional. Um, 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.440 so it was a rejection of to an extent her family, 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.360 but also just wanting to be a part of this 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:17.960 new exciting paradigm, you know, I mean original paradigm. That's 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.880 when it's been copied since. Yeah, that was it. And 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.560 she's twenty three years old and she wanted to be 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:26.720 this free spirit artist, but she also had a three 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.280 year old child, and that's where things, a lot of 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.720 tension and trauma really came from. What did your dad 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:37.600 do for a living? He was a chemistry professor at Columbia, 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.000 but he had been in the military and he was 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.400 It's funny people don't really talk about it that much, 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:44.960 but I think he was either an assassin or a sniper. 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.080 Um because I've asked me people in my family and like, oh, 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:50.160 what did my dad do in the military, and they're like, well, 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:53.000 he did a lot of things. It's never so I 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:57.880 think because he killed himself and he was he drove 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.880 I don't know where exactly, but he got very drunk. 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:03.440 My mom had threatened to take me away from him, 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:05.520 and so he got drunk and got in his car 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:11.160 and drove a hundred miles an hour into a bridge somewhere. Now, 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.160 what would people tell you if it all to do 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:15.640 to do do any investigation or did you have some 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.160 curiosity as to what your dad was like. Did you 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:20.280 learn a little bit about him later on in life? Well, 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:26.640 it's only beyond the CIA credit. Only in adulthood did 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.040 I realize how little I knew about my father. Like, 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:33.400 for example, if I had a child with a woman 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:35.840 and she died, as the child grew up, I would 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.160 do everything in my power to make sure the child 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:40.960 knew who his mom had been. You know, we would 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:44.360 talk about it. And after my dad dies, he was 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.520 never mentioned. His mother never mentioned it to me, and 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.360 all I knew was that he had been in the 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:55.520 military and I had photos. And but again it was 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.240 only after my mother died that the rest of the 0:08:58.240 --> 0:08:59.920 people in my family sort of let me know that 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.800 father had been a professor and he had a good 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:06.120 sense of humor. And your mother had to die before 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.400 people were allowed to introduce you to your dad. Kind 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.000 of yeah, I found And it's sort of had this 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.000 quasi like almost like a check off play quality, Like 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.840 I found out after my mother had died. I found 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:19.920 out that my father had killed himself, because my whole life, 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.079 up until that point, I thought he had just died 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.800 and no one ever explained how or why. And I 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:29.520 also found out I have a half brother somewhere, which, um, 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:31.280 can I tell you a story about who my half 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.320 brother is not? I think he'll appreciate. I was in 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.640 d C in two thousand and seven with Alexandra Pelosi, 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.480 Nancy's daughter, and we were with Nancy. Nancy was the 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.480 Speaker of the House. And this is pret sobriety. So 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:47.679 I got very drunk and ended up talking to a 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.319 journalist from Politico and telling this journalist that I have 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.920 a half brother, and I jokingly said, maybe it's Carl Rove. 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.120 The journalist wrote a little political piece saying our Mobi 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.080 and Karl Rove brothers. Two weeks later, I get a 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.760 letter on White House stationary and says, dear Moby, it's 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.640 not me. For one thing, I'm seventeen years older than you, 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.199 and I have no musical ability. Have you considered James 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.600 Carville as your long lost brother because he's bald and 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.839 plays the guitar too, your pal Karl Rove? And I 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:18.040 was like, so, I know, as far as I know, 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:20.000 Karl Rove is not my half brother. You have one? 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.360 Did you ever meet? I don't have no idea who 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.920 or where he might be. You know your story, and 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:27.760 we'll get to some of the details of this in 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.480 the book. That the self destructiveness, but an impression I 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:32.360 get of you the way you live as you you 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:37.040 like to isolate, and you talk about this panic plateau 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.480 thing or whatever the terminology is, which which which kind 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.680 of hampered or impacted relationships you would have with people 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.440 as Oh, yeah, I mean I'm fifty three and I've 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:49.560 never had a serious relationship. Um and over time trouble 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.640 you it used to, but then over time I've sort 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:58.800 of made peace with it. I mean, I guess there's 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.079 almost in a way not to overstate it, but like 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:06.920 there's a there's a sort of utility to being incapable 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.960 of having real relationships, which is I get to work 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.040 on other things, you know, like I get to be 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:14.439 to spend more use of the time. Yes, I get 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:16.959 to spend more time doing activism. I get to spend 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:22.240 more time I don't know, reading, working on music, working 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:24.280 on art. I have a weird little production company in 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:26.320 l A. So I can work more on that. So 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:29.160 I had always thought that the key to happiness, at 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:31.520 least growing up, was like you find your perfect person, 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:34.559 you build a life with them, and at some point 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.480 I realize, oh, that's just not in the cards for me. 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.680 And so there's so far, so far. But at the 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:45.040 same time, I don't I don't have any longing for it, 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.800 which not that you know of not that I mean, 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.600 maybe I'll meet the you know, maybe you just it's 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:52.760 it's you don't know. Do you want to vent? Your 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:59.559 word comes from? Does it come from certain obvious childhood signals? 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:03.560 I think I assume so that because you were left 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:05.600 alone a lot as a child, was left alone, and 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:07.559 I was also raised you know, I grew up very 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.679 very poor in a very wealthy town in Daryan, Connecticut, 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:12.920 and my mom dated Hell's Angels. There was a lot 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:14.320 of when you went back to Darien and you were 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.559 how old when I was five? So were you in 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:19.880 San Francisco just a couple of years? Yeah, so your 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:23.160 mom smoking pot and the taking actresses and taking acid 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.360 and and and everybody like, you know, kind of cavorting 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:28.440 around the hate or whatever they were doing. You were 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:29.960 only there for a couple of years and then we 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:34.359 moved back to Connecticut. Long well, I lived in Connecticut 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.640 from the time I was five until the time I 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:40.280 was twenty one. You basically grew up there. Yeah, I'm 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.959 just an inbred, white trash kid from Connecticut. The San 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.000 Francisco thing was a brief period of that was just 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:49.000 brief and traumatic and traumatical. Well traumatic. There was sexual 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.240 abuse my mom, and I don't want to throw her 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:55.839 under the bus posthumously, but she wanted to hang out 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:57.520 with her friends. She was twenty three years old, so 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.320 they put me in this very low rent daycare enter 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:02.960 and I was sexually abused there. What did she do 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.560 during the day? Did she work? Not? In San Francisco, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:07.920 she was supported by her family. They were all dependent 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.840 on somebody. A lot of kids from Connecticut who in 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:15.720 nineteen sixty four had been playing lacrosse. Nothing wrong with lacrosse. 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.440 I just was never very good at it. And uh 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.880 that short hair wearing I od's, you know, going to 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:24.280 Weburn Country Club, drinking Gin and Tonics, and all of 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.360 a sudden they're living on hate Ashbury with fringe jackets 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.280 and hair down to the middle of their back, taking acid. 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:32.400 And I sort of got caught up in the middle 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.079 of that as a as a three year old. When 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.160 you got back to Connecticut and you grew up there, 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:42.720 did your mother, Uh, developed as a parent and she 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:44.720 was getting older, which did she become a better parent? 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.600 Was there a continued period of isolation and kind of 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:52.160 uh uh not not good child care for you both 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:55.160 an equal measure, like with a good support system of 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.880 my grandmother, aunts and uncles. So there was a lot 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.760 of support. But did you spend a lot of time 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.959 with your mother's parents. Yeah, um, but also a lot 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:09.600 of time alone because also we were very poor. We 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:11.520 were on food stamps and welfare and we're in dairy 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:13.480 in Connecticut, which is per capital, one of the wealthiest 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.679 places in the world, and so I had this constant 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.720 sense of shame. You know, So when I went to school, 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.960 it was pretending that I didn't live in the garage 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:27.200 apartment and that we weren't on food stamps and welfare. 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:29.000 You know, if I had the flu, I would come 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.080 back and say, oh, we went to Switzerland, because that 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.720 sounded like something that wealthy people would say. So just 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:40.600 this the sense of shame and the sense of inadequacy, 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:42.560 and not to again not to overstate it, but like 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:45.920 when you grow up with that, it's hard, even in adulthood, 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:51.400 when your circumstances change, it's hard to move past how 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.440 you were formed. When did you start to get this 0:14:54.520 --> 0:15:01.200 idea that you were right music? I think, well, my mom, 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:06.200 who was an aspiring musician pianist. I mean, I remember 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:11.320 my mom had the most odd, eclectic record collection, you know. 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:13.720 So she had Crosby Stills, Nash and Young and divor 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:18.080 Jack and Lightning Hopkins and Bob Ala Tunji and so 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.840 I just grew up with this constant soundtrack of weirdness 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:25.960 and it made sense to me. And she she dated musicians. Um, 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:31.240 my uncle was a musician. My great grandmother actually taught 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:36.040 classical composition to Arthur Fiedler. She was Arthur Feedler's mentor. 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:40.720 So I grew up in this weird, idiosyncratic musical household. 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:44.160 So I never thought as I was growing up that 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:46.400 I would have a career as a musician. I just 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:49.000 knew that I loved music and I wanted to be 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:50.920 a part of it. And I had a lot of 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:53.720 free time because I wasn't very good at sports and 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:57.680 did you do well in school? I did okay. So 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.920 my name Moby is an name that I've had since 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.160 birth because I'm related to Herman Melville. So what I 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:08.080 learned was when teachers found out that I was descended 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.400 from Herman Melville. They just would add fifteen i Q points. 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:13.520 They would assume, like, oh, he's got to be like 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:16.960 erudite because he's descended from Herman Melville. Same thing. I 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:18.960 went to college and I was a philosophy major, and 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:20.920 I was not a good student. But I realized the 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.600 moment you tell someone you're a philosophy major, they think 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.160 you're way smarter than you actually are. So like, descended 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:31.720 from Herman Melville philosophy major. Like that just added thirty 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:36.480 bonus points to my i Q totally unwarranted. Um. So 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:38.320 I had growing up, had a lot of free time, 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:42.040 had access to instruments, and was raised in this odd 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.320 creative family. So I just started writing music when I 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:48.720 was on ten or eleven UM and i'd also my 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.400 uncle had given me some hand me down photo equipment, 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.000 so I started taking pictures. And here's an odd, little 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.320 funny story. My best friend when I was nine years 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.560 old was Robert Downey Jr. And so his dad gave 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.159 us because his dad was a filmmaker, and Darien he 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:11.320 lived there. Darien has a baffling array of odd public 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.520 figures like and Coulter and Gus fan Zant and Robert 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.800 Downey Jr. And Chloe seven Ye and Stevo from Jackass 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:21.040 and the author Rick Moody from this little town of 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:24.399 fourteen thousand people, very odd people the fact, and and 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.480 Colton and Sans and went to the same high school. Yes, 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.200 so Robert and I made with his this super eight 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:33.560 camera his dad when we were not eight nine years old. 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.359 We started making little films long since disappeared. But it 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.760 was just part of the ethos of just go out 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.000 and make things with no expectation that there would be 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:47.760 a career or that you'd even make anything good. But 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.440 I just started writing and taking pictures and making little 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.760 movies and writing songs and doing all this and make 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.399 little movies. How if you were broke, uh super eight camera, 0:17:57.760 --> 0:17:59.520 you got your hands on a Super eight camera. Yeah 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.960 I'm gonna horn shot so yeah, right, like a really cheap, 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.320 shitty super and you could develop film, you know, like 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:09.119 two and a half minutes of Super eight film, and 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.719 then you edit it on your kitchen table tape. Yea 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.560 a dracula and I'm emerging from the coffin. And then 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.200 you develop it and you show it on a sheet 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.760 kitchen yeah, you're ready to get a can? What's the 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:28.080 first song you wrote? Do you remember? Do you remember? Boy? Well? 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.760 So I started playing guitar, and then I had a 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.680 very odd music teacher. He played in a heavy metal band, 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.399 but he also loved jazz fusion and classical music. So 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.480 one day we would learn Chris Razola. He would teach 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:44.280 me a van Halen song, even though I never really 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:46.120 liked van Halen that much, and then we would do 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.920 a Larry Carlton or weather Report jazz fusion thing, which 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.080 I also didn't like that much, and then do a 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:55.960 Bach cantata, which I love and I still to this 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.480 day love. And then I broke his heart because when 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:02.920 I was thirteen, I discovered punk rock, and so I 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.320 sort of cast aside, like music theory and the sort 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.720 of idiosyncratic but formal music education. I had to play 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:11.800 clash covers, and because he thought I was going to 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.479 go on to be this virtue also guitarist and the 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:19.760 iron Yeah, and the irony is by embracing punk rock 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:24.719 and non virtuosic, if that's the word, I just invented music. 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:27.680 I ended up coming back to the world of classical 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.760 music and have since started playing with orchestras. Yeah, I 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:35.439 just I just did a performance with Dudamel in the 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:36.960 l A film. Did you wouldn't know? What did you 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.520 guys play? We? Well, they was two programs. The first 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.600 program was l A Composers, and they put a piece 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:47.560 of music of mine in. There's a song that I'd 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:52.440 written for a Michael Mann movie years ago for heat Heat, 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.879 It's a very end when al Pacino and Robert de 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:59.720 Niro finally, I don't want to spoiler alert, so they 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:01.679 did at as part of the first program, and the 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:05.399 second program was all orchestral versions of my music. During 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:07.480 the rehearsal there was I don't know a hundred and 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:09.600 eighty of us on stage because we had a huge choir, 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.679 full orchestra, and I realized, like, okay, we're doing my 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:17.520 music and I'm, without question the least talented musician on 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:19.760 stage right now, Like I'm the person who like if 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:22.720 I stopped playing, no one will notice. When God moving 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.120 over the face of the waters, there's this big crescendo, 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:29.320 you know, it's like timpani and symbols, and I got 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:34.760 so annoyed because the percussion had come in early, and 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:36.080 I was like, what like, this is the l A 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:39.920 Phil How did they screw up? And I realized there 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.320 was a thunderstorm and I was like, so this song 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:44.840 is called God Moving over the face of the water. 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:47.720 Keep in mind this is in September. This is sort 0:20:47.720 --> 0:20:50.520 of good theological argument for the existence of God that 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.760 he plays percussion during classical music. Do you did this 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:56.280 recently with the l A Though, what's the first time 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:58.560 you did that? Well, the first time was actually Michael 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:04.639 Mann for yeah, I had written some classical pieces. He 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:11.159 heard them, and this was unpublished. I there were no 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.280 that I'd put them as A B sides on and 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:16.680 somehow he had heard them and I We then had 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:18.720 one of the weirdest phone calls. Do you know, Michael, 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:24.520 I'm sure, so we're friends. I used that word those leaks. 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:26.760 I don't know if in my mind he and I 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:30.720 are friends. But he's a odd, wonderful, creative man. But 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:34.080 like our first phone call was he got my number 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.520 and he called me up and he spent forty five 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:40.040 minutes telling me the story of heat and hung up 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:42.440 the phone. I didn't say one word apart from hello, 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:44.200 so I was like hello, he said, maybe this Michael 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:48.080 Man forty five minutes soliloquy, telling me in great detail 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.640 everything about heat, like the archetypes that are going on 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:53.120 for like the classical element, the moment he has done. 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.560 He just hung up and I was like, what just 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.600 I'd never spoken two like an esteemed filmed rector before, 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:02.200 And I was like, is this is how film directors 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:03.960 talk to people? Just call up and talk for four 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:06.439