Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing,
Speaker 1: O Lot, Travel so hard, Oh love so hid, don't
Speaker 1: know that God in You're Cool. Friends put on Mobi's
Speaker 1: play at parties in two thousands, it was on the radio.
Speaker 1: Popularity snowballed into ubiquity. In two thousand one, Play was
Speaker 1: in malls and Volkswagen ads. It became the biggest selling
Speaker 1: electronica album of all time. Two fans. Outside the electronic
Speaker 1: music world, Moby seemed like an overnight success, but he
Speaker 1: was thirty three in and had been recording since the eighties.
Speaker 1: Play was actually his fifth studio album. It never occurred
Speaker 1: to him it would break even, let alone break records.
Speaker 1: The self described loner and nerd succumbed to the worst
Speaker 1: sort of rock star excess. As his fans filled stadiums
Speaker 1: and models showed up in his dressing room. Moby was
Speaker 1: euphoric but spinning out of control. It's a story he
Speaker 1: shares in his new book, Then It Fell Apart. I
Speaker 1: spoke to Moby last month. In the early chapters of
Speaker 1: his book. Moby is coming to terms with the album
Speaker 1: going platinum. What do you think happened inside the music?
Speaker 1: In that album that was different. Did something click? Did
Speaker 1: something changed all of a sudden, You're a monolith in
Speaker 1: the music business. Yeah, And to contextualize it, before that
Speaker 1: album Play came out, my career had essentially ended. I'd
Speaker 1: lost my record deal. It's very dark time. My mom
Speaker 1: had died, I was I was living on Mott Street, um,
Speaker 1: and I recorded Play where in my drum on Mott Street,
Speaker 1: And well, actually I slept in the closet, and I
Speaker 1: had my my bedroom had been turned into an ad
Speaker 1: hoc recording studio, and and I thought, so I had
Speaker 1: made Play, my last album had failed completely, and I'd
Speaker 1: lost my record deal. I was signed to Elektra, and
Speaker 1: then I was signed in the UK to a label
Speaker 1: called Mute, and they hadn't dropped me. But to put
Speaker 1: it in perspective, they'd never dropped anyone. That was their
Speaker 1: claim to fame is they'd never dropped an artist like Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was like, I couldn't really take too much
Speaker 1: comfort in the fact that I hadn't lost my deal
Speaker 1: with Mute when they had never ever dropped an artists. Well,
Speaker 1: Richard Branson started a label called V two, and someone
Speaker 1: working at V two somehow heard one of the songs
Speaker 1: on Play. I still don't know how, and he offered
Speaker 1: me a deal. But yeah, I mean before it was released,
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, I'm an alcoholic bald has been I'm
Speaker 1: going to release this one last closet. Living in my closet. Well,
Speaker 1: the building was from the mid nineteenth century on Mont Street,
Speaker 1: and it had been a slaughter house, so the space
Speaker 1: I was living in this is weird as an animal
Speaker 1: rights vegan. The floor is all sloped to central drains
Speaker 1: because when it had been a slaughter house they would
Speaker 1: just hose the floors out and all the awful would
Speaker 1: just get washed out in the drains. So I'm in
Speaker 1: that environment thinking I'm going to move back to Connecticut.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get a job teaching community college, like probably
Speaker 1: be a philosophy professor to students who just had no
Speaker 1: interest in paying attention to philosophy. And then this album
Speaker 1: comes out and rather than failing, it kept doing better
Speaker 1: and better. So do your question of, like, musically, why
Speaker 1: that happened? I still to this day because a lot
Speaker 1: of the vocals on play were like old African American
Speaker 1: vocals from the mid twentieth century, And if I look at.
Speaker 1: There's just no precedent for a middle aged musician making
Speaker 1: a record in his bedroom at the end of his career,
Speaker 1: involving vocals from people who have been dead for a
Speaker 1: few decades. Like, that's not a recipe for a hit record.
Speaker 1: I remember at some point it's sold fifty thousand records
Speaker 1: because I thought it was gonna sell nothing, and I
Speaker 1: was amazed that my album has told fifty thou records
Speaker 1: and then six months later it was selling a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand copies a week. What did people respond to the
Speaker 1: only people are listening to your music and buying your
Speaker 1: music in a world that has choked with music. It
Speaker 1: was there was so much stuff out there they can
Speaker 1: listen to, and they buy ten million copies of your album?
Speaker 1: Why do you think you know? I was recently doing
Speaker 1: an interview with Larry King and he asked me that question,
Speaker 1: and he sort of asked me, like, if you could
Speaker 1: replicate it, would you? And I was like, oh, I tried,
Speaker 1: like the following, like the next two I kept. I
Speaker 1: was like, how do I recreate that? And I never
Speaker 1: really could Like that one sort of weird lightning in
Speaker 1: a bottle moment. I don't I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: to anthropomorphize a universe too much, but I almost feel
Speaker 1: like the universe was in a sort of lighthearted, educational
Speaker 1: way saying like, Okay, we're going to give you everything
Speaker 1: you ever wanted times a million, and it's going to
Speaker 1: come close to killing you and you're gonna hopefully learn
Speaker 1: something from it. So there was like and again that
Speaker 1: that might sound very narcissistic, like I've just anthropomorphized a
Speaker 1: thirteen point eight billion year old universe, but it felt like,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, more than anything else, educational,
Speaker 1: like the universe is gonna say like, okay, you live
Speaker 1: in a time to ANTHROPOMORPHI the universe part of the
Speaker 1: human condition. Let's go from there. Then, so the album
Speaker 1: comes out, it's difficult for some people to say this
Speaker 1: is his style. You've had a lot of different, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of tones and a lot of different variety to
Speaker 1: the sound of your music. And what was music in
Speaker 1: your childhood. We went a chorus with a church with
Speaker 1: a music school. It was weird. I started playing guitar.
Speaker 1: I guess when those are a nine or ten because
Speaker 1: one of my mom's boyfriend friends had gone to jail
Speaker 1: and left a guitar behind. But your mother is kind
Speaker 1: of from a privileged background Connecticut quasi, I mean, like
Speaker 1: my grandfather worked on Wall Street. But then my mom
Speaker 1: sort of rejected that the sixties progressed and she fully
Speaker 1: embraced the hippie lifestyle. But your dad, your dad passed
Speaker 1: away when I was too, so when you were too
Speaker 1: And how long did you stay in New York? After
Speaker 1: he passed away? My mom moved back to Connecticut to
Speaker 1: get her undergraduate at East Khan if that is even
Speaker 1: still a school, and then we went to San Francisco
Speaker 1: in nine where everything sort of fell apart. And that
Speaker 1: three so right after your dad passed away, she finished school,
Speaker 1: say school, we went to San Francisco, and she sort of,
Speaker 1: I guess, was very torn, like the counterculture was happening,
Speaker 1: and she really desperately wanted to be a part of it,
Speaker 1: you know, And so did you have any ideas why?
Speaker 1: I have a feeling half of it was rejecting, like
Speaker 1: growing up in Dary in Connecticut, being encouraged by her
Speaker 1: parents to sort of be very conservative and very traditional. Um,
Speaker 1: so it was a rejection of to an extent her family,
Speaker 1: but also just wanting to be a part of this
Speaker 1: new exciting paradigm, you know, I mean original paradigm. That's
Speaker 1: when it's been copied since. Yeah, that was it. And
Speaker 1: she's twenty three years old and she wanted to be
Speaker 1: this free spirit artist, but she also had a three
Speaker 1: year old child, and that's where things, a lot of
Speaker 1: tension and trauma really came from. What did your dad
Speaker 1: do for a living? He was a chemistry professor at Columbia,
Speaker 1: but he had been in the military and he was
Speaker 1: It's funny people don't really talk about it that much,
Speaker 1: but I think he was either an assassin or a sniper.
Speaker 1: Um because I've asked me people in my family and like, oh,
Speaker 1: what did my dad do in the military, and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: he did a lot of things. It's never so I
Speaker 1: think because he killed himself and he was he drove
Speaker 1: I don't know where exactly, but he got very drunk.
Speaker 1: My mom had threatened to take me away from him,
Speaker 1: and so he got drunk and got in his car
Speaker 1: and drove a hundred miles an hour into a bridge somewhere. Now,
Speaker 1: what would people tell you if it all to do
Speaker 1: to do do any investigation or did you have some
Speaker 1: curiosity as to what your dad was like. Did you
Speaker 1: learn a little bit about him later on in life? Well,
Speaker 1: it's only beyond the CIA credit. Only in adulthood did
Speaker 1: I realize how little I knew about my father. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, if I had a child with a woman
Speaker 1: and she died, as the child grew up, I would
Speaker 1: do everything in my power to make sure the child
Speaker 1: knew who his mom had been. You know, we would
Speaker 1: talk about it. And after my dad dies, he was
Speaker 1: never mentioned. His mother never mentioned it to me, and
Speaker 1: all I knew was that he had been in the
Speaker 1: military and I had photos. And but again it was
Speaker 1: only after my mother died that the rest of the
Speaker 1: people in my family sort of let me know that
Speaker 1: father had been a professor and he had a good
Speaker 1: sense of humor. And your mother had to die before
Speaker 1: people were allowed to introduce you to your dad. Kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, I found And it's sort of had this
Speaker 1: quasi like almost like a check off play quality, Like
Speaker 1: I found out after my mother had died. I found
Speaker 1: out that my father had killed himself, because my whole life,
Speaker 1: up until that point, I thought he had just died
Speaker 1: and no one ever explained how or why. And I
Speaker 1: also found out I have a half brother somewhere, which, um,
Speaker 1: can I tell you a story about who my half
Speaker 1: brother is not? I think he'll appreciate. I was in
Speaker 1: d C in two thousand and seven with Alexandra Pelosi,
Speaker 1: Nancy's daughter, and we were with Nancy. Nancy was the
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House. And this is pret sobriety. So
Speaker 1: I got very drunk and ended up talking to a
Speaker 1: journalist from Politico and telling this journalist that I have
Speaker 1: a half brother, and I jokingly said, maybe it's Carl Rove.
Speaker 1: The journalist wrote a little political piece saying our Mobi
Speaker 1: and Karl Rove brothers. Two weeks later, I get a
Speaker 1: letter on White House stationary and says, dear Moby, it's
Speaker 1: not me. For one thing, I'm seventeen years older than you,
Speaker 1: and I have no musical ability. Have you considered James
Speaker 1: Carville as your long lost brother because he's bald and
Speaker 1: plays the guitar too, your pal Karl Rove? And I
Speaker 1: was like, so, I know, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: Karl Rove is not my half brother. You have one?
Speaker 1: Did you ever meet? I don't have no idea who
Speaker 1: or where he might be. You know your story, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to some of the details of this in
Speaker 1: the book. That the self destructiveness, but an impression I
Speaker 1: get of you the way you live as you you
Speaker 1: like to isolate, and you talk about this panic plateau
Speaker 1: thing or whatever the terminology is, which which which kind
Speaker 1: of hampered or impacted relationships you would have with people
Speaker 1: as Oh, yeah, I mean I'm fifty three and I've
Speaker 1: never had a serious relationship. Um and over time trouble
Speaker 1: you it used to, but then over time I've sort
Speaker 1: of made peace with it. I mean, I guess there's
Speaker 1: almost in a way not to overstate it, but like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a sort of utility to being incapable
Speaker 1: of having real relationships, which is I get to work
Speaker 1: on other things, you know, like I get to be
Speaker 1: to spend more use of the time. Yes, I get
Speaker 1: to spend more time doing activism. I get to spend
Speaker 1: more time I don't know, reading, working on music, working
Speaker 1: on art. I have a weird little production company in
Speaker 1: l A. So I can work more on that. So
Speaker 1: I had always thought that the key to happiness, at
Speaker 1: least growing up, was like you find your perfect person,
Speaker 1: you build a life with them, and at some point
Speaker 1: I realize, oh, that's just not in the cards for me.
Speaker 1: And so there's so far, so far. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I don't I don't have any longing for it,
Speaker 1: which not that you know of not that I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll meet the you know, maybe you just it's
Speaker 1: it's you don't know. Do you want to vent? Your
Speaker 1: word comes from? Does it come from certain obvious childhood signals?
Speaker 1: I think I assume so that because you were left
Speaker 1: alone a lot as a child, was left alone, and
Speaker 1: I was also raised you know, I grew up very
Speaker 1: very poor in a very wealthy town in Daryan, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and my mom dated Hell's Angels. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of when you went back to Darien and you were
Speaker 1: how old when I was five? So were you in
Speaker 1: San Francisco just a couple of years? Yeah, so your
Speaker 1: mom smoking pot and the taking actresses and taking acid
Speaker 1: and and and everybody like, you know, kind of cavorting
Speaker 1: around the hate or whatever they were doing. You were
Speaker 1: only there for a couple of years and then we
Speaker 1: moved back to Connecticut. Long well, I lived in Connecticut
Speaker 1: from the time I was five until the time I
Speaker 1: was twenty one. You basically grew up there. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just an inbred, white trash kid from Connecticut. The San
Speaker 1: Francisco thing was a brief period of that was just
Speaker 1: brief and traumatic and traumatical. Well traumatic. There was sexual
Speaker 1: abuse my mom, and I don't want to throw her
Speaker 1: under the bus posthumously, but she wanted to hang out
Speaker 1: with her friends. She was twenty three years old, so
Speaker 1: they put me in this very low rent daycare enter
Speaker 1: and I was sexually abused there. What did she do
Speaker 1: during the day? Did she work? Not? In San Francisco,
Speaker 1: she was supported by her family. They were all dependent
Speaker 1: on somebody. A lot of kids from Connecticut who in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four had been playing lacrosse. Nothing wrong with lacrosse.
Speaker 1: I just was never very good at it. And uh
Speaker 1: that short hair wearing I od's, you know, going to
Speaker 1: Weburn Country Club, drinking Gin and Tonics, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're living on hate Ashbury with fringe jackets
Speaker 1: and hair down to the middle of their back, taking acid.
Speaker 1: And I sort of got caught up in the middle
Speaker 1: of that as a as a three year old. When
Speaker 1: you got back to Connecticut and you grew up there,
Speaker 1: did your mother, Uh, developed as a parent and she
Speaker 1: was getting older, which did she become a better parent?
Speaker 1: Was there a continued period of isolation and kind of
Speaker 1: uh uh not not good child care for you both
Speaker 1: an equal measure, like with a good support system of
Speaker 1: my grandmother, aunts and uncles. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of support. But did you spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: with your mother's parents. Yeah, um, but also a lot
Speaker 1: of time alone because also we were very poor. We
Speaker 1: were on food stamps and welfare and we're in dairy
Speaker 1: in Connecticut, which is per capital, one of the wealthiest
Speaker 1: places in the world, and so I had this constant
Speaker 1: sense of shame. You know, So when I went to school,
Speaker 1: it was pretending that I didn't live in the garage
Speaker 1: apartment and that we weren't on food stamps and welfare.
Speaker 1: You know, if I had the flu, I would come
Speaker 1: back and say, oh, we went to Switzerland, because that
Speaker 1: sounded like something that wealthy people would say. So just
Speaker 1: this the sense of shame and the sense of inadequacy,
Speaker 1: and not to again not to overstate it, but like
Speaker 1: when you grow up with that, it's hard, even in adulthood,
Speaker 1: when your circumstances change, it's hard to move past how
Speaker 1: you were formed. When did you start to get this
Speaker 1: idea that you were right music? I think, well, my mom,
Speaker 1: who was an aspiring musician pianist. I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: my mom had the most odd, eclectic record collection, you know.
Speaker 1: So she had Crosby Stills, Nash and Young and divor
Speaker 1: Jack and Lightning Hopkins and Bob Ala Tunji and so
Speaker 1: I just grew up with this constant soundtrack of weirdness
Speaker 1: and it made sense to me. And she she dated musicians. Um,
Speaker 1: my uncle was a musician. My great grandmother actually taught
Speaker 1: classical composition to Arthur Fiedler. She was Arthur Feedler's mentor.
Speaker 1: So I grew up in this weird, idiosyncratic musical household.
Speaker 1: So I never thought as I was growing up that
Speaker 1: I would have a career as a musician. I just
Speaker 1: knew that I loved music and I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a part of it. And I had a lot of
Speaker 1: free time because I wasn't very good at sports and
Speaker 1: did you do well in school? I did okay. So
Speaker 1: my name Moby is an name that I've had since
Speaker 1: birth because I'm related to Herman Melville. So what I
Speaker 1: learned was when teachers found out that I was descended
Speaker 1: from Herman Melville. They just would add fifteen i Q points.
Speaker 1: They would assume, like, oh, he's got to be like
Speaker 1: erudite because he's descended from Herman Melville. Same thing. I
Speaker 1: went to college and I was a philosophy major, and
Speaker 1: I was not a good student. But I realized the
Speaker 1: moment you tell someone you're a philosophy major, they think
Speaker 1: you're way smarter than you actually are. So like, descended
Speaker 1: from Herman Melville philosophy major. Like that just added thirty
Speaker 1: bonus points to my i Q totally unwarranted. Um. So
Speaker 1: I had growing up, had a lot of free time,
Speaker 1: had access to instruments, and was raised in this odd
Speaker 1: creative family. So I just started writing music when I
Speaker 1: was on ten or eleven UM and i'd also my
Speaker 1: uncle had given me some hand me down photo equipment,
Speaker 1: so I started taking pictures. And here's an odd, little
Speaker 1: funny story. My best friend when I was nine years
Speaker 1: old was Robert Downey Jr. And so his dad gave
Speaker 1: us because his dad was a filmmaker, and Darien he
Speaker 1: lived there. Darien has a baffling array of odd public
Speaker 1: figures like and Coulter and Gus fan Zant and Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Jr. And Chloe seven Ye and Stevo from Jackass
Speaker 1: and the author Rick Moody from this little town of
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand people, very odd people the fact, and and
Speaker 1: Colton and Sans and went to the same high school. Yes,
Speaker 1: so Robert and I made with his this super eight
Speaker 1: camera his dad when we were not eight nine years old.
Speaker 1: We started making little films long since disappeared. But it
Speaker 1: was just part of the ethos of just go out
Speaker 1: and make things with no expectation that there would be
Speaker 1: a career or that you'd even make anything good. But
Speaker 1: I just started writing and taking pictures and making little
Speaker 1: movies and writing songs and doing all this and make
Speaker 1: little movies. How if you were broke, uh super eight camera,
Speaker 1: you got your hands on a Super eight camera. Yeah
Speaker 1: I'm gonna horn shot so yeah, right, like a really cheap,
Speaker 1: shitty super and you could develop film, you know, like
Speaker 1: two and a half minutes of Super eight film, and
Speaker 1: then you edit it on your kitchen table tape. Yea
Speaker 1: a dracula and I'm emerging from the coffin. And then
Speaker 1: you develop it and you show it on a sheet
Speaker 1: kitchen yeah, you're ready to get a can? What's the
Speaker 1: first song you wrote? Do you remember? Do you remember? Boy? Well?
Speaker 1: So I started playing guitar, and then I had a
Speaker 1: very odd music teacher. He played in a heavy metal band,
Speaker 1: but he also loved jazz fusion and classical music. So
Speaker 1: one day we would learn Chris Razola. He would teach
Speaker 1: me a van Halen song, even though I never really
Speaker 1: liked van Halen that much, and then we would do
Speaker 1: a Larry Carlton or weather Report jazz fusion thing, which
Speaker 1: I also didn't like that much, and then do a
Speaker 1: Bach cantata, which I love and I still to this
Speaker 1: day love. And then I broke his heart because when
Speaker 1: I was thirteen, I discovered punk rock, and so I
Speaker 1: sort of cast aside, like music theory and the sort
Speaker 1: of idiosyncratic but formal music education. I had to play
Speaker 1: clash covers, and because he thought I was going to
Speaker 1: go on to be this virtue also guitarist and the
Speaker 1: iron Yeah, and the irony is by embracing punk rock
Speaker 1: and non virtuosic, if that's the word, I just invented music.
Speaker 1: I ended up coming back to the world of classical
Speaker 1: music and have since started playing with orchestras. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I just did a performance with Dudamel in the
Speaker 1: l A film. Did you wouldn't know? What did you
Speaker 1: guys play? We? Well, they was two programs. The first
Speaker 1: program was l A Composers, and they put a piece
Speaker 1: of music of mine in. There's a song that I'd
Speaker 1: written for a Michael Mann movie years ago for heat Heat,
Speaker 1: It's a very end when al Pacino and Robert de
Speaker 1: Niro finally, I don't want to spoiler alert, so they
Speaker 1: did at as part of the first program, and the
Speaker 1: second program was all orchestral versions of my music. During
Speaker 1: the rehearsal there was I don't know a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty of us on stage because we had a huge choir,
Speaker 1: full orchestra, and I realized, like, okay, we're doing my
Speaker 1: music and I'm, without question the least talented musician on
Speaker 1: stage right now, Like I'm the person who like if
Speaker 1: I stopped playing, no one will notice. When God moving
Speaker 1: over the face of the waters, there's this big crescendo,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like timpani and symbols, and I got
Speaker 1: so annoyed because the percussion had come in early, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what like, this is the l A
Speaker 1: Phil How did they screw up? And I realized there
Speaker 1: was a thunderstorm and I was like, so this song
Speaker 1: is called God Moving over the face of the water.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind this is in September. This is sort
Speaker 1: of good theological argument for the existence of God that
Speaker 1: he plays percussion during classical music. Do you did this
Speaker 1: recently with the l A Though, what's the first time
Speaker 1: you did that? Well, the first time was actually Michael
Speaker 1: Mann for yeah, I had written some classical pieces. He
Speaker 1: heard them, and this was unpublished. I there were no
Speaker 1: that I'd put them as A B sides on and
Speaker 1: somehow he had heard them and I We then had
Speaker 1: one of the weirdest phone calls. Do you know, Michael,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, so we're friends. I used that word those leaks.
Speaker 1: I don't know if in my mind he and I
Speaker 1: are friends. But he's a odd, wonderful, creative man. But
Speaker 1: like our first phone call was he got my number
Speaker 1: and he called me up and he spent forty five
Speaker 1: minutes telling me the story of heat and hung up
Speaker 1: the phone. I didn't say one word apart from hello,
Speaker 1: so I was like hello, he said, maybe this Michael
Speaker 1: Man forty five minutes soliloquy, telling me in great detail
Speaker 1: everything about heat, like the archetypes that are going on
Speaker 1: for like the classical element, the moment he has done.
Speaker 1: He just hung up and I was like, what just
Speaker 1: I'd never spoken two like an esteemed filmed rector before,
Speaker 1: And I was like, is this is how film directors
Speaker 1: talk to people? Just call up and talk for four
Speaker 1: the teve minutes and hang up the phone. That was
Speaker 1: the first time you had provided score for a film? Well,
Speaker 1: I went to Sunny Purchase briefly, um and I had
Speaker 1: some friends in the experimental film program there, and so
Speaker 1: my friend Paul made an experimental movie called Me I
Speaker 1: the Onion in nineteen So technically that would have been
Speaker 1: my first foray in the film composing Beyond me I
Speaker 1: the Onion, Yeah, I made it. Michael Mann was the first.
Speaker 1: Did it lead to how many? How many other films
Speaker 1: have you contributed music to? I also I have a
Speaker 1: weird website called moby gratis dot com and it gives
Speaker 1: free music to independent filmmakers, nonprofits, film students. So if
Speaker 1: we count that, ten thousand films, but those are I'm
Speaker 1: like three minutes short films where people hired hired. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know hundreds thousands. I mean like not not accessing
Speaker 1: your music you published, they hired you to do score
Speaker 1: four oh, because there's the licensing music, licensing music, and
Speaker 1: that's like it's the greatest thing in the world because
Speaker 1: all you have to do is say yes, you don't
Speaker 1: there's no work involved apart from that actually writing music.
Speaker 1: So when I moved to l A after I got
Speaker 1: sober the first time, this most like ten years ago,
Speaker 1: I got sober, and I move to twice um yeah,
Speaker 1: once followed by a glorious thirteen year long relapse, and
Speaker 1: then again in two thousand and eight. And so then
Speaker 1: I moved to l A. And I thought, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: middle aged, I'm sober, I'm in Los Angeles. I need
Speaker 1: to fully commit myself to film composing. And then I
Speaker 1: realized I really don't like film composing, Like it's what
Speaker 1: about it, don't you like? Uh, well, I can like
Speaker 1: when I work on my own music, it's just me
Speaker 1: in the studio. There's no music supervisor, there's no director,
Speaker 1: there's no producer. I can kind of I have some
Speaker 1: complete self sufficiency. I don't have to respond to other
Speaker 1: people's comments, and as an only child who doesn't do
Speaker 1: well with people, that's nice. And my friends were great
Speaker 1: film composers. Part of their skill set is knowing how
Speaker 1: to deal with twenty different executives at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I just it was too tremending skill to have
Speaker 1: and a lot of anacs. This is God moving over
Speaker 1: the face of the waters. The piece MOBI wrote for
Speaker 1: Heat after a lot of input from executives at Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers and director Michael Mann. Stephen Daldry is another great
Speaker 1: film director with strong opinions about how everyone should do
Speaker 1: their jobs. I find it really crazy when it is
Speaker 1: coming self prepared because they've done some journey that they're
Speaker 1: getting it's commonly my character and you get it's not
Speaker 1: your character, and we're gonna make it up now interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be for that. It's ours. Well, my character
Speaker 1: wouldn't do that. Well, let's change the character. Then. The
Speaker 1: rest of my conversation with Stephen Daldry can be found
Speaker 1: in our archive. And here's the thing, dot org more
Speaker 1: Moby in a minute. This is Alec Baldwin and you
Speaker 1: were listening to here's the thing. M Moby never would
Speaker 1: have ended up so low if he hadn't been so
Speaker 1: desperate to be lifted up. He craved the affirmation of fame.
Speaker 1: I loved it, and I just wanted more. This guy
Speaker 1: that was this isolated guy that was left alone. You
Speaker 1: can't get enough of that. Yeah, I mean, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I was being invited to fancy parties, meeting
Speaker 1: heads of state, being flown around the world on private plane.
Speaker 1: I mean I still have them. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: suddenly like people are competing about who gets to dress
Speaker 1: you for the Red carpet, and you know it's like
Speaker 1: for Sacchi and Calvin Klein are like, oh well, let
Speaker 1: us send you free tuxedos. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: before this record, I was buying closed at Salvation Army
Speaker 1: on the Corner of Life. I had in printed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it was great. And then of course it wasn't great.
Speaker 1: You know, like my narcissism got out of control of
Speaker 1: my entitlement because I felt at the time, like two thousand,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, two thousand two, I felt that
Speaker 1: all I needed to be happy was constant love and
Speaker 1: attention from every person on the planet. Um to make
Speaker 1: ten million dollars a year for the rest of my
Speaker 1: life and to make sure that I could be as
Speaker 1: promiscuous as possible, do as many drugs as possible, and
Speaker 1: drink as much as possible without consequences. So obviously, in
Speaker 1: hindsight I recognize how certain unrealistic it is, but at
Speaker 1: the time I just wanted, like every night to be
Speaker 1: like this indulgent festival of narcissism. And can you tell
Speaker 1: me some of these stories that were in the book? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a weird one. We took helicopters to Staaten
Speaker 1: Island and had this weird dinner with the guy who
Speaker 1: apparently invented the cabbage patch doll and then went on
Speaker 1: to produce Stephen Sigal movies. And then we left and
Speaker 1: I went to a party on Park Avenue, very drunk.
Speaker 1: We show up and I met some friends and they
Speaker 1: were talking about this game that they played in college
Speaker 1: called knob touch. And what knob touches? You take your
Speaker 1: flaccid penis out of your pants and you brush up
Speaker 1: against people and you win by the number of people
Speaker 1: you can brush up against. And I've never done this,
Speaker 1: and my date, Miss new Hampshire, challenged me to play
Speaker 1: knob touch. And there's only one human being on the planet.
Speaker 1: I have brushed my flaccid penis against that man is
Speaker 1: currently the president of the United States. No, yes, where
Speaker 1: was this being hell some bar in part like one
Speaker 1: of those big restaurants on Park Avenue and like it
Speaker 1: and this isn't a private party. I mean it was
Speaker 1: like a one of those New York style parties where
Speaker 1: maybe it was like Ralph Lauren was launching a new
Speaker 1: paint color or something. You know, those those things that
Speaker 1: you just go to and you're not like, I don't
Speaker 1: know why, I have a couple of drinks. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's very people and I brushed my flaccid the head
Speaker 1: of your penis against Donald Trump brush. He didn't know
Speaker 1: it was dark. And what's funny is the publisher of
Speaker 1: the book said, like, in this climate, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you should include that. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think Donald Trump being able to say that I
Speaker 1: met him? Yeah. Um, so you're there and and you're
Speaker 1: this big superstar. When did you begin to think we
Speaker 1: really should get back into the studio and make another album.
Speaker 1: So then, like the tour for Play was supposed to
Speaker 1: be three and a half weeks long, and it ended
Speaker 1: up being twenty six months long. But the whole time
Speaker 1: because I've always compulsively written music. I have now probably
Speaker 1: like eight or nine thousand pieces of unreleased pieces of music.
Speaker 1: So even at the bottom of my like alcoholism, drug addiction, narcissism, entitlement,
Speaker 1: self destruction, I was kept writing music. So the problem, yeah,
Speaker 1: the problem with albums was to look at like a
Speaker 1: thousand songs and figure out how do you get fifteen
Speaker 1: to put on an album. It doesn't mean they're good.
Speaker 1: And when I say eight thousand pieces of unreleased music,
Speaker 1: I'm not speaking to the quality of them, like a
Speaker 1: lot of its garbage. But I just it's this weird
Speaker 1: almost like you know there's that word lag area. I
Speaker 1: have that of music where I just keep making it
Speaker 1: without any concern for whether it's good or bad. I
Speaker 1: just keep writing and so it's like a broken pipe. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like you turn on the faucet and just leave
Speaker 1: it on. So the next album was called eighteen UM,
Speaker 1: and I I thought, like, okay, this is like Play
Speaker 1: was big. I want this to be bigger, and so
Speaker 1: like I think the promo tour for the next album
Speaker 1: was five months long, like five months of just like
Speaker 1: you've done it as well, like traveling around the world,
Speaker 1: sitting in hotel rooms, going to every country, every TV show, everything,
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to be more famous, have more money,
Speaker 1: sleep with more people, drink more, do more drugs too,
Speaker 1: or more just for the guy that was isolated. Are
Speaker 1: you sitting there saying this is more like it now?
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to take their clothes off and jump in
Speaker 1: bed with me. And it seems like fame was going
Speaker 1: And this is when I say it out loud, it
Speaker 1: just sounds so absurd, I honestly, and I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: admitted this, but deep down, what I believed was that
Speaker 1: fame was going to fix everything, like every all the
Speaker 1: trauma from child, the sense the senses of all that fear,
Speaker 1: you know, the self centered fear, self sided, narcissistic fear
Speaker 1: is the root of all of our problems. And living
Speaker 1: in a constant state, living in a constant state of agitation,
Speaker 1: worrying about am I going to get this is gonna
Speaker 1: be taken away from me? Which defines my life. They
Speaker 1: say in a twelve step literature, they say that um
Speaker 1: our greatest fear is to lose something we already have
Speaker 1: or not get something that we want. I just thought, oh,
Speaker 1: fame will fix it, as long as I can keep
Speaker 1: getting invited to great parties and drinking and doing drugs,
Speaker 1: and as long as I get good reviews. But then
Speaker 1: the universe, with its sense of humor, took away all
Speaker 1: the things that I know. They have a sense why.
Speaker 1: I think because on an on a sort of artistic level,
Speaker 1: there came a time, and I'm so ashamed to admit this,
Speaker 1: and around two thousand to two thousand three, I wanted
Speaker 1: to make great music, but I wanted music to be
Speaker 1: a means to an end where I wanted it to
Speaker 1: like sustain my career. So before my life had just
Speaker 1: been spent. Yeah, And I never thought I don't want
Speaker 1: to go backwards. Yeah, I was like and before that,
Speaker 1: all I wanted to do was make music that I loved,
Speaker 1: you know, that music that somehow was like emotion, just beautiful, expressive.
Speaker 1: Two thousand to two thousand three, years after the release
Speaker 1: of Play, I still wanted it to be beautiful, but
Speaker 1: first and foremost commercially Volume, it was a little less
Speaker 1: beautiful and it sold more copies. That was okay with me,
Speaker 1: and I started thinking Okay, Well, if I produced this
Speaker 1: type of song, it'll get on the radio. And if
Speaker 1: I produce this, it'll sell more. And like the paradox,
Speaker 1: the wonderful in hindsight, the wonderful paradox is the more
Speaker 1: of an effort I made to be famous, the less
Speaker 1: famous I became. You know, you were very open with
Speaker 1: the press. You courted the press, You would speak to anybody.
Speaker 1: You know. For me, the problem has always been the
Speaker 1: you know, the press is never it's it's a sad
Speaker 1: It does sometimes make me sad. I get I get
Speaker 1: over it, and then every now and then it comes
Speaker 1: up in black jacks me again out of nowhere, like
Speaker 1: it's in an alley way. I get mugged by it again,
Speaker 1: which is they're never going to interpret who you really
Speaker 1: are to the public. Never. They don't have the ability.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's so painful that this understanding that goes
Speaker 1: hand in hand with it, especially because I when I
Speaker 1: don't know if you had this experience, but when I
Speaker 1: started getting press attention, I loved it. In the beginning
Speaker 1: they were so nice, and the reviews were gentle, and
Speaker 1: then the reviews were great, and then you have this
Speaker 1: sweet spot where you have like fame and you're lauded
Speaker 1: in the press. And then it turned. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the reviews got bad, the articles got bad,
Speaker 1: and I felt so betrayed. I was like, why why
Speaker 1: can't you guys just be nice? But then time passes
Speaker 1: and I'm like, in a way, like God, bless them
Speaker 1: for turning, because I've since then like when when you're rejected,
Speaker 1: when the press rejects you, you then, at least for me,
Speaker 1: I had to sort of look like, Okay, well who
Speaker 1: am I without that, you know, and where does my
Speaker 1: worth and sense of self come from? And like realizing, oh,
Speaker 1: if it comes from the opinions of people I've never met,
Speaker 1: there's something really unstable and unhealthy there, you know. I
Speaker 1: had this epiphany recently. I was in l a middle
Speaker 1: of February, hiking and Griffiths Park and it was one
Speaker 1: of those beautiful days, like the sun is shining, coyotes
Speaker 1: are running around, hummingbirds are flying by, and I suddenly
Speaker 1: thought like, Okay, if my last album had sold ten
Speaker 1: million copies, and if every journalist on the planet loved
Speaker 1: me and wrote great things about me, and if I
Speaker 1: was dating the most beautiful woman on the planet. How
Speaker 1: would this moment be better? And I was like, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't like you know, good reviews, good press, all this
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't And I know I sound like a crazy
Speaker 1: New Age hippy, but like it wouldn't affect like that
Speaker 1: moment of like like standing in the sun wearing a
Speaker 1: T shirt, smelling sage and lavender, watching the hummingbirds fly by.
Speaker 1: I was like the universe in that moment was so
Speaker 1: benign and indifferent to anything that I cared about, and
Speaker 1: there was something there's sort of like a transcendent liberation,
Speaker 1: almost like emerson Ian style liberation in that that moment.
Speaker 1: I'll that feeling at this point, I just turned sixty one,
Speaker 1: and I'll take that feeling wherever I can get it
Speaker 1: now and and and at my age, I have to
Speaker 1: accept that my creative energies may or may not come
Speaker 1: to the four here, and if they don't, I have
Speaker 1: to find something else to do to get off creatively,
Speaker 1: which is what I do. I completely segregate my creative
Speaker 1: from my commercial in a way that I never thought
Speaker 1: it was possible. And and there's one because you reference
Speaker 1: the twelve and twelve earlier. Um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's a twelve Steps is part of your life? Okay,
Speaker 1: thirty four years sober, so it's I mean. And again
Speaker 1: I feel like such a middle age cliche saying this,
Speaker 1: but like the Twelve Steps really, of all the like
Speaker 1: therapeutic things I've been through, the Twelve Steps really saved me.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I learned, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: was like the role of fear and trying to sort
Speaker 1: of like deconstruct fear and learn from it. But the
Speaker 1: other thing that when I did the Twelve Steps that
Speaker 1: I really loved was all of my judgment up until
Speaker 1: that point was sort of based on the misperception of
Speaker 1: omniscience or fake omniscience. Like when I had an album
Speaker 1: that failed, I was furious because I knew that it
Speaker 1: should have succeeded, because if it has succeeded, it would
Speaker 1: have been better for me. And then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden I realized, like again, in a thirteen point eight
Speaker 1: billion year old universe, I don't have omniscience. I don't
Speaker 1: know causality. If I want something to work out and
Speaker 1: it doesn't work out in a way, I'm like, who
Speaker 1: am I to judge? And in politics as well, because
Speaker 1: I got really involved in politics for a while, it
Speaker 1: was like the vast majority of people on the planet,
Speaker 1: their goal is to keep the lights on tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're like they want a job, they want to
Speaker 1: keep their and I have to be like, okay, that's
Speaker 1: It's like with the press as well. Afe to remind myself,
Speaker 1: like most of the people I know were journalists, like
Speaker 1: they're barely able to pay the rent. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to be patronizing or judgmental, but I've sort of
Speaker 1: say like, Okay, my job is not to rely on
Speaker 1: them from my sense of happiness and well being, you know,
Speaker 1: like my sense of strength. Creative, Yeah, the same thing.
Speaker 1: And creatively, if they're too much of a hindrance, you
Speaker 1: move on. You sort of say like, okay, God bless
Speaker 1: you know, like have healthy boundaries. And I just say,
Speaker 1: like it almost makes me think of like that like
Speaker 1: the Rudyard Kipling poem is it if I remember reading
Speaker 1: when I was like eight or nine years old, And
Speaker 1: it's sort of that idea of just keep I just
Speaker 1: keep going, not even from strength and fortitude, more just
Speaker 1: sort of like like a post apocalyptic cockroach, just keep
Speaker 1: plowing forward, like someone steps on you. Okay, you stepped
Speaker 1: on me. Have a good day. I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 1: But this is also if I really became the biggest
Speaker 1: movie star in the world and made hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in private planes, who the funk knows what
Speaker 1: I would have done with that. I would have screwed
Speaker 1: that luckily in a way, like as as sober middle
Speaker 1: age guys. Um, I feel like, maybe this is an
Speaker 1: indelicate thing to say, but like a lot of people
Speaker 1: have done the work for us, Like, for example, yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, I would look at Michael Jackson and say, like, wow,
Speaker 1: look at that. The wealth and the fame and the adulation. Boy,
Speaker 1: oh boy, I'm gonna be glad. I'm glad with him,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that I was cut off to an
Speaker 1: extent from the access to like excessive wealth and fame
Speaker 1: that he had in me. Again, it's a hard thing
Speaker 1: to talk about because I don't want to malign anyone,
Speaker 1: especially if they're dead or struggling. But like we know,
Speaker 1: I mean the number of public figures who have had
Speaker 1: profound success, profound wealth and it destroys them. I mean,
Speaker 1: like people like you and I are the ones who
Speaker 1: sort of like hopefully emerge unscathed and chastened, with hopefully
Speaker 1: an understanding that we can almost use in the form
Speaker 1: of service, you know, to go out and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've learned a lesson. It's an odd, rare, unique lesson.
Speaker 1: Let me try and do something with it. What was
Speaker 1: there an epiphany? What was the what was the bottom?
Speaker 1: The bottom was? Do you remember a restaurant in New
Speaker 1: York called zen Palette Vegan Chinese restaurant. So this is
Speaker 1: a little analogy. New Year's Eve, I went to the
Speaker 1: Zen Pallette on Ninth Avenue and I ordered yeah, and
Speaker 1: I ordered purple Japanese egg plant, and it disagreed with me.
Speaker 1: And I never ordered purple Japanese ig plan again because
Speaker 1: I had one bad experience with it. Vodka, cocaine, everything.
Speaker 1: I would do it every day and it would kill
Speaker 1: almost kill me and make me sick, and I kept
Speaker 1: going back and basically the consequence what I mean is
Speaker 1: like the rational response to vodka and cocaine if you
Speaker 1: have a night out and the next day you want
Speaker 1: to blow your brains, is to say, wow, that was bad.
Speaker 1: I shan't do that again. As opposed to give me
Speaker 1: more every day for the next fifteen the thing that's
Speaker 1: making me SI. Yeah. And as I got older, because
Speaker 1: you got sober young. Yeah, I got sober at forty
Speaker 1: three and basically to ride the range and the hangovers
Speaker 1: just got worse and worse, and it got to the
Speaker 1: point where I was having heart time stringing sentences together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got sober because I moved to l A and
Speaker 1: I was driving a car, and I thought, well, the
Speaker 1: consequence is caught up with Yeah, I thought I came
Speaker 1: and I still drove around ship face for two years
Speaker 1: before I got get smart. I want to talk um,
Speaker 1: When did pure vegetarianism take hold with you? When I
Speaker 1: was growing up, I had that weird paradox of loving
Speaker 1: animals and loving burger king. You know, when I was
Speaker 1: in junior high school high school, like, we had a
Speaker 1: bunch of rescue animals and I loved them unconditionally, but
Speaker 1: I also loved Pepperoni pizza. And I had this one
Speaker 1: rescue cat named Tucker who had found it the dump
Speaker 1: and Dary in Connecticut, and I loved Tucker even more
Speaker 1: unconditionally than I unconditionally loved the other animals. And when
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, I had this like Saul on the
Speaker 1: Road to Damascus moment where suddenly I looked at Tucker
Speaker 1: and I was like, he has two eyes, a central
Speaker 1: nervous system, and a profoundly rich emotional life and a
Speaker 1: deep desire to avoid pain and suffering. And in that
Speaker 1: moment I sort of extrapolated and realized every animal with
Speaker 1: two eyes and a central nervous system has a rich
Speaker 1: emotional life, and it is a deep desire to avoid
Speaker 1: pain and suffering. So that's when I became a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: and then seven became a vegan, and my only vegan
Speaker 1: relapse was in ninety two I had yogurt ones. So
Speaker 1: now I've got thirty one years. What is your diet?
Speaker 1: Basically something you you you you you cook at home,
Speaker 1: have well. Actually, I own a vegan restaurant in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles called Little Pine and it's in Silver Lake. And
Speaker 1: what makes it unique is that one of the profits
Speaker 1: go to animal rights organizations because at this point in
Speaker 1: my life, I don't I mean, I still am selfish
Speaker 1: and probably pretty narcissistic, but all of my work, one
Speaker 1: percent of the money I make professionally goes to the
Speaker 1: charities I work with because I'd rather live. You were
Speaker 1: sort of addressing this, like live a simple life, like
Speaker 1: live very much within my means and make art and
Speaker 1: music for the love of art. I had a couple
Speaker 1: of them, and like I had this crazy sixty acre
Speaker 1: compound up in um Putnam County, and when I moved
Speaker 1: to l A, I moved to a castle. But I
Speaker 1: wasn't I wasn't happy in these places. And I was
Speaker 1: just ask myself, like why am I having this sort
Speaker 1: of like gats Bsque excess, the Citizen Kane style, like
Speaker 1: overcompensation if the end result is like I've tied up
Speaker 1: my resources in real estate and I'm miserable and no
Speaker 1: one's benefiting. So like now I live in a much
Speaker 1: simpler house. It's got a little simple apartment in Park Slope,
Speaker 1: and I can just work for the causes that I
Speaker 1: care about, yeah, and and that freedom to like make art, music, books, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And if there's money, just give the money two different
Speaker 1: cause that that's that's amazing to do that, but that's rare.
Speaker 1: That's rare. That One of the benefits of my weird
Speaker 1: attachment issues is like I'm not married, I don't have kids,
Speaker 1: So like I have this odd autonomy, so I'm able
Speaker 1: to rely on you. Yeah, and so there's it is
Speaker 1: like that there's a luxury to that, like almost like
Speaker 1: a monastic independence. This is I can't think of any
Speaker 1: better way to ask this, and I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: better way to ask this, but I want to ask, like,
Speaker 1: who cares for you? Where is love in your life?
Speaker 1: If you're so autonomous and you don't have the fans
Speaker 1: and the public and the press, which is a form
Speaker 1: of love, it's like an energy that that that that
Speaker 1: that that simulates love, it isn't really love. But in
Speaker 1: your life, where is the love and the and the
Speaker 1: care in your life? Who's caring for you? Okay, well
Speaker 1: a few friends, close friends are there for you. I
Speaker 1: have a few family members. But there's the answer that
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable giving because it's one of the hardest things
Speaker 1: to say in our world. Is so when we do
Speaker 1: the twelve steps. When I got to the third step,
Speaker 1: and the third steps has made a decision to turn
Speaker 1: our life and our will over the care of God
Speaker 1: as we understood God. And I really wrestled with this
Speaker 1: because I was like, I was like, the care of
Speaker 1: God as I understood God, like I don't understand God.
Speaker 1: And that was my epiphany. I was like, oh, the
Speaker 1: God of my understanding is a God that I do
Speaker 1: not understand. And and I was like, but I see
Speaker 1: evidence again, not to anthropomorphize, but I see evidence of
Speaker 1: divinity in kindness, in forgiveness, in the gentleness of puppies,
Speaker 1: report in our immune systems, like I see in my eyes.
Speaker 1: This is all evidence of the divine, and so in
Speaker 1: nature and all these things. And so my honest answer,
Speaker 1: that's an uncomfortable, secular twenty one century answer, is divine
Speaker 1: love is what I search. That's but also it's a component.
Speaker 1: And if I die and someone says, oh, guess what,
Speaker 1: there's no God. We live in this empty existential cipher void,
Speaker 1: like you're just a bunch of like weird molecules that
Speaker 1: have come together arbitrarily. That's okay too. But I I
Speaker 1: do somehow, in my dim I don't know, naive way
Speaker 1: see evidence of the divine. And so it's always trying
Speaker 1: to move towards that. Again, not religious, not denominational, no gender,
Speaker 1: it's just simply this idea of the divinity of like
Speaker 1: forgiveness and puppies and immune systems and the unredacted MOLA
Speaker 1: reports and et cetera. So that's a huge that's that's
Speaker 1: where I get a lot of comfort from what's music
Speaker 1: in your life? Now? You continue to write? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I I work on music mainly for the love
Speaker 1: of music. I refused to tour. Hate touring unless it's
Speaker 1: going to do orchestral things. I had this wonderful realization.
Speaker 1: I guess it's about eleven years ago, the first time
Speaker 1: I met David Lynch, and we've since become pretty good friends.
Speaker 1: L A has that going for it. I live around
Speaker 1: the corner from David Lynch. But when I first met him,
Speaker 1: he was being interviewed at BAFTA in London and he
Speaker 1: said something so reductive and simple and it really struck me.
Speaker 1: As he said, very simply, he said, creativity is beautiful,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: he's right. Like, why am I compromising my creativity in
Speaker 1: the interest of like commercial gain and for worldliness? I
Speaker 1: was like, as we know, like music is that ineffable beauty,
Speaker 1: Like it can communicate love and transcendent and beauty. That
Speaker 1: should be my goal, not that I'll ever reach it.
Speaker 1: Not that I'll ever make beautiful, ineffable, wonderful music, but
Speaker 1: like if every day I wake up with that as
Speaker 1: the goal and not in the interest of worldliness and
Speaker 1: other people. I mean, you've written a book, You at
Speaker 1: points in your life have conquered the music business. Have
Speaker 1: you ever wanted to try other media? Have you ever
Speaker 1: wanted to make films? Yeah? I'm actually I have a
Speaker 1: weird production company. I feel like I used the word
Speaker 1: weird too much, um, but I have a production company
Speaker 1: in l A. We're working on some documentaries. We've got
Speaker 1: some scripted features, an animated feature that we're trying to develop.
Speaker 1: But if you're handing that too, do you like baking films?
Speaker 1: I love it as long as I have to your
Speaker 1: point the recourse of autonomy, meaning like some of the
Speaker 1: projects were working on, Like, sure, it would be great
Speaker 1: if we have financing, if we get people attached to it,
Speaker 1: but we also have projects that we can do on ourselves.
Speaker 1: And because as we know, like how much time have
Speaker 1: our friends spent waiting, you know, waiting for the financing,
Speaker 1: waiting for this to be greenlit approval and with the
Speaker 1: production company. Again, my goal is to never make personally,
Speaker 1: never make money from it. So if money is generated,
Speaker 1: it goes to my foundation, or it goes to causes
Speaker 1: I work with. And did you say upfront, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be involved in projects in the film business, and
Speaker 1: I never want to make money with them. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot of meetings and l A, You're
Speaker 1: not going to get at to make money from it.
Speaker 1: Like like the guy who runs my production company and
Speaker 1: my head of development and some of our partners. I
Speaker 1: want them to be fabulously wealthy. I would rather be
Speaker 1: like live in a shitty apartment in Hollywood or I
Speaker 1: don't know, in bed sty and work for causes that
Speaker 1: I care about. I just don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: personally benefit from it. I would like to do a
Speaker 1: documentary film, and I'd like to put you together on
Speaker 1: a project. I'd like to couple of you on a
Speaker 1: film project with someone equally maniacally creative and independent as you.
Speaker 1: I'd like to do a film where like we get
Speaker 1: you in a in a studio and you're gonna do
Speaker 1: like a little project with Coppola to people who don't
Speaker 1: want to collaborate with other people really, and you force
Speaker 1: them to get they agree to collaborate for this one
Speaker 1: time and see what the result would be. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to produce that. By the way, you don't have
Speaker 1: to make anybody. My kids are expensive. I'm keeping all
Speaker 1: the money. I think we're done. Then we have a
Speaker 1: thank you Moby composer, musician, recovering addict, and proud ex celebrity.
Speaker 1: Didn't you think he's cool with them? You do? Okay?
Speaker 1: Moby's new book is called Then It Fell Apart. It's
Speaker 1: very funny and very sad. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you were listening to Here's the Thing