Q&A: Moby

Interview by Thomas H Green. Originally published in Mixmag in March 2008.

Distantly related to the novelist Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick, Richard Hall has been known as Moby since he was a child. After a punk teen-hood he converted to dance music and became an early New York house DJ before breaking through with rave classic ‘Go’ in 1991. He soon became renowned for his engaged politics, veganism and declarations of Christianity. After an initial run of chart club hits he scuppered his career with the album ‘Animal Rights’, a return to his punk roots. Mute Records stuck by him, however, and his next album, 1999’s ‘Play’, which extensively sampled ancient blues-folk recordings, was a multi-million-selling global hit. The follow-up, ‘18’, was also a bestseller.

Moby’s recent projects include creating the soundtrack to Donnie Darko-director Richard Kelly’s latest film, Southland Tales, and creating the site www.mobygratis.com where independent filmmakers can download pieces of his music free of charge. A devoted New Yorker, he recently started the Degenerates club night at Hiro’s on 9th and 16th where he is resident alongside guests that have recently included Spank Rock and Princess Superstar. Moby’s new album, his eighth, is called ‘Last Night’.

Is it true that you’ve paid a quarter of a million dollars to go into space?
Virgin Galactic approached me and asked whether, when and if they’re able to build a commercial space ship, I would be interested. I said that when and if they do, I’d be happy to talk. I’m dumb, but not so dumb I’d spend a quarter of a million dollars to go into space for 30 minutes.

A decade on, do you still get grief about licensing all the tracks on ‘Play’ to TV adverts?
I’ve been crucified over and over for it, but what seems particularly strange is that even the most credible artists license their music to movies, TV shows and advertisements all over the place – Singapore, South Korea – just never at home for journalists to see. Another curious thing is that a lot of the places I’ve been most aggressively attacked are magazines that exist on advertising revenue. NME wrote what a sell-out I was, but if they’re so offended why don’t they reject all their own advertising revenue?

Your new album contains a track called ‘Every Day Is 1989’ and seems to hark back to your rave days…
In New York, dance music has become really eclectic. You go to a club and the DJ, instead of playing one style of music all night, pretty much plays from every different era. The idea behind the album was to take an eight-hour night out in my neighbourhood on the Lower East Side and condense it to 65 minutes. It’s a love letter to the history of dance music and New York.

When was the last time you used your degree in philosophy?
I never got a degree – I dropped out. The only way it’s useful is when you’re at a party and tell people you were a philosophy major. They automatically assume you’re thinking incredibly deep thoughts even if you’re just thinking about getting drunk.

Who is the greatest New Yorker of all?
Woody Allen must be close to the top of the list, Jackson Pollock, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese… I’d probably go with [jazz composer] George Gershwin. His ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ sums up the character of New York City even now.

As an original raver, what do you make of nu-rave?
A year ago I made a point of listening to all the nu-rave records and my conclusion was that they weren’t bad, but they weren’t really dance music. They’re dance only in the way that The Charlatans or the Stone Roses were.

You wrote the music for the film Southland Tales. Apparently Justin Timberlake is pretty odd in it…
It is, without question, the strangest movie ever made. Justin Timberlake’s character is an Iraqi war vet who sits on top of the Santa Monica pier with an automatic weapon and shoots people on the beach. When he’s not doing that he sells a drug that enables the user to see God. There’s a scene where he shoots drugs into his neck and goes on this fantastic trip where he sees God in an arcade. That sums up the character of the movie.

If you could go back in time for 24 hours, where would you go?
I’d go back to Israel around the time of Christ, just to see up close if Jesus was divine. If you look at his impact on humanity, on contemporary life, it would be interesting to know for sure. My second choice would be to go back 4.5 billion years to the moment life first existed on the planet. It would be amazing to be there at that one single moment when the peptides and amino acids came together to form life. I’d take a couple of pictures…

What is The Little Death?
It can get a bit lonely, just me in my studio, so I started a rock band with friends of mine. We get together, drink a lot of beer and play music that sounds like Led Zeppelin meets Janis Joplin. We drink too much and stay up too late. It’s great.

You are one of dance music’s premier bloggers. Do you ever regret what you write?
Ninety-eight per cent of what I’ve written and posted I’ve ended up regretting. Coming home at 5am, having had too much to drink, I’ll sit down and write something that seems like the greatest thing ever written, then in the morning I’ll reread it and just wince. With regard to writing about politics, there are a lot of very angry right wing people in America who really hate my guts. My political blogging antagonises them. I’ve had some hate mail where I’ve actually had to involve the police and get restraining orders.

Your new single’s called ‘Alice’, one of the most overused names in pop…
I didn’t even think of that. The vocalist is a Jamaican rapper who lives in the UK called Aynzli. In the lyrics he talks about losing his mind and references Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. I thought there was something really interesting about giving a dark, menacing hip hop track a woman’s name, as if Public Enemy’s ‘Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos’ had been called ‘Penelope’.

You once produced Britney Spears. What are your feelings about her current troubles?
It makes me feel very paternal. There’s this part of me that wants to run an intervention, take her to Montana, have her work on a farm for a month, because I don’t know that hanging out in Los Angeles, drinking all the time, doing tons of drugs and sleeping with random people is necessarily the best path to mental health.

How rock’n’roll is Moby at the moment on a scale from Katie Melua to Mötley Crüe?
I’m hesitant to admit it but skewing more towards Mötley Crüe. But a guilty Mötley Crüe member who thinks maybe it’s time to take a break as he’s 42 years old and the hangovers aren’t getting any better.

Read more: Mixmag