Hot Press meets Moby

Moby authored the ultimate sleeper hit with his 1999 album Play, which infamously became the ubiquitous advertising sound bed of the early noughties.

However, Moby is under no illusions about the rather more modest prospects for his eleventh studio opus, Innocents.
“In some ways it’s sort of emancipating that people don’t really buy records anymore,” the bald boffin begins. “I’m all in favour of people buying records, but what was truly emancipating about this project was when we were making this album, we never discussed for a second how it might sell.”
“Unless you’re Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake, no one else really sells records in significant numbers, especially 48-year old guys like me making their eleventh album.  One of the things I truly love about the digital present that we live in is that when my music goes out into the world, I can’t control it and I’ve absolutely no idea how people will respond to it. It’s a form of democratic and egalitarian chaos to put any music or information out into the world.”
Innocents differs from all the previous Moby records in that it features a venerable cast of vocalists and collaborators including Mark Lanegan, Inyang Bassey, Skylar Grey, Damien Jurado, Cold Specks and Wayne Coyne.
“I’ve know Wayne since 1995 when both of us went on tour with Red Hot Chili Peppers,” Moby reveals. “When I was writing ‘The Perfect Life’ I thought it sounded like a Flaming Lips song. I could even imagine people dressed in stuffed animal costumes onstage jumping around to it.
“So, I texted Wayne and asked him if he would sing on it. Within 30 seconds he replied saying, ‘Sure!’ We hadn’t even spoken in a couple of years.”
Moby had a blast working with all the guests on Innocents.
“I have to say that it feels weird and somewhat selfish of me to have all these really odd and remarkable talents on my record and I somehow benefit from their work,” he confesses. “There seems to be something wrong about it, as if it really shouldn’t be my name on the cover of the record.”
If Moby has realistic ambitions about how many copies Innocents will sell, surely he intends to coin it in on the road and blitz the summer festival circuit next year? Not so. He’s already completed a ‘world tour’ comprising of three Los Angeles dates that were also streamed worldwide. Surely his agent, management and label think he’s completely nuts?
“You bet,” he laughs. “That very question has been asked by my manager numerous times over the course of my career. My nickname is the ‘little idiot’, and it was my manager who gave me that a long time ago. According to him my desire to not to tour for this album simply re-affirms that nickname.
“Luckily, my manager stumbled upon the role of being a real cool manager who represents people like M83, Royskopp, The Knife, Robyn and Fever Ray. They all tour and go out and make money for him and I get to stay at home and work on music and live up to my name as the little idiot.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if my manager holds a gun to my head and forces me to go back on tour, or else he just fires me and focuses on his artists that are willing to tour.”
It’s certainly not an aversion to performance that has led to his live retreat.
“I love playing live but what I don’t love is being away from my studio,” Moby explains. “As much fun as playing live is, it’s not terribly creative. When you’re playing live, you’re not making anything new. What satisfies me most as a musician is being left to my own devices in a studio writing music, so that’s the main reason I’m not on the road.”
The buzz phrase in the music industry in recent times has been “alternative revenue streams.” Film, TV and advertising accounts for a massive chunk in a lot of musicians’ income. Moby has the luxury of both strong sales of his back catalogue, plus of course, a significant advertising windfall with Play.
“When I licensed the music from Play the goal was simply to get people to hear the music,” he explains. “Most of the licenses weren’t particularly lucrative, but they enabled people to hear the music because otherwise the record wasn’t being heard.
“There’s a certain irony that a lot of people who criticised me for licensing my music are now desperately trying to license theirs. In the past, musicians would be embarrassed if they licensed music, but now it’s the centrepiece of every musician’s record release campaign.
“Any musician who did now what I did with Play would be lauded and celebrated by musicians and the music business today. That certainly wasn’t the case thirteen or fourteen years ago.”
Speaking of the fruits of success, Moby’s palatial LA home graces the new documentary Mistaken For Strangers in a hilarious scene with Matt Berninger of The National and his brother Tom.
“Someone told me about it alright,” Moby grins. “I only moved here a few years ago and I think I know the house they’re talking about. One of my neighbours has this fancy floating infinity pool. Someone told the guys in The National that I lived next-door and they just started yelling at my house. Unfortunately, I wasn’t here at the time, otherwise I would’ve gone over and gone swimming with them. I saw one of their early, early shows in New York. I remember even then thinking to myself that they had the potential to be very successful.”
When Moby toured in the ‘90s he was a big draw in Ireland, performing at numerous festivals and sharing a stage with U2 at Slane for their momentous 2001 concert.
“I remember a show in the SFX in particular because the guys from U2 had sent me a bottle of champagne,” Moby recalls. “I couldn’t believe they even knew who I was, because I’d never met them. I was stunned. I remember going backstage and there was a bottle of champagne and a nice little note. After the show, I ended up getting way too drunk.”
Despite the perception that Moby is some kind of monastic teetotaler vegan, he was pretty extreme in his drinking days.
“Maybe this is too much information, but when I got sober five years ago in New York I went to AA meetings that were either in Chinatown or the old Jewish neighbourhoods,” he reveals. “If you went to a meeting in Chinatown, you might as well be in Belfast because everyone looked so Irish. My ancestry is Scottish and Irish, so I also have that alcoholic gene. It was funny being in these rooms that ostensibly should have been filled with Chinese or Jewish people, but they were filled with Irish descendants.
“Back when I was a drinker, I wasn’t a very civilized drinker,” he continues. “I had some friends that would love a glass of Sangria in the afternoon in a nice café but I was much more extreme. Once when I was in Belgrade, I got drunk with all these ex-soldiers who introduced me to ‘Concrete’. Basically, you take half-a-pint of beer and pour in a load of vodka. The weird thing is that it tastes so good. If you ever order that in a bar filled with a bunch of crusty old alcoholics, they’ll look at you with some sort of combination of fear and respect.
“I suppose I’m much more of monastic vegan now, because I stopped drinking five years ago, but I had a good couple of decades being a crazy out of control alcoholic. I don’t regret all of it because I have some amazing stories. For example, I had a crazy night out in Dallas with Tommy Lee and the guys from Pantera. At five o’clock in the morning, Dimebag Darrell and Tommy and I were very incredibly drunk in some awful dive bar. We decided to start a band together because it would be the weirdest band of all time.
“Unfortunately that never happened and of course Dimebag died (the Pantera guitarist was tragically shot dead onstage by a fan in Ohio in 2004), but it’s the kind of story that confuses the hell out of people who think I was some sort of cloistered artist.”

Innocents is out now