Last Night with
Moby

words by Devoe Yates
photo by Robert Todd Williamson

After several years of relative silence, Moby’s back with his best album since Play. His new spine-crumper, Last Night, drops in stores on April 1st and we were fortunate to spend some time with Moby to get the low down on his latest adventures.

h: You’re a New Yorker through and through, what do you make of L.A.?
Moby: I love it here actually. I’ve always wanted to live here for a period of time, but the main reason I don’t live out here is because I don’t have a driver’s license, and to live in L.A. without a driver’s license, I don’t know how anyone could do it. I had a license when I lived in Connecticut and it expired 13 years ago. I was such a bad driver, the world is a better place with me not having a license (laughs).

h: What’s the inspiration behind the new album?
Moby: I’m hesitant to say this because it sounds a little suspicious, but it’s a concept record. Not in the way that Styx or Yes would make a concept record, but the concept is that it’s supposed to take an eight hour crazy degenerate debauched night out and condense it into 65 minutes. I live in the lower east side of Manhattan in the middle of tons of bars and even though I’m 42-years-old, I go out all the time, way too much. A lot of times a night will start in a very sort of simple innocuous way, at a dinner party or some charity event. But all of my friends who have day jobs or children, they have to head home and I’ll find myself in lots of bars on the lower east side by myself at three in the morning, which is great, you meet new people. Suddenly you’re having a long conversation with a homeless person at the Mars Bar or you’re talking to European tourists who are in New York for the first time. I just love the random chaos of being out at 3 in the morning. I’ve been going out in New York since the early 80’s and it still keeps me interested, so the record is sort of an homage to that.

h: So, the final hidden track, what part of the night out is that?
Moby: The hidden track is seven in the morning, you’ve been up for 36 hours and you’re at the corner of Broadway and Houston, and everyone else you encounter is on their way to work or church. You’re experiencing the same thing that they’re experiencing but in such a completely different way.

h: Do you come up with a lot of music ideas when you’re out on the town?
Moby: Sometimes. I’ve found that musical ideas that I come up with at five o’clock in the morning that seem great usually don’t seem as great when I wake up the next day and listen to them (laughs).

h: What was your writing process like for this album?
Moby: I have a studio in my apartment and I just go in there and start working on music without any pressure, without trying to worry about making a record or hit singles. With this album, I ended up writing about 400 songs and narrowing it down to 15. But when I say I wrote 400 songs for this record, that certainly doesn’t mean I wrote 400 good songs. But I feel like, as part of the creative process, you should just give yourself freedom to do whatever you want, good or bad. The only time you should start editing is when you’re going to share it with other people.

h: Did you consciously avoid big cameos on the new album?
Moby: A lot of the singers are friends of mine because rather than go the route of gratuitous celebrity collaborations, I thought it would be a lot more interesting and fun to just make music with my friends. When you work with celebrity collaborators, you have to go through their manager and through their record company and you have to book them hotels. If you make a song with your friends, they come over, you work on music, you go out to dinner, it’s a lot more pleasant.

h: Why do some people have so much animosity towards you?
Moby: I think more than some people, lots of people. I don’t know, especially in New York, there’s so many people there that seem to hate me. It’s really weird being hated by people you’ve never met. My ex-girlfriend was out one night and someone was talking about how much they hated me. He didn’t know that she knew me, and she asked him, ‘Why do you hate him so much?’ And he said, ‘Oh, he’s just one of those yoga hippy guys and he’s so self-righteous.’ And my ex-girlfriend said, ‘Actually, he’s a drunk. He doesn’t do yoga, he’s not a hippy. He’s more likely to be out drinking Bud Light from a plastic cup at four in the morning more than anything else.’ So it’s also weird to be hated for things that have nothing to do with me. I think part of it is I’m opinionated and I’m kind of a loudmouth and I’ve had a degree of success and nothing pisses people off more than success. People love failure. And maybe there’s just something about me that’s inherently annoying that I’m not aware of, but I don’t know.

h: Have you had any recent run-ins with Moby haters?
Moby: Every now and then there’ll be a belligerent drunk who’ll be antagonistic for no reason. I used to respond with belligerence, and now, not to sound like some sort of new age crackpot, I find it a lot more interesting and challenging to try and defuse their anger. To take someone you’ve never met who hates you and is being belligerent at three in the morning, if five minutes later you’re buying each other drinks and you’re best friends, it’s much more fun.

h: Tell us a little bit about your new MobyGratis website.
Moby: I have a lot of friends in the world of Indie non-profit experimental films, and they all complain about how difficult it is to license music. So I started this website called MobyGratis.com and it provides free music for Indie and non-profit filmmakers. Anyone can go there and download the tracks and use them for free, it’s all pre-approved.
h: Is there any zany comedy music on there?
Moby: There’s some new pieces of music that I just put up that are a little zany. Zany in an almost Surf Acid sort of way (laughs).

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art direction by Laura Ann
styled by Monica Schweiger
groomed by Robin Glaser/Celestine talent