"I'd hate me too!"

Moby talks about his annoying public persona, the presidential election, his sex life and his brand-new album.

By Scott Lamb

Read more: Moby, Interviews, Arts & Entertainment, DJs, Arts & Entertainment Music Interviews, Salon Conversations

April 7, 2008 |

You may be sick of Moby, but he won't hold it against you. His 1999 album "Play" was the kind of early success that can cast a shadow over an entire career: It sold 9 million copies, every song was licensed for some commercial purpose, and it injected techno music into the American mainstream consciousness -- almost overnight. That kind of quick fame doesn't come without cost, and Moby has since admitted he became the poster child for selling out. "If I wasn't me," he says now, "I'd hate me too."

None of his follow-ups have been quite as successful, but that may not be such a bad thing. With his new disc, "Last Night," which was released April 1, he has taken a much more low-key approach. The album's a return to his DJ roots, revisiting the sounds coming out of New York in the late '80s and early '90s, and it's about as reflective as a dance album can be. His label, Mute, has taken an understated approach to marketing it -- no big campaigns, seeding music blogs and social networks, or giving away tracks online.

Moby is a confounding mixture of so many things -- a vegan and a "barely functioning alcoholic," bisexual and vaguely Christian, a DJ who doubles as a frontman -- that the press often has a hard time knowing what to make of him. His outspokenness on issues ranging from the environment to electoral politics has irritated fans across the political spectrum, and the spoils of his successes -- his former uptown New York residence is on the market for $7.5 million -- continue to make him a target for cultural sniper fire.

His physical presence belies this reputation. Dressed in a simple a black hoodie and jeans, his eyes sparkling behind stylishly thick black glasses, Moby, 42, comes across as nothing so much as an earnest DJ. We met in his Manhattan apartment -- cluttered with the evidence of his recent obsession, buying old drum machines off eBay -- and talked about how New York has changed, why the gossip about him is more interesting than the reality and how he treats hangovers. (Listen to a podcast of the interview here.)

It seems like lately you've gotten back into DJing and performing as a DJ a lot more. What brought that on?

I've been playing music since I was 9 years old. I started out playing classical music and studying music theory, then played in punk rock bands and got into DJing after I dropped out of college -- this was around 1984. But then I had this voice in the back of my head saying, "You're a musician, you have to go out and play live." And so throughout the '90s and into the beginning of this century, I toured with a band and played live, living on a tour bus and waking up in parking lots. At first I really liked the novelty of it, and then about three or four years ago, I finally had to admit to myself I really don't like touring. So I started DJing again, but in a very, very low-key way. You know Nublu, the bar on Avenue C? I was doing Monday nights there, for 75 people -- it wasn't really advertised -- and I was having more fun than being on tour playing to 10,000 people a night. It was almost like this unquestioned idea that as a musician you're always supposed to pursue a large audience, but I realized I don't enjoy it. I really enjoy just playing records for a couple hundred people.

Is it a little bit more difficult now that you're older, staying out late and going to clubs?

No -- if anything, I go out more and stay out later now than I ever have. The only difference is, the recovery time is longer. When I was 19, going out and drinking all night, by noon the next day, you're fine. And now, the hangovers really do last 24 hours. It's almost like every hour that I'm out drinking is going to involve four hours being hung over. The ratio just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

See, as a barely functioning alcoholic, I've tried every hangover cure. I'll stumble into the deli, and they'll have some new Russian hangover medicine, or I'll read online that it's all about bananas; it's potassium. The only thing I've found that works for me is water and Xanax. You take a Xanax, you drink a lot of water, you go to sleep for six hours, and that usually helps.

It seems like in New York, DJing in general has come back over the last four or five years. Does it have a cachet that it may not always have had?

When I started DJing in 1984, I'd just dropped out of college. I was living at home with my mom, and I was DJing Monday nights for about 10 or 15 people at a club in Port Chester, N.Y., called the Beat. And at this point, there was nothing glamorous about DJing. The successful DJs were guys named Sal, who were mobile DJs and had satin jackets with their names in script on the left breast pocket. So in the early '80s, I was always a little ashamed to introduce myself as a DJ. It had all the glamour of being a tollbooth operator or something.

And the new album is an ode to the early days?

On the one hand it's sort of representing my history with dance music in New York, but it's also supposed to feel like a night out on the Lower East Side, eight hours condensed into 65 minutes.

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