Moby is playing a show at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles this coming Saturday and ahead of that sat down with the LA Times to talk about his career and his brushes with the greats.
Foremost amongst those was meeting David Bowie – “One time, David Bowie and I sat in my living room, just the two of us, and drank coffee and played ‘Heroes’ on acoustic guitar. So as far as top of the list goes, that’s a pretty phenomenal one.”
He also played Walk On The Wild Side with Lou Reed, Me and Bobby McGee with Kris Kristofferson and spent time jamming with “weird instruments” in David Lynch’s art studio. “It’s overwhelming, these experiences, almost to the point where it makes me wonder, did they really happen or not?” he asks rhetorically. “Like, is it actually more likely that I’m currently out of my mind on mescaline in the desert in 1986 and none of this has happened?”
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So the inevitable question is what did he learn or pick up from these iconic figures? “I think the main lesson I learned, especially from David Bowie and David Lynch, is to be sustained by the love and enthusiasm for what you’re doing. David Bowie and David Lynch both had their insecurities. They had their anxieties.
“But I know from spending time with them, every day they woke up excited to make something. And even till the end of their lives, they brought this childlike enthusiasm to everything they were doing.”
“And cultivating that ‘ars longa, vita brevis’ (literally, ‘art is long, life is short’ in Latin) approach of focus on the art, focus on the joy, the mystery and the joy and the fascination that you have for the creative process and for making art, music, writing. If you can then do that and also somehow have the goal to, through your work, try to make the world a better place, to try and be of service. To me, that seems like a much healthier approach towards existing in this fame-driven world than self-involvement and self-aggrandisement.”
The 61-year-old producer also dipped his toe into the whole ‘should artists be political?’ debate that was triggered by the Macklemore/ Ed Sheeran debacle in September. “One of my great shortcomings is I’m not good at writing political music,” he admitted. “So instead, what I do is talk about politics endlessly in public and with my friends and make music that is more emotional rather than political.”
He continued: “But certainly, I saw the James Hetfield quote recently about his band just wanting to entertain. I don’t think this is the right time for a band to just entertain. The world demands political engagement from all of us. And I will do everything I can in my power to move the needle away from the status quo as it currently is.”
