and disconcerting to have such an emotional reaction while one of my own songs was playing . I was like , “ Is this narcissism ? Or am I just simply having an honest emotional reaction to this ?”
IE : Securing the closing credits is like getting a billboard for your song . It ’ s a coveted catbird seat . Moby : Yeah . One of the first times I ever licensed music to a film was the Michael Mann movie Heat , and he and I have worked together on a lot of things , but at the end of the movie , he uses a classical composition of mine , and it runs for about five or six minutes . It starts when Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro have their encounter , and it just keeps going and going . And as a result , it ’ s this obscure piece of classical instrumental music I had written – no drums , no vocals , no chorus – and somehow , because of it being used in Heat , all of a sudden , it ’ s one of my better-known pieces of music , and it ’ s an eight-minute long ethereal piece of classical music , not something you would necessarily imagine people would be aware of .
IE : Years ago , I was heading up to Tower Records on Market Street in San Francisco , and I walked past the notorious Beck ’ s Motor Lodge but was surprised when a girl called my name . And it was Shelby Meade , your old publicist , inviting me over to watch famed photographer David LaChapelle doing an elaborate shoot there of an unassuming guy in an orange prison jumpsuit , who Shen then introduced me to . And that guy was you ! Moby : Oh yeah ! That was an odd moment . It was right before the album 18 came out ( in 2001 ), so it was sort of the height of my being involved in the pop culture zeitgeist , and it involved all sorts of things , like playing at the Winter Olympics , flying to Los Angeles to make a million dollar video , then flying to San Francisco to do a photo shoot with a crew of thirty people in ten different locations , the flying to the UK . It was definitely a very , very different world , to state the obvious . And I ’ m glad I experienced it because it was such an odd cultural phenomenon to be involved in that . And that whole photo shoot was for SPIN Magazine , and we went to a porn theater in the Mission and we shot there , and we went to that motor lodge and we shot all over . And at that point , David LaChapelle really was this unhinged creative genius , and because the budgets were so huge for those things , he was allowed to do whatever he wanted . And if he was like , “ Yeah – we ’ ll rent the entire motor lodge . We ’ ll rent the entire theater . We ’ ll bring in thirty people .” And basically – because this was back in the days of print media when people were buying CDs and the budgets were just out of control – it wasn ’ t uncommon for one of his photo shoots to have a three- or four-hundred-thousand-dollar budget . As opposed to now , when the budget for a photo shoot is , you come over and take pictures of someone in their backyard and maybe have some sparkling water .
IE : Given those surreal situations , what other weird We ’ re-not-in-Kansas-anymore places did you find yourself in back then ? Moby : One of the weirdest – because I never expected to have a career as a musician , you know ? When I was growing up , I played in weird little punk rock bands , we were happy to have an audience of ten people , and I lived in an abandoned factory , I worked in an underground record store , and the store was actually in Darien , Connecticut – it ’ s still there , it ’ s called Johnny ’ s . And it started out as a head shop , and it slowly started selling Grateful Dead bootlegs . But really , there was a lot of what we ’ ll call maybe extra-legal stuff happening there , and it wasn ’ t uncommon when I was working there to bring large amounts of cash to people in parking lots after dark . Like , it was definitely interesting , and at the time , I was also living in an abandoned factory in Stanford , Connecticut , which is now condos , of course . But at the time , it was an abandoned factory – no heat , no bathrooms , no running water . But I loved living there because it was free , and they ’ d forgotten to turn the electricity off . Which is a long-winded way of saying that I never even expected to make music that anyone listened to , and I certainly never expected to have a record deal or sell more than a couple hundred records . So everything that happened to me , professionally , has been a surprise , both the good and even the bad . The bad was still more than I expected .
So some of the incredibly surreal moments ? One of them has to be playing the Winter Olympics in 2002 because it was me , Bon Jovi , Willie Nelson , KISS , Christina Aguilera , and Earth , Wind , and Fire – we were the performers , and there were 500,000 people in this Olympic stadium , and they said the TV audience was probably close to a billion people , and Dick Cheney was in the audience . And I thought , “ How in the world ? Like , I ’ m playing to – at the very least – a couple hundred million people – when I thought I was gonna be a philosophy professor at some New England community college , making music in his basement that no one ever listened to .” So basically , everything has been strange , but that was especially strange .
IE : I ’ m guessing you probably gravitated toward the great Maurice White backstage if anybody . He was still alive and touring back then . Moby : I actually didn ’ t speak to anyone backstage ! I didn ’ t know if I was really allowed to . I mean , this was in Salt Lake City , and the fact was that we did all share a backstage , and there was a big green room , and I was like , “ This is so strange ! There ’ s Willie Nelson next to Gene Simmons , and there ’ s Jon Bon Jovi next to Christina Aguilera . These are big stars ! Shouldn ’ t they have their own dressing rooms ?” So I didn ’ t talk to anyone , except the next morning , they had rented a private plane , and they flew me and KISS and Earth , Wind and Fire to Los Angeles . And I slept on the plane , and I woke up , and Gene Simmons tapped me on the shoulder , and I turned around , and I ’ d never spoken to him . But he just looked at me and he said , “ Moby , you are a powerful and attractive man .” And then we got off the plane , and I ’ ve never spoken to him since . So everything about it was very , incredibly odd , and I ’ m glad that I ’ m no longer a part of that world . But I ’ m kind of grateful that I was able to experience it .
IE : But with your record-retail background , how awesome does it feel to see that yellow Deutsche Grammophon logo on your albums right now ? Is that class , or what ? Moby : Oh yeah ! I mean , to put it in context , in 1984 , I ’ m working at this underground record store , putting away records , and most of the records back then were garbage . And I don ’ t
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