Let’s talk about the relationship between passion and creativity. Duke Ellington described what’s required to bring these two together when he said, Create, be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste. Moby is about to release an album in which he took that advice fully to heart.
Moby’s first single, Go was released in 1991 and was listed as one of Rolling Stone’s best records of all times. His own records have now sold over 20 million copies worldwide, and he’s also produced and remixed scores of other artists, including David Bowie, Metallica, The Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. He has toured tirelessly playing well over 3,000 concerts in his career, and has also had his music used in hundreds of different films, including Heat, Any Given Sunday, Tomorrow Never Dies and The Beach.
His next album, Wait for Me, will be released on June 30, 2009. Moby works with a variety of charities and recently performed at a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation at Radio City Music Hall along with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and others to raise funds to teach Transcendental Meditation to millions of at-risk kids.
James Ray, one of the stars of the movie The Secret, conducted the following interview with Moby. James has been called the rock star of personal transformation, and he is the author of the New York Times bestseller Harmonic Wealth. James has studied and been exposed to a wide diversity of teachings and teachers from traditional college and the schools of the corporate world to the ancient cultures of Peru and Egypt and the jungles of the Amazon.
As a result, he has a unique ability to blend the mystical and the practical into a useable and easy-to-access formula. You can learn more about James and his work by going to www.JamesRay.com.
JAMES RAY: Hi, Moby, how are you?
MOBY: I’m pretty good. How are you?
JAMES RAY: I’m doing really well. As you know, this series is called Passion of Real Life Legends. Definitely, you’ve made a huge impact on the world and on music with quite a long list of accomplishments, as Chris was talking about. Let’s just talk about passion for a minute and the things that matter most to you. How have passion and the things that matter most in your life played out in what you do today?
MOBY: It’s a good question. I guess I can go back to when I was about nine or 10 years old. I remember when I first got exposed to music. Nothing I had encountered up until that point affected me as much as music did.
JAMES RAY: Do you remember the person you were really hit by?
MOBY: I remember when I was actually four years old and I was in the car with my mother. The song Proud Mary by Credence Clearwater Revival came on. I refused to get out of the car until the song ended. Growing up, again, a lot of the ways I was exposed to music was in the car with my mom. I’d hear everything from Donna Summer to the Eagles to Rod Stewart-whatever was on pop radio at the time.
JAMES RAY: Right.
MOBY: I just loved it. I loved that it represented a world that I was not a part of. I loved that it was people expressing themselves emotionally. I loved that it was exciting. I loved that at times it was really sad. I guess at an early age without even really being aware of it, I just dedicated my life to making music.
JAMES RAY: It sounds like it was really the emotional impact of music that had the biggest impact on you. Is that true?
MOBY: Yes. It was emotional. Also, I was never really happy with the circumstances in which I was brought up. I grew up very poor in a really wealthy town. I also really liked music because it had an escapist element to it.
JAMES RAY: Right. I grew up poor in a poor town.
MOBY: I don’t know which is worse.
JAMES RAY: Probably, there wasn’t as much contrast for me as for you. I’ll bet there’s a lot of comparison in your life.
MOBY: Yes, and a lot of shame and lot of pretending that my circumstances were better than they actually were. I liked music, especially music in the 20th Century because it really celebrated disenfranchisement. It was not a celebration of the status quo. If you think of rock-and-roll, punk rock, and even hip hop, it’s usually people who feel disenfranchised picking up a guitar, a synthesizer or what have you, and expressing themselves through music. Because I felt quite disenfranchised, I really responded to that aspect of it.
JAMES RAY: When was it that you said, I’m going to become a musician?
MOBY: That’s a good question. I think, strangely enough, it just sort of happened. It was a product of a few different variables. One was the fact that I loved music and it really just affected me on a very powerful level. The other was that I was not very good at sports, so I had a lot of time after school to either watch television or listen to records or learn how to play guitar.
I think that you’ll find with a lot of musicians, especially in the States, is that they weren’t bright enough to be great students and they weren’t athletic enough to be great athletes, so they had a lot of free time in which to listen to records and learn how to play an instrument.
JAMES RAY: It’s really interesting because in my childhood, I was a horrible athlete. I was a skinny kid everyone beat up all the time. I was picked on, had the buck-teeth and the thick glasses. I loved music. I always did, and yet I hid myself in books. It’s a similar situation.
MOBY: I did both. I was an obsessive reader, but there’s a lot of free time, as I’m sure you can attest to, growing up a latch-key kid in the suburbs. You get home at 3:00 in the afternoon, and you have the next seven or eight hours to fill. For me, that was watching television, drawing pictures, reading books, and also listening to a lot of records. My mother was a musician, and she had guitars laying around.
She had a piano. Some friends of hers would occasionally rehearse at our house and leave drums there. I learned how to play all of these instruments just by having free time and having access to the instruments.
JAMES RAY: Yes, I was going to ask you, because I know you play keyboard, guitar, bass and drums, was there any one that you were attracted to initially, or was it all of them?
MOBY: When I was quite young-let’s say nine, 10 or 11 years old-all of my heroes were guitar players. When you saw a picture of The Beatles, you saw a picture of The Clash, or you saw a picture of The Rolling Stones, the guitar figured really prominently. Even though my mother was a pianist and there was a piano sitting there, and I did eventually learn to play piano, at first all I wanted to do was be a guitar player. I spent hours and weeks and, eventually, years learning how to play guitar.
JAMES RAY: Have you ever played Guitar Hero?
MOBY: I went to my friend Lisa’s. She has two kids, who I think are 12 and 16. I went over to their apartment, and her son was playing Guitar Hero. He’s 12 years old. He asked me if I wanted to have a try. I was very smug and I said, I’ve been playing guitar for 30 years. I’m sure I’ll be able to do this. I played a Ramones song. I got an okay score. I handed it to him with this smug look on my face saying, Beat that. He then played a Joe Satriani song, and I was utterly humiliated on Guitar Hero by a 12-year-old.
JAMES RAY: There have always been challenges for all of us to overcome. In fact, one of the things I’ve found, Moby, and maybe you have as well, is that a lot of people-and there may be exceptions-and I don’t want to say everyone, but a lot of people who accomplish big things in the world actually started off with big challenges. I think we choose to really dig in and improve ourselves to ourselves and to the world. You talked a little bit about your difficult childhood. Would you be willing to share some of your biggest challenges that you’ve had in your life and how you overcame them?
MOBY: I think probably the biggest recurring challenge was basically feeling like a second- or third-class citizen, growing up quite poor in a very wealthy town. Every day I’d go to school and I’d be wearing clothes that my mom had bought at The Salvation Army or Goodwill. My friends were wearing brand-new, very fancy clothes. Always there was this sense of shame, like not wanting people to look too closely.
Even more importantly, it was to try to get people to see me in a way where I wouldn’t be ashamed. I think that led to a degree of becoming, on one hand, very introverted but also quite an extrovert on a performance level.
JAMES RAY: Do you still consider yourself an introvert at heart?
MOBY: There’s still that ingrained belief that if people look too closely, they’ll be profoundly disappointed with what they see.
JAMES RAY: Yes. How did you overcome that?
MOBY: I don’t think I have.
JAMES RAY: To some degree you have. For you to be able to get on stage and to create like you do, you had at least to have been able to believe in yourself enough to say, I can do this.
MOBY: Yes, again it’s that odd paradox of having equal measures of self-doubt and confidence. I can’t explain it. I guess I can be objective regarding myself to an extent, but that’s one thing I’ve never really figured out.
JAMES RAY: I would guess-and you can tell me if I’m wrong-that what I know about your new album that’s coming out is that you basically said, I’m going to create music for me and not worry about the commercial impact. How does that rattle your cage?
MOBY: I started making music a long time ago. For the longest time I really believed that no one would ever listen to the music that I made. Then around 1990, I lucked into a record contract with a record company that didn’t actually exist. These two guys named Jared and Dave signed me to a record deal, and at the time they didn’t actually have a name for their record company.
They didn’t have offices. They didn’t have any other artists, but they somehow signed me to this record deal, which suited me just fine because I never expected to have a record deal.
JAMES RAY: This was the 90s?
MOBY: This was 1990. They came up with a name for the label; it was called Instinct Records. We started putting out records, and I very quickly developed a pretty good following in the underground dance community. Then I spent the next, I’d say, eight or nine years putting out records that either did well on an underground level or were complete failures on an underground level.
I put out some records that have just been loathed across the board, like one-out-of-10 star reviews in Rolling Stone; those sorts of records. I also put out other records that have done well, either critically or commercially. It left me in a very confused place as a musician, especially starting in 1999 or 2000 when I started having a lot of commercial success. Then I got very confused.
I thought to myself that on one hand I wanted to make music with great integrity. I wanted to make music that was emotional and beautiful, but I also wanted to keep the record company happy, try to sell records and make stuff that would get played on the radio and that, also, maybe critics would like. I ended up making a couple of records that are certainly not bad records, but they’re records that were trying to be too many things to too many different people.
Ultimately, it leaves you feeling quite exhausted. I think with this next record, an album called Wait for Me, I just realized that on my deathbed I want to remember aspiring to making music that ideally has nothing but integrity and artistic merit. I’d almost rather have a record that sells 10,000 copies that those 10,000 people really love, than selling a million records to a million people who are indifferent about the records they bought.
JAMES RAY: I know that David Lynch had a big impact on you. From what I understand, you heard him talk about creativity for the sake of creativity, which isn’t a new idea but I think there are times in our lives, I know certainly for me, where you hear something that maybe you’ve heard thousands of times before, but you’re in the right place at the right time mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and it hits you like a ton of bricks. Talk a little bit about that.
MOBY: I wish that there was a word for that experience.
JAMES RAY: Epiphany, maybe.
MOBY: It’s an epiphany, but ‘epiphany’ doesn’t take into account how many times you might have heard something or thought something. In my case, there are certain thoughts and certain things I’ve been exposed to countless times that only really resonate with me, say, the 500th time I’ve been exposed to them. That idea that creativity in and of itself is a wonderful thing is an idea that I was probably first exposed to when I was five years old and in kindergarten.
All my life there have been people who have stressed the virtue of creative expression. It wasn’t until I heard David Lynch say it. The way he speaks is very earnest and very clear and very straightforward. Hearing him say that creativity in and of itself is beautiful finally got through to me.
JAMES RAY: Was it really one of those moments like a light just flashed on and you said, That’s what I have to do?
MOBY: Yes. It was a simple realization that he was right.
JAMES RAY: How torn were you? I think, if I’m correct, you got a lot of equipment off of eBay, and you recorded this Wait for Me in your apartment in New York, correct?
MOBY: It’s the first time I’m talking about this, so forgive me if I sound like I’m a little foggy. I’m trying to figure it out as I’m talking about it. I guess up until a couple of years ago I had this idea that artists or musicians should make records in a certain way. That meant you had to make records in certain types of studios using certain types of equipment.
It also meant there were certain professional standards or criteria that should be applied to all music. I realized that my favorite records, more often than not, were made in very unconventional, very idiosyncratic ways.
JAMES RAY: For example?
MOBY: Even if you just listen to an old Rolling Stone’s record or a rock-and-roll or R-and-B record from the late 50s… What’s that?
JAMES RAY: They’re a little more edgy and rough.
MOBY: Yes. Nowadays, when people record a drum set they use 20 microphones on the drum set. Back then they would just throw a microphone in front of the drum set and hope it sounded okay. I gave myself the creative license to just make a record and not try to hold it up to objective external criteria but rather, use my own subjective internal criteria for whether or not the music was affecting me emotionally.
JAMES RAY: Moby, let’s go back, and I’m going to use the word ‘insecurity’ because that’s me, and I don’t know if you feel that fits you in the early years or not.
MOBY: Oh, yes. Early years? I’m 43, and I’d still use that word to describe myself.
JAMES RAY: Yes, I was really insecure, really introverted, and it sounds like we have some similarities there. How much did that kick up for you? You’re definitely carving old ground in a new time, if you will. I mean, you’re recording an old Rolling Stones album in a completely different era. How much did that insecurity kick up for you during that process, if at all?
MOBY: Insecurity is an interesting driving force. If someone is crippled by insecurity, they’ll never get anything done. If someone is crippled by complacency and arrogance, they’ll never get anything done. I guess I got lucky, and it sounds like you got lucky as well. We had just enough insecurity to drive us forward without too much insecurity, which would actually keep us from sharing what we’ve made with the world.
JAMES RAY: Yes, that’s interesting. On a side note, this is Stress Awareness Month; you may or may not be aware of that. A lot of people think stress is totally bad. Hans Selye actually said there are two types of stress. There’s distress which is that stress that just tears us apart. Then there’s eustress; he coined that term. Eustress is that creative tension where we set an intention in our mind that we’re going to do something. The gap between where we are and where we choose to be is that eustress, or that creative tension.
I think there’s a difference. A person like you, who has experienced some insecurity and said, I’m not good enough; I’m not capable, and then ends up accomplishing is how we frame that experience. If we say, I’m going to use this as fuel to motivate me forward and inspire me to create more and to accomplish more, I find that very common. I don’t know how many of your friends you talk about this kind of thing with, but it seems to be common.
MOBY: Yes, stress is a double-edged sword, clearly, in light of what you’re saying. It can be crippling and damaging and dangerous; it can destroy our organs and destroy our ability to see things clearly. It can also be really exciting and vibrant. This might seem like a trite or clichéd analogy, but it’s kind of like fire. Fire can be one of the most fantastic things in the world if you’re trying to cook something, if you’re trying to stay warm in the wintertime, or if you’re trying to see your way in the darkness. Fire can be fantastic, but it also can very quickly consume anything with which it comes into contact.
JAMES RAY: That’s a great metaphor, because what is it that causes some people debilitating fear that becomes another person’s fuel?
MOBY: Yes. That’s true even if it’s in the same person. If I look at the role of stress in my life, stress can sometimes drive me on and it can lead me to accomplish really interesting things, but then once I’ve accomplished them, the stress is still there. One of the things I’ve beaten myself up for over and over again is that inability to step back and enjoy. If I’ve accomplished something it’s really hard for me to sit back and actually enjoy the accomplishment.
JAMES RAY: Yes. Have you consciously addressed that? I can relate to that, as well. There have been times for me like that. I have my New York Times bestseller, Harmonic Wealth, and it’s time now to take a breath and to really savor that. There’s another angle that says, What’s next? What do you do next and how do you keep going? How do you deal with that issue?
MOBY: In the past, the way I dealt with it was to keep working and drink a lot.
JAMES RAY: Which comes back to bite you in the butt, long-term.
MOBY: Oh, yes! That’s fine up to a point, but then all of a sudden you start getting sick, you start missing days, and the stress really starts destroying you. What I finally learned is this. I thought my inability to relax and my inability to enjoy myself or appreciate my accomplishments meant there was something seriously wrong with me. What it actually means is I just don’t know how to do it.
JAMES RAY: Are you learning?
MOBY: I’ve realized there are very specific things we can do to alleviate stress and to help ourselves deal with our circumstances more rationally.
JAMES RAY: I have a little insider information that you’ve recently started meditating. I want to ask you about that in a minute, because I’m going to bet that that’s part of what you’re saying here, that you’ve learned how to deal with that. Let me put that on track two for a second, if I can. Anything else you want to talk about is okay with me. I heard Shot in the Back of the Head, and I watched the film. Is there anything you’d like to talk about how it’s different from what you’ve done in the past, your relationship with Lynch, or how that panned out?
MOBY: I’ve tried to make a nice record. I hope my heart was in the right place when I was working on it. I do think there’s a lot to be said for approaching things with good intentions. I made this record. It comes out June 30th, and if people hear it, I hope they like it. If they don’t, luckily there are a lot of other records for people to listen to.
JAMES RAY: What if people hear it and they don’t like it? By the way, the first track is great. It has a surreal vibe to it.
MOBY: It’s one of the things I do love about the place I’m in right now and also the demise of the record business. Ostensibly, this song, Shot in the Back of the Head, is the first single from the record, except it’s an instrumental so it’s never going to get played on radio. In the old days when you put out a first single, you wanted a song that would be a big hit on radio.
Then you’d make a video that would be a big hit on MTV. Instead, I put out an instrumental that will never get played on radio with a very dark, beautiful, obscure video by David Lynch that will never get played on MTV.
JAMES RAY: Did he capture the feel you wanted?
MOBY: Perfectly. It’s one of the single greatest gifts anyone’s ever given me creatively.
JAMES RAY: What was the inspiration for the title?
MOBY: It’s a strange inspiration. I was doing an interview with a friend of mine who’s an artist. We were being asked how we wanted to die. My answer was that I would like to be at the edge of the universe in a few billion years as it starts to contract. That’s my way. What she said was that she wants a complete stranger to walk up to her and shoot her in the back of the head so she has no warning this is going to happen.
JAMES RAY: That had a big impact on you and stuck with you?
MOBY: Most people, when you ask them how they want to die, they say in bed surrounded by loved ones, or painlessly in their sleep. I thought this idea to have a complete stranger walk up and shoot you in the back of the head was not how I want to die, but I thought it was a really interesting answer. That title just stuck with me.
JAMES RAY: Just as a side note, the universe may not contract. We’re finding now that the universe is growing more rapidly than it ever has in our world history.
MOBY: I try not to think about the universe, because it just makes my head hurt.
JAMES RAY: You recently played Radio City Music Hall with McCartney, Ringo, Donovan, and Eddie Vedder. What was that like?
MOBY: It was one of the strangest events I’ve ever done. It was great. Everybody performed really well. It was just a strange confluence of ex-Beatles, Donovan, Eddie Vedder, and Ben Harper all hosted by David Lynch in Radio City. It really was like a psychedelic buffet line.
JAMES RAY: Like a once-in-a-lifetime experience?
MOBY: Also, the fact that it was all in service of teaching Transcendental Meditation to at-risk school kids.
JAMES RAY: Yes, I want to talk about TM, as I told you a minute ago. Let me ask you one other question for our listeners. Because this series is about passion and creativity, and you certainly have both, if you had to give one tip or one insight to listeners who are struggling to discover and express their own creativity, what advice would you give them?
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For more information about Moby and his work, please go to http://www.moby.com/.
