TEAM LAST CALL

Ten years ago, an impish wee-man known as Moby became the world’s most unlikely pop star thanks to the multi-platinum success of Play, a transfixing crosspollination of old gospel field recordings and modern-day house beats bolstered by the monster hit “South Side.”
While Gwen Stefani is no longer licking the back of his head in music videos, little else seems to have changed in Moby’s life. The self-proclaimed “weird, bald, middle-aged man” is still completely unequipped to deal with fame. He’s still hated by millions of people for no apparent reason. And he’s still churning out artful electro-pop that manages to be simultaneously poignant and escapist. His latest album, Wait For Me, is being hailed as his finest effort since his 1999 breakthrough. Ambient and subdued, it’s described aptly enough by Moby himself as a “hangover record.”
Team Last Call chatted with the baldheaded beatmaster prior to his North American tour to discuss his name, what he wants to think about on his deathbed and a certain phenomenon known as “nerd sweat.”

Team Last Call: Is it true that you got the name Moby because you’re actually an ancestor of Herman Melville?
Moby: That’s what my parents told me. Before I was born, they had decided that if I was a boy, my name was going to be Richard Melville Hall. And then once I was born, they looked at me and realized that was a very grown-up name for such a little baby. So as a joke when I was literally 10 minutes old, my dad started calling me Moby. I don’t think either my mother or my father anticipated that 43 years later I’d still be saddled with my infant joke nickname.

TLC: Wait For Me is getting an amazing response. It got on my radar because I flipped on NPR and heard the music critic call it your best album in a decade.
M: I try very hard not to read any of my own press. At this point, there are still a lot of journalists that just hate me for whatever. I could make the best record in the world and they’re still going to hate it. If I read good press, it makes me uncomfortable. If I read bad press, it makes me want to kill myself.

TLC: Why do people hate you?
M: I was actually talking about this the other day. Do you watch The Simpsons? Do you remember the Simpsons where Lisa had a bully? They realized that what the bully was responding to was the pheromones in Lisa’s nerd-sweat. That’s all I can think of. Maybe I’m missing something. It seems like there are probably more loathsome people on the planet than me.

TLC: Over the past couple of records, you’ve returned to making music for yourself, as opposed to satisfying expectations of a record label. Did you have some sort of epiphany?
M: The epiphanies that I have tend to be things that are fairly self-evident for most people. My epiphanies happen slowly over a long period of time. I rarely have one of those “Saul on the road to Damascus” moments, where the scales fall from my eyes and I can suddenly see things clearly. It usually comes from making the same mistake a few hundred times.
I guess what happened was, I never expected to have a record contract and I never expected to have any success as a musician. So then when Play became very successful, it certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but I was quite unprepared for any of the ramifications of success, the creative ramifications. After Play, suddenly I was getting more phone calls from the record company. I found myself trying to make records that the record company liked and that the press would like and that people would like – trying to please everybody. And especially with the album Hotel, I ended up with a record that I just wasn’t all that happy with. So I guess with Wait For Me, I just wanted to focus more on first and foremost trying to make a record that I loved, and then trying to make a record that another individual would love. Instead of generalizing about tens of millions of people, just trying to think of one other person at home in their living room on a Sunday morning when it’s raining outside.

TLC: Making an album like this is obviously not about trying to make millions of dollars and get free drugs. What is it about?
M: I have an answer, but I hope it doesn’t sound overly earnest, even though it’s true. At some point, I realized, I mean, life is short. Maybe we live to be 70, 80, 90 years old, but in the grand scheme, that’s not such a long time. I guess I just asked myself the question, “On my deathbed, what do I want to remember?” And I don’t want to remember meetings with record companies where they’re talking about collaborations with Top 40 stars. I don’t want to remember spending my time at celebrity parties. For me, one of the only things that I feel gives my life any degree of meaning is working hard trying to make music that I love.

TLC: That sounds honest, not earnest.
M: It’s hard. In interviews, you want to retain a degree of detachment. I think a lot of people, when they do interviews, they sound tough or they sound ironic or they sound like they don’t care. I’m neither tough, ironic nor apathetic.

TLC: You’re at a weird point now where you’re starting to sell more records out of the country than you are in the U.S. Does that matter?
M: It’s a bit strange. We just finished a European tour, and the shows there were a lot of big festivals where we’re playing to about 60,000 people a night. And then I’m looking at the North American tour, where on average we’re playing to around 900 people a night. Which is fine – I actually selfishly really enjoy playing smaller shows. But I think it was on the last record where I sold more records in Belgium and the Netherlands than I did in the United States.

TLC: Was it ever much of a priority for you to be famous in the first place?
M: I truly believed that I would spend my entire life making music in my bedroom that no one would ever listen to. If we had been talking 20 years ago, I would have guessed that my life would involve teaching in college and working in a book store. There’s never been any plan. When I found myself having success or being more in the limelight, it was very accidental. As a result, I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it. Now the way I deal with it is by almost avoidance – avoiding a lot of the institutions of fame that for me I just don’t see as particularly appealing. Most of the people who really pursue the world of fame, they have lives that I wouldn’t even want to have. Not that their lives are even available to me. I’m 43 years old. Being 43 and not able to dance does kind of limit your ability to be famous in 2009.

TLC: You keep talking about being 43. Do you feel cooked? What else is there?
M: All I want to do for the rest of my life is try and make music that I love. I’m not really too concerned about how the music is made or where the music is made or whether it’s successful. Honestly, that’s pretty much it. I mean, it’d be nice at some point to fall in love and get married. It’d be nice to learn how to put up drywall. It’d be nice to speak Spanish better. But pretty much the only serious goal I have in life is trying to keep working on music.