Interview

Hail pounds brutally on the skylight of Moby's Nolita apartment, threatening to break the glass as we talk. His bookshelf, containing everything from Flannery O'Connor to Naguib Mahfouz to The MacHiavellian Guide to Womanizing, rattles from the storm. And Moby pauses every now and then to look worriedly around the room. His apartment is bare, wooden and sparsely furnished. It is the same place he lived when he recorded his first single, "Go," in 1991. Though his material circumstances don't seem to have changed, a lot has happened since then.

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When he moved in, Moby, a veteran of punk bands in Connecticut, had reinvented himself as a local club disc jockey. The success of his first singles and albums catapulted him to the forefront of the first wave of next-big-thing techno in America, and he was heralded as the face of a so-called faceless movement. But Moby refused to stand as a symbol for something he didn't belong to: He advertised his beliefs as a vegan, drug-free Christian and, in concert, was unafraid to strap on a guitar and return to his hardcore roots. Slowly, his star began to fade.

But then, out of the blue, came Play. Harnessing samples from old blues and gospel field recordings (particularly Alan Lomax's Sounds of the South collection) to achingly melodic keyboards and a chugging beat, he once again transcended his genre. Play has sold over two million albums so far, hitting No. 1 in England and No. 54 in America at a time when preening teeny-boppers and rap/metal lunkheads are ruling the roost. It belongs to no specific genre other than that rare class of album that is simply agreed upon as good music by just about anyone who hears it. A year after the album's release, Moby is still reeling from its unexpected reception and his trajectory into the realm of semicelebrity.

NEIL STRAUSS: Now that Play has been so successful, is it strange meeting people who you thought were untouchable stars?

MOBY: Yeah, it's just so interesting to put things into perspective. I met Elton John at an Interview dinner, and we just sort of became friends. He's got such a wicked sense of humor. He's just very sharp. And it's particularly interesting for me because the first song I ever learned to play on the guitar was "Crocodile Rock" when I was nine years old. I also met Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, and one of the first records I ever got was the first Aerosmith album. And the first time I ever went to second base with a girl was to that record. Do you remember how with a vinyl record, you could put this little thing down in the middle and when the needle got to the end of the record it would pick up and start from the beginning again? Well, I was thirteen or fourteen, and I was kissing a girl, and I was so nervous. We were making out in that bad junior high school way with neither of us enjoying it but couldn't admit it. So I worked up my nerve and thought, When the needle picks up and goes back that's when I'm going to go for second base. And I did, except she didn't have breasts. I met Steven Tyler and told him this.

NS: The first time I interviewed you when your first album came out, you were living in this same house. And it was just as empty. Has your life changed much?

M: I have been making records for ten years, and this record has been the most successful of my albums. But the only real difference in my life is I get to look at a picture of myself eighty feet tall every time I walk out of my house.

NS: What did you think when they put up that CK Jeans ad near your house in lower Manhattan?

M: I was so excited. I remembered that the first ad that went up in that space featured Foxy Brown, and I remember walking up Broadway and just being like, Oh fuck, that's huge. At the time it was the biggest photo of a human being
I had ever seen. I remember just for a split second thinking, Wow, that would be so cool, and it happened. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I love it.

NS: Do people recognize you whenever you walk past it?