by Moby
50
DARIEN, CONNECTICUT (1983)
After I apologized to the Vatican Commandos and promised that my petulant days were behind me, they relented and let me back in the band. Over Christmas break we’d recorded six songs for a seven-inch single, and now we were embarking on our first-ever tour: a pizza parlor in Ohio, a prep school in upstate Connecticut, and then the Anthrax, a small punk-rock club in Stamford, Connecticut.
We were leaving on Thursday night to drive to Akron, so that day in school I informed anyone willing to listen that I was going on tour. Friday was going to be the first time since kindergarten that I’d skipped a day, or even a period, of school. But I’d already been accepted to Kenyon, Tufts, Fordham, and the University of Connecticut, so I could be a super-tough little punk-rocker and miss a day of school without worrying about compromising my permanent academic record.
The Vatican Commandos lineup had changed a bit. Chip was still on drums, but Jim had switched from vocals to bass. We had a new singer, Chuck, who had a blue Mohawk and was going to be a pre-med at Boston University in the fall. John had left the band to spend more time with his amazing new girlfriend, Lindsay. We still couldn’t believe that one of us had an actual girlfriend, especially one from Los Angeles who was tall and beautiful and had been friends with former Germs singer Darby Crash.
On Thursday night the singer for Reflex from Pain – one of the bands we were touring with – picked us up in his dad’s van. The van had no windows or seats, so the four Vatican Commandos, the four guys in another band called CIA, the three other guys in Reflex from Pain, and two of our Connecticut punk-rock friends all sat on the metal floor for the twelve hours it took to drive to Ohio.
Our friend Sean had written an article about the Vatican Commandos for Neirad, the Darien High School newspaper. As we pulled onto I-95 and headed out of Connecticut, Jim handed me a copy of the paper. There was a picture of us playing at Pogo’s, opening up for Agnostic Front, and a complimentary two-hundred-word article. It was our first press, and we took turns reading the article over and over again. I couldn’t get past the thrill of seeing a picture of myself in print, even if it was blurry and was only going to be seen by a couple of hundred people at Darien High School.
At 4 a.m. we got to a punk-rock squat in Akron and fell asleep on the living-room floor, a pile of teenage punk-rockers curled up with their leather jackets. I was exhausted after twelve hours in the van, but I went to sleep happy: I was on tour.
Three hours later I was woken by a mangy dog adorned with a Crass bandana who was sniffing my face. A smiling punk-rock kid with a bright-green Mohawk happily announced, “We made lentils and brown rice!”
We had woken up in a vegan squat. I’d heard of vegetarianism; my mom sometimes flirted with tofu. But veganism? Until the green-haired punk-rocker explained it I had no idea what “vegan” was. My diet consisted of Frosted Flakes, pizza, hot dogs, and Burger King, so there was no way I was going to eat anything remotely healthful for breakfast. Especially not lentils and brown rice.
“We need to get real food,” I said sotto voce to my friend Jeff, who published the Connecticut Underground Dispatch with Jim. The CUD was the first punk-rock fanzine in Connecticut, and Jim and Jeff printed each six-page issue on Jeff’s dad’s Xerox machine. They’d sent copies to Tim Yohannan, the king of punk-rock fanzines and the publisher of Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll. Tim had sent back a note saying, “Thanks!” – high praise and a high-water mark in Connecticut punk-rock fanzine history.
Jeff and I put on our leather jackets and walked through Akron until we found a fast-food restaurant. I couldn’t believe we were in Akron, the home of Devo and Pere Ubu, and I secretly hoped Mark Mothersbaugh or David Thomas might come to the pizza parlor tonight.
“I had the weirdest dream,” Jeff said, as we stood in line to order our food. “You were playing at a stadium in front of a hundred thousand people, and you were on top of a tank.”
“That’s bizarre,” I said. “With Vatican Commandos?”
“No, you were playing on your own. You had your shirt off and you were standing on top of this tank, and everyone was screaming.”
“Like Freddie Mercury?”
He laughed. We ordered hamburgers and chocolate shakes for breakfast. “You know,” he said, “technically they can’t call them milkshakes because they don’t have any dairy in them.”
*
A handful of people – seven, to be exact – bought $5 tickets to our show in the pizza parlor, but the bulk of the audience was the people from the squat and the other bands. There wasn’t a stage, so we cleared away some tables and chairs and set up our equipment between the front door and the jukebox.
We started our set with “Hit Squad for God,” and the twenty people in the pizza parlor immediately started moshing. Twenty-five minutes later, after we had played all twelve of our songs, our set was done.
The other bands ran through their equally short sets, and by 10 p.m. the show was over. We packed up the van, ate some pizza, and politely set up the restaurant tables and chairs as best we could.
“We only made $35 at the door,” the punk-rock anarchist vegan with the green Mohawk told us apologetically, “but you can take it all.”
We stopped at McDonald’s to get food for the road and started the long drive back to Connecticut. “You guys,” I said, after eating another Quarter Pounder, “I think I need to use the bathroom.”
“Okay,” the Reflex from Pain singer said from behind the wheel, “I’ll find a gas station.”
A few minutes passed and I started panicking. “I need to go now,” I announced.
“Yo, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“I don’t care – I need to go now.”
He pulled over and I jumped out of the van, pulling down my pants and making it a few feet before everything came out. “Fuck! Gross!” Jim shouted. Everyone else got out of the van and pelted with me empty beer cans and garbage while I had diarrhea.
“Stop it!” I yelled, trying to run away with my pants around my ankles.
“Hurry up, Moby!” a member of CIA yelled, as he pegged me with an empty beer can. “We’re leaving!”
“Guys, leave him alone,” Jeff said, earning my undying gratitude.
After five minutes I had emptied my bowels and I got back in the van. The other musicians tried to give me space in the tightly packed vehicle – not out of consideration, but because I smelled like a dumpster.
We stopped a few more times so I could throw up and shit by the side of the road, and got back to Connecticut at noon. I was feverish and shaking, but I reminded myself that things were great, as I was on tour. “I’ll pick you up in two hours to go to Choate,” Jim said, as I got out of the van.
I slept for ninety minutes and woke up to Jim honking his horn in the driveway. I’d gone to sleep sick, but being seventeen years old and on tour had healed me, so now I felt fine. Jim was leaning on his horn, so I brushed my teeth and ran out the front door.
We headed to Choate Rosemary Hall, one of the prettiest and preppiest boarding schools in Connecticut. A senior at Choate had become a punk-rocker, and on a visit to the Anthrax saw us and Violent Children and Reflex from Pain. He wanted to bring punk rock to Choate, so he offered the three of us $100 to play as part of their spring concert series.
The only issue was that all the bands had to change their names, which were too harsh for the refined sensibilities of Choate. So Vatican Commandos became Velvet Calm, Reflex from Pain became Reflections from Poetry, and Violent Children became Violet Children.
We played in a wood-paneled common room as the sun set behind the ivy-covered brick buildings. A few preppy Choate students stood around and watched, while the seventeen-year-old promoter, who gave himself a Mohawk before the show, tried to start a mosh pit.
While we were playing “Point Me to the End” – one of our darker, faster songs, closer to speed metal than punk rock – I looked at my fellow Vatican Commandos and tho
ught, “We’re actually good.” Chip had become a fast and solid drummer. Jim was manic and passionate on bass. And Chuck was a little screaming demon, hurling himself into audiences and yelling at the top of his lungs. I was glad I had apologized to the band and they’d let me rejoin.
I was still being punished for my sins, though, so after the show Jim, Chip, and Chuck got drunk on light beer in the parking lot and made me the designated driver. During the car ride home they kept drinking while we listened to the Flex Your Head compilation from DC, and they threw empty beer cans at my head.
“Don’t shit in my mom’s car, Moby!” Jim yelled at me.
I laughed. “I can’t make any promises.”
51
NEW YORK CITY (2007)
I needed a hit.
My fame was waning: whereas a few years ago I had been billed first or second at music festivals, now I was usually fourth or fifth. At some festivals I’d even been relegated to performing during the daytime. And a daytime slot at a festival was fine if you were up and coming, but playing to a festival crowd of fifty thousand people while the sun was still up was a kiss of slow death if your career was in decline.
My dwindling fame terrified me. A few years earlier I’d been invited to parties every day of the week. Rock-star parties. Movie-star parties. Head-of-state parties. But now the invitations were getting fewer and further between, and the parties were less prestigious than they’d been in the aftermath of Play. I hoped tonight would be different – when I was done working in my studio I was going to a birthday party for a billionaire.
Over the last decade fame had given me worth and made me attractive. And I feared that if I wasn’t famous, I would never find the right person to finally love me.
If you asked me why I was holing up in my studio, I would say it was because I wanted to make beautiful music. But what I really wanted was to make a hit that would recapture the fame and validation I’d had after Play. The song I was currently working on had a pleasant disco chorus, a loop of a woman singing “I love to move in here.” I’d added disco drums, percussion, and some old-school house piano, but in its current state I knew the track wasn’t going to be the hit that I craved. Grandmaster Caz was on his way to my studio, and I hoped that he would make the song come together, helping to keep me from the curse of sunlight when I played festivals.
Grandmaster Caz was a hip-hop legend. He’d written and rapped on some of the most iconic tracks of the late 1970s and early 1980s; he was widely seen as one of the inventors of hip-hop. I’d reached out to him through my manager’s assistant, asking if Caz would consider doing some verses on my new record. To my amazement, he had agreed.
For some reason I didn’t understand, the New York hip-hop community still seemed to like me. I’d worked with or remixed some of my rapper heroes, like Public Enemy, MC Lyte, Busta Rhymes, and Nas, and most New York-based MCs and producers were usually incredibly kind to me. More often than not they’d pull me aside and say something along the lines of, “Fuck Eminem, Moby, we got your back.” Which was gracious, but cold comfort. Eminem was the most successful musician on the planet, and every year that went by he sold more records and I sold fewer.
Grandmaster Caz came over, I set up a microphone, and he flawlessly recorded his vocals in a matter of minutes. It was always unsettling having someone else in my studio, as the room was small and I usually worked alone. Also, Caz was taller and bigger than Lou Reed and David Bowie and the other musicians who had visited over the years, so after we were done recording his vocals we relocated to my living room. I made us each a cup of tea and we hung out, reminiscing about New York in the 1980s, talking about old clubs like Mars and the Tunnel and some of the hip-hop records that were big back then.
After Caz left I put the song together, adding more percussion and keyboards. By 7 p.m. it was done. I played it back and judged the results: it was slow and sinewy and special in places. But it wasn’t a hit.
I was angry, anxious, and ashamed. Angry at myself because I couldn’t write a hit. Anxious that my career was spiraling downwards. And ashamed that I’d become a sad joke among the hipsters: a faded star who was still out every night, getting drunk and going home with anybody who’d say yes. But deep down I was angry because I knew that I had perverted my own music.
I almost couldn’t admit this to myself, but my primary method for judging the music I was working on had become the contemptible criterion “Will this help my career?” I’d hoped that my epiphany at hearing David Lynch say “Creativity is beautiful” would fix me, and then, freed of my lickspittle desire for fame, I could go back to making music without worrying about its commercial potential. But here I was, judging a perfectly nice little song because it wasn’t a hit. I felt like a disgrace.
I turned off my studio, repulsed by what I’d become, and put on my nicest suit. I’d been invited to the birthday party of billionaire real-estate developer Richard LeFrak by one of his assistants, who apparently thought I was still young and cool. I wanted to bring a guest, but I’d alienated most of my friends, and the few I hadn’t lost were now in their forties, happily married, and living in the suburbs. I thought about staying home instead of going alone to a stranger’s birthday, but LeFrak had rented the Hammerstein Ballroom and hired Earth, Wind & Fire, and I’d never seen Earth, Wind & Fire play live.
I took a cab to the Hammerstein Ballroom, one of the most beautiful old theaters in New York, and gazed up at the marquee. I’d played here in 2000. Originally I’d been booked for one night, but it sold out so quickly we added a second, and then a third. My skin ached with desire for the halcyon days when everything came so easily.
The Hammerstein held up to three thousand five hundred people, but tonight’s party was for a hundred. They’d set up tables and chairs in front of the stage, and although everything was exclusive and elegant, it still felt like having a tea party in an airplane hangar. I was seated between one of the Hearst daughters and an heir to the Sackler pharmaceutical fortune. I surveyed the room. Donald Trump was there. Michael Bloomberg was there. Some of the new hedge-fund billionaires were there. “We should take them all hostage and start a new country with their money,” I said to the Hearst heir sitting next to me.
She paled, and I was flooded with regret, remembering that her mother had been kidnapped and taken hostage in the 1970s. “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot,” I said, sincerely contrite.
“It’s okay,” she said, but turned away to talk to the hedge-fund manager seated on her right.
I ordered vodka and more vodka and drank quietly, while waiters brought course after course of food I couldn’t eat. After dinner a cadre of staff pushed the tables to the side of the dance floor, the lights dimmed, and Earth, Wind & Fire took the stage. A few people clapped, the sound evaporating in the cavernous room, but most of the billionaires chatted with their friends or, like Trump, scowled while checking their phones.
It wasn’t a glamorous gig, but Earth, Wind & Fire had been paid to play, so they played. I’d had six or seven vodkas, so I got up and danced by myself. When the band played “September,” a few of the billionaires even stood up to dance joylessly with their Botoxed mistresses.
“September” was one of those songs that seemed light and jolly on the surface, but was deeply melancholy at the core. I looked at the cavernous theater and heard the surprisingly mournful, elegiac words bouncing back from all the empty seats. Only seven years ago I had filled all those empty seats with happy people.
The singer for Earth, Wind & Fire seemed exhausted. When he reached the last verse, his words filled the theater like a lamentation.
A few songs later they played “Shining Star,” and almost all the people at the party finally got up to dance. A few of the younger guests had smiles on their faces, but most of the older ones looked as grim as undertakers in a town where nobody was dying. “What’s the point of being obscenely wealthy if you’re going to be fucking miserable?” I wondered.
The billionaires joyless
ly lifted their tired, gouty feet, roughly in time to the music. But on the far side of the stage I could see the waiters and kitchen staff who’d come out of the kitchen to dance happily and wave their hands in the air. The minimum-wage employees were smiling and happy, jumping around to Earth, Wind & Fire, whereas the billionaires looked miserable. And the billionaires weren’t just joyless, I realized, they were angry. They owned the world, but they were perpetually dissatisfied. What was so broken in me that I aspired to be accepted by them and live how they lived?
There was Donald Trump. He had his name on gold-plated buildings and was the star of his own reality show. He had more than anyone could ever dream of, but as he stabbed his phone with his odd little orange fingers he looked like the saddest man on the planet.
The joylessness of the party finally broke me, so I walked off the dance floor and through the near-empty theater to leave. There was a song I’d started working on the day before, with a singer named Sylvia, and I wanted to finish it.
When Sylvia had shown up at my studio she told me that she’d been awake for thirty-six hours, but that she’d written some lyrics on the train on the way to my apartment. I’d recorded her, and I liked her lyrics, balanced halfway between consciousness and the apocalypse, but I hadn’t had time to finish the song.
After taking a taxi back to my studio I flipped power switches and pressed buttons, bringing my equipment to life. I opened the Pro Tools session with Sylvia and listened to what I had so far: her vocals and some keyboards. I had planned to turn her performance into the core of a deep-house song, but after tonight and my febrile pursuit of hits and acceptance I was offended by drums and effort.
Sylvia’s words washed over me: