In a recent interview with Anton Savage on Today FM, Moby said that the years he spent as David Bowie’s neighbour in New York were “remarkable but very disconcerting” and admitted the late singer wasn’t just a great friend but a “demigod and a genius”.
The 50-year-old musician, who was born Herman Melville Hall, admits he took his first job as a caddy on a golf course just so he could buy Bowie’s tracks.
“David Bowie was my favourite musician of all time. In fact the first job that I ever had was as a caddy on a golf course. I was quite small so I could only carry old people’s bags as they didn’t have as many clubs. I only took that job when I was 13 years old, so I could buy David Bowie records,” Moby said.
The singer-songwriter recalls how he grew close to Bowie and his wife Iman, when they moved across the street from him.
“In the year 2000 David Bowie moved in across the street from me in New York and we became very good friends. We went on tour together. We had Christmas together. It was remarkable but very disconcerting to be neighbours and very good friends with a man who was my favourite musician of all time!
“We would wave at each other from our balconies. I would go to the deli to buy soy milk and oats and he and Iman would be in there buying oranges and coffee,” Moby said. “They were my neighbourhood pals. It started to seem normal but at the back of my mind I never forgot the fact that David Bowie was a demigod and a genius and the best musician who will ever live,” he added.
The Natural Blues hitmaker admitted he doesn’t like meeting his heroes and recently declined an offer to meet musician Neil Young.
“Generally, I don’t like to meet my heroes. In fact, the other day I was at a party in L.A. and Neil Young was there, and someone asked me if I wanted to meet him.
“I declined because I was afraid that I would catch him on a bad day, and he wouldn’t very nice to me, and I would then lose twenty of my favourite songs of all time,” he said. “I’d rather not meet my heroes and be able to hold on to my favourite pieces of music.
“With David Bowie becoming good friends with him actually made me love his music more because he was such a remarkable man,” Moby added.
Porcelain: A Memoir
Moby, who was on the show to promote his memoir, which chronicles his life as an artist living in New York City up until the mid-nineties, credits Bob Seger, The Boomtown Rats, U2 and Glen Campbell as artists who he admires in the book.
“I’ve had an odd musical life,” he laughed. “I grew up playing classical music when I was very young and then my teenage years I spent playing in punk rock bands and post punk bands. I really only came to electronic music in my twenties. It was very odd for me when I start selling records and people assumed that I was this DJ from the electronic music world. As much as I love electronic music my background is more in punk rock.” he said.
Moby’s fourth studio album, Animal Rights, flopped in 1996 and he confesses he doesn’t even know why he made the record in the first place.
“The album that I released in 1996 Animal Rights didn’t do so good. My manager still affectionately refers to it as my ‘suicidal career killing album’.
“I still don’t fully know why I fully made that record. This was also at a time when bands like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim were rising to prominence and they were my peers,” he said. “As they were rising I made this very difficult punk rock record that sold nothing and led me to be a has-been.”
Moby’s memoir ends shortly after 1999 and he reveals it was around this time he thought his career was over. But little did he know that the magic was just about to happen.
“I was finishing making the album Play and I thought it was going to be this failure of a record that no one would ever listen to. I thought I would have to move back to Connecticut where I had grown up to teach community college.
“But Play worked out very surprisingly well for a poorly mixed record made by a middle-aged bald guy in his bedroom involving vocals that were fifty years old. It sold upwards to ten million records,” he added.
Moby’s new book, Porcelain: A Memoir, is out now.
