"The book starts and I'm squatting in an abandoned factory and I'm a sober christian, trying to get a record deal," said Moby in a recent conversation with Take Two's Alex Cohen at his Los Angeles home. "And the book ends and I've toured the world, but my career has come to an end. I'm a dissipated alcoholic. Things have not worked out. And then the book ends just as I'm releasing the album "Play.""
Moby's new memoir "Porcelein" explores ten turbulent years of the musician's life, from the early to the late 1990s, just before his career exploded.
And the beginning wasn't easy. Take for instance, a story that Moby tells about his first big performance, at The Palladium in New York. With 3,000 people in the audience, the main act cancels, and Moby is left to step in to fill the void:
"So people were booing and throwing things. And this was my first ever real show. And I walked over to my equipment and it had been unplugged. And I had this one piece of equipment, this Yamaha sampler, that... took about four minutes to load. So, I stood on stage in front of 3,000 people, booing and throwing things at me while I loaded floppy discs into my sampler.
The nice thing was at some point people just stop booing because they got bored. And then I played my set, it worked out OK, but those five minutes of walking on stage and being booed by 3,000 people while they pelted me with limes from cocktails and then seeing my equipment turned off, I'm pretty sure that's why I'm bald."
Moby and Cohen go deep while talking about his life, covering topics including where his name came from, how he's related to Herman Melville and why a Diana Ross song terrified him as a child, but is also responsible for his career.
Moby has a number of book signings coming up, which you can check out here.
To hear the entire conversation click on the audio embedded at the top of this post.