Issue Number 1006 | Big Gay Following: Moby | Advocate.com Moby  |  | Advocate.com

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Moby
After Moby spoke out against Eminem’s misogynistic and homophobic lyrics at the Grammys in 2001, the rapper called him a “36-year-old baldheaded fag” and declared “nobody listens to techno” in his single “Without Me.” Turns out that the angry 8 Miler was wrong on both counts: Though an ultra-liberal vegan, Moby’s not gay, and if the international success of his critically acclaimed CDs (particularly his 1999 pop breakthrough Play) is any indication, electro club jams do have an audience. Now releasing his sixth studio album, Last Night, which he calls “a love letter to dance music in New York City,” our 42-year-old baldheaded friend celebrates his androgyny and searches for a fresh feud.
By Brandon Voss
A shorter version of this story appeared in The Advocate  April 22, 2008
Moby

First off, the cover art for Last Night only features busty babes -- and they don’t look transsexual. Where are the men, Moby?
Oh, you haven’t seen the inside yet! There’s a really beautiful shirtless Polish boy with long red hair cascading down to his waist. He’s sort of the centerpiece of the art on the inside. 

So what did you do last night?
Oh, last night was very glamorous. I flew back to New York from California, so my last night was spent watching Everybody Loves Raymond on the in-flight monitor on crappy American Airlines. 

Are your nights fairly low-key nowadays?
As of late, yeah. For the last couple of years, I’ve found myself going out way too often. I mean, I’m 42 years old, and I hate to say this -- it sounds like an old-age cliché -- but it’s started to catch up to me. There were decades of my life where I could stay out until 6 in the morning every night with really no consequences, but I’ve found now that if I stay out until 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning and even have just four or five drinks, the whole next day is kind of shot. 

Does an ideal night out in New York involve gay clubs?
On occasion, but the only problem is that I live right next to the Lower East Side, and all the good gay clubs are in Chelsea -- and I’m nothing if not provincial. Also, the bigger gay clubs -- and bigger clubs in general -- kind of turn me off. I almost prefer a sleazy dive bar to a big shiny new club. I’m really not particularly classy when it comes to my taste in bars and nightclubs. I’ve been to Motor City on Ludlow Street probably about 500 times. 

Last Night is your most dance-oriented album in years. Will you still be making dance music even when you look like the “nursing-home Moby” from your “Natural Blues” video?
Maybe not when I’m in my 90s, although who knows? It’s funny, because dance music is slowly becoming like a musical idiom, almost like folk music or jazz. I did a photo shoot recently for Mix mag’s 25th anniversary, and the average age of the people in the shoot was probably around 40. It’s just funny that this very progressive, technologically driven musical genre is slightly graying. 

Well, just look at Madonna.
Yeah, she’s 120. 

How do you reconcile your art with the drug use that permeates the hard-core club scene?
I don’t think there’s anything inherently good or bad about drugs, just like there’s nothing inherently good or bad about bricks. If you use a brick to build a house, it’s a good use of it; if you use it to drop on someone’s foot, that’s not such a good use. Everything really depends on use and context. I would safely say every single person I know has either done or continues to do drugs, and manages to live a healthy, happy life. In moderation, I think drugs are fine, but I don’t know too many light, moderate crystal meth users. There are some drugs, like crack and crystal meth, where it’s hard to argue for their therapeutic benefit. It’s not like a couple of glasses of red wine with dinner that lowers your cholesterol. 

How can one dance past sunrise without drugs? Because Red Bull isn’t cutting it.
Speaking from experience, there are lots of ways. A few of my friends who are still late-night clubgoers come home and sleep until 3 in the morning, then go out at 3. In extreme cases, they’ll sleep until 6 in the morning and go out at 6, but the contrast is that if you walk into a club feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and everybody else in there has been up for the last four days and looks like they’ve been dead for the last few years, then that’s not so sexy. 

You’ve been such an ally to the gay community that you’ve taken some heat for it -- like when you stated in an interview that gays were “superior to straight people.” Do you stand by that?
Yeah, and I also said that if and when I ever have children, I want gay children, which didn’t really endear me to the Christian right wing of America. There are a lot of people in the world who are virulently homophobic or misogynistic or anti-Semitic, and what baffles me is that if you just look at it empirically, gays, women, and Jews are certainly responsible for far fewer violent crimes than straight white guys. They’ve started fewer wars, and they tend to be well educated, fun to hang out with, and they have nice homes, bars, and restaurants. 

Voss is editor in chief of HX magazine.

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