Moby — Play. Story behind the album which could have been the last Moby’s record

It was said many times: Play is a unique album. The rights for all 17 tracks were acquired by TV producers, advertisers and film-makers. The Moby’s manager of that time denies that the music from the record was initially created as a soundtrack. “Many people seem to think that we pitched the music for ads only, whereas the truth is that we just responded to the requests; the ads we selected were very carefully chosen, and we actually turned down more than we accepted.” And it all happened because the radio rejected Play. So they had to go by the back door—to studios and agencies.

Now this album is honoured with golden epithets and branches of the laurel, but after the failure of a punk-album Animal rights Moby didn’t know what to think. He received respect from rock monsters, and he turned away from his former techno-breakbeat-ambient audience. He planned to record his last album, retire and study architecture. And Play was supposed to be his swansong. Together with his manager he went to different labels hoping to at least get close to the sales of Everything is wrong, Moby’s most successful album at the time selling 250,000 copies. Play surpassed 10 million. What’s interesting is that the sales didn’t go so well at the beginning. The three singles released to support the album made a little difference, but didn’t really make it popular. Magazines didn’t want to listen to this music and the radio refused to play these weird kind of tracks.

Moby’s manager Eric Härle: “Most major record labels would have stopped working the album, but luckily nobody gave up on the record; being on the independent label Mute in the UK helped us a lot, because they just kept ploughing on and at some point around seven or eight months after the initial release it turned around and started snowballing.”

“I have no idea why it’s been so successful,” Moby muses. “All I was aiming for was a record that I loved and that perhaps some of my friends would love. I guess I wanted to make it good value for money, something that people would want in their homes.” Interviewer notices: As a sound bed for ordinary goings-on? “Yeah. A lot of people tell me it’s nice to have sex to. Though I couldn’t imagine being naked while my voice was playing in the background. Too creepy.”

It’s difficult to say why it was nothing at first and everything later. After all, the material didn’t change in 10 months. Moby played the album in the basement of a Virgin music shop while customers queued for CDs or were choosing them. That meant that he played for forty people, just like at the times of Animal rights. Then there were supporting performances in the US, alcohol and oblivion, until the manager called: “We’re number one in the UK!” After this, the author only became more and more famous. The radio suddenly understood it and the journalist who had rejected Play started asking for interviews. Then he was able to release collections of the best, unreleased and early tracks, answer to readers’ questions, make double albums and so on. This is a story about how you should never give up and what a weird thing success is. Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

12″ publishes the Moby’s track by track guide from the Rolling Stone interview

Honey

My friend Dimitri Ehrlich, who is a music journalist here in New York, got this Alan Lomax box set. He had listened to it and wasn’t that interested in it and he gave it to me, and I heard all those great a cappellas. I wrote Honey in about 10 minutes. My girlfriend at the time really liked it. And that surprised me because she didn’t really like my music.

Mario Caldalto Jr, the Beastie Boys producer, agreed to mix Honey. Keep in mind, at this point, I was a has-been and I knew I was a has-been. I was hanging out at Max Fish and Mars Bar and Motor City drinking with the few remaining people in New York who would still hang out with me. At this time the Beasties had Hello Nasty, which was doing incredibly well, and I just couldn’t believe that Mario Caldato, Jr. was willing to work with me. It came out as a single and did nothing. I think it got played once or twice and disappeared.

Find my baby

Basically just me playing slide guitar over a vocal sample. I added what I thought were hip hop drums to it. In the ’80s I was DJing a lot of hip hop. At one point I was working at Mars and I used to keep a microphone by the turntables. Big Daddy Kane and Run DMC and 3rd Bass and Flavor Flav and everybody would go to this club and get drunk, and I had the microphone. I was the weird white DJ for all these rappers where were drinking and rapping to impress their girlfriends.

Porcelain

Strangely enough, that’s probably the most signature song on the record, and I actually had to be talked into including it. When I first recorded it, I thought it was average. I didn’t like the way I produced it, I thought it sounded mushy, I thought my vocals sounded really weak. I couldn’t imagine anyone else wanting to listen to it.

When the tour for Play started, Porcelain was the song during the set where most people would get a drink.

But then Danny Boyle put it in the movie The Beach with Leo DiCaprio. It was Leo DiCaprio’s first film since Titanic and everyone went to go see it. He used the music so well in the movie. I think that’s when a lot of people became aware of the record.

Why does my heart feel so bad?

Why does my heart feel so bad was written in ’92 as a really bad techno song. Just mediocre, generic techno. At some point I rediscovered the song and I tried doing it considerably slower, tried to make it mournful and romantic. My manager Barry talked me into including Porcelain and my other manager Eric talked me into including Why does my heart feel so bad It became a big hit in Germany. Why does my heart feel so bad for some reason struck a nerve in Germany and became a big hit single over there. I thought that was as far as any success for Play was gonna go. (See a story behind little idiot character)

South side

South side oddly enough is my least favorite song on the record. I just don’t think it’s all that interesting. My favorite thing about South side is the subject matter. It’s essentially a song about abject amorality. I love that it’s a happy sing-along pop song about kids that become so inured to violence and become so desensitized that nothing gets through to them. It’s about people who have become so over-exposed to stimuli that nothing matters to them anymore. I like the idea of having subtle, very disturbing lyrics hidden in a happy-friendly pop song. And I also like the fact that no one stopped to listen to the lyrics—which is fine with me.

Gwen Stefani came into the studio while I was recording Play. And this was when the first No Doubt record was doing really well. So I couldn’t figure out why she’d want to go into the studio with me. She was a big rock star and I was a has-been. She came into the studio, she recorded the vocals and she did a great job. But my mixing skills are limited. I couldn’t get a mix with her vocals that worked. I tried and I tried. So the first album version didn’t have her vocals on it. I went back to it a year later and handed it off to a friend who was a good mixer, and he was able to actually do a mix with her vocals that worked. So, that’s why there’s two versions.

Rushing

Those first five songs—they’re OK. None of those first five songs, which all went on to be fairly successful in some country, I think they’re all OK. But Rushing is one of my favorite songs on the record. This is why I should never be allowed to be an A&R person. I remember when I was listening to the demos of the album, Rushing was the only song I felt confident about. And I really didn’t change it much from the demo to the finished version.

Bodyrock

Bodyrock was the song both of my managers tried to get me to take off the record. They thought it was really tacky. They thought it sounded like a Fatboy Slim ripoff—which I guess it kind of did. I like it because the hip hop sample was off the first mixtape I ever got, maybe in 1981, off of the Mr. Magic Show on WBLS. The guitar is directly inspired by What we all want by Gang of Four. And I thought it was kind of funny to have an orchestral chorus on what is essentially a hip hip song.

Natural blues

Of all the successful singles on the record, Natural blues is my favorite. It’s quite ethereal and mournful. It almost didn’t make it on the record. I had some friends over and I was playing them songs off the record and they thought it was too weird. I couldn’t get a good mix of it. This guy in England, 1 Giant Leap, he mixed that song and did a really great job so I was able to include it on the record.

Machete

It was the only song on the record that was really fun to play live. Machete was the only techno song. It’s such a weird song. To me it reminds of that late-’80s EBM. When I was recording it, I was trying to be like Meat Beat Manifesto, Frontline Assembly, Skinny Puppy. That song was my direct influence from listening to too much Front 242.

7

Again, this is why I should never be allowed to run a record label. Because it’s also one of favorite tracks on the record, even though it’s about a minute long.

Run on

Run on was one of the first songs written and it was really hard to put together, because it has so many samples in it. I didn’t use computers at this point, it was all done with stand-alone samplers. When it was finished, I collapsed in exhaustion. I didn’t know this when I recorded it, but it’s a standard. Everybody’s done it. Elvis Presley did a version of it, Johnny Cash did it. If you were a gospel or country star, everyone covered that song. And I had no idea.

Down slow

The only songs I really like off Play are the quiet instrumentals. All the songs from here on in, I really like. The first five songs on the record don’t interest me very much, but the last five songs I’m quite proud of.

If things were perfect

Remember that band James? Before James became successful they put out some singles on Factory Records. One was called Hymn from the Village and If things were perfect was the B side. For some reason I liked that title. So when I wrote and recorded this song, even though there’s no relationship between the title and the song, I just gave it that name. I don’t know why. Sort of an homage to James even though the song sounds nothing like James. I did meet [James vocalist] Tim Booth in a nightclub once and he was telling me he quit music to teach yoga. That’s one of the spoken-word songs. That’s the one that was directly inspired by walking around Chinatown, the two bridges area, at like 5 o’clock in the morning. That’s the most New Yorky song on the record.

Everloving

This still makes me laugh. I recorded a rushed demo to cassette. I could never mix it in a way I was happy with, so I just ended up using the cassette demo on the album. If you listen to it, there’s hiss, there’s tape warble. It’s probably one of the only songs on a 10-million-selling record recorded to cassette. And what’s funny is that it’s been licensed. Oliver Stone used it in a movie, it’s been in a couple really big movies. And every time I hear it in a huge movie, I think to myself, “This is just a crummy demo on cassette.”

Inside

The idea with Play is to have this narrative arc, where it starts off energetic and then by the end dissolves into an opiated haze. Inside is like having done too much ketamine, because it’s just so numb. Whenever I put it on, I feel like I’m in a K-hole.

Guitar flute & string

I’m the worst judge of my music. This is my favorite song on the whole record. Hands down, bar none. Also recorded demo to a cassette. When Play was released, I didn’t think anyone was gonna listen to it. So I figured towards the end, I will put on the songs that I like. No one’s gonna listen to this record, certainly no one’s ever gonna get this far in the record. Track 15 or whatever? So I put it on there for myself. [The title] is not very inventive. Brought to you by the people that invented the orange.

The sky is broken

There’s only three elements in the whole song: really bad drum samples, and old Oberheim Matrix 1000 synthesizer and vocals. It was intentionally very minimal, very austere, very simple.

My weakness

I never expected anyone to ever listen to this song. It was tagged on to the end because I love music that’s equal parts disconcerting and beautiful—you can get caught up in a sense of beauty, but also it’s unsettling. It’s why I like a lot of late 19th Century classical music like Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune. I know it’s beautiful but it also makes me feel uncomfortable. My weakness is such a strange piece of music. There’s no drums and it’s this odd African choir loop — I sampled it 12 years ago, I don’t remember what it’s from. What was most gratifying for me when Play became successful was when people liked the more obscure songs. Gillian Anderson used The sky is broken in an X-Files (All things episode, 7th season). I was so flattered that someone had listened to the whole record.