MOBY: Almost Home


The video was recorded at Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles.

RELATED: This story starts in Moby’s apartment on a sunny pre-9/11 morning in New York city. Moby and his neighbor David Bowie are sitting on the couch strumming “Heroes” on acoustic guitars. They are prepping for a Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall organized by Phillip Glass. This is too good to be true, Moby thinks to himself. What if it isn’t? What if I’ve lost my mind and I’m institutionalized and just hallucinating this? Does it even matter? Just go with it. As hallucinations go, you could do a lot worse.

Then Moby thinks to himself: If I could somehow travel back to 1977 and tell the 12 year old version of me that was standing in line Johnny’s Records in Darien, Connecticut, waiting to purchase the first album he would buy (Heroes, on cassette) with the money he earned from his first job (caddying at Wee Burn Country Club), that 24 years from now he’d be sitting on his couch with David Bowie rehearsing the version of “Heroes” they will perform at Carnegie Hall later that night…Nah, even a wide-eyed 12 year old wouldn’t buy a cock-and-bull story like that.

Maybe this story starts a few months back at the Hollywood compound of his pal David Lynch, who has nailed a dead chicken to the wall in the hopes that it will draw maggots, for reasons unclear to everyone but David Lynch. Naw, that’s too weird. Maybe it starts back in 1975 when a nine-year-old Moby is starring in a super-8 movie with Robert Downey Jr., his BFF at the time, directed by Downey’s father, the iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. Naw, Moby hasn’t spoken to Robert Downey Jr. since he was 10. Or maybe this story starts in bed with Natalie Portman circa 2001 — nah, people don’t want to read about that kind of stuff.

Or maybe it starts at that party Shepard Fairey threw a year or two ago, and Neil Young was there and somebody offered to introduce him, but Moby declined for fear yet another long time hero would disappoint in person. “I’m sure he’s a great guy,” he thought to himself, “but on the off chance he isn’t – if he’s mean or a jerk – all of the sudden I lose 30 of my favorite songs.” Nah, too anti-climactic.

Maybe it starts at Club Anthrax in Stamford CT, circa 1983, where the Vatican Commandos, the punk band of then-16-year-old Moby, is opening for The Circle Jerks. The guitar player from Hose, the other support act on the bill, wants to borrow Moby’s amp. His name is Rick Rubin. No, too name-droppy. MORE