Music maestro Moby’s latest album revists and reinvents some of his finest work – with a bit of help from jazz and blues great Gregory Porterand others

BY BEN WEST

Richard Melville Hall, aka Moby, is one of the most celebrated musical artists of all time, having sold more than 20 million records in a career spanning more than three decades.

Singer and songwriter Gregory Porter has in recent years seemingly almost single-handedly revived the contemporary jazz genre, twice winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in the process.

The two of them have recently worked together on Moby’s new album, Reprise, which features Moby’s most famous hits and successes, re-envisioned in new powerful versions with arrangements for acoustic instruments and philharmonic ensembles. Porter’s contribution was to feature on Moby’s re-imagined single of his hit, Natural Blues.

I asked them, via a Zoom call to their homes in California, whether, overall, they preferred creating music or listening to music.

“That is a tough one,” said Porter. “I enjoy the process of making music. But inevitably, during the process of making music, I beat myself up about not being as meaningful as the people that I admire so much. So if you have your influences, as Nat King Cole, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway – the gods of music – you’ll never touch it. You’ll never touch the hem of that garment.

“And so making music can be frustrating in that way. But I enjoyed the process. I enjoy the journey of making music. The process of making music starts way before you get into the studio, I think it’s a feeling, even the feeling that you get that inspires you to do something. I think that’s powerful.”

Said Moby (whose name is a reference to his family’s ancestry: he is the great-great-great nephew of Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick): “Yeah, that makes so much sense. I remember being very depressed, I don’t know, at some point a few decades ago, when I realised I was never going to write a song as beautiful as Heroes by David Bowie. I was never going to make a record as phenomenal as What’s Going On. I was never going to be able to sing like Baby Huey. But then, for me, once I accepted it, it was kind of liberating.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I can be inspired by the gods of music. But I can also understand, I’ll never touch them’. Like, I’ll never come close to them. It’s almost sort of like maybe going to Mount Everest base camp and being like, ‘Okay, I got to the Mount Everest base camp, and I’m looking up at Mount Everest. And there are a lot of people up there, and I know that I will never join them.’”

That’s very humble for a musician who has been so incredibly successful. In 1999 Moby’s fifth album, Play, dominated the charts around the world for two years, and was included in Rolling Stone magazine’s ranking of the 500 greatest albums ever made. It eventually became the biggest-selling electronica album of all time with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide.

When he used the samples of blues artists  from the original Play album, did he hear the samples first and then build his songs around that, or was it the other way round?

“The songs were written around the vocals,” he said. “I heard these vocals and I fell in love with them. I wanted to pay tribute to them by writing around them – the only function of those songs is to celebrate and pay tribute to those voices, for which I have such reverence. I have an almost shy, apologetic humility around these voices because I fully understand as a middle-aged white guy it’s not my place to avail myself of a tradition that I’m not a part of.”

A further 14 studio albums over the next 20 years led to accolades at the MTV Video Music Awards, the Billboard Music Awards and the DanceStar Awards amongst many others.

This latest release, Reprise, was recorded with the Budapest Art Orchestra and features duets with renowned artists that include country music icon Kris Kristofferson, Jim James of American rock band My Morning Jacket, Rihanna’s co-songwriter Skylar Grey, and others.

An acoustic version of David Bowie’s Heroes features Mindy Jones. Moby stated David Bowie was his favourite artist of all time after another journalist on the call asked him to choose his top musician.

“The first job I ever had, I carried golf clubs as a caddie just long enough to save money to buy some David Bowie records,” Moby recalled. “I was almost 13. Then, in 1999, we became friends. And he and Iman [Bowie’s second wife and widow] actually moved to an apartment across the street from me in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. So we were friends. We were neighbours. We went on tour together, we had holidays together, and we had this one, phenomenal morning where he came to my apartment, and we sat on my sofa – I had this green mid-century sofa.

“And we played an acoustic version of his song Heroes that was just the two of us. On a beautiful Saturday morning, drinking coffee and playing Heroes. And I still can’t believe that this happened, that I was able to play the greatest song ever written with the greatest musician of all time. And so the version of Heroes that is on Reprise is a testament to the song, a testament to David Bowie, a testament to my friendship with him, and it’s supposed to be almost like an emotional homage to this moment of happiness – sitting on my couch playing Heroes with David Bowie.”

Another journalist asked how the orchestral remastering on Reprise came about, and why?
“I did my first ever orchestral show about four years ago and afterwards I was asked if I wanted to make an orchestral greatest hits album and immediately said yes,” said Moby. “I thought it would be such a fascinating approach to making a record because normally when I work on music I’m by myself, in my little studio. Working on an orchestral album though – by definition – involves a lot of people. To state the obvious, the utility of music is communicating emotion, and while I love the way electronic instruments display emotion, there’s something so special in the way that you can create emotion with an orchestra. And so the ultimate inspiration is to revisit these songs and expand upon the original emotional quality.”

Reprise has been released together with Moby Doc, a spellbinding documentary about Moby’s life by Rob Bralver, narrated by both filmmaker David Lynch and Moby himself. Moby reflects upon such things as past alcoholism and present sobriety, his traumatic childhood and past unstable personal life. He also talks about knowing Bowie and his profound love for animals and nature. Indeed, he is a huge advocate for animal rights and veganism.

Does he think the companionship of animals will be appreciated more in the future due to the joy they have brought during this pandemic?

“I hope so. So many people struggle with loneliness and isolation, even those in families or friend groups. A lot of people feel they can be their authentic self with animals and that’s such a lifesaver for so many.”

Porter said of Moby that he had enjoyed watching “the intelligence and beauty of some of the cows and pigs that you show on your social media and I have to say, even though I’ve been cooking for years, I’ve consumed meat for a long time and I have a cooking show – I didn’t  mean to plug that! – and everything is available to me. But you put a seed in my head, and I don’t know much that seed is going to grow, but it did cause me to think about the sacrifice. I wondered even when I met you if you be a zealot about it or gentle, and I didn’t feel any pressure one way or another.”

Against a backdrop of a plain white wall, with sunshine-dappled leaves swaying in a gentle wind through the window behind him, Moby replied: “I have to remind myself, until I was 19 years old I ate nothing but Burger King and pepperoni pizza. We live in a time where people just yell at each other and it accomplishes nothing apart from making people angry, whether that’s within politics, gender, race, or the Middle East – there’s this constant noise of people disagreeing instead of listening. We’re all fallible, we’re all working to do our best with limited amounts of information and I guarantee you everyone is doing something that someone else would judge them for.”

Gregory Porter pointed out that persuasion and leading by example can go a long way: “If I was to cook the perfect vegan meal for you, what  would it be?” he asked.

“That’s a hard one because there are so many wonderful vegan things that people don’t even realise are vegan, like a lot of Italian, Indian and Chinese food. One of my favourite vegan meals is very simple Mexican food. It makes touring in Mexico so easy because I just ask for a plate with brown rice, black beans, steamed corn tortillas, guacamole and some nice salsa and hot sauce. I’m sorry if that’s a dull answer especially because your a very accomplished chef but I’ve got to say a plate of simple Mexican food is my favourite.“

Before the video call, Moby Kindly sent round some vegan snacks such as exotic crisps, plant-based chocolate and fruit bars, to prove his point, and they were all indeed surprisingly diverse and tasty. I somehow suspect that he didn’t go out shopping, wrap up the package, and take it to the post office himself, but the thought definitely counts.

“When we’re done talking I think I’m going to go and make myself a baked sweet potato with avocado, with maybe some sea salt on top.,” said Moby.

“We’re done  talking, Moby, so you can go and get your baked potato,” said Porter. And with that they said goodbye.

Gregory Porter’s online TV cookery show ‘The Porterhouse’ is streaming on You Tube.

Moby’s new album, ‘Reprise’, released via Deutsche Grammophon/Decca, and his current single featuring Gregory Porter, ‘Natural Blues’ are both out now. Moby Doc is released in the UK via Dice TV and available as a DVD.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of Black + Green Magazine