MOBY’S BEAUTIFUL WAY OF POURING OUT PAIN

MOBY is a musical pioneer who has sold more than 20million albums.

And David Bowie, New Order and Britney Spears were among those who called on his remix skills after he emerged from the New York hardcore punk scene as a self-contained chart-smashing electro star 20 years ago.

In 2010, Moby moved from New York to LA leaving behind the drink and drug excess that had been a feature of his life since childhood.

The star, now 52, said: “I started doing drugs and drinking when I was 10.

“By the time I was 13, I’d already had some bad experiences.

“The older I got, alcohol and drugs were the only good things in my life – they were the only things that consistently and predictably worked.

“I was getting sick and I couldn’t have relationships, I was depressed and I was anxious, but I could always take comfort in alcohol and drugs. The problem was that the hangovers started lasting 36 or 48 hours, and it got to the point I couldn’t even really string sentences together. “I was sleeping until five or six in the afternoon every day.” As he releases his moving but troubled new album Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt, Moby is making another break with his past by selling almost all of the records and musical equipment that fuelled his career. He said: “I moved house recently and I had the practical thought that I haven’t played these records in a long time. Most of the musical equipment I have I haven’t used in a long time. So the idea is to sell everything and give the money to this organisation I work with called the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine.” In his 2016 memoir Porcelain, Moby recounted an extraordinary life journey from poverty to popularity, through a series of mismatched relationships.

He said: “I’m single and middle-aged. I come home to an empty house. There is a wistfulness where you imagine ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to come home to a house where there’s someone who loves me and has my best interests at heart?’

“But there’s a lot of flexibility that comes with being single. It’s a trade-off.”

Raised by a single mother – his father died when he was two – Moby has no wish to be a parent himself.

“In the past I would give lip service to it,” he admitted, “but it always just seemed more like a pleasant idea than something I wanted. It’s easy to not have a kid but it’s a hard thing to say in public. I’m really happy without children.” ● Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt is out today.