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

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.

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.

Moby @ Mars. Mid 80s

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? 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 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.