Moby’s Career an Interesting Study in the Unlikely Coming to Pass

Sitting for an interview recently, music sensation Moby talks about how his entire music career is, essentially, a story of the unlikely coming true. Says Moby, "I never expected to have a career as a musician." It’s not that he wasn’t going to make music. That part of his life is so ingrained that it would do it without being paid to do so. He notes, "I thought that professional musicians were other people. I thought I was going to spend my life teaching in a community college, working in a bookstore and making music that no one listened to."

Instead, Richard Melville Hall, has made it big, selling over 20 million records thus far…and counting. He’s currently touring for his "Destroyed" album and while his music is "simple," his life is hectic. The 46-year-old, unlikely star has noted of his music, "I really like simplicity. Nothing makes me happier than when I can write a song that only has one or two chords in it, because it seems like a fantastic affront to all that complicated music theory I was brought up with."

But Moby, who says he is related to the author Herman Melville, and takes his stage name from Melville’s seminal work, "Moby Dick," didn’t always have things so good. In 1996 he released the album "Animal Rights" and it did so poorly that Moby referred to himself as a "has been." But Mute Records head Daniel Miller convinced him to make just one more album, and he released the off-beat "Play," it started to sell so well that Moby was a star. He noted, with a touch of amazement, "All of a sudden I was playing to 10,000 people and being invited to crazy celebrity parties, drinking too much, doing a lot of drugs and going to red-carpet events. It took me a while to realize I really didn’t enjoy it." Now, Moby is much more low-key, and prefers quieter evenings when away from the stage. Call it growing up for a musician who, supposedly, was never actually supposed to make it big.