US electronic producer Moby is everyone’s go-to guy when we think of the pseudo-spiritual, quasi-Buddhist, vegan, hippie musician. Armed with some prayer beads and a Roland Juno-6, his schedule is made up mostly of producing and meditating.

But the reality is actually quite different. For one thing, Moby is a Christian, though these days he says he doesn’t actually subscribe to any kind of regimented faith. He is a vegan though, but he’s also a recovered alcoholic.

As The Guardian writes, the 50-year-old producer hit the big time with 1999’s Play, after spending the better part of a decade in relative obscurity, best known for his underground rave classic ‘Go’.

Play changed everything for Moby. Not only was the album a commercial and critical smash, with several high-selling singles, every single song on the album has been licensed for use in film and television.

Considering some of the stories Moby lays down in his new memoir, Porcelain, it’s a good thing he’d cleaned up his act and was done with “bags of drugs” and sex with strangers by the time Play rolled around.

“They have a look,” Moby says of how people view him after having read his highly confessional memoir. “It’s odd being on the receiving end of that look. It’s a look of knowing, but it’s also a look of concern. Like, ‘Is everything OK?’”

Porcelain covers Moby’s life between 1989 and 1999, from when he moved to New York City to just before the release of Play. As a struggling DJ, Moby made his bones playing anywhere he could, whether at legendary clubs or swingers’ nights.

His hijinks at the time included being a dominatrix’s sidekick dubbed Master Bobby, getting Lyme disease, dating indie girls and strippers, and living in disused warehouses and squats with crazed roommates who threatened to kill him.

Each night he’d go out and spin tunes at orgies in New York’s infamous Meatpacking District, but all the while he was a teetotaller who enjoyed making vegan treats with his Christian girlfriend and didn’t touch the drugs being thrown around him.

But in 1995, after being sober for eight years, Moby returned to the bottle. “I still recognise that person, stumbling through life without much agency. There’s enthusiasm and a good work ethic, but ultimately complete cluelessness, being baffled by everything,” Moby now says.

Moby’s MO was to head out for a couple of drinks and then find himself “at 8am, with strangers in my house, bags of drugs, I’d had about 15 drinks, having sex with a complete stranger. Which is great, but that was my best attempt to drink in moderation”.

“Also,” he admits, “I thought I was going on these great adventures, and the truth is I was going from one bar to another on Ludlow Street.” As the ’90s came to an end, so did Moby’s wild ways and his time in New York.

After moving to LA and getting sober, Moby became a bonafide pop star with the release of Play and now concentrates on making music whenever he feels like it, managing his vegan restaurant, and engaging in animal rights activism.

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