“She was beautiful, smart, and charming”: Moby recalls dating pre-fame Lana Del Rey in new memoir

Lana played the musician one of her early tracks during their evening together

Moby has opened up on dating a pre-fame Lana Del Rey in his new memoir, Then It Fell Apart.

The book, released earlier this month, is a follow-up to 2016’s Porcelain and is described as “a journey into the dark heart of fame and the demons that lurk beneath the bling and bluster of the celebrity lifestyle.”

With the memoir delving into the 53-year-old musician’s promiscuity following his rise to fame, its pages detail a brief romance with Lana Del Rey. As Stereogum points out, the pair had their first date at a vegan macrobiotic restaurant in 2006.

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A section of Then It Fell Apart sees Moby recall their evening together, which ended with Del Rey – known then as Lizzy Grant – visiting his five-floor New York penthouse.

Moby
Moby

Remembering his first meeting with Del Rey, Moby wrote: “We’d kissed at the bar at 4 a.m., just as the place was closing, and I’d asked her to come home with me. She’d smiled and said no, she wouldn’t go home with me after just meeting me, but she would happily go on a date if I called her and asked her out. I called her the next day, and we talked for thirty minutes about music and politics and growing up in the suburbs.

“She was beautiful, smart, and charming; making plans to meet up with her was both what I wanted to do and what my new therapist had told me to do.”

With Del Rey telling Moby that she was a musician during dinner, he asked her to play something for him when they were back at his place.

Lana Del Rey

“Sure, do you have a piano?”
“Yes, back on the second floor,” I said.
“Floors in an apartment.” She shook her head. “Moby you know you’re the man.”
“Ha, thanks,” I said.
“No, not like that. You’re a rich WASP from Connecticut and you live in a five-level penthouse. You’re ‘The Man.’ As in, ‘stick it to The Man.’ As in the person they guillotine in the revolution.”
I didn’t know if she was insulting me but I decided to take it as a compliment.”

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Moby described Del Rey’s early song as “haunting”, explaining that her “voice was dark but strong”. After asking if she had a record deal, he questioned whether she planned to release music under her real name. “I don’t know. When you say it like that it sounds kind of plain,” she replied.

“I think it’s a nice name.” I sat next to her on the piano bench and started kissing her. She kissed me back — but then stopped.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I like you. But I hear you do this with a lot of people.”
I wanted to lie, to tell her that I didn’t, that I was chaste, sane, and ethical. But I said nothing.
“I’d like to see you again,” she said.
“Me too.”
I walked her downstairs to the twenty-ninth floor and kissed her good night at the bank of the elevators.
This wasn’t how I imagined the night ending. I’d assumed that we would end up christening my new apartment with vodka and sex. But to my surprise, this was almost nicer.

In a later chapter, Moby identified Grant as Del Rey while talking about his side-project Little Death. “Lizzie Grant, whom I’d tried dating a couple of years ago, was one of our original backup singers, but she left the group to pursue her own career as Lana Del Rey,” he said.

Meanwhile, it has also been revealed that Moby’s memoir includes an anecdote on how he “rubbed his penis” on Donald Trump at a New York party.

Stephen Colbert previously said of Then It Fell Apart: “Somehow this chronicle of a long, dark night of the soul also involves funny stories involving Trump, Putin, and a truly baffling array of degenerates.”

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