Before Lana Del Rey became Lana Del Rey, she was trying to launch her music career as Lizzy Grant. Although she ultimately found fame as Lana Del Rey, she had brushes with it as Lizzy Grant. In fact, Moby reveals in his new memoir Then It Fell Apart that he and Del Rey dated before she was well known.
The two apparently first dated in 2006, after hitting it off at a bar in the late hours of the night:
“‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked Lizzie.
‘No, I’m sober,’ she said. I was surprised, because we’d met the week before in a bar at 3 a.m., and I assumed everyone in a bar at 3 a.m. was as drunk as I was.
Lizzie was from Albany. She had short bleached hair and looked like a beautiful elf. 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.”
Moby then described Del Rey playing piano for him at his apartment and the two deciding to take things slowly:
“Lizzie sat down at the piano. I hadn’t known what to expect, but her song was haunting. And her voice was dark but strong.
‘You’re really good,’ I told her when she finished.
‘Thanks,’ she said, smiling sweetly.
‘Do you have a record deal?’
‘I’m working with a manager, but you know how it is. Or maybe you don’t,’ she said, gesturing at the penthouse.
‘So you’d make music under your name? Lizzie Grant?’
‘I don’t know. When you say it like that it sounds kind of plain.’
‘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.”
Moby didn’t mention Del Rey by name in the passages above, but later on in the book, he confirmed it was her while talking about his Little Death side project, writing, “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.”
Meanwhile, Del Rey recently shared a cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time.”
