Nine Inch Nails - London, UK - Spring 2005
By: Toby L
Trent Reznor, icon to the disaffected, saviour to the disenchanted, spokesperson for the disparate and divided. He's had a few scrapes.
You wouldn't know it, however, looking at him off-hand. We walk into a swish, specially-hired quasi-suite and find a broad-shouldered, black-haired figure peering out the window to the view of a bustling, tepid London. He turns on cue, and walks forward for a handshake. His countenance and composure are that of delicate knowing and surprising, instant warmth. Hardly the bastard-rock behemoth we'd anticipated some seconds earlier.
Yet, if there's one thing we learn over the course of an ensuing conversation, or life in general, as is repeatedly flung at us through teaching circumstance, it's that preconceptions prove to be a real hindrance. Here's not a man grossly indoctrinated with the ghosts of yesteryear to the point of solely proffering haunting murmurings and indulgent, tritely earnest sloganeering. His company makes for a quite humble, occasionally witty and brutally frank chat, seldom one without hope, though.
The reason for such tireless introspection? Well, after beyond ten million album sales, and a dose of time out trying to regain soul after a disarming slip from control, you'd be contemplative, too. Almost four decades in, Trent Reznor has seen it all. His placement as one of the top-ten 'most influential men in America' in 'Time Magazine' during the 1990s; Johnny Cash covering his NIN classic, 'Hurt', as a career and life swansong; production-credits on peers' monumental opuses (Marilyn Manson's 'Antichrist Superstar', for one); and an effort in almost losing it all through severe manic depression and drug addiction.
It's best conveyed in 'With Teeth', a career peak. Songs that weave between eerie, electronic soundscapes and turgid guitar dissonance, and meshed only via Reznor's taut and raging vocal exorcisms. Between club-land and hell, it lurks to inform and creep, and mesmerise along the way. It's a record that's seen a re-emergence of NIN to the world stage, top-five chart-placements and critical lauding in force - truly, Reznor and his tales of debilitation and subsequent recovering haven't been more timely, nor well-received.
'I wrote it in a much different way than I did the last couple,' he reminisces of his present project, eyes dawdling over a tray of fruit. 'And I'm not sure why. What I mean by that is... 'Pretty Hate Machine' (the NIN debut) I wrote as a series of demos over time, and they got revised and revised, and revised, and they eventually came out as a record. 'The Downward Spiral' and 'The Fragile' were written in a studio that became my demo-room; what I realised then was that the writing and the arranging and sound-design all became intertwined as one process. And it really dawned me when I went back and remixed 'The Downward Spiral' in surround around six months ago; I hadn't listened to multi-tracks of that record since I did it; and it struck me how differently I am approaching new stuff. 'The Fragile' was a more extreme example of go in the studio and explore what happens, and maybe a song gets added at the end, or not.
'But, this time, I moved out to Los Angeles and set up a very small demo-room with a piano and a drum-machine, and a computer to record into. I was going to start with words, and just do demos again; and see what happens. Do two demos every ten days. I got a whole shit-load of them completed, and it just felt as if things had been done quite a lot differently this time round...'
In part, 'With Teeth', with its pulsing atmospherics and stadia-packing vigour, sounds a lot more band...
Reznor acknowledges the notion, yet gets side-tracked. 'The reason that might be... what I discovered in the process of doing it... the reason it took so long... I got sober. I had a problem. It took me a long time to acknowledge.' He becomes momentarily restless, and eye-contact swerves.
Just how much did your outside troubles affect the making of 'With Teeth'?
'100%,' he instantly retorts, signifying both commendable transparency, yet discomfort in such hastiness. 'I wasn't real keen on rushing into doing the record, because I wasn't sure if I could do the record. I didn't want to find that out after just three days of sobriety...'
Matters didn't help with the general reception to 'The Fragile'; a brooding, deeply misunderstood (or is that misrepresented?) marker as to Trent's mode towards the latter-90s. Arrangements, words became deeper, darker, simply more worrisome. In hindsight, we should have considered it a cry for help.
'When 'The Fragile' was finished, we went on tour,' he recalls. 'When the tour was finished, I was finished. And then I got clean. I wasn't concerned about a career at that point, because I was just grateful to be alive. It wasn't a 'Maybe I can deal with this situation...' It was like a loaded gun to the head. I was going to die.'
The room becomes gravely silent. We struggle to fathom the depths of this sorrow... Just how low are we contemplating here?
'When I say the bottom... I can say, from experience, I never want to see that again.' He pauses. 'That was complete and utter loss of soul, and total despair. I hated myself. I hated myself...'
What got you through, primarily?
'Some moment of clarity,' Reznor sniffs. 'And my best friend got murdered. And I felt like that could have been me. Or that it should be me. Maybe for his memory, I did it. I just felt, 'I can't go forward, and I'm too much of a coward to kill myself.'
'The experience was robbing me of my ability to write. When you're faced with that prospect, the only thing to do is get more f**ked up, but that led itself to its own conclusion. When you've finally reached that point where, you know you have a problem, you know you are an addict, and you know you have to do something, and you'll do anything to not be in that condition... that's what did it for me. It wasn't a slap on the wrist. It was getting punched in the face a million times, then going back for another million, and then trying again, and then realising, 'This sucks.' From that moment on, things profoundly changed. I took some time off...
What were the greatest lessons you derived from the period?
'Well, through it all, I learnt humility. And it's tough to feel real cool about yourself in a psycho ward, where you can't get out, surrounded by a bunch of crack addicts, and peeing on yourself; it was tough to feel like a rock-star.
'I started getting out, and realising my priority was to try and stay alive, and to try and listen, and that I didn't know everything in the world, and that I wasn't so much different to everyone else.
'I did what I was told to do: I do need people: I do need friends, I do need love. All these things I didn't think I needed; all the things I neglected the last fifteen years of my life since I got a record-deal, because all I cared for was making music. Music was the only tangible thing that could make me feel good. After time, that didn't work.
'But, in the couple of years I was taking it easy, I realised that I loved music. And I realised that music and a career are not the same thing. It made me feel, 'I should return when the time's right, and I'm ready to start the new record, and I've got myself collected and ready to potentially face failure...' Because it could have been me returning and everyone saying, 'But you're old now...'
Against that, seemingly, what Reznor's producing now appears to have been received more rampantly than ever previous, we suggest.
'I'm glad to hear you say that,' he brightens. 'I also feel that way. But I didn't know that when I got started again. It's like waking up out of a coma; 'I'm 39? What?! I remember 28 was good... but how the f**k did almost being forty happen?'
'The gift was, when I started working on the record, I found instead of facing no ideas, I had more than I could put down - the pipes were clean, I had so many ideas that had been clogged up and weren't able to come out before. It feels great. When I finished the record, I turned it into the label, and someone at the label liked it, and I couldn't understand that... and then I put some shows on sale, and people were interested still... And I put a band together that feels vital when we walk onstage.
'As a band, actually, we're playing more,' he expands emphatically. 'There's not many backing-tracks, which we used to be reliant on, in a keyboard and drum-machine embellishment kind of way. It feels like, when I was auditioning people for the band, I got Jeordie (White - bassist) right away, and Jerome (Dillon)'s a great drummer, I found the keyboard-player OK (Alessandro Cortini)... but we had a f**king nightmare getting the right guitar-player. It was fifty guys into it, that I realised I was looking for the wrong person. When Aaron (North, formerly of The Icarus Line) came in, he was a mess; he smelt bad, and when he spoke, he was all (murmurs apathetic indiscernible witterings). But as soon as he started playing, it was like, 'F**k!' All wrong notes, but it didn't matter - it felt right. At the end of all the playing, it was then I realised he would be the only person I could invite to play on my record, because he wasn't trying to sound like me - it was his own thing. And it was the prod in the ass of the band that we needed. Suddenly, it felt like it had purpose in it.'
It's paid off. Live, the band are as consuming a draw as they come, even the best part of two decades in; 30,000 tickets for their impending UK tour sold out in under fifteen minutes. That Reznor's torment has been to little or no appraisal, or result, is unfounded. His pain, though tragic, has given to so many. Empathy and compassion and a yearning voice to parallel the darkness.
And when Trent looks back at his years, from initially garnering influence via those that inspired his own initial musical inception, how does it feel to have the tables turn: where his Nine Inch Nails are perceived as a vital starting-point for so many?
'You know, it's weird,' he grins. 'A lot of it's me still trying to come to terms with what my role in life is, and coming out of active addiction, that I'm older than I think I am, and hearing people saying, 'I was in grade school when your first record came out...' I'm just like, 'F**k, man. This isn't a dream; I'm really alive.'
'It's strange, and it's flattering, but right now, I've got my eyes wide open and I'm going along for the ride. I'm happy with what I've done; I'm out to promote it whatever tasteful way I can; and I'm ready to play the best shows I can after having made the best record I can... and anything that happens beyond that, I can't control. I just put my best food forward. Right now, it feels healthy and the right thing to do. It might not be next week, but - right now - it's correct.'
And if you ponder the desired effect you'd ideally enjoy to cast upon your audiences, what would you wish for?
He holds a momentary break. 'This may sound pretentious... Stuff I've always liked when I was growing up, even now, there's always a sense of integrity or honesty, or some message being said and the person means it. It doesn't have to be a mean message, or angry, or upset. But there's some voice that's wanting to be heard, and deserves to be heard, and is true. A voice that has something to say, and from the heart. They mean it.
'I've tried to approach all my records in the same way: being as honest as I can be as I do it. And I can see 'The Fragile', as I did that, I was on a slippery slope about to bottom out, and I was trying to be as honest as I could. I was honest with what I was at the time, but I didn't know what was coming.
'I'd just hope there's a sense of it being the real thing; there's an honest emotion and effort that went into the stuff, and that if you were to look for depth, it's there. I want to feel as if I'm challenging myself, pushing myself as an artist, and that I'm doing it for what I feel is the right reason. The right reason isn't, 'I hate what's on the radio - I'm going to show something that proves that'; the right reason isn't 'Someone made fun of me for this, I'm going to show them'... The right reason, in my heart, is that I was excited to make this sort of music and wanted to share it. I want to produce the best music I can do. If it's not what stuff is like on the radio, it's OK; I don't listen to what's on the radio.'
It's to some defining credit.
Artists in this article: Nine Inch Nails