NIN interview

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has finally pulled himself out of his personal downward spiral and released the band’s first record in more than five years. And, he admits, he’s a changed man.

“The world doesn’t revolve around me, people tend to know more than I do and it helps to listen, occasionally!” Reznor reveals.

Rewind to 1995 and Nine Inch Nails were in the early stages of their ascension (thanks to the mega-selling second full-length record, The Downward Spiral). Trent Reznor’s status as a cult figure and martyr for the depressed and dispossessed increased daily, but the then-25-year-old auteur’s dog had just died, falling 50 feet from a balcony in Ohio.

“I’m happy that his dog died,” a fan told People magazine at the time. “I like it when he’s depressed. It’s good for the music.”

To paraphrase a famously dark star’s inked pelvis, it was a case of quod me nutrit, destro. If the music of NIN was cathartic for the band’s followers and allowed them to explore (and, in many cases, survive) their darkest hours, they were perfectly happy for their idol to bleed out every line for their personal benefit – even if it meant misery, self-destruction and God knows what else for Reznor.

The newly calm Reznor laughs about it today, but ten (or even five) years ago he found himself trapped in a vicious cycle of stimulus-response.

“Certainly a motivating factor in my making music was my being depressed, because I found music was a cathartic way for me to feel better, to get that out of my system,” he offers. “I learned that drawing on negative experiences – whether it be anger, or depression, or heartbreak, or gloom, or frustration, or madness… those are things that acted as a catalyst to make music. But later I started to believe that I had to be in the midst of a tormented phase to have anything pertinent to say, anything relevant or meaningful. And then that led into me thinking, ‘I wonder if I also need drugs or alcohol to maintain that state’. There’s enough bullshit writers and poets that would lead you to believe that all creativity stems from a bottle or whatever it might be.”

If you’ve been out of the NIN loop over the past few years, here are some cliff notes: on the outfit’s last large-scale tour, in 2000, Reznor overdosed on heroin. But following rehab in 2001 and some wilderness years of self-examination and creative breathing space, Reznor has clawed his way back to a semblance of normalcy.

For the droll ex-Pennsylvanian (who recently turned 40), this hard-won clarity is something of a milestone.

“For sure,” Reznor says. “I also learned that I never turned to drugs or alcohol as inspiration. If anything, that ended any sort of creativity. I just did it because I didn’t want to feel bad, I didn’t want to be in pain, and that was the only way I knew, reliably and easily, that I could do that. And it does work, for a little while. Then it leads to a place far worse than when you began.”

It was a place Reznor has only just begun to explore throughout With Teeth, NIN’s first full-length release since 1999’s The Fragile, a record Reznor now feels was overblown and misguided (even if it did contain mini-masterworks like ‘Into The Void’).

Upon With Teeth’s release earlier this year, Reznor was quick to announce it was his most personal record, though he now tempers that statement somewhat.

“I think what I meant when I said something like that was that the process of writing this record was a lot different to what it had been in the past, not just the strategy of execution – which was starting with piano and vocal, I hadn’t done that before – but the process of actual writing and creating,” he explains. “I felt a lot, as it went on, a lot freer and a lot more confident and willing to take chances, and a lot less concerned about wondering if it’s good enough or wondering if people will like it and all that nonsense.

“I know I’ve invested a lot in feeling that way in the past and feeling confident enough to say, ‘Yeah, let me try this’ [or] ‘Is this ‘right’ for Nine Inch Nails?’. [But] who cares? Do I like it? Yes. All right, [then] quit overanalysing it and quit talking about it and quit being afraid!”

It was the first time, too, that Reznor felt no pressure to succeed commercially or appease to his notoriously passionate fans.

“This time I was divorced completely from external pressure, but I had my own bar that I’d set that I had to make sure I’d pass. But going into it [not knowing] if the record label wants to even put it out, or if anyone cares, I think, in a way, that was freeing. I really achieved a sense of humility and of being humbled through the process of my own life bottoming out. It’s tough to feel real cool when you’re vomiting in a fucking toilet in rehab with junkies about to kick your ass; it’s tough to feel important in that state.”

Even though he didn’t realise it at the time, waking up in a London hospital with tubes in most orifices was, on some level, a window into a new creative mindset.

“I had a fresh well of experiences,” he laughs, “things that I’ve barely started to even sift through. I’ve had enough negative, terrible times for several more double-albums if that’s what I chose to do. It was the biggest change in my life and the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, for sure, and the most searching… I felt like I had a loaded gun at my head saying, ‘Do this or you’re going to die’.

“But having done it, I’ve learnt more about myself and others and I learnt so many things that I was so full of shit about!”

So is this the beginning of a beautiful new relationship, a healthier way of going about things?

“Let’s see how it goes,” Reznor laughs. “I’m still learning on this process, but I have learnt an incredible amount so far.”

Source:
NIN interview, Viewed at 26th August 2005