Photo: Rob Sheridan
The Upward Spiral As the 20th anniversary of Nine Inch Nails’ most celebrated work rolls by and their latest incarnation sets sail for Scotland, Trent Reznor says he can’t afford to look back
“W
here are we coming from?” Trent Reznor stops to wonder where he’s been for the last month. “Oh yeah, we just got back from South America and we’re heading your way next week.” Now a quarter of a century into the Nine Inch Nails story, the veteran frontman speaks between transatlantic legs of a globespanning year-long tour which will this month see his proto-industrial rock giants give The Hydro’s PA system its greatest challenge yet. Returning from a self-imposed five year sabbatical which could have been the very end of the band, today he’s mild mannered, focused and seemingly a world away from the troubled prodigy who penned furious Gen X anthems like Gave Up and Mr Self Destruct. But in an era of rampant reappraisal, where landmark anniversaries for classic records are celebrated weekly while a holographic 2Pac can stalk the stage, it seems nothing’s ever really over in latter-day popular culture. Besides, Reznor himself didn’t seem to know what early retirement might entail back in 2009. With an Oscar on his mantelpiece to show for a handful of high profile gigs scoring David Fincher films with sometime collaborator Atticus Ross (their third, Gone Girl, has just been announced), there’s a sense that the versatile composer was out there playing the game. “There wasn’t a master plan to bring Nails back,” he says, staring down suggestions that the reprisal is some calculated deceit. “There really wasn’t. I felt like I needed to force myself into some unfamiliar territory and try to progress other projects I’d been talking about doing. It felt like that format of Nine Inch Nails, where
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Interview: Dave Kerr
we’d just got off a couple of solid years touring, I needed to force my hand and try something new – period. So I started a family, scored some films and worked with some other people on How To Destroy Angels. I unexpectedly found myself really very inspired by all of that and started seeing what some new Nine Inch Nails material might sound like. It felt strong, and I felt like there was a whole record in there. I accepted that and it became Hesitation Marks. Somewhere along the line somebody said ‘Do you want to play some shows?’ It seemed like it was worth trying that out – put a band together, start rehearsing and it felt good. I try not to get too bogged down with the things that I can’t control. Will people like me? I don’t know. Will people show up? Are they interested? I hope so, but I don’t know. I try to live up to my end of the deal and see what happens.” Nearly five years after his last trip to Scotland – where Nine Inch Nails toppled The Killers on the neighbouring main stage and claimed their men of the match medallion after a memorable wave goodbye at T in the Park – they return to play their largest indoor gig in these parts. Has absence made the heart grow fonder? “It seems like that’s the case,” Reznor chews on the notion. “I don’t know exactly why that is. I just try to do the best work I can do. It’s nice just to see somebody out there gives a shit about us,” he lets out a genuine gasp of humility before a dry chuckle takes over. “…that feels pretty good.” A cursory glance at behind the scenes footage of the band’s high-tech Tension tour late last year hammers home a clear sense that this ‘reactivation’ was no small undertaking. “We’re
not the kind of band that will do a show here, then take six months off and play a handful of shows. We build a machine that can last X amount of time. In this case, we knew we’d be committing to a year of touring. Having done this a number of times in the past, what I realised is that when you build something that’s pretty production heavy – something specific that brings in theatrical elements or elements of video, almost like a film or a play where it starts in one place, winds up in another and there’s a kind of flow and a climax to it – the unexpected result of that as the performer is that it can start to fall into a routine. A lot of the spontaneity in terms of what happens during the show is gone – you know what’s gonna happen because you’ve done it 40 times. That’s something to be concerned about.”
“How do you keep the ending exciting in this spoilerbased world of Twitter?” Trent Reznor
Before they’ve even set foot on the next stage, Reznor points out that the perceived shock quality of any sustained string of live performances has already been undermined by the presence of a camera. “A lot of these shows
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– particularly festivals – are now webcast around the world. If you’re interested in Nine Inch Nails, chances are you could’ve seen our show at Fuji Rock or Lollapalooza, because it’s living on YouTube right now. How do we make that exciting in the spoiler-based world of Twitter? How do you keep the ending exciting? How do you keep things fresh? So we try to treat each leg of the tour as a separate tour.” Inspired by the unconventional lodestar of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense tour, Reznor turned Nine Inch Nails into a rotating ensemble when it was time to head for the enormodomes. “With Tension, we went no holds barred, knowing it was a core audience coming into an arena to see us. ‘How far can I take that?’ So I expanded the band into an eight-piece, really went heavy on video and production integration and by the time we finished that at Christmas I felt like ‘Hey, we’ve proved our point and I’m kind of tired of doing that.’” So what shape has the Nine Inch Nails live experience consequently taken for their imminent UK return? “What you’re going to see is a different thing,” says Reznor, keen to emphasise that this perpetual reconfiguration isn’t about cutting corners. “Now it’s a four piece band – much more nimble, less about deeply exploring the new album and more about the integration of an electronic and rock band and how far we can take that aggressively and also spontaneously. The shows we just did in Australia and South America were pretty bare bones – the show we’re building for your neck of the woods has much heavier production than that. It’s not the same as
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