I was perusing the "rocklink" forum of AOl today and I came across this
interview.  IT's seems to be just before SPiral was released..dunno when
exactly.

BTW- I have just taken the steps to get an "industrial" section on AOl, so
we don't have to be Classified under "alternative" (blech!) anymore.

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PROFILE: NINE INCH NAILS


Nine Inch Nails Lineup:

Trent Reznor, vocals/guitar; Robin Finck, guitar; Danny
Lohner, keyboards, guitar and bass; James Woolley,
keyboards; Chris Vrenna, drums.

Label: Nothing/TVT/Interscope Album: The Downward Spiral
Produced: Flood and Trent Reznor Singles: "March of the
PIgs" and "Downward Spiral."

Trent Reznor talks about:

Keeping up with charts: "I have a morbid interest in it.
I think the climate at radio and MTV back on the last
album is a lot different now. It was before alternative
became mainstream. Going into it now I'm surprised that
it debuted where it did. When I listen to that record
now it doesn't sound very commercial at all. I realized
that when I completed it that was the case but I didn't
look at that as a negative. I try to treat Nine Inch
Nails as something that will be around five years from
now. This record I needed to make it artistically
because that's what was in me at the time. If the plan
goes as planned looking back maybe 10 years from now
this may have been more of a career record. I needed to
open up the boundaries of what Nine Inch Nails is
capable of doing. With this record it might be at
commercial expense but I'm proud of the record and I'm
glad it's doing well. It's doing better than I expected
right out of the bag for what I don't consider a really
commercial record."

What came first the music or machines: "I've been
interested in electronics and music from early on. I'm a
keyboard player primarily starting out playing piano at
five years of age and taking that to the point that I
either wanted to be a serious concert pianist and making
sacrifices to follow that career or have more fun with
it. This is all happening around the time of puberty and
the discovery of Kiss records and it made me want to
take it in more of a band way. At that time synthesizers
were just starting to come of age. Midi had not really
arrived on the scene yet. Computers were primitive but
intriguing and I was always interested in technology in
general. I got my first synthesizer when I was in high
school and that somehow triggered the nurd in me and I
was fascinated in the whole blend of technology and
music. I played in different bands as a keyboard player
and then college for a year because that was what you
were supposed to do. I didn't want to do that
necessarily but to go for computer engineering and to
integrate in some music hopefully. Technology, whether it
was designing computers or whatever. but as I got into
it I realized that it's more calculus than it is
creativity. I just stumbled into the goal I really
wanted and that's when sequencers and midi started. I
got into that immediately and they became somewhat
affordable around '83 or '84. There was this explosion
of bands that came out from Human League and Gary
Numan. Although it had a cheesy factor to it except for
Numan and Devo it couldn't have been done earlier. I
also liked metal a lot and I liked the harder stuff.
Hearing bands like Skinny Puppy and old Ministry that
started to have the anger and energy and doing it with
synthesizers and noise and technology were a big
influence on me. Everything that I wanted to do just
came together. After wasting time playing keyboards with
other bands, I confronted my greatest fear of writing
music to see if I could really do it."

Turning your music into performance art: "It was
difficult because when I am in the studio to this day I
treat the studio as another instrument. I'm not too
concerned that each song has guitar or bass or drums.
It's just sounds and I have a variety of tools with
which to accomplish that. I'll have songs where there's
unplayable drums because there would be a loop of noise
off some movie I found and the next one might have real
drums with forty guitar parts. Back in the days of
Pretty Hate Machine it wasn't quite as complicated but
it was still a challange to pull it off live. I didn't
want to go out with a tape deck and fake it like some
electronic bands try to get away with which I think is a
cop out. I'm interested for the performer and the
people watching the performance. I wanted a visceral
element with someone who could play drums and guitar and
keyboards. Most of the bass wasn't real bass and was of
a nature that no one could play it. I could have gotten
a five piece band to go out and play it but I liked the
sound of it juxtaposed against the guitars and real
instruments. The thing that made sense was to play with
tape because computers break. Put what would be on
computer on tape like the bass and I went through a lot
of people to try to make sure they understood that Nine
Inch Nails was not how great you could play and taking
guitar solos but just about expressing this music's
emotions and getting it across in an honest way. Once
that got across it started to click and rehearsals
became fun and when we started touring which we did
about two or three years of, something started to happen
that was unexpected. Better than I could have predicted.

The music took on its own mind and although a lot of it
started to sound a lot different than the record which
never concerned me, it became something new and really
mutated in a great way. It was not uncommon to have
someone say that they saw us at Lollapolloza and they
thought it was great and went out and got the record but
it's got all this synthesizer sh*t on it. I just
chuckled. After we got done touring and I listened back
to that record I had to admit I heard naivety in that
record. It was made before I knew what guitars sounded
like and real drums sounded like standing right next to
them. My idea was a drum machine. From that spree of
touring it opened up a new palatte of sounds and
resources. That obviously changed the sound of the band.

With this new band I've gotten together we didn't tour
since Lollapolooza, and did "Broken" and then started on
"Spiral" so all the new material hasn't been played live.

When it became time to apply the old formula to pursuing
this the music had become more complicated and the
textures more varied. As my guitar playing improved the
parts got more diffficult and the playing live required
more skill so I needed someone who understood texture in
an Adrian Belew sense.

The Belew turn-on: "I had heard a bit of both his
careers with Bowie and his own solo stuff. A lot of
times when music caught my ears it would be Adrian. His
name popped up at the end of the record. The songs were
pretty much finished but Flood and I wondered what it
would have been like if we'd had some other musical
input. We just had him play and it was an astonishing
little moment of two guys. He triggered something in me
that made a real impression. I've been afraid to work
with high calibre people I've always been in awe of
them - when they're sitting next to you with the idea of
creating music together which is pretty intimate. I got
over that fear and I realize I'm a lot more competent in
the studio than I've been before. I'd like to
incorporate other people more in the future. That
moment when things do spark you realize that someone has
contributed something you'd never thought of and made
you come up with something you'd never have thought of
is a pretty valuable moment."

Flood's input: "He does come up with some valuable
moments. He does absolutely, although the capacity of
our collaboration is that I present the food on the
table and he serves it up. Most of the pressure of
coming up with what we work on is from me. I aspire to
become more collaborative as I come across other players
and this new band is by far the best players I've had.

The band got together after the album was finished but
I hope to incoporate them more."

Music as a time pill: "When I approach doing music a
lot of times I get criticized for the amount of time it
takes for me to do a record. I'll admit part of that's
because I'm not sure how to do records enough yet so
that it beomes assembly line-ish. I haven't done ten,
I've done two and a half. But when I approach doing a
record I try to approach it on as many levels as I can
think of. Probably the most basic level is do I have
anything to say. If it's yes, make a record and if it's
no, don't make a record. How am I going to present that
in a way that on a very surface level it might be
abrasive sounding or very soft or a catchy chorus but
ten layers down there are still things in there that
come out subtly. One of the problems, and this is
something that Flood and I do and it's not necessarily
good, is that we put too much stuff in. Broken was my
classic example of that. With those songs there's
probably another 15 parts you don't hear because there
wasn't room for them. It would not be uncommon to spend
two day's just programing a high hat in there that might
every third cycle alternate a little bit and to the
point that it was insane. Crazy little things like that.
To some degree, it might add depth but to another degree
it might show that you're going insane by the amount of
care you put into every element. But also to keep an
element of randomness and freshness and not be over-
produced.  Personally the records that I like the best
are the records you're not sure you like or not.
There's something intriguing, and by the second time you
need to listen again but by the fifth listen you like it
and by the tenth it's great and you still get new things
from it each time. The other thing I tried to do with
"Down Spiral" was to make a record that worked as a big
chunk of music rather than a bunch of songs that were
stuck together and to have a theme or thread that flows
through the whole thing and works like watching a film.

I think that's very unfashionable. I've never been a
big retro fan. I've always looked at that with distaste
like it's backwards thinking rather than moving ahead
trying to assimulate a '70s rock band which is what
everyone is trying to do. I can listen to the new Sound-
garden record who I do like, but it's like you guys
like Led Zeppelin and you do it well, but what's the
point. I discovered a lot of music that I had ignored
when I was growing up because I was into old Iggy Pop,
Bowie and Lou Reed, Velvet Underground. When I went
back to listen to "Low" and "Transformer," it struck me
that these were good records. Records like "Hunky Dory,"
where every song was not just good but great. Those guys
were making art rather than the commercial MTV - or radio
friendly stuff. If that record came out today it would
still be amazing. "Low" for that matter would still be
great today.

As rock and roll has become less dangeous and it's
pumped into everyones house around the world via MTV and
with the advent of CD's it's one more step towards
lessening the art and increasing the product. CD's are
ugly little plastic pieces of sh*t that you can't fit
any artwork on and now you can skip a song by pushing a
button. The big money guys moved in and realized that
they was a lot of money to be made here. With the
discovery of MTV, if we hook up an interesting and
incredibly bland visual with this made for MTV song
we've got a hit band. To me generally and there are
exceptions, it's more just product and less special than
it was a one time. The only way I can combat that is to
bitch about it and try to make something that satisfies
what I would want. I base all my decisions on the fact
that I'm a music fan and a serious record buying person.

The new Nothing label: "Artists already signed are
Marilyn Manson, Pop will Eat Itself, Coil and
Trust Obey. When the situation at TVT was being remedied by
getting onto Interscope, they offered us a great deal.
They went into the relationship with us knowing what
Nine Inch Nails was about and what we wanted.

Essentially what we wanted was a situation for
themselves where they could just be left alone to make
music. That was the problem with TVT. I could deal with
not getting paid but don't tell me how to write music
and how my video should look or who's going to remix my
music. That doesn't mean that I'm not open to criticism
but I want that from someone I respect. They give us a
chunck of money and we deliver a finished product with
art work and an overview of the type of marketing plan
that we feel is appropriate at the level of saturation
that you want to go in at. There's a danger there if
your record is marketed improperly, there's a danger of
getting played too much at MTV and it could shorten the
life of the band.


Transmitted:  94-06-02 13:37:09 EDT

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