There's a tooth missing from the Russell Mills
original in Trent Reznor's kitchen-an earth-toned painting of a razor blade
that's immediately recognizable as the image that adorns the back cover of Nine
Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. The water in the goldfish bowl, which is
actually part of the dining-room chandelier, looks a little murky. And, yes,
the walls in the foyer are painted in a deep, burgundy or, er, blood red. Other
than that, Reznor's home in the Garden District of New Orleans seems, well,
like a pretty normal dwelling for a young, wealthy bachelor with good taste and
money for a professional decorator. Nothing hellish about it, except maybe that
Grim Reaper scythe hanging on the living-room wall.
Reznor's been master of this particular domain
since 1991, the year Lollapalooza helped make his Nine Inch Nails a ruling
force for a growing nation of young nihilists. Three years later, with NIN liberated
from a bitter feud with TVT and Reznor set up with his own Nothing imprint, the
torturous epic The Downward Spiral proved there was a lot more to this guy than
just post-industrial temper tantrums. If Pretty Hate Machine had been the
soundtrack to a soul being smashed, The Downward Spiral was a grand symphony
tracing the twisted path of each of its broken pieces as they were washed down
some psychic drain.
There hasn't been a full-length Nine Inch Nails
album since, but Reznor's been far from idle. Along with producing a
groundbreaking cut-and-paste soundtrack for Oliver Stone's postmodern
tour-de-force Natural Born Killers, and scoring David Lynch's visually
stunning, if somewhat puzzling, Lost Highway, he's taken Nine Inch Nails on the
road with Bowie and produced three CDs for Florida shock-rockers Marilyn
Manson. Manson's Antichrist Superstar was almost as much a Reznor disc as
anything by Nine Inch Nails, with its dense architecture of doom and
techno-logical melding of man and machine. It also helped put Nothing on the
mas as something more than just a vanity label. And, even if the Christian
Right has been giving Manson most of the free publicity, Antichrist Superstar
can only be whetting their children's appetites for Reznor's next offering.
Which is what brings me (Matt Ashare) to New Orleans on a balmy Saturday at the end of
July. Reznor's currently hard at work on a follow-up to The Downward Spiral, in
his nearby studio. It's a project that's absorbed most of his time since the
beginning of the year, when, on the advice from producer Rick Rubin, he spent a
month away from his sampler, trying to write at a piano in a rented house in
Big Sur. Reznor has retained Rubin, instead of his longtime friend and
collaborator Flood, to produce the new disc, in an effort to break out of old
routines and, more importantly, reinvent Nine Inch Nails. So when he sits down
on a big black leather sofa in the dimly lit den of his house to talk, the
evolution of himself and his band is at the top of the list. And though his
notorious penchant for dissing other artists (Bush, Courtney Love, and Filter
to name three) isn't completely in check, he reserves the harshest words for
himself-or at least the man he used to be.
"After our last round of touring," he
reflects, "I thought Nine Inch Nails was a bloated, stupid thing that had
become a parody of itself. I was embarrassed looking at videotapes of us
performing. You switch modes from being the intellectual guy who thinks about
what he's doing to the guy who just does it on tour. But after the tour, I
looked back at some of that stuff and felt like I was becoming another retarded
rock guy. I mean, when I started out I had dreams of being Mr. Big Time, but I
never thought I'd attain anything. Where I grew up, girls didn't like me and I
wasn't a football star or anything. Then suddenly it's like, you're rich, and
your nose isn't that big, and girls like you. That can freak a lot of people
out."
"But there's a point where the individual
has to check in on themselves and realize enough is enough. I realized I was an
asshole. I was shitty to people, shitty to old friends and new people I met. I
thought, 'My shit doesn't stink anymore.' I'd seen people like Axl Rose
surrounded by people saying things like 'Yes, Mr. Rose, that does smell good,
can I flush it for you?' So at one point I sat back and looked at myself and
went: 'You're a fucking asshole. You've become what you never thought you'd
be.'"
Another thing Reznor never imagined he'd
become, particularly in the wake of his tempestuous history with the business
side of music-making, is the head of his own label. But Nothing, which is
co-owned by Nine Inch Nails manager John A. Malm Jr., has quietly grown into a
home for an increasingly intriguing roster of artists. Along with some of
Reznor's confrontational pals (Pig and Manson), the Nothing roster now boasts
drum 'n' bass wizard Plug (a.k.a. Luke Vibert and Wagon Christ), former Juda
Priest singer Rob Halford's Two, the up-and-coming British duo 12 Rounds, techno
agit-poppers Meat Beat Manifesto and Pop Will Eat Itself, and seminal
avantgardists Einsturzende Neubauten and Coil.
"It's kind of a thing where we're just
trying to mutate from being a vanity label to, hopefully, five years from now
being like Death Row-you know, I'll be in jail, John will get murdered, and
Manson will be gunned down on the street. No, seriously, the label is not taken
lightly on our end. I find myself balancing the Coils versus the Mansons,
trying to justify it to Interscope, who pays the bills. Coil are the feather in
the cap in terms of being artistically cool, but at the end of the day they
might only Sound-scan 5,000 records. So I'm trying to make it a viable thing
for everybody involved-Coil, Manson, and Interscope.
"Peter from Coil and I are very good
friends. We talked long and hard about the fact that I don't want to turn Coil
into Marilyn Manson, I just want kids who come from where I came from in Pennsylvania to be able to find their records in
the local store. If Manson wants to be Kiss on Nothing, then that's fine too.
They just have to understand, it's a business. It's heartbreaking and it's
soul-destroying, but that's the bottom fucking line. Nothing is trying to
[tell] the artists that if they want X amount of money it requires X amount of
commitment; be aware of the fact that you can have a big tour bus, but it
always ends up coming out of your pocket. Record labels don't want to tell
artists that stuff, because they don't give a fuck. The artists usually don't
find out until it's too late that the limo that drove up to the hotel is
something you paid for, the model in your video is something you paid for. But
there is a balance where a band like Coil can be happy selling a certain amount
of records and making great, arty, super-cool music, ;and not being forced to
bitch about the fact that they can't put 'Bitch' on their record like Prodigy.
That's how it works."
Indeed, Reznor has had to go to bat for his
artists at Interscope, who initially balked at the idea of releasing Marilyn
Manson's 1994 debut Portrait Of An American Family. "I fought Interscope
to make Manson the right thing," says Reznor. "And it came down to
saying, 'We want this record out, and if you don't put it out I'll put it out
on my own.' They wanted me to ask Manson to change a few things, but I
couldn't. The whole crux of Nothing is that we don't do things like that: We
offer complete artistic freedom. My experiences with my former record label
taught me that you shouldn't fuck with people's art. So I will never fuck with
you as an artist. Just know that what you do has repercussions, understand
that, and I'll fully support you. Do I support all of Manson's beliefs? No. Do
I agree with most of them? No. Would I do that as an artist myself? No, I wouldn't
do that personally and I don't have a problem with Interscope not liking it or
not wanting to put it out. But I can't go back to a guy I just signed and say,
'hey, by the way, that thing I said about whatever you want to do is cool?
Well, we need you to change the cover and change this song.'"
For the record, Reznor has nothing but praise
for Interscope. Although he got off to a rocky start with the label-"They
bought Nine Inch Nails without consulting me, so I began by telling them to
fuck off," is how Reznor sums up the first encounter-he's since come to
regard Interscope honcho Jimmy Lovine as a friend, and his staff as valuable
allies. "What I learned after The Downward Spiral took off is that
Interscope had resources I never had before, and that I can trust their
marketing guy and ask him questions."
On the other side of the business, the success
of The Downward Spiral has forced Reznor to reassess his relationship with his
fans. "I had to deal with the personal demons that come with going from
being a cool underground band to being big. Suddenly, your fan club, your
alternative fans, don't think you're cool anymore. And I could relate to that-I
didn't go see the Jesus And Mary Chain after they got big. So I had to ask
myself whether I should be trying to make my music more inaccessible, or should
I just do what I think is true to myself. It was actually Bono from U2, who I
became friends with, who said 'Fuck those people.' I thought about that for a
little while, and it was like waking up with a new haircut. It's different. I
miss what I was. But I'm not what I was anymore. I've thought differently about
Nine Inch Nails ever since."
On a more practical level, Reznor has been
plotting a new musical course for Nine Inch Nails. "I think the whole industrial
distorted thing is dead. I'm bored with it. All I listen to now is hip-hop.
Erykah Badu's record is my favorite CD of the past year. The new wave of
electronica also interests me. I was completely blown away by jungle. It's so
not rock 'n' roll. Double-speed beats against half-speed reggae-what an
interesting and cool style of music. I was pissed off, in a good way, that I
never thought of it. Like I remember seeing Jane's Addiction on their first
tour, standing in a fucking Cleveland club, unsigned and mad, thinking
'these guys are fucking good-fucking assholes!' It was a good mad. Not mad like
with 311, where it just sucks that you have to listen to it. But a good,
humbling mad."
Reznor says he's been toying with drum 'n' bass
in the studio, as well with the kind of loops and electronic beats that have
always dominated Nine Inch Nails material. But that's only part of the picture.
he was recently in Chicago, where he had Steve Albini record
Bill Rieflin (formerly of Ministry) playing drums. He's planning to
cut-and-paste the results into rhythm tracks for the new disc. And there was
the abortive month in Big Sur, which Reznor spent trying to write in a more traditional manner.
"When I got in touch with Rick Rubin about
doing the album he said, 'As a friend and a fan, be aware that I think you're
boxing yourself in a corner. There's only so much more extreme you can get
lyrically.' He told me to try writing a record alone at the piano instead of a
drum machine. I tried. I went to Big Sur and lived in a house by myself. I went insane
and almost killed myself sitting at a piano trying to write like Tom petty
does. I think Petty's great. I also realize that when I sit down and do that it
starts to sound like Billy Joel's The Stranger."
David Bowie also offered some song-writing
advice. "We had long talks when we were on that tour together. He said to
me at one point, 'I don't mean to sound like your dad'-and he's the exact same
age as my dad!-'but try writing in the third person, because you'll find that
you'll get yourself out of a hole that I was once in.' So I've been trying to
change that. It's just weird as a writer to try to define yourself in a
different way. It's like learning how to write for me, because I don't know how
to fucking write."
Ultimately, the next Nine Inch nails album
won't really take shape until Rubin joins Reznor full-time in the studio this
fall. All Trent can say for sure is that he's aiming to take people by surprise.
"In thinking about a new direction, I
realized it's important to me to challenge what's accepted and stay away from
doing the safe thing. I'm concentrating on fucking around thematically and
stylistically. It'll be more like a Tom Petty record, not in the sense of being
ten pop songs, but in being ten separate songs instead of one big story like
The Downward Spiral was. I know this probably all sounds lofty and pretentious,
but I think back to this interview with Clive Barker I once read. He said
something like, 'I know a lot of people like me, but with the next book I put
out I want to piss my fans off. But maybe they'll take my lead and respect me
enough to go down a different path. And if I don't do that then I'm not being
honest with myself as an artist.' That's the kind of album I aspire to
make."
by Matt Ashare
John A. Malm JR.:
All About Nothing
“When we started the label we got a lot of tapes
from Trent wannabes and heavy industrial bands,“ admits Nothing Records
co-owner and Nine Inch Nails manager John A. Malm Jr. over the phone front the
label‘s Cleveland office. “But our thing was that we didn‘t want Nothing to become
a genre label.”
Malm was one of the primary architects of the
Nothing deal with Interscope, which had all immediate goal of shielding Reznor
and Nine Inch Nails from a major-label meddling. “We wanted to set up a situation for ourselves
where Nine Inch Nails could be self-contained. We knew nothing about Interscope
at the time. But their whole thing is ‘lf you want he just ask; if not, we’ll
leave you alone.‘ It‘s turned into a great situation“
Even back then, Malm was aiming to make Nothing
a legitimate label. “We knew we would sign other bands. We wanted to turn it
into a small label with credibility that could grow like Mute. That‘s where we
were coming from.“
Being in Cleveland, the city where Reznor launched
Nine Inch Nails, has given Nothing the space to develop at its own pace and to
find its own niche. “There‘s no formula at this point,” admits Malm. “We go out and look for bands; some
bands come looking for us. Rob Halford showed up at Trent‘s door with a tape of
his new band. Manson had opened for Trent on an early tour. We‘re basically
just looking for artists where we could put them in the sandbox and let them
go.”--- MA
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