The rock legends Trent Reznor utterly failed trying to be: “It was shitty”
It’s easy to forget the long and arduous road many an artist has to traipse to find their voice.
Even in his mid-1990s pomp, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor’s evolution from the new wave to Woodstock ‘94’s mud-smothered industrial racket was trailed with a litany of awkward misfires and screwed-up balls of terrible songwriting.
Rewind a decade or so from ‘Closer’s squalid electronic throb, and Reznor was sporting an immaculately coiffed barnet and short-sleeve blazers that’d make Duran Duran proud, lending his keys to a revolving circuit of Cleveland pop groups from The Innocent, Exotic Birds, Slam Bamboo, and the artier Lucky Pierre, featuring future Prick singer Kevin McMahon.
Such trite masked Reznor’s true calling, however. Fundamentally shaped by David Bowie’s classic 1970s album run, Kraftwerk’s angular construction, Rush’s compositional expanses, and the volatile transgression emitted from Throbbing Gristle stuck a hook in the young Reznor deeper than the pop-rock derivativity he’d been orbiting since college.
While always diffident about the industrial label, it can’t be understated how seismic an influence the movement’s silver age would be. Exposed to the shock theatre of Skinny Puppy and Ministry’s mechanised pummel, Reznor’s studio demos would take a turn toward a darker and more aggressive path to the fire in Nine Inch Nails’ 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine’s belly.
Reznor also wanted to step behind the mic. While not a total virgin—a video of a young Reznor fronting covers band The Urge and giving his all with Billy Idol’s ‘Eyes Without a Face’ has floated around for years on YouTube—a desire to sing required a sincerity that could only come from handling lyrical duties. With later lauded gems like ‘Hurt’ in his songbook, Reznor’s emerging songcraft soldiered through the rocky waters of doubt and striving for originality to reach a point where country legend Johnny Cash would take a rendition of the aforementioned The Downward Spiral coda.
“I think I always knew what I wanted to do with my life, but I seemed to have spent a lot of time governed by fear-in this context, fear of failure, Reznor confessed to Alternative Press in 2004. “Way back when, I’d played in a number of bands but avoided writing, because I knew what I liked but didn’t know if I’d like what I could write”.
Reznor furthered. “When I finally started, yes, it sucked. I was lyrically trying to be The Clash or Gang of Four, and it was shitty. It read as insincere because it was. I was drawn to the passion and sincerity of these artists and was attempting to emulate that, but what they were singing about were things that mattered to them, not so much me”.
It’s an honest mistake, and likely many budding artists’ typical early pitfall. Naturally, the first attempt at pouring your heart on a notepad will look and sound like the bands that you spent hours listening to in the intimate confines of your teen bedroom. In lyrically emulating Joe Strummer’s excoriation of imperialism or Jon King’s political critique, it’s a safe bet that amid the dross buried deep in the Reznor vault, the seeds of future searing, social lambasts of ‘Head Like a Hole’ or ‘Heresy’ were sown, leading to greatness.
