- trent reznor, nine inch nails -

Who knows? Maybe there will be a happy album from Nine Inch Nails. I doubt it, but you never know.

The music I always liked as a kid was stuff I could burn out to and realize, 'Hey, someone else feels that way, too.' So if someone can do that with my music, it's mission accomplished.

I like using choruses, hooks, and melody but I also like trying to subversively slip in things you wouldn't normally find there--creating a bit of beauty under a really ugly exterior.

To a large extent, my music is about me coming to terms with who I am, and addressing that in a potentially ugly manner. Sometimes that's a shocking thing because when you peel back the skin, sometimes you find that what you see is not always the person you originally hoped or thought you were.

Nine Inch Nails is a pretty accurate reflection of how I feel at the moment. If next week, I was to get married and feel completely happy and calm and placid, then it's time to stop the band or take a different direction.

The reason why I hope people like Nine Inch Nails is the lyrics.



When somebody tell me 'Here's the rules,' I always want to challenge it. I was a terrible employee working in menial jobs because I wouldn't do things I knew were stupid.

I don't know what's made me feel this way, but every time I'm told I can't do this or do it that way, I inherently want to know why. Put it this way: I was a bad employee and it wasn't because I wouldn't work hard. It was because what I was being told was dumb.



I watch MTV because I am morbidly fascinated with how bad most of what I'm seeing is.

MTV is telling you this is what is cool. Listen to what is cool. I think that the whole situation has made music less art-y and put more emphasis on music as a product.



I believe in God. I was brought up going to Sunday school and church, but it didn't really mean anything. Things upset me a lot. It was just a theme I kept coming back to: religion, guilt and doubting. I believe there's God but I'm not too sure of his relevance.

There are just some things that don't seem very fair in the world, like this fucking hypocrisy of organized religion. I just don't understand how people can blindly believe a bunch of the shit they're fed, to believe it so that they don't think too hard about other issues. 'Be a good boy and you'll go to heaven.' If it works for you, fine, but it doesn't work for me and that pisses me off because I kind of wish it did.



I do actually believe in love. I can't say that I'm 100 percent successful in that department, but I think it's one of the few worthwhile human experiences. It's cooler than anything I can think of right now.

In the old Nine Inch Nails, if we wanted to get rid of people, the guitar player and I would start making out. It was a trick. I mean, I really love women. I don't dislike men, and there's times I've thought about it. You get into certain scenes, and I realize I should experiment down that path, and I just haven't done it yet. I've been in situations where there's men involved, but not directly interacting.

I never allowed myself to really get in a totally serious relationship. For one thing, I was so poor I was ashamed of it...That's not a real reason. The real reason is I wanted to do what I'm doing and I didn't want anything to hold me back. When things started happening, every other element in my life was pushed to the back burner. I was excited by the work, but the price I paid was a sense of normality, a community of friends and a successful relationship.

I never thought I could be married before. And it's not like I'm ready to do that, but it doesn't seem as foreign to me; I'd like to have a kid someday. I never thought I'd ever .. again, I'm not set up to do that....



I'm the first to admit that I don't like myself.

Darkness and desperation are obviously of interest to me and I feel a lot of that within myself. I think it's just something that's chemically in me, and it provides a palette of something interesting to explore, almost scientifically at times.

I don't always see the world in such extreme terms as the records suggest. And as for 'Am I like that all the time?' No! But I have thought all those things, or else I wouldn't have written them. When I'm in the mode I am now, bombarded with things to do, I've got armoured up and I'm kinda numb. It's when I've got time to myself I feel the most human. Then I kick into melancholy mode.

When I think about the state I'm in, I feel like a fucking loser because I've got things I really should be glad about. I'm aware that I'm fortunate to live in this house and do what I've always wanted to do. And be one of the few who got the record deal. I hear myself bitching about how it sucks to be popular, then I have to just stop because that's bullshit to say so. By the same token, I'm not more happy or content with my life than I was ten years ago. I got everything I wanted in my life...except I don't really have a life right now. I don't have any real friends, any relationships that mean anything to me, and I've turned myself into this music-creation-performance machine.

I get a lot of people saying, 'Wow, you must be the most depressed person in the world!' Well, I don't think I am. I'm not the happiest guy in the world either.

I'd like to bow out thinking, hey, I did that. I tried that. I experienced that. I wasn't afraid. Rather than sit in the back room with a fucking towel over my head. I want to be around it, absorb, consume.

I'm always a little bit depressed, and I should probably go to therapy, but that would ruin my career.



I've not thought about suicide a lot because it's kind of dangerous in your own mind to think about it. But I make myself think about it once in a while to explore what it would be like, you know, what if I did? I don't want to do it, I have no plans to do it, but there's been times when I've seen that black fucking cloud, and I don't even want to get up, like, what's to get up for? Because there's no way I can fix everything that's fucked up.



Reznor.
Died.
Said 'fist fuck' and won a Grammy.
He had no social life, but you shoulda seen him smash a Les Paul.




trent reznor on tori amos
We met on a friendship level; it was not like some mutual ass kissing thing. I really liked her first album, which is not the kind of thing I'd normally listen to. Someone had given it to me and said that it sounded like Sinead O'Connor. I fucking can't stand Sinead O'Connor, so I ignored it. Then I saw the video for Silent All These Years and it struck me in a way where I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. But it was interesting. I was pleasantly surprised to find someone who I thought was taking chances. Not playing it safe, and also writing good songs, melodies and really good lyrics...I relate to her work a lot, on some level...She approaches things with a totally different aesthetic than I do, but it's good.

She called me to do this vocal track. It wasn't that big a deal. Her first album was permanently in my car's CD changer. It really struck me as well written, in a similar vein to what I was doing-from a different point of view, but the same kind of addicting, pouring out, gushing, baring, naked kind of song. Other people put their fingers in the pie, and they kind of messed up a friendship. We're not that close now. Some malicious meddling on the part of Courtney Love. But I still feel the same feelings for Tori.

Her music gives me goose bumps whenever I listen to it. It's very rare for music to affect me that way.



tori amos on trent reznor
[In partial response to the question 'Was there an album that you listened to and suddenly, the world was different for you?']
...And believe it or not, `Pretty Hate Machine,' Nine Inch Nails, when I was writing. That's why we met, because after I had heard `Pretty Hate Machine,' it had been such an influence, I began reading the Sandman comics and listening to `Pretty Hate Machine.' I had given this young man, who had been the lover of the girl I used to babysit in Rockville, a place to crash on my floor in Hollywood. They had had a falling out -- I was 20 -- and I was like his older sister. I gave him a place to crash, and he brought in the Sandman comics -- he was a dropout of Parsons Art School -- and Nine Inch Nails. Just imagine, I'm reading the Sandman, listening to Nine Inch Nails, reading `Calliope,' going, `Where have I been?' Playing at the Marriott. So yeah, these are some landmarks in my life.

I love the screaming male aggression of his music, because I'm not in touch with that part of myself so much. I think there ought to be a raging-male cruise line we could take, go to seven islands and just watch these guys act out. I've always said that what Trent really needs is a blanky and a hot chocolate with marshmallows. He doesn't need another hole to crawl into. I think somebody should give him one of those little hard hats with a miner's light on it, so when he gets lost in a dark hole, he can find his way out.

[on the duet with Trent, "Past The Mission," on her album Under The Pink]
I always loved what he did. So 'Past the Mission' said to me, "I want Trent to sing on me." And I said, "I'm sure you do." And, so, I made the call, and he was, uh, 'open to that'. And we, uh, did it at his house, you know, the old Tate House...

The choice for (`Past The Mission') had to be somebody that represented rage and anger because this is all about a girl trying so hard to work through being a victim. I felt like for a guy to be supporting her, it had to be a guy that could rage, because then it would really mean something if he could be tender. Trent is--well, you can't be in all that much rage and pain unless you have a very big heart.'

Well, look, he's so anorexic sometimes. I just look at him and go, baby, you need my cooking honey. And he was very open to the idea because, you know, I don't think he gets much nurturing, that guy. There's just not a lot of nurturing going on. Anyway, so I went over there and I brought all my little supplies because they only have Coca-cola in the fridge.... Well I was gonna make him baked chicken because like, look, I'm from the South, I know how to make chicken, I've been making it since I was 10 years old, with my Nanny, my Grandmother in the kitchen, where it's dripping down your chin, and that whole buttery thing, right? Well I'm making it, and _nothing's happening_. I mean its just, yes it's cooking right, the oven's cooking, I've made it the same time, the same way that I've made it for 20 years. And it's _not working_. I mean, you know how globs of flour were collecting on the chicken. And, it just wasn't working, nothing was working, and he's standing there with his arms folded thinking he's like, I'm not applying to be your wife or anything. I mean this isn't what's happening anyway. So why are you not giving me a chance? This is wrong. This is your house. And I called my mother on the phone, things got so bad, and I said, Mom, what's wrong, I can't make this chicken for this guy, and she goes, well you know honey, I heard the Folger's coffee heiress was also in that house, and she died that night, and I think there's a curse on anything that has to do with culinary things. And I'm like, thanks, Mom.

Well, I'm a bit of a lunatic right now. I called my friend Trent Reznor--I was lying on the marble. There's this marble little sit place at the Ritz Carlton in Chicago, with the windows, and I was just losing my mind a little bit. Don't think I was thinking of anything so cliche, right, but you know, I was thinking of at least throwing my ice cream out the 26th floor, or the telephone. And he said, `You can't, Tori. I've been in that Ritz Carlton in Chicago, and the windows are inverted, so I'm not worried.' So there's kind of something wonderful about having friends that go through what you go through. You have your buddies that understand. Obviously Robert Plant can't understand, because all he says to me is, `Why are you touring? Just come to Wales and we'll watch the butterflies and talk about great Welsh stories.' I was going, `Yeah, a legend can say that, you know?'

'We're like the Devil and Miss Jones. One time I called Trent when I was ready to jump out the window of the Ritz Carlton, because I'd had one too many days in the Midwest or something. And he said, 'Well, I've been in that Ritz Carlton, and I'm not too worried about you because I tried it myself and that window doesn't open right.'