Sing
the Body Electronic
All hail the
antigrunge: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor sports fishnets, BPMs, and a new
–gasp!- concept album. Got a problem with that? Darcey Steinke doesn’t.
The last time I saw Trent Reznor was at the
Sharon Tate house in Los Angeles, during the recording of the new
Nine Inch Nails record The Downward
Spiral. It wasn‘t quite the place nightmares are made of— an unassuming
ranch house, cedar-paneled with burgundy trim, set in a secluded, downright
pleasant spot at the end of Cielo Drive off Benedict Canyon Boulevard. After
the grisly 1969 murders of Sharon Tate and her houseguests by Manson family
members, the owners had a shaman come in to drive out the evil spirits. Maybe
it was that ritual cleansing, or the big voodoo candles Reznor brought with him
from New Orleans, but the place had an almost holy vibe, more
like a war memorial than a haunted house.
I remember feeling pretty comfortable until
after dark, when steam began rising off the heated Pool and the only light came
from the red coals of the barbecue. Several beers later I went inside to use
the bathroom. It was occupied, so I wandered down the hall to an unused
bedroom. I stood in the doorway slowly realizing this had been Abigail Folger‘s
room. She had been lying over an antique bed in a long white night gown,
slightly stoned on MDA, when Charles Manson‘s devotees cut through the screen
of the empty nursery with a bayonet and creepy-crawled into the house.
Reznor claims the Tate house‘s macabre history
had no effect on The Downward Spiral.
“Honestly,“ he says, clearly tired of the Manson-related questions, “with the
exception of the name of the studio [Le Pig], which I know was in very bad
taste, most of the lyrics had been determined before I even leased the house.
Now, of course, I realize I used ‘pig, pig, pig‘ in all these songs. But it
wasn‘t at all calculated.
It could be perceived as trying too hard, but it
just wasn‘t like that.“ It was all a strange coincidence, Reznor explains. The
realtor forgot to mention the building‘s history, and it was so much cheaper than
all the others he‘d been shown, such a pretty house suspended like a mobile
over the twinkling lights of the city of angels.
Still, it‘s hard to believe that making music
in the room where the most notorious murders of this century took place didn‘t
affect Reznor‘s writing. Protest as he might, history has always served as muse
to art; they have a sort of cross-pollinating, symbiotic relationship. The
Beatles went to India and came home with The White Album. Bowie moved to
Berlin and wrote Heroes with Brian Eno. Picasso painted “Guernica“ to immortalize a battle in the Spanish Civil
War. Steven Spielberg went to Auschwitz to film Schindler‘s List, believing that the death camp‘s evil ambience would
be more evocative than some Hollywood back lot. Pink Floyd‘s The Final Cut was influenced by Roger
Waters‘s memories of World War II.
And Reznor, however subconsciously, used the
Manson murders, still a resonating example of mind control and violence, as
grist for The Downward Spiral.
Manson‘s two most famous sayings—“You can‘t kill, kill“ and “Getting the fear“
— could fit thematically almost anywhere on The
Downward Spiral. The first single, “March of the Pigs,“ seems subtly
evocative of the murders themselves: “All the pigs are all lined up / Take the
skin and peel it back / Now doesn‘t that make you feel better.“
As time passed, Reznor reflects, Charles Manson
and his grim legacy grew as irrelevant and distant as the ‘60s themselves. The
house became peaceful and ordinary. “After a while it wasn‘t freaky, just sort
of normal. But in a way,“ he says, “that‘s almost scarier.“
The Tate house s gone now, torn down in January
to build a bigger, less tainted mansion, and NIN is on a run of warm-up gigs
before the official tour in Seattle. We‘re in Hawaii, land of palm trees, huge waxy
plants, and vaginal-looking flowers. Reznor, in black leather pants and a black
T-shirt, sits across from me on the couch of his messy room in the superposh
Halekulani hotel. It‘s a nice pad right on the Pacific with a choice view of
Diamond Head.
“How unfashionable are we right now?“ Reznor says grimly, but with a healthy sense of the
absurd. He has a long, expressive face, like a figure in an El Greco painting,
and is wearing his black hair shoulder-length these days, with wispy,
boomerang-shaped sideburns. “We use synthesizers, put on a theatrical show,
maybe even use costumes, We‘ve made a concept album with no real singles. We‘re
not from Seattle, and we don‘t play ‘70s rock.“
He shakes his head, fully aware of his
precarious position as the son of Bowie and Eno at a time when the offspring of
Neil Young rule the earth. “I appreciate what happened in that whole movement. It
was needed for a while to kill off the Poisons and the Bon Jovis. But whatever
was sincere about the whole back-to basics college-rock thing that eventually
turned into grunge—the whole we‘re not pretentious rock icons, we‘re normal
people playing earnestly‘—is over. Now that‘s the fashion.“
“Trent represents something more mysterious to
people than someone like Eddie Vedder,“ says Kennedy, MTV VJ and a friend of
Reznor‘s, ‘but the real difference is that Trent takes more showers.“
It‘s not only musically and hygienically that
Reznor is out of sync with his contemporaries; he‘s also not afraid to leap
onstage in a garter belt and fishnet stockings. He‘s intensely aware of the
ritualistic, almost religious aspects of performance. “When I go see a show, I
want to see freaks, dancing midgets. I want to see flesh and blood. I want icon
and entertainment. I don‘t give a shit that you look like the guy that just
pumped my gas down the street.“
His flamboyance is part of a rich tradition: Jim
Morrison wore black leather in the age of flower-power, singing songs about sex
and death when everyone else was surfing the hippie-dippy-trippy wave; David
Bowie wore makeup in a cosmic drag act called Ziggy Stardust; Peter Gabriel
wore elaborate costumes and Kabuki face paint while embracing the most advanced
technology available; Alice Cooper Goth-glammed his way through Welcome to my Nightmare. And then there
was Kiss, who went so far as to become cartoons in grease paint and sparkly
platform shoes.
They were the coolest,“ waxes Reznor. “Fucking
demonic, monster-loud rock band. They were superheroes to me. We were always
having God of Thunder yardstick concerts. I was Gene Simmons in the Halloween
parade, aluminium foil on my shoes. I was fucking styling.“
Embracing the double helix of sex and death,
creation and destruction, in such a theatrical and courageous manner as Reznor
does can make for very zealous fans. He‘s scratching at the taboos of suburbia
in a way grunge never will; linking anger and violence to a sexually charged
experience that suggests drag, camp, even homosexuality. At a show three years
ago in Tampa, the vehemence and ecstasy of the young women pressed up to the
front of the stage was reminiscent of girls fainting dead away at the feet of
Elvis. But Reznor‘s message —I want to fuck you like an animal /I want to feel
you from the inside“ —is no kin to “Love Me Tender.“
Reznor was born May 17,
1965, to
teenage parents and lived his first years during the most turbulent time in
recent American history. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther
King, Jr., race riots, Vietnam, and the Manson murders all came
down before he turned five.
But secondhand chaos was nothing compared to
what looomed closer to home; in 1970 his parents divorced and the little boy
landed, along with his sister Tera, at his grandparents‘ house in a working-class
neighborhood in Mercer, Pennsylvania. Reznor, like many children whose parents
split up, felt “ripped off.“
Mercer, population 2,444, resembles any other
small town in America with its Shenango Valley Mall and
multiplex theater off of State Route 62. Reznor says there was nothing to do,
that the coolest thing that happened there was the opening of the new
McDonald‘s. He took solace in classical piano and saxophone lessons. About
school he says, “I did well when I cared and shitty once I didn‘t.“ He went to
church. “For a while I got good things out of it. Especially that feeling of
purity.“ But once he got a whiff of self-righteousness, a human quality on the
top of Reznor‘s long hate-list, he stopped attending. “I hate that I‘m a better
person than you‘ bullshit.“
At Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Reznor majored in computer
engineering and hoped to “fit in and make friends.“ But it didn‘t work and he
eventually dropped out, moved to Cleveland, and worked as an assistant engineer
at Right Track music studio. His first demo was made when the place was closed,
in the wee hours of the morning. The tape made the rounds, eventually catching
the ear of Steve Gottlieb at TVT Records. Adrian Sherwood remixed some of the
songs and Pretty Hate Machine hit in
1989.
The band toured and toured and toured; the
record sold steadily, a fan base grew, and without much help from the media or
radio, Pretty Hate Machine eventually
sold half a million copies. It wasn‘t until Lollapalooza ‘91 that the band
gained wider recognition. But while its popularity rose, things at TVT were
turning sour. Gottlieb, who Reznor claims was into ‘fierce artistic
repression,“ wouldn‘t hear of a big-label buyout. Gottlieb claims TVT did right
by NIN, citing the debut‘s big budget and myriad artistic freedoms. He implies
Reznor has a problem with authority.
“We‘re talking about the guy that wrote ‘I‘d
rather die than give you control,‘ “ Gottlieb says. “But our relationship got
dysfunctional and I do take full blame for that. I obviously let Trent down.“
John MaIm, Reznor‘s manager, says, “At that time,
Trent would rather have mowed lawns than make another record for TVT.“ Thus
followed two years of litigation and the eventual settlement and jump to Interscope
Records, where president Jimmy lovine has a method more in tune with Reznor‘s
artistic individuality. “When you got the real banana,“ he says, “it‘s hands
oft.“ As a part of his deal with Interscope, Reznor set up his own label,
Nothing Records, which had already signed, among others, the Florida band Marilyn Manson. Reznor
describes their material as offensive to some: “Serial killer stuff, but with
this circus sideshow, satirical edge.“
In 1992, Interscope released Broken, an electronic thrash-metal
record that was made clandestinely with producer Flood during the legal mess.
Reznor refers to the EP as “an island off a bit.‘ He further explains, “I was
pissed off and just wanted to make a record that said “fuck you!“
The Downward Spiral debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard
chart. It represents a new level of maturity for Reznor, distanced from both
the bubble-gum freshness of his first album and his “fuck you“ stage. The idea
for the record came in 1991, after two long years on the road. “The bus comes
to a halt...I‘ve been in there so long... I come out. The light sort of hurts
my eyes. I got everything I ever wanted but it doesn‘t seem to be what I
wanted. And I start thinking... Why do I feel this way? What‘s all this
negativity about? This anger? Why am I so self-destructive? I wanted to write
about someone who was decaying, someone who was looking for salvation or hope
through dangerous and improper means.“
Reznor calls The Downward Spiral a concept album; like the Who‘s Tommy or Pink Floyd‘s The Wall, the songs are connected into a
(very) loose narrative. It‘s a dark, visionary story filled with self
examination and loss. The line “nothing can stop me now“—more threat than mantra—is
repeated in three different songs, reminiscent of my grand father‘s saying,
“Nothing can stop a man when he‘s got nothing to lose.“ On “Hurt,“ Reznor evokes
that miserable abandon— What have I become? / My sweetest friend“—and hints at
the violence that sometimes accompanies it—“I will let you down / I will make
you hurt.“ Getting at the way despair often leads to violence, Reznor is a
depressed Walt Whitman, singing the sang of himself over and over, like a man
banging his skull against a concrete floor even after his forehead bleeds.
It‘s only 6:30 P.M. in Honolulu, but there‘s
already a line outside the After Dark club. The band is in the dressing room, located
in the bar of an adjacent Chinese restaurant called the Bohemian Café it has a
grass hut motif: split bamboo covers the walls, carved coconuts hang, lit up
like jack-o-lanterns. The Time Machine
flickers on the TV over the bar.
Reznor is preoccupied. The monitors aren‘t loud
enough and he‘s sure he‘s going to blow out his voice. Mark O‘Shea, the
good-natured road manager, unlocks the wardrobe case. Robin Finck, who‘s
worried his guitar strap will rub his sunburned shoulder raw, goes over and
sniffs what he hopes to wear tonight. Lots of sparkly Lycra sticks out of the
big black chest; all the band‘s outfits could fit easily into a shoe box.
Bassist-keyboardist Danny Lohner can‘t find his gold leggings. Reznor shuffles
through one drawer, then another, finally sighing with relief as ha pulls out a
pair of bright silver shorts.
Just before the band comes an, I roam the
crowd, most of wham are dressed like vampires an a cruise. Hawaii is the
Disneyland of paradises, but it‘s also suburbia, long and low with subdivisions
and strip malls. And it just might be the most isolated community an earth. No
doubt the locals get mightily sick of the old smiley face “A-lo-ha“ routine.
Everyone‘s elated that the band is playing here. One guy with a mohawk and a
NIN T-shirt tries to convince me he‘s their hugest fan. ‘I can‘t believe this band came here,“ he says over and over. A Japanese girl, whose mother works
as a waitress at one of the big hotels, is not surprised. ‘The spirits are very
powerful here,“ she says, and then tells me how one of the highway overpasses
is haunted, and that tourists who take away lava (a big bad luck no-no) usually
end up mailing it back.
The tape rolls, the smoke machines hiss, and
the strobe light beats like the heart of a fat man about to suffer an attack.
The band takes the stage. They‘ve pounded corn starch into their subtly
metallic clothes and look like nothing except futuristic gypsies. Up in the VIP
section (which consists of a wooden platform suspended by chains from ceiling
rafters) stands David Gahan, the lead singer of Depeche Mode, and a
rather confused-looking labelmate of Reznor‘s, Dr. Dre.
As he works the stage, Reznor conveys the perfect
combination of sexuality, spirituality, and fascism; he‘s the demon lover,
sometimes whispering, sometimes snarling, always seducing. Mid-set, Reznor uses
the end of his mike stand like a hammer on James Woolley‘s keyboards, while
Robin Finck plucks theatrically at the neck of his guitar. I zone out and in an
the computerized sound loops, and get the weird sensation I‘ve taken a ride on
a time machine, that it‘s 2094 rather than 1994; that the future is now.
After the show, backstage, the band emerges one
by one from the dressing room in street clothes. Dre has split, but Gahan is
telling everyone the show was “fucking brilliant.“ He knows Reznor from L.A. “Touring is exactly what that
gloomy fucker needs,“ he says.
We have one drink and then another. Gahan laughs
about doing karaoke to Depeche Mode songs in Manila. People are allowed in the dressing
room now, but somebody warns us to give Reznor a little more time. Rumor has it
he suffers horribly from post-performance depression. And it‘s not long before
we hear he‘s gone back to the hotel. Gahan looks disappointed and even a little
hurt, and I sense that, in the anti-affirmative, fucked-up, passive- aggressive
way of rock stars, the electronic torch has just been passed.
The light has fallen, and it‘s so dark in the
hotel room that Reznor‘s features are as obscure as the face of a clouded moon.
I can‘t see my questions anymore, so I close my notebook and set it beside me
on the couch. The ocean tongues rhythmically at the shore outside, and faint
Hawaiian music blows in through the window. I‘m convinced now that Reznor‘s
alienation isn‘t just for effect, that he‘s actually nourished by sorrow, and
has an almost intellectually interest in hate.
But what about love? Could he ever write a real
love song? One that wasn‘t about death?
“You mean one where I don‘t get my dick cut
off?“
I nod.
“Well, I don‘t know if I could. I‘d try it.“ He
pauses, and when he speaks again the tone of his voice is dead serious. “You
know, I do have the capacity to love. I have loved—and I mean truly loved—several times. I‘m not
afraid of it.“
What about happiness? Is it a hollow concept for
someone like you?
“No,“ he answers immediately. “But trying to sustain
it for any length of time—that‘s where the trickery lies.“
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