Trent Reznor

Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American musician, singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He is the founder and primary creative force behind the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, and was previously associated with the bands Option 30, Exotic Birds, and Tapeworm, among others. As of 2007, Reznor split his ties with his Interscope Records, and is now an independent, unsigned musician.

Reznor began creating music early in his life, and cites his sheltered Pennsylvania childhood as an early influence. After being involved with a number of synthisizer-based bands in the mid-80s, Reznor gained employment at Right Track Studios and began creating his own music during the studio's closing hours under the monicer Nine Inch Nails. Reznor's first release as Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine was a commercial success, and he has since released six major studio releases. Outside of Reznor's chief project Nine Inch Nails, he has contributed to many other artists' albums, including Marilyn Manson and more recently Saul Williams. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music."^[1]

Michael Trent Reznor was born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, halfway between Pittsburgh and Erie, to Michael Joseph Reznor and Nancy Lou Clark.^[2] Reznor was referred to by his middle name to avoid confusion with his father. After his parents divorced, he lived with his grandparents, while his sister Tera lived with their mother. Reznor is a direct descendant of George Reznor, founder of the Reznor Company (founded 1888), a heating and air conditioning company. The family sold the business in the 1960s.^[2][3]

Reznor began playing the piano at the age of five and showed an early aptitude for music. In a 1995 interview, his grandfather, Bill Clark, remarked, "Music was his life, from the time he was a wee boy. He was so gifted."^[4] His former piano teacher Rita Beglin said "Reznor always reminded me of Harry Connick, Jr." when he played.^[4]

Reznor has acknowledged that his sheltered life in Pennsylvania left him feeling isolated from the outside world. In a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, he makes reference to his choices in the music industry.

I don't know why I want to do these things, other than my desire to escape from Small Town, U.S.A., to dismiss the boundaries, to explore. It isn't a bad place where I grew up, but there was nothing going on but the cornfields. My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines. And when your fucking culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you.

— Trent Reznor, Rolling Stone^[5]

However, Reznor later said, "I don't want to give the impression it was a miserable childhood".^[6]

At the Mercer Area Junior and Senior High Schools, Reznor learned to play the saxophone and tuba. He was a member of both the jazz and marching band. Former Mercer High School band director Dr. Hendley Hoge remembered Reznor as "very upbeat and friendly".^[4] Reznor also became involved in theater while in high school. He was voted "Best in Drama" by classmates for his roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man. Reznor graduated from this high school in 1983 and enrolled at Allegheny College, where he studied computer engineering.^[7]

While enrolled in Allegheny College, Reznor joined local band Option 30, playing three shows a week with them. But after only a year of college, Reznor dropped out and moved to Cleveland, Ohio in order to pursue a career in music.^[4] In 1985, he joined The Innocent as a keyboardist. They released one album, Livin' in the Street, but Reznor quit after just three months. In 1986, Reznor joined local band Exotic Birds. He also appeared with them as the fictional band "The Problems" in the 1987 film Light of Day.^[8]

Reznor got a job at Right Track Studio (now known as Midtown Recording) as an assistant engineer and janitor.^[9] Studio owner Bart Koster later comment that Reznor was "so focused in everything he [did]. When that guy waxed the floor, it looked great."^[4] Reznor asked studio owner Bart Koster for permission to record demos of his own songs for free during unused studio time. Koster agreed, remarking that it cost him "just a little wear on [his] tape heads".^[4] While assembling these, the earliest NIN recordings, Reznor was unable to find a band that could articulate his songs as he wanted. Instead, inspired by Prince, he played all the instruments except drums himself.^[10] This role remains Reznor's on most of the band's studio recordings, though he has occasionally involved other musicians and assistants. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material, and Reznor signed with TVT Records.^[9] Nine selections from the Right Track demos were unofficially released in 1994 as Purest Feeling; many of these songs would appear in revised form on Pretty Hate Machine in 1989 under the name Nine Inch Nails.

Nine Inch Nails' debut album, Pretty Hate Machine was released in 1989. It was a moderate commercial success, and was certified Gold in 1992.^[11] Amid pressure from Reznor's record label to produce a follow-up to Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference, resulting in the Broken EP, released in 1992.^[12] In the summer of 1991 Nine Inch Nails was included in the Lollapalooza package tour, and won a Grammy in 1993 for a performance of "Wish" from the same tour.^[13]

Nine Inch Nails' second full-length album, The Downward Spiral, entered the Billboard 200 in 1994 at number two,^[14] and remains the highest-selling Nine Inch Nails release in the United States.^[11] To record the album, Reznor rented and moved into the 10050 Cielo Drive mansion, site of the 1969 Manson Family murders.^[15] Reznor built a studio space in the house, which he renamed Le Pig, after the message scrawled on the front door with Sharon Tate's blood by her murderers.^[15] Reznor told Entertainment Weekly that despite the notoriety attached to the house, he chose to record there because, "I looked at a lot of places, and this just happened to be the one I liked most".^[15]

Nine Inch Nails toured extensively over the next few years, including a performance at Woodstock '94, where he admitted to the audience that he did not like to play large venues.^[16] Around this time, Reznor's studio perfectionism,^[17] struggles with addiction, and bouts of writer's block prolonged the production of a follow-up record.^[18]

Five years elapsed before Nine Inch Nails' next major album, The Fragile, a double CD that debuted in September 1999 at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 228,000 copies in its first week and receiving favorable reviews.^[19] Another six years elapsed before Nine Inch Nails' next full-length album, With Teeth, which also debuted on the top of the Billboard 200.^[20] The album was written and recorded following Reznor's battle with, and recovery from, alcoholism and substance abuse.^[21]

Nine Inch Nails's most recent major studio recording, Year Zero, was released in 2007, alongside an accompanying alternate reality game.^[22] With its lyrics written from the perspective of multiple fictitious characters, Reznor described Year Zero as a concept album criticizing the United States government's current policies and how they will impact the world 15 years in the future.^[23]

In 2007, Trent Reznor announced that Nine Inch Nails split from its contractual obligations with Interscope Records, and will distribute its next major album independently. The last Nine Inch Nails release on Interscope was a remix album based on material from Year Zero.^[24]

During the five years between his albums The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999), Trent Reznor struggled with depression, social anxiety disorder, writer's block, and the death of his grandmother. It has also been revealed by Reznor that he had been suffering from alcohol and drug addiction during the Fragile era (circa 1999-2002). In a 2005 interview with Kerrang!, Reznor makes a note of his self-destructive past: "There was a persona that had run its course. I needed to get my priorities straight, my head screwed on. Instead of always working, I took a couple of years off, just to figure out who I was and working out if I wanted to keep doing this or not. I had become a terrible addict; I needed to get my shit together, figure out what had happened."^[18] Since recovering from his addictions, Reznor admitted in a 2005 interview with Revolver that "I’m pretty happy right now".^[25]

In the late 1990s Reznor was involved in a feud with Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, calling Durst a "moron" and saying in a 1999 interview in Rolling Stone, "Fred Durst can surf a piece of plywood up my ass."^[26] It is noted, however, that Reznor is credited as a writer of the song "Hot Dog" on Limp Bizkit's album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, due to this song's use of lyrics from "Closer," in particular the phrase "I want to fuck you like an animal."^[27]

Reznor is a fan of David Bowie, and has cited Bowie's 1977 album Low as one of his favorite albums. Reznor has stated that he played the album constantly during the recording of The Downward Spiral for inspiration.^[6] In 1995, Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie toured as a co-headlining act on the Outside Tour, and also appears in Bowie's video for "I'm Afraid of Americans" as Bowie's stalker. Reznor also made several remixes for the single release of the same song.^[28]

Reznor was the credited producer for Marilyn Manson's albums Portrait of an American Family (1994), Smells Like Children (1995), and Antichrist Superstar (1996), as well as the soundtrack for the films Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway. Reznor is credited for "Driver Down" and "Videodrones; Questions" on the soundtrack for Lost Highway, while another track, "The Perfect Drug," is credited to Nine Inch Nails instead.

The original music from id Software's video game Quake is credited to "Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails";^[29] Reznor helped record sound effects and ambient audio, and the NIN logo appears on ammunition boxes in the game.^[30] Reznor's association with id Software began with Reznor being a fan of the original Doom. He reunited with id Software in 2003 as the sound engineer for Doom 3, though due to "time, money and bad management",^[31] he had to abandon the project, and his audio work did not make it into the game's final release.

Under the band name Tapeworm, Reznor collaborated over the span of nearly 10 years with Danny Lohner, Maynard James Keenan, and Atticus Ross, but the project was eventually terminated before any official material was released.^[32] The only known released Tapeworm material was a reworked version of a track called "Vacant," retitled "Passive,"on A Perfect Circle's 2004 album eMOTIVe.^[33]

In 2006, Reznor played his first "solo" show(s) at Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit. Backed by a four piece string section, he performed stripped-down versions of many Nine Inch Nails songs.^[34]

Reznor co-produced Saul Williams' 2007 album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! after Williams toured with Nine Inch Nails in 2005 and 2006. Reznor convinced Williams to release the album as a free download, while giving fans the option of paying $5 for higher quality files, or downloading all of the songs at a lower quality for free.^[35][36]

Reznor's work as Nine Inch Nails has influenced many newer artists, which according to Reznor range from "generic imitations" dating from the band's initial success to younger bands echoing his style in a "truer, less imitative way".^[37] Following the release of The Downward Spiral, mainstream artists began to take notice of Nine Inch Nails' influence: David Bowie compared NIN's impact to that of The Velvet Underground.^[38] In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music."^[1] Bob Ezrin, producer for Pink Floyd, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Peter Gabriel, described Reznor in 2007 as a "true visionary" and advised aspiring artists to take note of his no-compromise attitude.^[39] During a rare appearance at the Kerrang! Awards in London that year, Reznor accepted the Kerrang! Icon, honoring the Nine Inch Nails' long-standing influence on rock music.^[40]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Trent Reznor.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Trent Reznor.

• nin.com − official website
• The Spiral − official fan club
• Trent Reznor at IMDb