by Carr, Daphne
I love the instrumentals from Trent. They’re relaxing to listen to while driving down a road aimlessly. The Fragile has always been my favorite. Trent used such amazing orchestrations and had such deep intentions with this album. “The Day the Whole World Went Away” is probably the most heart-filled song I have ever heard. My favorite lyrics come from “All the Love in the World,” though: “Watching all the insects march along/Seem to know just right where they belong/ Smears a face reflecting in the chrome/ Hiding in the crowd, I’m all alone.”
Something I Can Never Have
Ric, 26, Hubbard, Ohio
Ric is the best friend and bandmate of my former guitar teacher.
We met on a few occasions, once in a coffee shop in his hometown.
Ric talked straight into the microphone, and at the end of the interview picked it up to thank Trent for helping him get where he is today.
I remember the day I bought Pretty Hate Machine, probably in 1992. My mom took me to Underdog Records and I saw Broken and I saw PHM. I remember flipping the CDs over and seeing that Broken had six songs and PHM had all kinds of songs, so I bought that.
My stepmother was convinced that my music was the music of the devil. She was 19 years old, only a few years older than me when she and my dad got married. My dad was an atheist, but my stepmother and her family were insane born-again Christians. She was on this power trip because she had gotten someone like me under her control. So I had two CD collections: Christian music, and what I really loved at my mom’s house.
I used to have to stay up super-late when my parents were asleep because MTV was forbidden, and I’d want to catch Headbangers Ball. I always used to pretend to write videos in my mind, because I couldn’t hang out. I was extremely sheltered by my family and church. I wasn’t allowed to go to parties or after-school events. I’d just go home and listen to music. But on one of those nights, “Wish” came on.
I was young and naive when I gave my life to God in a play called Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames. The whole play is about people dying and either going to heaven or hell. I became a Christian out of fear of going to hell, not learning about the love of God. I started going to church, to youth group, and then it started snowballing. I became super-Christian. I wasn’t watching PG-13 movies. I wasn’t masturbating—well, I was trying not to, I did it all the time, but I would always get mad at myself. It was similar to listening to music that you weren’t supposed to. It was forbidden, but it felt pleasurable, so I would do it anyway.
The church was fundamentalist. The story of Jonah and the Whale—they believed that really happened.
The pastor was making us into a crazy army of Christians at war with the devil. I hated my dad because my dad didn’t believe in God. I couldn’t be friends with anyone who wasn’t a Christian because they’d take me down. The more I gave up, the higher I’d be looked up to in the church. If I were to say, “I used to listen to all those CDs, but you know what I did? I burned them,” everyone in church would say, “That’s a good, strong Christian.” The Downward Spiral was the one CD that I could not get rid of. I really loved Broken and PHM, but I burned them. In their place, there were Christian bands that were just rip-offs of bands out at the time. There was a Christian NIN called Klank. To kids who loved NIN, these Christians were like, “Yeah, they’re cool, but check these guys out: they talk about God.” It was a weird parallel world.
I started opening my mind, asking, What is heaven? Who is God? And then I retaliated in a really angry way. That’s when NIN hit me the hardest. I started finally realizing I was an all right guy. First I was angry at everybody, then it turned into absolute hatred toward God, toward religion, and the church. “Hey God, why are you doing this to me?/Am I not living up to what I’m supposed to be?” I think if anybody in the universe were going to feel what Trent was saying there, it would be me.
At first I felt alone because I had been trying so hard and still failed God. Then I felt like I turned my back on God, and my friends thought I was crazy. I was an outcast. But I think that through listening to PHM, The Fragile, and Broken, I really felt like, There’s somebody else who’s been through this, and that I wasn’t so strange for being so angry. After that, it was a process of self-repair. I said, I’m going to live by my morals, which my mom and dad instilled in me before they split. NIN was the main rebuilding influence. Trent felt the same way, and music was his way of venting. Songs like “Heresy” and “Happiness in Slavery” were his ways of dealing with it.
The day I stopped believing in God was the day I bought The Fragile. I was 18 and dating this girl who was a supreme born-again Christian. Her family was 10,000 times worse than mine. They thought she was this princess of heaven and I was this bum. We battled throughout our year-and-a-half relationship because she said I was not as good of a Christian as I thought.
She went on this summer mission trip to Israel. When she returned, I went to the airport with her family to pick her up, and she was ice to me. She gave me a four-page letter of all the things I had to do if we were going to be together, like becoming a stronger Christian. I got home and cried. After a couple of weeks, she started being into me again, but then I found out that while she was on the trip, she had been hooking up with some guy. I went to her house and said, “If you have anything else to tell me about what happened between the two of you, you’d better let me know right now, because you will never speak to me again.”
That day I had bought The Fragile. After I put it on, and by the time “We’re in This Together Now” came on, I was not a Christian. “It’s funny how everything you swore would never change is different now.” It was like all of a sudden my room collapsed in on me, but then there was somebody there pulling me out. And it was Trent Reznor. The next day, I was at a friend’s house playing video games, something I was previously forbidden to do. I had been in a coma, and I just woke up.
I think after The Fragile, which is my The Wall, I really began to love NIN as a whole. I saw NIN live and they started with “Terrible Lie,” so I went back to rediscover PHM. I remember when I first heard it, I liked that I didn’t know what was going on. I liked listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and knowing there was a bass player, guitarist, singer, and drummer. With NIN, I was like, How will the live show be? Is there going to be a guy rattling a box of chains, another with a trumpet, and someone with a garbage lid? At the time I was also listening to Nirvana’s Nevermind and all these formulaic radio and MTV rock bands. NIN was something completely different.
My friend Jason and I were known for sneaking out at parties. We used to sit in his car and listen to this NIN mixtape. We’d stare at the stars and have long conversations about what we thought The Fragile was about. “Something I Can Never Have” was huge to us. It was that phrase: “I just want something I can never have.” How brutally honest is that? What kind of person can admit that?
Like with my band. I wanted to be this famous, super-rock star, but that was something that could never happen with that band. To admit that was hard. I was in a relationship with a fantastic girl, but I screwed up and she left, and I thought, Why can’t I not fuck up? Can I not be faithful? Maybe that’s another reason I relate to Trent, because I guess sometimes I don’t look at what I’m doing to others. I sort of blame other people, like God. At the time, I never thought of it in those terms, but then again … I’m also a guy. I wasn’t looking at the love aspect of Trent’s music; I was listening to it more for the rage I felt. I wanted to be this big rock star, this super-spiritual leader. I wanted that power to make up for the inadequacy I felt about myself, you know?
I lost my virginity at 22 while listening to “Starfuckers, Inc.” I played the song really loud because I knew no one else in my apartment would hear us if I did. It was with the girl I’m still dating, the only girl I’ve had sex with. So I can understand when Trent says, “I want to fuck you like an animal.” I know all about repressed sexual tension, because I wasn’t going to have sex until I was married
. I remember seeing a pretty girl and saying to myself, If she only knew the horrible things I’m thinking, because I wanted to ravage her. But I was also thinking I couldn’t actually do it. It was horrible, like I wanted to have bad porno sex with women, like clawing and ripping passion, like not-human sex.
At the time I was super-religious, I was thinking these horrible thoughts about girls, that they were inducing sin. I was calling women devils because they were flirty and sexy. It’s like in “Kinda I Want To.” Trent has thoughts he wishes he had some way of acting out, but he feels guilty because God’s watching. That, to me, sounds like a dialogue he’s having with himself.
I always saw his sex stuff more as part of the theatrics. I think it was the perfect representation of what he was saying, to be that submissive, to be turned on by getting beaten and whipped. Think about the video for “Happiness in Slavery.” A guy gets ripped to shreds in a meat grinder, but it’s a metaphor. What Trent’s writing is the antimusic of the time, and what he’s doing is the forbidden, just like S&M. That’s what the doctors and lawyers do in secret. He’s putting that out there. He doesn’t have that persona anymore, but he established himself as that guy in the eyeliner and tight leather outfit. You think of Trent and of his persona and his music, and that’s what you really want. It makes you want to be a musician.
I met Trent while I was working at the Shenango Valley Mall. When he walked in, it wasn’t, like, suddenly the lights went out and two spotlights beamed down and all these people in chains appeared. He’s a regular guy. Around here, you hear so much negativity about him because of people’s envy. They weren’t a part of his life back then, and now he’s somebody and they want to be part of his life. Everybody’s got a Trent story. It’s either, “We had a good time,” or “I ran into Trent at Merko’s [a local bar] and he was an asshole to me, and we went to high school together.”
One time, Trent’s sister visited Squirrelly’s [Skin Art Inc.], where my girlfriend worked, because she was curious about some tattoo ideas. My girlfriend had the Things Falling Apart poster on her wall, and Trent’s sister was like, “You know who I am?” I was like, “Yeah, I know who you are, and you look just like him.” When I worked at Sears, this old guy came in with a NIN hat on, and I was like, “Dude, NIN is one of my favorite bands!” and he was like, “Trent’s my grandson!” He was so proud of him. When The Fragile came out, grandpa Bill walked into the store with both arms up in the air, like, This is the day!, and we high-fived over the CD.
I worked in what you call the Shenango Valley Mall, but what we call the Shenango Valley Hall. It is one row. There was a north wing that had an arcade that I used to go to when I was a kid, the same one Trent used to go to. That wing is closed now. That place is hell. Our area is comprised of the East Park Mall and the Southern Park Mall—those are the two big ones. The Shenango Valley Mall is where everyone else goes because they’re too far away to go to the good malls.
Within driving distance of the mall, you’ve got three types of people. You’ve got the really ritzy people down by the golf course. Then you’ve got people from Sharon and Farrell, the ghetto. It’s gangster over there. It’s worse than Youngstown, Farrell. Then there’s Fredonia and Mercer—that’s the country. If you were to take an hour, you could hit all these areas in one big run. Mercer County, where Trent’s from, is another universe. The people who listen to Pink Floyd like Trent did and the people who love the music I listened to when I was in the mall are few and far between. Mercer people love their country, and they love their rap. Rascal Flatts and Nelly—it’s all just pop.
Our area is a cultural shock. There is nothing defining us. We were defined by our televisions, by the radio. They ain’t fucking kidding about Ohio, we’re “the heart of it all.” We just take what they give us, and pump it back out. You look around here and think, What am I going to do, am I going to own Goldstar Home Improvements? Am I going to own a coffee shop? Am I going to be a rock star in Youngstown? No.
When I was little, I had no hope. I thought Hubbard, Ohio, and Sharon, Pennsylvania, would be it for me. I thought I’d be living here forever. Then I thought I was going to be this gigantic celebrity. I thought I had the entire world at my fingertips. I didn’t. My band opened for King’s X in Cleveland, and that was the high point. Now I’ve never felt the doors as wide open as they are because I let go of all the preconceived notions I had. Now I want to connect with the world like Trent did, whether it’s through music, writing, acting, whatever. I want to find what makes me unique, which is what he did. And I thank him for that.
Kinda I Want To
Michael, 35, Youngstown, Ohio
Michael is a supplier who often came into my mom’s office wearing a NIN shirt. My mom asked him whether he was a serious fan, and eventually his contact information was passed on to me.
We met up at a coffee shop on a commercial strip between my neighborhood and the adjacent, upscale neighborhood of Canfield.
Remember when E.T. came out? I was little then, and parents got me a Speak & Spell for Christmas. First thing I did was get my dad’s screwdriver and open it up. “How does this thing talk, man?” Electronics have been the theme of my life.
I was totally different from the kids who went to Poland High School. There was nobody who was into any kind of self-expression, bands, art, or anything like that. They’d bring me into the guidance office and say, “Junior year’s coming up. Go to the vocational school. They have some good programs there.” I’d say, “No, not interested. Next year I’m going to take advanced calculus!” I drove them nuts because I wore Metallica and Iron Maiden shirts, had long hair, and only went to school when I wanted to.
I had ultra-conservative parents. They didn’t react to me very well.
I moved out of my house when I was 18 and went to Youngstown State University. I tried to self-finance that while working at bars and odd jobs. I thought I would go into electrical engineering, but I took a couple of psychology and philosophy courses and liked that more. Education was important to me, but it came to a point where I couldn’t afford it. Also, I had the revelation that I could go to the library and learn anything I wanted to for free.
I began to manage a BP gas station in Canfield, and a guy I knew who was a drummer came in. He said there was an electrical company starting up in Youngstown. I went to work for them, and then the owner of the company I work for now called me one day and said, “My estimators are leaving. Come work with me.” I’ve been with him for 14 years.
The first time I heard NIN was in the Terrace Room of YSU my first year of college, in 1989, and it was Pretty Hate Machine. The people I was hanging around with at the time were listening to Ministry and Love and Rockets, what would be known as industrial, and a lot of the old standards, like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. There’s, like, a mechanism in our brains that draws us together, you know? Just geeks. And NIN came to our attention.
I saw NIN in Cleveland in their early days, when they were bumbling idiots. If I were to describe what the show was like, I would say, “Still experimenting.” If you write music in the studio and then immediately go play it live, you really don’t know how to play it, and you gotta learn it, and that was Trent’s methodology. He didn’t know how to put it together, and the keyboard players looked like, Should I play the low part here or the high part here?
Trent was magnetic onstage. His personality almost put the music in the backseat. He was good-looking, weird, geeky, and wore makeup and fishnet stockings on his arms. Even when you saw him in a little club and the music wasn’t together, you knew he was a star. He was really focused. You’d get a “Thank you” or a “This next song is.…” But it wasn’t, “Hey guys, how’s everybody doing? Go get a beer!”
NIN had a lot of melodies and good hooks, and they were radio-friendly, but they were also aggressive. Other synth bands had melody and the hooks but were really mellow and really British. They could be campy and you expected that, but NIN wasn’t really campy—I guess they w
ere kind of campy, but you know? Everybody dressed like Trent. I think his fashion did for the industrial genre what flannel did for nineties rock: it defined what it looked like to be in a band.
PHM is clearly well rehearsed, like Trent knew where every vocal inflection was gonna go. What do I like on PHM? “Head Like a Hole” is obvious, with the bass line, but the song is like “Stairway to Heaven” for me. “Terrible Lie,” I like the repetition; it’s a weird phrase to be the chorus of a song, like “purple elephant” or something. “Sanctified” is cool for that little sizzling sound: “I am sanctified … [pzzt].” “Something I Can Never Have” isn’t really a love song, yet it is in a NIN kind of way. If you were to graph this album, you would build steadily and then hit a valley with that song.
Then PHM picks back up with “Kinda I Want To,” which probably should’ve never been on it because it’s so cheesy. Still, it fits in the program of the album, which to me is about a spoiled rich kid not getting what he wants. Maybe before I knew Trent’s biography I would just say spoiled kid. It’s kind of pretentious, the gloom and doom of it all. I don’t buy it. I enjoy not necessarily Trent’s point of view as much as his ability to write a good song, put the lyrics together, make it sound good, create a good hook, put together a nice little story, make a nice little song. I’ve always been of the mind-set that you make a good song and don’t read into it too much. A guy’s just a musician; he’s not a prophet.
For some reason, after PHM, Cleveland hated Trent Reznor, and he hated Cleveland. After Broken, he started to come back around, and he was big-time. The radio would announce, “At 3 o’clock NIN is going to play a free concert, but we’re not going to tell you where until 2:50 p.m.” So we would go up to Cleveland and wait and listen to the radio, and everybody would bust ass to get over there. Oh, it was nuts! Some of the most fun I ever had.