Klintron’s Brain

So by now, you’ve of course heard about Radiohead selling their new album exclusively through their own web site. And now Trent Reznor’s announced that Nine Inch Nails is no longer bound to a recording contract. A couple months ago he made headlines saying that when he was off his contract, he would go indie selling NIN’s music directly from their web site. So I could go off on some tangent explaining the importance of all this for the future of music, but I’m sure you can find much smarter people than me doing just that. So instead, I give you this piece I wrote a few years ago and never published:

One rainy Olympia day my late roommate put on the nin album Pretty Hate Machine. Hearing “Head Like a Hole” for the first time in years, I had an epiphany: every song on that album, from “Head Like a Hole” to “Ringfinger” was about crack cocaine. Not about women, social control, date rape, or any of the other usually suggested themes. Just freebase.

Years ago I’d read that the song “Sanctified” was about crack:

Reznor says that “Sanctified,” which appears to be about Reznor’s obsession for a woman, is actually “about a relationship with a cocaine pipe.” “I knew it could be interpreted [as a relationship with a woman], but it was more about addiction.” To the obvious follow up question, Reznor answers “Let’s just say it was partially fact and partially fiction. The situation has been remedied.” (Portrait of a Nine Inch Nail, by Stacey Sanner AP Issue 31 July 1990.)

So I guess that’s where the initial idea came from. Random, half-remembered interview quotes started bubbling to the surface of my mind. My thesis: Reznor was hooked on crack (or at least coke) and used the recording of the album to kick his habit.

Now, “Sanctified” may not have come from personal experience. It could just have been about a friend or something. That quote alone isn’t enough to justify the idea that Reznor is a recovering coca-fiend. But this quote, about how he dealt with the death of his dog, gives some insight:

When he went on tour he didn’t even have a home to go back to. Maise [his dog] was his last link with a life you might call normal. And now she was gone.

But the tequila was there. And the cocaine was there. (Cocaine isn’t the sort of drug Trent favours. His idea of a drug experience is to take psilocybin mushrooms and cycle through Louisiana parklands, sucking in the experience. But cocaine can make you numb, and sometimes numb is the easiest way to feel.) And the wheel turned on, down through the mad, dark days, and out again. He feels better now. A little tired, but better. (The Art of Darkness, by Chris Heath, Details April 1995).

So now we’ve established: 1) Reznor wrote at least one song about crack. And 2) Reznor was familiar with cocaine.

Moving on, here’s Reznor talking about his life leading up to the recording of Pretty Hate Machine:

So I quit Exotic Birds and got this job doing odds and ends at a studio. And I made a pact with myself. I’d been getting high a lot. I was turning into what I’d never wanted to be. So I started this experiment: What would happen if every ounce of energy went into something? (Sympathy For The Devil, Spin March 1996).

Was he just smoking weed every night? Maybe, but Chris Heath noted in the interview quoted above: “The first time Trent smoked pot was with his father when he was fourteen. He’s never liked it.”

So Reznor, who never liked pot, was “getting high” every night and then decided to go into the studio and make an album with at least one song about coke addiction. But the real proof is in the lyrics. Go get the album right now and put it on, and hear it again for the first time.

Epilogue: Since I originally wrote that (in 2002), Reznor has admited to being an alcoholic and coke addict during the period he was recording the Fragile. Read all about it.

Just for the heck of it: Here’s an interview with Trent Reznor from Cleveland television from his period with the Exotic Birds. It also features Andy Kubiszewski from Stabbing Westward (remember them?) and, of all things, t.A.T.u.

And here’s a torrent of Reznor’s original NIN demo from 1988.