![]() ![]() And, as Roger Waters had done on The Wall, Trent built an album around a wounded central figure to help him navigate it.Īt that point in his life, Trent’s wounds had numerous sources. Trent Reznor, like Roger Waters, had felt the deep undercurrent of negativity that can envelope a rock star on a big stage. From The Wall, The Downward Spiral took the idea of having an overarching concept in which to articulate a sense of frustration and alienation. From Low, as illustrated by a largely instrumental second half created with ambient supremo Brian Eno, was the use of synthesisers to build soundscapes that conveyed an atmosphere of disquiet (NIN would, of course, end up supporting David Bowie on his Outside Tour in 1995). The Downward Spiral clearly pulled on threads from both albums. The Wall was Roger’s exploration of his own horror and the self-imposed isolation it inspired. This culminated in an incident during a show at Montreal Olympic Stadium, when bassist and songwriter Roger Waters spat in the face of one rowdy fan. Pink Floyd, meanwhile, had grown disillusioned with the scale of their shows during 1977’s In The Flesh tour, not to mention the way their audience interacted with them. ![]() ![]() In Bowie’s case, it was his struggle with cocaine, coupled with a sense of dislocation after moving from Los Angeles to Berlin. Both featured artists making drastic left turns during fraught periods in their lives. Two rock classics were also looming large over his creative thoughts: David Bowie’s 1977 album Low, and Pink Floyd’s 1979 release The Wall. He soon renamed the place ‘Le Pig’, a reference to the word scrawled on the door in Sharon Tate’s blood by her murderers. Trent had moved into the ‘Tate House’ in 1992 to record the Broken EP – secretly working on it in the midst of his dispute with TVT – as well as Fixed, an accompanying collection of remixes. Twenty-three years later, the trip into The Downward Spiral began at that very same address. These included actress Sharon Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, and their eight-and-a-half-month unborn child. In the early hours of August 9, 1969, at 10050 Cielo Drive, four members of the Manson Family brutally murdered five people. This he got – and more – and in 1992, Nothing Records was born. Among other demands, Trent asked for his own imprint so that he could sign acts with a degree of independence from Interscope. When the two men finally met face-to-face, Jimmy cut to the chase and asked what it would take. But, despite his record of success in securing talent, it’s fair to say he had to pursue Trent more doggedly than most, spending many hours locked in his bathroom conducting the year-long negotiations on the telephone. Jimmy, meanwhile, was determined to recruit another visionary producer into the Interscope (the label he co-founded) fold. Given the 14 hours a day he’d spent in the studio making NIN’s debut album, 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine, Trent hadn’t appreciated having his work deemed “an abortion” by TVT founder Steve Gottlieb, who later asked the artist for more of the same when that album went on to sell a million copies and landed the band a support slot on Guns N’ Roses’ European tour. As shown in The Defiant Ones, the HBO series chronicling the individual and collective careers of Beats Electronics founders Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine, Nine Inch Nails had a difficult relationship with their first label TVT. Trent Reznor certainly had reason to feel angry in the years leading up to this outpouring. Nine Inch Nails had terraformed a sprawling, dark recess that felt entirely new – and wholly terrifying. While these records are significant enough in the context of those artists and for rock music en masse, The Downward Spiral changed the musical landscape. And in the midst of all this, Weezer’s self-titled debut, The Blue Album, reframed the idea of the rock star in a nerdier new image. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam – the bands deemed grunge’s ‘survivors’ in the wake of Nirvana’s demise – unveiled Superunknown and Vitalogy, taking the sound of their native Seattle to dizzying new heights. Four days after her husband Kurt was found dead on April 8, Courtney Love’s band Hole released their definitive musical statement, the appropriately titled Live Through This. Green Day and The Offspring released their breakthrough albums – Dookie and Smash, respectively – bringing punk rock to the masses to the tune of millions of sales. In the year in which we lost Kurt Cobain – an event many rushed to suggest would spell the death knell for rock – innumerable releases proved that the genre was, in fact, in extremely rude health. While the memory has a tendency to romanticise the past, there’s no denying that 1994 was a momentous 12 months for alternative music. ![]()
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