Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor Speaks

The apocalypse truly must be nigh: It’s going to take less than five years for a new Nine Inch Nails album. Until Trent Reznor’s latest proto-industrial bloodletting drops in summer, this DVD—comprised of performances from last year’s With Teeth tour—should soothe your black, festering heart.

The DVD celebrates the group incarnation of Nine Inch Nails even though it’s always been viewed as a kind of a one-man band. How do you view it yourself?

Reznor: I got the band down to one person. I had my own studio. I can engineer it myself. For a long time I thought I could do everything myself, and if people let me down—which they always do—f*** ‘em. “I’ll do it myself. Give me some money, I’ll make you a record; shut up and leave me alone. I don’t need you.” I took that to the extreme, and it doesn’t work. It might’ve worked in some capacity for some amount of time, but not as a final solution.

So what kind of changes did you make for With Teeth and beyond?

Reznor: I opened the record up to management and some people at the record label that I trust and just said, “What do you guys think?”, which I’ve never done before. Usually it’s been, “Here it is. It’s finished. Here’s the first single, here’s the second single. Good luck. See you on the road.” This time around I kinda said, “OK, it’s your job to help market this thing. What do you think?” I’m friends with the label again. I’ve got a management team that… we think alike. We have a discussion pretty much every day and it’s rational and the decision gets made and then it gets executed, and things just work. I never knew it could be like that. I’ve got people that I enjoy being around, that I respect, and they respect me, I think.

What’s your sense of where you and Nine Inch Nails sit at this point?

Reznor: Well, I went into With Teeth feeling like I’d probably done irreparable damage to my career by another long period of time away. And I can kind of make myself feel better on one hand by acknowledging there’s a disease at work. I made it through with my liver, but my career probably got left as a victim. And if I could change the time frame and put out records quicker, I would’ve done that. But I couldn’t, and this is how it is and I can’t change that, so I’ll make the best of it. My first priority was to make a record I thought was great and see if I could do it. And when I finished With Teeth, I felt so good that I did what I set out to do, and I feel confident that’s how I should keep doing things.

You had to be pleased that the audience was still there when With Teeth came out.

Reznor: I feel very, very grateful that there are still fans out there that are interested. [Nine Inch Nails] still is the most important thing in my life. It’s not a hobby; it’s my life. And it feels like there’s more interest now than there was before. I can’t explain why it is. I’m not trying to figure it out. I’m just happy it feels that way.

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