From SeemsLikeSalvation...
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German print magazine, Visions, interviewed Trent Reznor at his Nothing
Studios last October. Interviewed by Sascha Krüger, the german version
is now published in the Jan 2002 issue of VISIONS and will probably be
online on the official site once the next issue is out.
Veronika, who translated the interview, said, "this is only my
(not-so-humble) re-translation from the original German translation of
the interview, and thus liable to all kinds of faults &
misunderstandings... I can only say I tried my best & hope that at least
the factual information is still somewhat accurate even if the style
certainly isn't.... at least I tried to stick as closely to the German
text as possible."
EINE SPEZIELLE FORM VON SPANNUNG - A SPECIAL KIND OF TENSION
[translator's note: I'm skipping most of the introduction here, because
(other than the interview itself) much of it is neither new nor of much
interest as it deals mostly with some (now dated) info on aatchb, a
description of nothing studios & Trent's clothes, the weather in New
Orleans being nice & a guy called Tim saying Trent is a good boss....
whatever.]
However here's the interviewer's comment after being shown the DVD:
''I'm seeing one and a half-hours of rage, madness, orgiastic
light-experiences. A Trent Reznor who seems to be losing control. And a
fantastic band, that is even more impressive due to the opulent 5.1
surround sound. One must say it: This is bombastic.'' He also gets to
listen to some outtakes from the 'Still' CD: ''Some well known songs
like 'Hurt' or 'A warm place' completely stripped down to the melody and
some piano fragments. And a new, great song, the name of which I forget
to note down''
visions: Are you working alone here most of the time?
trent: Not completely alone. As a rule there's another engineer here who
takes care of the whole computer stuff and wiring.
visions: But no other musicians, right?
trent: Right.
visions: So you're quite the studio hermit you're often said to be?
trent: Probably. Initially the reason for that was that I simply
couldn't find anyone who wanted to make music with me. That used to be
hard for me earlier, because I'd always wanted to have a real band. But
I simply didn't get on with the musicians I knew.
visions: Or the other way round.
trent: Yes, or that. But with time that turned out rather positive
anyway, because I realised I could work more efficiently and precisely
on my own. When I go into the studio I always have a heap of ideas I
want to start working on simultaneously, and it simply works out faster
if I'm playing everything myself, than if I have to explain to everyone
at length what they're supposed to play.
visions: But you have to do that anyway, before a tour at the latest.
trent: Yes, but then the music already exists, they only have to perform
it. [translator's note: I've no idea what word exactly Trent might have
used here: what comes across in the German translation however, implies
a mere repetition, no involvement at all in the process of creation,
it's even somewhat harsher than the 'perform' I finally decided upon.]
visions: So the live band Nine Inch Nails is nothing more than a band
performing your studio recordings?
trent: Well, now that maybe would be a bit harsh. After all we did
arrange the transformation of the studio recordings for live performance
together, and besides the guys are really good. But basically you're not
totally wrong: I wanted Nine Inch Nails to look like a real band live,
which in fact we are not in the studio.
visions: Why do you release a live record like 'And All that Could Have
Been' now?
trent: When we started compiling the setlist for the 'Fragile' tour, I
wanted it to be like a retrospective, the best from each record in a
way. At the same time it was supposed to sound very compact and in tune,
as if all songs were from one and the same record, which they absolutely
don't sound like in their studio versions. So I thought that this idea
was really worth being preserved, especially since many songs have
changed a lot over the time. I also wanted to give my band the chance to
prove how good they are on a record for a change.
visions: Are you a hundred percent at ease on stage?
trent: Definitely not. And personally I know hardly anyone who is. And I
don't believe that my music is very self-confident in the sense that it
requires a real stage performance. Like Tom Jones, for example - that
guy and his music belong on a stage, in front of an audience. I don't,
really. That's why I almost never talk to the audience - I don't have
anything to say to them, that I'm not already saying with my music. It's
about a special kind of tension, which I want to create, nothing else.
And I don't have to be the performer type for that.
visions: I've read that tours are such a problem for you because you're
afraid of loosing all intimacy and privacy through the intensity of your
musical performance.
trent: You're just scaring me a bit, because you're approaching topics
that make me think about things I rather avoid otherwise. Who knows what
there's going to come up.
visions: Are we seeing the real, in a way the emotionally stripped Trent
Reznor on stage, or rather a stage version of him?
trent: A really interesting question. Let's see: When I started taking
the stage with my music, at that time I found it very exciting, and
sometimes it's still like that today. The fact that I suddenly shared
with so many people the music I'd written in extremely private,
vulnerable moments at home on my note book, and that this worked
nevertheless, was truly amazing. My songs were nothing less than my
insides turned into music, with all my uncertainties, doubts,
depressions. And suddenly I saw people who screamed my lyrics back at
me, and I realised that they meant something to others, too. I don't
know what, but that doesn't matter, either.
visions: Do you think they know what they mean to you? trent: No, and
there's no way I'm going tell you what they mean to me. But as I said,
that doesn't matter. All that mattered was that people would actually
feel something through my music. When I saw that the first time it was a
real detonation of shivers. As a result for a long time I'd totally
spend myself to get this kind of feedback again and again. But with time
I realised that there was an imbalance between giving and taking,
because half an hour after the show I'd be sitting alone in a room
backstage feeling naked to the bones, while all the others were back at
home again in their small and tidy lives, and had had a good time with
me, nothing more. I felt like being the only one feeling totally alone
after this exchange of energies. I had to do something about that, and
that's why I prefer hiding behind a little masquerade now.
visions: In such situations many people resort to drugs to recapture
this moment of high.
trent: I've done that too, for a long time, frequently, and plenty. But
this is nothing but dragging out the problem. But: I'm saying this now
that I'm clean. That has once been different, too.
visions: Taking a lot of drugs for a period of time somehow seems to be
a part of becoming famous.
trent: Yes, it seems to be that way. At least it was like that with me.
There are many things from that period of my life, which I regret; it
was a very self-destructive life style. But at the same time I'm glad to
have gone through that, because it makes you stronger to end things. It
shows you your true nature, if you succeed in resisting the temptation.
visions: Which aspects of your personality do you believe you still need
to work on?
trent: I hope to be a person who feels at ease in every situation of his
life at some point. I'm still very far away from that and I envy people
who give the impression of always doing the right thing and feeling at
ease with that. I'm getting along much better with myself in the
meantime, but I have a long way to go before I can say that I'm a
self-confident, convincing, likeable human being.
visions: Once again back to the stage masquerade: There's a scene on the
DVD where you're smashing a keyboard with the mikestand. This is, to put
it cautiously, very rock star-like. What makes you do something like
that? Is it all only show, after all?
trent: No it isn't: Even today there are still moments at concerts where
the intensity explodes in such a way as to leave you without control.
You just switch over to autopilot. Sure, I'd be lying if I claimed not
to notice how you can attract people's attention with that. If you're on
tour for two years, there just are evenings when you don't feel like
going through that adrenaline hell again and again, emotionally,
mentally and physically. And then you're realising that sometimes you've
really become the person you never wanted to be: the guy who plays the
role. I hate to say it.
visions: Lets talk about the second part of the double CD, the
'Still'-CD. How did that happen?
trent: Well, at first there was the idea for the DVD, it was only later
that I thought about releasing it on CD, too. But to merely put the
concert on CD didn't seem sufficient to me. At the time we'd just done a
radio show in Chicago, very acoustic, very laid back, with songs like
'Hurt' or 'The Fragile', which I like very much, but didn't fit into our
set. We recorded some of those songs, and I thought they would make a
good complement to the live CD. After all they're based on live
recordings, only I'd edited them a bit afterwards. [translator's note:
it's not entirely clear to me from the German text if that's supposed to
mean that the tracks on 'Still' are indeed an edited versions of the crc
sessions, or that they were just inspired by them - sorry to be so vague
on such a crucial
...
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