It was too much for Kurt Cobain’s ravaged mind and body to handle, and Pearl Jam’s prolonged battle against Ticketmaster, while admirable, was also something of a spotlight-retreat, and probably an intentional one. As Eric Weisbard writes in 1995’s great SPIN Alternative Record Guide, industrial frontmen tended to play “carnival barker” rather than letting the audience in - Ministry’s Al Jourgenson being the great example - and Reznor almost seemed embarrassed, at first, to use the singular first-person pronoun in his lyrics.īut then, the transition to rock stardom was rough on that entire early-’90s crew. Moreover, Reznor came from industrial, a genre that was allergic to rock stardom, a sado-masochistic pummel with a very specific and frightening underground fanbase. Especially early on, he learned more musically from the Human League and Gary Numan than from, say, Zeppelin, and it took “Head Like A Hole” to trick consumers into thinking Pretty Hate Machine, his debut, was some kind of metal album, rather than a synthpop one.
#The downward spiral skin#
Reznor was a keyboard nerd from Ohio with milk-paste Midwestern skin and an undying fascination with video games. For all his charisma and sinew and theatrical flair, Trent Reznor was a deeply unlikely rock star - more unlikely, even, than his mixed-up gaggle of early-’90s peers.
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