Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine (33 1/3) (12 page)

I remember being little and my dad complaining, “This goddamn Chinese steel, we can’t do anything with it. In the fifties and sixties, it was good steel, when we made it here. Now they’re buying it from China and it’s junk, and they’re expecting me to make a Rolls-Royce out of it, and I can’t.”

I have older brothers, and their destiny was to graduate high school and either work in a mill or join the army. And what happened when you returned from the army? You went to work in a mill. For me, that wasn’t an option, so I went to college.

There was never a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in Youngstown. I wish my parents had told me to get out of here. “Son, when you’re 18, move to New York, move to L.A., get the hell out of here, whatever you do,” you know? Wasn’t until I was in my middle 20s that I figured that out: “Well, there’s more to life than Youngstown.”

Greg, 28, Cleveland, Ohio

Greg and I met through a mutual acquaintance who remembered Greg as a “huge Nine Inch Nails fan” in college. We chatted over IM and traded e-mails for several years. Portions of this narrative come from an online archive of Greg’s creative nonfiction, which I found by chance and was given permission to use along with the interviews.

I’ve never been particularly enthused with Cleveland. It has its charms, but it’s a city in need of a lot of help. Help that probably isn’t coming. I’m still here, out in the suburbs, trying to stay afloat just like everyone else. I was a kid when we moved to Willoughby Hills [a Cleveland suburb]. Before, we lived in Mayfield. I don’t remember much of it. My mom’s family has been in the area since the mid-forties. They lived in Indiana before that. Worked for the railroad. Can’t say I’ve ever asked about my dad’s side. Weird.

My parents wanted me to get a Catholic education, so I
did, K-12: fun, fun, fun! It was about an hour bus ride each way to school. I listened to my Walkman the whole time. I was far from being well liked for the vast majority of my life, but the rides on Willoughby Hills Bus No. 28 were definite lowlights. Imagine sitting in a moving jail cell, surrounded by people who (at least seemingly) hate your guts, having spitballs thrown at you, having people wanting to fight you because you had no choice but to sit in their seat, with your only refuge a Walkman that can’t keep batteries alive for more than two hours at a time. Energizer owes me some kickbacks.

Now, let me tell you about Lake Catholic. It was the most soul-crushing of all the Catholic schools, which was quite an accomplishment. Free will was as outlawed as premarital sex, and seen as more of a threat. What they never tell you about Catholic school is that the values they claim to be instilling are nothing more than programmed lines: “Conformity is good,” “God can save you if you follow our rules,” “We’ll think for you,” and so on. I felt a bit like Nada in
They Live
, trying to convince the easily led cattle of imminent danger, but they kept on eating the feed, not realizing that the path they were being led down would take them to nowhere but the slaughterhouse.

The people I know who went to public schools had a completely different experience. I feel a bit cheated. My teachers were all very … oppressive. I remember when a girl stated that she was an atheist. The teacher damn near had a heart attack, and told her that if she didn’t participate in religion class, she’d be suspended. I had one teacher who liked NIN, but even then, it was an art teacher, so that person was an outcast to begin with.

It’s tough to be a teenager and not have doubts. I love “Why?,” and religion is the ultimate “Because I said so.” I never really talked to anyone about it. People who know me
know that I’m a very loud, obnoxious person, but I don’t take things away from people. Just because I don’t agree doesn’t make the other person wrong. That’s another reason I can’t do the whole religion thing. I don’t really have an answer for the rest of it. I probably should’ve dictated some sort of moral code for myself a long time ago. Never bothered.

Growing up, I was a commercial kid: Aerosmith, Kiss, the Rolling Stones. They were all great but wholly unfulfilling. After
PHM
, it was like a new world had opened up in front of me. I wasn’t sure what to think after the first listen. It was in parts beautiful, and in parts the angriest thing I had ever heard. I locked myself in my room and listened repeatedly.

The first half I loved. The second half I didn’t quite understand. I think I connected with the anger more than anything else. I remember “Down in It” blowing me away, and jumping up and down on my bed to it. It was so much more … intense than anything I knew of. It didn’t scare me, but it probably should have. I don’t think I really understood it. I started to understand probably in eighth grade, after getting dumped. It’s like a kid saying, “Fuck.” Until someone gives context, they know it and use it, but there’s no connection.

I was 9 when I got the
PHM
tape from my parents for Christmas, in 1990. It was impossible to miss the band, and [alternative radio station] 107.9 loved playing “Head Like a Hole.” My family and teachers thought I was nuts, but I knew it was love from the moment I heard the intro.

In fifth grade, I bought the CD at Sam Goody, at the now-closed Euclid Square Mall. Strangely, while I was allowed to listen to
PHM
, later, Aerosmith’s
Get a Grip
was not okay. I guess my parents knew best, after all! My dad was into the Monkees and a lot of the Stones, and my mom was into Kenny Loggins and all kinds of wimpy shit. When I was
about 14, they didn’t want to know what I was listening to. If they had heard “Closer,” they would have flipped. At that time, I stayed in my room, mostly, with the door closed.

I went to Ohio University for two years, 1999–01, and worked at the radio station. I studied radio, and then later journalism at Kent. I had my own show with a girl who’s now on a show in San Diego. Journalism was the fallback, but it seems like it’s all about getting your name on a front page, more than the content of your story.

The Fragile
was one of those kismet situations for me: the strongest moment of my fandom. It came out within a month of when I started college and the radio station. I played the album on repeat for an entire weekend before its release. Every note, every word fit my life perfectly. I had just gone through a hellacious ending of a relationship. A friend had died. I didn’t know anyone at school. I remember opening up the album after UPS dropped it off in my dorm room, and skipping the rest of my classes that day … just sitting and soaking in the album with headphones on. It’s probably my favorite musical memory.

The journey of
The Fragile
is generally similar to that of
The Downward Spiral
: from rage to hope, loss, and numbness, but with so much more detail.
The Fragile
, while starting off with a bang, shows that through the sadness, there might be a little sunlight showing, with a reemergence of hope.
PHM
is about the idea of wanting, which implies striving for something better, whether it’s something as grand as life itself or it’s as simple as a person.
Broken
and
TDS
are about destroying everything:
Life is terrible
and
What’s the point
and
Let’s smash everything.

It’s one thing to be an angry young man, but if you feel that way 20 years later, there’s something wrong. There’s a maturity in NIN now that replaces the general naivety of
PHM
. As far as what morality the album may be pointing to, maybe it’s self-dependence. It’s not a happy or positive album.

Seeing and hearing some of the bands Trent was in before NIN, even as a hired gun, is pretty interesting. He was steeped in new wave. Just look at Option 30’s music. It’s better to see him going down the industrial path, rather than the Depeche Mode path. It feels more natural with his songwriting. Trent and Kevin McMahon have similar song-writing styles, especially the uses of first and second person. I find it entertaining that even the non-T.R.-produced tracks on
Prick
still sound like NIN. When you’re singing a song with “I” and “you” in it, if it conjures an emotion that people can relate to, it’s almost like it’s your song. Both Kevin’s and Trent’s lyrics do that. When I think of NIN’s use of “you,” it always brings me back to “Terrible Lie.” The implied finger-pointing of the song makes it stand out.

There are a lot of similarities between NIN and Prince. Trent writes all his own music. He’s a control freak like Prince. There are songs like Prince’s “Loose,” off
Come
, which see him going toward a darker, almost pseudo-industrial style, but it ends up being closer to Prodigy or the Chemical Brothers than NIN.
Broken
and
Come
could be seen as similar in that they were both “fuck you” albums to record labels.

But Prince is more erotic. Prince is sex. Trent seems to look at sex as something more dangerous than fun. I always connected more with the Prince school of thought, but in my clumsy advances, I’m sure both Prince and NIN found their way in, much to the girls’ chagrin. Have you ever stood in front of a girl’s window with a giant boom box blasting “Sanctified”? Awkward, to say the least.

Trent presents desire in a more masochistic way. Prince puts
it out there. Take, for example, the Prince lyric “I hate to see an erection go to waste.” Even when Trent says “I want to fuck you like an animal,” there’s a context to it, if only the underlying moral of the song. Trent has a mournful afterthought in his lyrics—there’s definitely some sort of guilt there. “Closer” seems to be more about degradation than actual sex.

To me, “Sin” is about abuse, possibly consensual, almost like a precursor to “Closer.” From “I’m a piece of shit, here I am, abuse me” to “I’m a piece of shit, if you want me, here I am.” But what’s the sin? Love? Trust? Trust fits, I think. Think about the rest of Trent’s music. Betrayal is a big component.

We all have people we trust whom we know we shouldn’t. It’s not a sin, but it could be a betrayal of one’s self. I think Trent isn’t necessarily saying that trust is immoral but maybe that he “sinned” against himself by trusting.

Trust is something I’ve struggled with all my life. I moved back to Cleveland from college because my family imploded. I couldn’t be far away and hear what was happening. I was having a tough time with school anyway.

My mother flirted with severe bouts of depression and heavy medication for most of my life. Her cries of “I can’t believe you won’t just leave me already” to my dad fell on deaf ears, so
she
left. She was the one who was always telling us how great a family we were and how lucky we were that we didn’t have the problems other families had. Then she just left. That was the end of religion for me, because my family’s priest was somehow supportive of my mom’s leaving. My dad was told that there was nothing he could do. Understandably, my dad almost left the church after that as well.

Back home, I got a job at a grocery store, but when the Record Exchange opened up, I applied on the first day. Being around something that I had a passion for was energizing.
But there was construction that shut down the road the store was on, and then a decline in sales, so they let me go. It was one of the saddest days of my life. Now I work at GameStop and am not particularly fond of it. I used to think that all retail was the same, but it’s not true. Music fans have a deeper connection and understanding of the work. Video-game fans are looking for instant gratification. Plus, the record store I worked at was an independent chain, so there was a bit of freedom and perks. Now I work for a Fortune 500 company. It’s still a shock to the system.

I hate my job because I’m embarrassed of it. I just had my 10-year high school reunion, and I refused to say what I was doing. I’d rather have people guessing than laughing.

I sang in a few grungy cover bands in the nineties. Since the turn of the century, I’ve jammed with different people, but it’s tough to find the time to put something together. There is no scene here, only shitloads of cover bands. This town used to be centered around local acts. There were a lot of smaller, noncommercially owned clubs, like the Odeon and the old Peabody’s Down Under, that were welcoming to local bands.

Cleveland’s original groups are all artsy and boring. I loved one local band a couple of years ago, the Chargers Street Gang. They got decently big and put out a couple of albums. Then the singer left, and the band reformed as This Moment in Black History. They’re okay. But no one plays rock ’n’ roll anymore. They’re all trying for some clever angle. No one wants to go onstage and have fun, to just fuck around up there, having as good a time as the crowd. That’s what rock ’n’ roll’s all about.

Nothing else gives me the charge that NIN did. Prince and Queens of the Stone Age came close. Chuck Palahniuk’s writing comes close. Well, it did. Nothing of his has struck
me since his book
Survivor
, except maybe
Rant.
I have a fair number of friends who still like NIN, but they would tell you that they grew out of them. The show last month was my girlfriend’s first.

I started posting on the NIN boards out of boredom, followed closely by curiosity at a new concept: a community of people who had the same passion for a band that I did. I loved watching the flood of new people around the release of a new album. And I loved watching the rise of Meathead.
⁵⁴
I went to the Cleveland
With Teeth
nin.com listening party. It was … smelly. It’s interesting to me, much like I imagine it would be for the artist, seeing how fan bases grow, whether through evolution or de-evolution. I remember the mid-nineties—let’s say 1994. We were disenfranchised, sure, but we knew exactly what we were. There was no feeling of entitlement. There were no spoiled kids lashing out. There were those who felt lost in the world that we knew nothing about. There was no silver spoon. It was us versus everyone.

As for my current fandom, I’m not burned out per se, but I guess nothing Trent has done lately has brought out the same passion in me. It could be me. I’ve heard other stuff that’s hit pretty hard, but nothing to the level of NIN. The reason NIN once hit me so hard is that I grew up with it, like
The Giving Tree
.