Nine Inch Nails Launches American Tour

Written by Glenn Gamboa

Nine Inch Nails was in this position before.

In 1991, when the then-Cleveland-based band signed on to the first Lollapalooza Tour, it had plenty to prove _ that it belonged on the big stage, that it wasn't a flash in the pan, that it could re-create mastermind Trent Reznor's studio composition in a live show.

After inciting near-riots at almost every show with an amazingly powerful combination of electronic music, hard-charging guitars and Reznor's intense stage persona, Nine Inch Nails took its place with the big boys as one of the best rock bands in the world.

Now, nine years later, after some well-publicized personal problems and a lukewarm, disappointing public reception to its excellent, ambitious double-CD "The Fragile," Nine Inch Nails is set to prove itself again, with an American tour that launches Wednesday (April 12) with a sold-out show in Cleveland.

"We have the same pressure that's always existed," said guitarist Robin Finck. "It's about wanting to really make the most of these songs. It's about rising to the occasion. It's about still being Nine Inch Nails after being away for so long. It's not from the album not being where somebody intended it to be on the charts."

"Being Nine Inch Nails" was a tough thing for a while.

After the world tour to support the mainstream breakthrough "The Downward Spiral," which included the March of the Mudpeople performance at Woodstock '94, the group essentially became Reznor, who left his Cleveland base for New Orleans to begin work on "The Fragile" in 1995.

Bewildered by fame and besieged by the pressure to re-create "Downward Spiral's" success and, well, save rock 'n' roll, Reznor fell into the grips of writer's block and eventually depression.

Finck, who had gone to work with Axl Rose on the still-unfinished Guns N' Roses album for two years, worried about returning to the NIN fold last summer.

"I was very anxious about coming back," said Finck, who had been NIN's guitarist on the "Downward Spiral" shows and had become Reznor's onstage foil and fellow roughhouser.

"It had been several years since I had even seen Trent, much less been in the same room hammering away at `March of the Pigs.' But it felt right. It still feels right. When they decided to put together a band to go on the road again, they said, `Do you wanna come with us?'
I really did want to go; my roots run deep there. More importantly, I didn't want somebody else to go."

The new NIN - with Reznor, Finck, Danny Lohner and Charlie Clouser playing a variety of instruments, and new addition Jerome Dillon playing drums - has changed songs from "The Fragile," as well as some of the band's classics.

"Some of the original NIN songs have a different feel to them because Jerome's involved," said Finck. "The first day we got together and played through some of the original songs like `Wish' or `Down in It'
was quite a charge. We were all rusty and hadn't done it forever. But we started hammering that stuff out, and it was still there. The thrill is still there."

And the thrill had not gone, even after the rigorous rehearsals that went with the band's European and Asian tours. By the time NIN hit Australia in January, the band had hit its stride, said Finck.

"This is what we knew it was all about - hurling ourselves toward the front line and actually marching,' he said. " ... Once the crowd gets going, we think of nothing else."

Finck doesn't want to blow any of the surprises in the new NIN show, though he does offer that it will have a different pacing than the international shows.

He won't say what changes are made to the set, which had been starting with early material like "Head Like a Hole," "Terrible Lie" and "Sin" with songs like "Into the Void" and "Even Deeper" from "The Fragile" rolled into the main set, closing finally with the anthemic ballad "Hurt."

"We've worked really hard on creating the pacing and dynamics of the new set," he said. "There is a purpose for each song. And we look forward to each one helping us get to where we're going. We've been finding the right spot and the right neighbors for each one of these songs. Some songs don't allow a certain song to come after another one, but we really want to mix things up."

Finck laughs when asked if the band has changed its attitude about taking its frustrations out on its instruments, smashing defenseless synthesizers and guitars into little bits onstage.

"If anything, there's a concentrated effort to tone it down," he said, laughing. "We've been doing that for so long and it gets a lot of attention. It just happens. In the set, some of the songs just lend themselves to it and we have to clear a space for that possibility to grow ... and it seems to grow every time. It's not a premeditated happening. We get caught up in a moment – then anything, everything goes."

Akron Beacon Journal
April 2000