I grew up in Cleveland which meant that I was largely responsible for making my own fun. The collective population makes a great argument that there are worse places to live such as Somalia and Afghanistan. Cleveland thought it had a pretty decent music scene, but if you look back on the acts that were born and bred in Cleveland, you find Tracy Chapman, The O’Jays and Michael Stanley. Have you heard of the Michael Stanley Band? He’s basically the Bruce Springstein of Cleveland and Put-In-Bay. The local scene was pretty lame until 1989.
In 1989 music changed with the release of an album called Pretty Hate Machine. We got the vinyl in our high school radio station which was 100 watts of progressive rock power. We barely made it to the next town and had 10s of listeners, but the music was fantastic. The very first song I even spun was Knock Me Down by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The station was all indie and alt rock and when we got our hands on a new band called Nine Inch Nails, we were not really sure what to make of “them”. The station manager marked up the album with the songs we were allowed to play, Down In It, Sanctified and Head Like a Hole. She also put a little label that said “they’re from Cleveland” on the front to entice us and so that we would remind our listener that these “guys” were local. I played Down In It on my show and it caught me as something different, something I did not quite understand but I liked the sound.
The First Show
4/3/1990
NIN was known to play the Phantasy Nite Club, which was a small bar in Lakewood that I could not get into because it was an 18 and older club. I tried to sneak my way in to no avail. I would keep checking Scene magazine to try and figirue out it they would play someplace I could go, but they seemed to be regulars at the PNC so I gave up. About the same time, we got a glorious album called Deep into the station from a blonde haired goth legend named Peter Murphy. It was easily the most popular at the station. Peter Murphy was touring and the station manager got us onto the guest list. We were excited to go and hear Cuts You Up and the Line Between the Devil’s Teeth among others. We had no idea who was opening, but on the way to the show, we learned that it would be Nine Inch Nails.
The old Phantasy Theater was a decent sized venue. It could hold around 1000 people. It was general admission so we got right up close to get a good look at Reznor, who walked out onto the stage with Richard Patrick, who would later form the abominable Filter, on guitar and remix master Chris Vrenna on the drums. He did not look into the crowd. He looked right past us and the band launched into Terrible Lie. At this time I had not heard much of Pretty Hate Machine. I knew Down In It and Head Like a Hole, but I did not own the record and had no idea where to get the tape. There was not much chance to listen to it outside of my show so most of the material was new to me. This was literally the first time I ever heard Terrible Lie. My eyes got wide as the crowd moved together in a giant wave. This was just before people started violent moshing, so the pit was pretty tolerable. Trent had me at “Hey God”.
Deep Tour Set List
1. “Intro”
2. “Terrible Lie”
3. “Sin”
4. “Sanctified”
5. “That’s What I Get”
6. “Get Down, Make Love”
7. “Ringfinger”
8. “Down In It”
9. “Head Like A Hole”
The song literally burned itself into my mind as the crowd swayed and by the second verse, everyone was shouting TERRIBLE LIE with him. Richard Patrick was (presumably) so high, he was hardly aware of where he was. In between songs, Trent would yell and talk about what a piece of shit town Cleveland was. They played most of Pretty Hate Machine, save for Kinda I Want To which in the 8 or so times I have seen NIN, I have never seen performed live. Just as well. The remarkable thing about NIN was how their live experience was brilliantly different than the studio effort. I knew I would have to skip a few study halls and hang out in the radio station to go deeper. And speaking of Deep, Peter Murphy came out and gave us exactly what we expected from him. I mean he was remarkable, but I could not help but think that Reznor had rudely upstaged him.
Headliner
12/28/1990 and 1/29/1990
I decided that I needed to see NIN again after a solid couple of weeks of listening to the record incessantly. Luckily NIN decided to do another tour after Deep. I was supposed to see them Jesus and Mary Chain, but they cancelled for some reason. I learned every word of every track and got the station manager to add Sin to the rotation. They started to get a bigger following and outgrew the Phantasy Nite Club. I got tickets to see Trent and company at the Phantasy Theater again. This time they would headline a show that included Chemlab and Die Warzau. Die Warzau was another industrial act that I had recently found out about because I decided to find out if there were more bands like NIN out there. NIN was my gateway to Wax Trax acts like Ministry, Skinny Puppy and KMFDM.
Trent had met up with the boys from Ministry and the Revolting Cocks while recording Get Down Make Love, a B-Side on the Sin Single that Al “Hypo Luxa” Jourgensen produced. He brought the late, great cowboy Jeff Ward of Revolting Cocks, Lard and 1000 Homo DJs along to beat the skins. The stage was bigger and more technical. Ward sat in a giant cage- center stage. His bald head and cowboy hat poked out through the giant iron bars. Between songs Reznor remarked that we had no idea how to enjoy a show, that we were not at all destructive and that he was going to have to be the one to show us “pussies” how to do things right. He proceed to put his head in a noose on stage left (from the audience) and swing out while holding on to the rope to keep from strangling himself.
Sin Tour Set List
1. “Intro”
2. “Terrible Lie”
3. “Sin”
4. “Something I Can Never Have”
5. “Sanctified”
6. “That’s What I Get”
7. “Suck”
8. “The Only Time”
9. “Get Down, Make Love”
10. “Ringfinger”
11. “Down In It”
12. “Head Like A Hole”
After a wildly emotional version of Something I Can Never Have and a gripping and pulverizing rendition of Sanctified, Reznor pulled something out of his bag of tricks. The song started with a break beat a little like Terrible Lie and the opening lyrics were along the same theme, but what the fuck was this song? By the second verse the entire audience had picked up on the “HOW DOES IT FEEEEEEELLLL”.
It was not until I picked up the Pigface Gub CD that I realized that the song I heard was Suck. It took until 1992 when I bought Broken and discovered the secret mini-disc that I got the version I wanted. The Pigface version is OK, but it’s so understated and did not satisfy my hunger for the one I heard live. The violent onslaught of music and rage continued. Reznor continued to call us names and eventually started madly humping the keyboards, trying to knock them down with his junk and then threw mic stands at the cage. Ward didn’t even flinch.
Lollapalooza
July 8/5/1991
The festival scene kicked off with Perry Farrell’s Lollapalooza in 1991. With Jane’s Addiction, Rollins Band, Siouxsee & the Banshees, the Violent Femmes and Nine Inch Nails on the bill, there was no way I was going to miss the show. I scored pavilion seats through my rep with Sony Music, so I sold my lawn seats to some other fans. Now I had been reading about the tour in Alternative Press magazine. AP is one of the gems of new music. I got to know the editor, Mike Shea, a little bit through our radio station. He had a rave show on Thursday nights after my industrial show. I learned a lot from Mike. He had stuff none of us could touch, including the original version of Let’s Get Physical by the Revolting Cocks that they could not press because Olivia Newton-John did NOT approve. The revised lyrics version turned out to be a classic anyway. She could have been in great company with their cover of Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy. AP wrote that the Lollapalooza tour had not been kind to NIN. The initial shows were in Arizona and California. NIN was performing in the middle of the day in scorching heat and some of their loop tapes actually melted. They had a bunch of equipment problems and legend has it they were actually booed off stage in Tempe.
When it came time for them to take the stage, the initial notes sounded a lot like NIN’s calling card opening song, Terrible Lie, but it kept playing over and over with a broken beat. Trent took the stage to raucous cheers and launched into “I’m. Gonna smash myself to pieces. I’m. Gonna fuck myself up. I’m. sifting through the ashes. I. What have I become?” It was some kind of new intro to Terrible Lie that was full of anticipation, suspense and understated energy. “I FUCKED IT ALL AWAY. now i’m nothing
Wait. WHAT?
I had seen NIN 3 times. Trent never had anything nice to say about the birthplace of NIN. He always called us names and told us he hated us. I was amazed and I decided to do whatever it took to get from my pavilion seat to the pit. I had to see this up close.
Lollapalooza Set List
1. “Now I’m Nothing”
2. “Terrible Lie”
3. “Sin”
4. “Physical (You’re So)”
5. “The Only Time”
6. “Wish”
7. “Ringfinger”
8. “Get Down, Make Love”
9. “Down In It”
10. “Head Like A Hole”
Aside from throwing new songs into sets that we’ve never heard, including some that he never intended to record like Now I’m Nothing, another of the amazing things about NIN is Trent’s unstated philosophy on covering songs. If you take a look at the songs that he has covered, they are all songs that did not succeed the first time around. If they were homes, they would be fixer-uppers. They are songs that he saw the potential in. He then took them, gutted them and carefully reconstructed them in a new image, while still maintaining their structural integrity. Call it a restoration. Enter Physical (You’re So) by Adam and the Ants.
Trent Dives In
Another surprise was Wish, which would later be realeased on their 2nd effort, Broken. Can you believe this all happened before Broken? During Wish I stormed the pit and dove past security on top of the people and got passed to the middle- center stage. The pit was hot and even more intense than the pavilion, which was full of energy given the effort that Trent was putting into this show. Remember, it was the middle of the day and aside from a bunch of dry ice, it was all up to the band to get people charged. After Down In It, I took a second and looked around. Time seemed to slow down. There was a woman on a guy’s shoulders behind me. She had long, blonde hair and was really attractive. She was wearing a camouflage jacket and shorts, while generously showing everyone her round, ample breasts. I turned back to the stage when the band started Head Like a Hole. The pit went into full motion and the song exploded. People were being passed around and as they went into the finale, guitars droning, singing finished, Reznor did something I never expected. He dove into the crowd, right in front of me.
We Save His Ass
The pit started to collapse on top of him. He went fetal. I saw his face for a split second. He was smirking, but he also had a slight look of “Oh what the fuck have I done?”. People were tearing at his shirt and his shorts. People were climbing over other people to touch him. It was complete chaos. I looked at two other people, one to my left, one to my right. We nodded to one another and started throwing people off of him. I got a rush of adrenaline and realized that most of the people in the pit were high or wasted. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and I only have to throw a couple of elbows. We grabbed Trent and lifted him up over our heads and chucked him back on stage. He got up and ran off to thunderous applause. Needless to say, I did not give a fuck about Living Colour or Siouxsee & the Banshees after that performance.
Thanks Trent. Thanks for the shows I talked about. Thanks for all the others I saw afterwards and thanks- in advance- for the ones in NY that I WILL SCORE TICKETS FOR.
