Stories of Reinvention: Trent Reznor

You may not think you know who Trent Reznor is. Or you may know the bare minimum that he is the frontman for a band called Nine Inch Nails. Perhaps you have heard Johnny Cash's cover of his song Hurt, or you have listened to Lil Nax X's song Old Town Road, which heavily samples Reznor's song Ghosts I-IV, but you may not realize that you have probably heard his unmistakable sound. 

Trent Reznor was born in 1965 and grew up in the town of Mercer, Pennsylvania, a place he couldn't wait to move out of. He was quoted saying, "I wanted to escape Small Town USA. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities."

His parents were teenagers who divorced when he was six. He then moved in with his grandparents. While living with his grandparents, Reznor began taking piano lessons and showed quite the talent. But as in many small towns, Mercer included, to be cool, you had to be an athlete. So, as soon as he finished school, he moved to Cleveland to pursue his rock and roll dreams.

While in Cleveland, he began to work at Right Track Studio as an assistant engineer and janitor. The studio owner would let him record his own demos for free while the studio was not being used, and it was here that Nine Inch Nails began. But, in the beginning, it was just Trent recording every instrument himself. Eventually, others would come (and go), contributing to the band by recording and going on tour with Reznor. Nine Inch Nails would ultimately become one of the most popular bands of the 90s, headlining at Lollapalooza, touring the world, and selling millions of albums. The one constant throughout all this time was that Reznor was Nine Inch Nails, and Nine Inch Nails was Reznor. There were no other official bandmates until Atticus Ross was announced as an official member in 2016, even though he had played with Nine Inch Nails since 2002. 

As the success of Nine Inch Nails and Reznor grew, he began to step back from touring and recording music. 

At first, the step back began with dipping his toes into movie soundtracks, contributing songs, and producing the soundtrack of Natural Born Killers and the Crow, but then Reznor and Atticus Ross went all in, scoring entire films. Their twitch, moody style can be heard in the background of movies like The Social Network, Gone Girl, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. They also joined Jazz musician Jon Batiste and scored the Pixar movie Soul. 

Moving from headlining concerts to sitting in the back of a studio may seem like a logical next step. But there is a certain vulnerability that takes place when you move from the center of the stage to the back--when you move from creating a piece of art that is fully and uniquely yours to adding your art to someone else's work. As Reznor's career has progressed you can see a move from independence, and perhaps selfishness, to collaboration and generosity. In the beginning, Reznor was perfectly happy working alone, playing all the instruments and being the one doing everything required, but as he has grown older, he has reinvented himself into an elder statesman, coming alongside other artists and collaborating on their albums, coming alongside directors and scoring their movies, and more fully realizing that sometimes the best way to reinvent yourself is to share your talents.