Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and composer. He serves as the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and principal songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails,[1][2][3] which he founded in 1988 and of which he was the sole official member until 2016.[a] The first Nine Inch Nails album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), was a commercial and critical success. Reznor has since released 11 more Nine Inch Nails studio albums.
Trent Reznor
- Musician
- singer
- songwriter
- record producer
- composer
1982–present
5
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
- Vocals
- guitar
- keyboards
- The Null Corporation
- Columbia
- Nothing
- Interscope
- Universal
- TVT
- Slam Bamboo
- Exotic Birds
- The Innocent
- Lucky Pierre
- Option 30
- Tapeworm
- Sound City Players
Reznor began his career in the mid-1980s as a member of synth-pop bands such as Option 30, The Innocent, and Exotic Birds.[4] He has contributed to the albums of artists such as Marilyn Manson, whom he mentored, rapper Saul Williams and Halsey. Alongside his wife Mariqueen Maandig and long-time Nine Inch Nails collaborators Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan, he formed the post-industrial group How to Destroy Angels in 2009.[5][6][7][8]
Beginning in 2010, Reznor, alongside Atticus Ross, began to work on film and television scores. The duo have scored many of David Fincher's films, including The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Gone Girl (2014), Mank (2020), and The Killer (2023). They won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for both The Social Network (2010) and Soul (2020). The duo has also scored the films Patriots Day (2016), Mid90s, Bird Box (both 2018), Waves (2019), Bones and All, Empire of Light (both 2022), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023), and Challengers (2024). They have scored the documentaries Before the Flood (2016) and The Vietnam War (2017), and the TV series Watchmen (2019), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for the lattermost.
In 1997, Reznor appeared on Time's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music".[9]
Reznor is also the co-creator of the virtual supergroup, WitchGang, with Atticus Ross.[10]
Early life[edit]
Michael Trent Reznor[11] was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania,[12] on May 17, 1965,[13] the son of Nancy Lou (née Clark) and Michael Reznor.[14] He is of German and Irish descent, and grew up in Mercer, Pennsylvania.[12] His great-grandfather, George Reznor, founded the heating and air conditioning manufacturer Reznor Company in 1884.[15][16] After his parents divorced when he was six years old, Reznor's sister Tera lived with their mother while he went to live with his maternal grandparents.[17] He began playing the piano at the age of 12 and showed an early aptitude for music.[18] His grandfather told People in February 1995, "[Reznor] was a good kid [...] a Boy Scout who loved to skateboard, build model planes, and play the piano. Music was his life, from the time he was a wee boy. He was so gifted."[18]
Reznor has acknowledged that his sheltered life left him feeling isolated from the outside world. In a September 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, he said of his career choices, "I don't know why I want to do these things, other than my desire to escape from Small Town, U.S.A., to dismiss the boundaries, to explore. It isn't a bad place where I grew up, but there was nothing going on but the cornfields. My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines. And when your culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you."[19] However, in April 1995, he told Details that he did not "want to give the impression it was a miserable childhood".[20]
Reznor would later recall, "The first concert I ever saw was the Eagles in 1976. The excitement of the night struck a chord with me and I remember thinking, 'Someday I'd love to be up on that stage.'"[21] At Mercer Area Junior/Senior High School, he learned to play the tenor saxophone and tuba, and was a member of both the jazz band and marching band. The school's former band director remembered him as "very upbeat and friendly".[18] He became involved in theater while in high school, being awarded the "Best in Drama" accolade by his classmates for his roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man. He graduated in 1983 and enrolled at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he studied computer engineering.[22]
Career[edit]
Early projects[edit]
While still in high school, Reznor joined local band Option 30 and played three shows a week with them. After a year of college, he dropped out to pursue a career in music in Cleveland, Ohio.[18] His first band in Cleveland was the Urge, a cover band.[23][24] In 1985, he joined The Innocent as a keyboardist; they released one album, Livin' in the Street, but Reznor left the band after three months. In 1986, he joined local band Exotic Birds and appeared with them as a fictional band called The Problems in the 1987 film Light of Day.[25] During this time, Reznor also contributed on keyboards to the band Slam Bamboo[26] and briefly joined the new wave band Lucky Pierre.[27][28]
Reznor got a job at Cleveland's Right Track Studio as an assistant engineer and janitor.[29] Studio owner Bart Koster later commented, "He is so focused in everything he does. When that guy waxed the floor, it looked great."[18] Reznor asked Koster for permission to record demos of his own songs for free during unused studio time. Koster agreed, remarking that it cost him "just a little wear on [his] tape heads".[18]
Business activity[edit]
Dispute with John Malm[edit]
In 2004, Reznor's former manager John Malm Jr. filed a suit against Reznor for over $2 million (~$3.09 million in 2023) in deferred commissions. The suit alleged that Reznor "reneged on every single contract he and Malm ever entered into" and that Reznor refused to pay Malm money to which he was contractually entitled.[123]
Weeks later, Reznor filed a counter-suit in the U.S. District Court of New York, charging Malm with fraud and breach of fiduciary duties.[124] Reznor's suit arose from a five-year management contract signed in the early days of Nine Inch Nails, between Reznor and Malm's management company J. Artist Management. This contract, according to the suit, was unlawful and immoral in that it secured Malm 20% of Reznor's gross earnings, rather than his net earnings, as is the standard practice between artists and their management. The suit also alleged that the contract secured this percentage even if Malm was no longer representing Reznor, and for all Reznor's album advances.[125] The suit also described how Malm had misappropriated the ownership rights regarding Nine Inch Nails, including the trademark name "NIИ".[126] According to testimony by Malm, Reznor gave him half of the "NIИ" trademark "as a gift".[126]
Reznor stated that he began to fully understand his financial situation after tackling his drug addiction.[125] Reznor requested a financial statement from Malm in 2003, only to discover that he had only $400,000 (~$635,086 in 2023) in liquid assets. He told the court, "It was not pleasant discovering you have a tenth as much as you've been told you have."[127] Malm's lawyers, however, claimed that Malm had worked for years "pro bono", and that Reznor's inability to release an album or tour and his uninhibited spending were the reasons for Reznor's financial situation.[128] After a three-week trial in 2005, jurors sided with Reznor, awarding him upwards of $2.95 million and returning to him complete control of his trademarks.[127] After adjustment for inflation, Reznor's award rose to nearly $5 million.[126]
Beats Music[edit]
In January 2013, Reznor and TopSpin Media founder Ian Rogers were chosen to head Beats Electronics' new music subscription service, Project Daisy, described by Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine as having "hardware, brand, distribution partnerships, and artist relations to differentiate Daisy from the competition".[129] There was some speculation as to what Reznor's role would be within the company, but he was later named chief creative officer.[130] He promised that he and the other members would strive to create a music subscription service that will be like "having your own guy when you go to the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn't have necessarily encountered".[131] The service was officially launched in the United States on January 21, 2014.[132]
Reznor continued on in a similar role under Beats' new ownership at Apple, where he was involved in the launch of Apple Music.[133] He later left Apple, noting working there "felt at odds with the artist in me."[134]
Legacy[edit]
Reznor's work as Nine Inch Nails has influenced many newer artists, which according to Reznor range from "generic imitations" dating from the band's initial success to younger bands echoing his style in a "truer, less imitative way".[158] Following the release of The Downward Spiral, mainstream artists began to take notice of Nine Inch Nails' influence: David Bowie compared NIN's impact to that of The Velvet Underground.[159] In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music".[9] Bob Ezrin, producer for Pink Floyd, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Peter Gabriel, described Reznor in 2007 as a "true visionary" and advised aspiring artists to take note of his no-compromise attitude.[160] During an appearance at the Kerrang! Awards in London that year, Reznor accepted the Kerrang! Icon, honoring Nine Inch Nails' long-standing influence on rock music.[161]
Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose, an early supporter of Nine Inch Nails,[162] was heavily influenced by Reznor in the writing and composition of the band's Chinese Democracy album.[163] Steven Wilson of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree has stated that he is influenced by and much admires Reznor's production work, in particular The Fragile,[164] and in 2008 said that "[Reznor] is the only one [he'd] let near [his] music".[165]
Indonesian singer Anggun said that Reznor was "the man of my musical life", and that The Fragile was "the album that changed my life."[166][167]
Writing for Revolver magazine on the 25th anniversary of Broken, musician Greg Puciato stated that one of the few vivid musical memories of his teenage years was listening to the EP at age 12, front-to-back, in the first digipak he had seen. Later, after discovering the story behind its release, it became a giant influence on him, particularly "when it comes to [his] own artistic path or output".[168] Timbaland has cited Reznor as his favorite studio producer.[169] Drummer Chris Pennie of the Dillinger Escape Plan said The Fragile changed his compositional mindset from drums to production, as he was "blown away" by its dense yet elegant mix and vocal ideas. He called it one of his two favorite albums of all time.[170]
Notes