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on the record - classic rock albums revisited
nine inch nails, the downward spiral (tvt, 1994) produced by trent reznor and flood
picture 1

On July 4, 1992, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor moved out to Los Angeles with a seemingly simple plan. Instead of making his next record in a established recording studio, he wanted to find a house where he could build his own custom facility and work at his own pace.

"I wanted to fine-tune my engineering skills," recalls Reznor. "I figured if I had a studio around, I'd inevitably figure out how to use it. And also, for the first time, I had the financial resources to do something right, so I ended up buying a big console and a couple of Studer machines because it was cheaper that renting, in the long run."

After rejecting about 15 houses, Reznor settled on a place in Bel Air. The 4.9 million dollar mansion was, for his purposes, perfect - secluded, the rooms were huge and there was a large swimming pool off the master bedroom. Reznor soon discovered that it was also a world-famous slaughterhouse - the place where members of Charles Manson's "family" brutally murdered five people, including actress Sharon Tate.

"The first night was terrifying," says Reznor. "I jumped a mile at every sound. But after a while I got used to the place, which, in a way, is almost scarier."

While Reznor doesn't claim that the house is haunted, it sure seemed that way to him at times. "We had a million electrical disturbances," recalls Reznor. "Things that shouldn't have happened did happen. Eventually, we'd joke about it: 'Oh, Sharon must be here. The fucking tape machine just shut down.'"
Exasperated by constant equipment glitches that would render his arsenal of keyboards and samplers useless for hours - and even days - at a time, Reznor was forced to start writing on the three guitars he had brought with him: a white Gibson Les Paul, a Fender Strat and an Ovation acoustic. As it turned out, switching to the guitar turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Reznor, as it allowed him to concentrate on the fundamentals of songwriting - something he'd been having problems with.

s the song ideas began taking shape, a theme started to emerge: Reznor was chronicling one man's dark journey through self-examination, desolation and loss, culminating in complete despair. While not the cheeriest subject for a pop album, The Downward Spiral became a massive critical and commercial success.

"It's the type of record that takes a little more work on the part of the listener," explains the man who is Nine-Inch-Nails. "It gets better the more you hear it, hopefully. But it isn't something that jumps out of your cart speakers and says, 'This is the greatest album that's ever been recorded.' I was trying to find an intensity though restraint rather that by smashing you over the bead with a baseball bat. If we had 48 tracks, we wanted to bury 48 riffs that were meant to come out with repeated listenings."