Date:
10/27/1994

Danny Lohner was 12 hours shy of a UT Management Information Systems degree when he got the job he'd always wanted. And it is a pretty damn good job. It pays well, he gets to travel the world, and he doesn't even have to wear a tie. The only problem is, the boss does a lot of screaming and gets violent once in a while. But what else would you expect if your job was playing guitar and keyboards with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails? Lohner, 28, became a member of Nine Inch Nails last November when Reznor was looking for musicians to back him for the upcoming tour in support of The Downward Spiral. And it certainly wasn't the UT Career Center that got him the job. Lohner says it was mostly luck that got him hooked up with NIN, and the fact that he was a founding member in the Austin industrial band Skrew. Lohner had spilt from Skrew a few months before he traveled out to Los Angeles to audition for another band (not NIN), which he asked to go unnamed. "It was a disaster," Lohner says of the audition. "But it got me out to L.A." And a trip to L.A. was all Lohner needed to meet up with Chris Vrenna, current NIN drummer, who had worked with Lohner on a Skrew record in Chicago. Vrenna let him know that Nine Inch Nails was looking for another guitarist, and that was when he got hooked up with Reznor. "Trent knew I could play the guitar," Lohner says. "But I did a lot of the programming and technical shit in Skrew, and so he liked that I could kind of be an all-purpose player." Lohner flew out to Los Angeles last November, and says he's seen each NIN member every day since. The band spent several months preparing for the tour, which began early last spring, and has been on the road since. In that time, they've gone from playing small, sweaty clubs to packed arenas, a change Lohner says he has found kind of bizarre. "We started out in clubs with just wall-to-wall people, and people slamming and getting right in your face, you know, which is how Trent wanted to start out," Lohner says. "Now we're playing arenas, and it really isn't as exciting. I mean, you're up there freezing on stage because of the air-conditioning and everyone's like a few hundred feet away, that's hard to get used to." But Lohner is quick to point out the advantage of playing in the arenas, which is a much larger show with plenty of special effects. "It's a pretty wild show," Lohner says. And the wildness all starts with Reznor, the scrawny, leather-clad icon behind the NIN hysteria. His music, from 1989's Pretty Hate Machine to the 1991 EP Sin to The Downward Spiral, is more than enough to suggest Reznor's chaotic nature, but seeing him perform live proves it. NIN first performed in Austin in 1989 at Curfew, the disco-tech space on Sixth Street that now houses Mirage. At the end of the show, Reznor first poured water all over the steamy crowd, much to their delight, then splattered bags of flour on them -- much to their dislike (water + flour = a dough-covered crowd). This stage insanity continues today, as images of Reznor smashing instruments and even his fellow band members on stage have surfaced plenty during this tour. "I've played with plenty of irrational people, but Trent is just totally unpredictable," Lohner says. "I'll be playing, and if I turn my heard for one second he'll come flying into me at full speed. Man, I swear I need a health plan with this band, I've gotten enough bodily damage." The band's abusive nature is what lead to the famed mud-fight before its Woodstock performance, which got them notice by David Letterman and numerous other not-yet NIN fans. The mud-covered band's performance proved to be one of the more memorable moments from Woodstock '94. "That was insane playing Woodstock," Lohner says. "We weren't nervous at all because we had gotten there the night before and had time to take it all in. "But when it came time to play, I was just getting off the bus and the next thing I know, Trent pushes me head-first into a mud pile and then he jumps on top of me and we're all wrestling in the mud. It was a pretty sorry sight -- a bunch of 100-pound guys trying to act tough." Lohner says the band went on to play the worst show of the entire tour, but it still had fun. Actually, in spite of what the abuse and the tense music might suggest, he says all the members really have a blast working together. And Mr. Reznor, he says, isn't the psycho everyone might imagine him to be. "I don't want to blow the guy's image, but he's really got his shit together," Lohner says of Reznor. "Any thinking person can see that for him to do all that he's done -- I mean, he controls every artistic aspect of the band, from making the records down to designing the T-shirts -- for him to do all that and have gotten where he has, he's really got to be a totally smart, articulate person." Reznor has plenty more in store for the band, too, including a live record, a full-length video and touring around the world through March. After that, a new record will be in store, and Lohner says it won't take anywhere near as long as The Downward Spiral took to get out. But Lohner is quick to stress that all this upcoming work is in store for the band, not just Reznor. "I've been told that we will be working on the next album, and this will be a long-lasting lineup for the band," he says. "Trent wanted guys he can work with for years, you know, because that has its advantages." Of course, this raises one question for Lohner: Is he ever going to finish his MIS degree? "I'd like to think I am," he says. "But I'm a little busy now." Lohner says he dropped out of school before he got in with NIN, so the band wasn't the sole reason for him avoiding the UT campus. But it's not like he's become just another slacker. "Two years ago, I was scalping tickets in front of the Erwin Center for money," he says. "Now I'm playing it. That's bizarre."