Like Cobain, Vedder and Corgan, Reznor's parents split up while he was growing up. He was born on May 17, 1965 in the bucolic small town of Mercer, Pennsylvania, near Amish-tended farmland; and raised by his maternal grandmother. Reznor studied classical piano as a chilad, played saxophone and tuba in the high school band, then was inspired by his love of KISS to join several different garage rock bands as a keyboardist.
He even made a cameo appearance in Paul Schrader's 1987 Cleveland-based movie, Light of Day, about a struggling bar band which starred Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett. keyboardist. He went on to study computer engineering before dropping out of college, then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked at a local musical instrument store before joining a series of different groups in the area.
While working as an engineer at Right Track Studios, Reznor recorded three demos tunes with some local musicians, including drummer Chris Vrenna. He dubbed the ever-changing line-up Nine Inch Nails, a name allegedly connected to the length of the nails used to attach Jesus to the cross; and put together his first album, Industrial Nation, featuring the uncompromising metallic crunch of guitars, keyboards and drum machines that would come to characterize his sound.
Steve Gottlieb of TVT Records, an independent label then known primarily for its compilation albums of television theme songs, signed the band to a deal, but refused to put out the existing album. Instead, NIN, as they came to be called, toured for most of 1988 and 1989, opening for Skinny Puppy, Jesus & Mary Chain and ex-Bauhaus Peter Murphy among others. After they completed their TVT debut, Pretty Hate Machine, they launched their own "Hate '90 North America" tour in June 1990 to support the album. At this point, the band included guitarist Richard Patrick, who previously played with Trent in the band Exotic Birds and would go on to form the group Filter with fellow ex-NIN member Brian Liesegang. Pretty Hate Machine, produced by Reznor with Flood (U2, Depeche Mode), Adrian Sherwood, Keith LeBlanc and John Fryer, attracted immediate interest at college radio with "Down In It" and especially "Head Like A Hole."
The video for the latter track, with its mechanistic montage of a rotating head turning into a machine a constant Reznor obsession proved an MTV staple. The album lodged in the charts and has gone on to sell three million copies. The success of Pretty Hate Machine unfortunately spawned a protracted feud between Reznor and TVT Records that prevented Trent from re-entering the recording studio and forced the band back onto the road, where they undertook U.S. tours with fellow industrial thrashmeister Al Jourgenson's Revolting Cocks and U.K. dates with Wonder Stuff. The group's profile soared with their mind-blowing appearances at the inaugural Lollapalooza travelling festival, organized by Perry Farrell of co-headliner Jane's Addiction. NIN overshadowed a lineup that included Henry Rollins, Butthole Surfers, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Body Count featuring rapper Ice-T, who actually joined NIN on stage to play guitar with them on "Head Like A Hole." After Lollapalooza, Guns N' Roses invited NIN to open for them on their European tour, a trip that resulted in the band almost being bottled off-stage by angry fans.
In 1992, frustrated by the legal impasse that kept him from recording, Reznor and his manager John Malm Jr. formed their own label, nothing records, and began recording what would become the Broken EP. After finally settling his dispute with TVT, which was granted profit participation in the next several NIN albums, Reznor brought his nothing label which now included Pop Will Eat Itself, Prick and Marilyn Manson to producer Jimmy Iovine's fledgling Interscope Records. Despite the fact that no video outlets would play the harrowing black and white video for the first single, "Happiness In Slavery," the Broken EP debuted in the Billboard Top Ten, went on to sell over a million copies and NIN earned a Best Metal Performance Grammy award for "Wish."
Reznor would receive yet another NARAS nod in '95 for "Happiness In Slavery." Its notorious video was a fitting metaphor for the frustrations Reznor felt about his treatment by the record industry: it depicted a man, played by the late S&M performance artist Bob Flanagan, losing his genitals, being gored by metal drills and finally being ground into chopped meat.
