![downward spiral downward spiral](https://mikeladano.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/scan_20220429-5.jpg)
“All these Charles Manson fans showed up while we were there,” Chris recalls. Nine Inch Nails weren’t the only ones drawn to the ugly past of the place. The band intentionally placed the mixing board and main control area in the exact location of the couch where Tate was found murdered, Chris says, and Trent slept in Tate’s master bedroom. Trent was fascinated by the history and the lingering feeling of evil. It was the site where actress Sharon Tate and four others were brutally murdered on August 8, 1969, by four members of the Charles Manson family. To colour his dark creativity blood-red, Trent chose to write and record The Downward Spiral at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. Robin Finck heading down the spiral (Image credit: getty) Trent never gave a shit about doing anything to please the fans.” Those were really important records that helped convince us that we were doing the right thing by making this weird music that we wanted to make. “We listened to Low, Lodger and Heroes a lot, as well as Iggy’s The Idiot. “Bowie’s Berlin trilogy was big for us,” Chris admits. Less obvious influences included David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Trent’s determination to create an original, dark album that paid tribute to pioneers of guitar-bristling industrial was evident. “So when you listen closely to the clean version, you can hear the beginning of the ‘f’ and the end of the ‘k’.” “He said, ‘I wonder what the least amount of the word ‘fuck’ is that we can snip out of the word and get away with it as a clean version,’” recalls Chris. Trent didn’t want to replace them with bleeps or sound effects, so he reluctantly agreed to leave a blank space, but it wasn’t quite that simple.
![downward spiral downward spiral](https://misticaespiral.com/panelwp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/downward_spiral.jpg)
All Nine Inch Nails had to do was take the swear words out of the chorus. Two months after the release of The Downward Spiral, alternative radio was clamouring for a clean edit of Closer. “Our producer, Flood, and I looked at each other and I told Trent, ‘Well, you had the pop single for the record until you said ‘fuck’ in every line of the chorus.’ Trent started laughing and he said, ‘I know.’ He did it on purpose because he didn’t want, necessarily, to have such an overt pop song.” “We were all working on something one night and Trent came in the next morning and showed us the lyrics of Closer for the first time,” recalls Chris Vrenna. Even after the band finished the music for Closer, the closest thing they had created to a pure pop song, Trent put a lyrical stamp on it that rendered it virtually unplayable by mainstream media. Trent’s determination to follow his instincts and peel back the layers of his previous work to see what lurked deep inside resulted in an album that was emotionally dense, utterly authentic and immaculately conceived.Īnd there was a brazen perversity that flowed through it all. There was no denying the artistry behind The Downward Spiral. Night stint in the capital in ’94 (Image credit: getty) NIN tearing London a new one on the second date of a three. “The live drum solo at the end of Piggy is intentionally crazy and off-tempo, and for that piano part at the end of Closer, Trent played it but didn’t quantize the MIDI, so it wasn’t exactly the same feel or speed as the rest of the song.” “There are a few parts on the record that are purposely messed up structurally,” says drummer and sound designer Chris Vrenna, who was in the band from Pretty Hate Machine through the end of the tour for The Downward Spiral. It was a feast of unconventional rhythms, barbed hooks, abrupt tempo changes and torrents of noise that sometimes continued after the rest of the instruments cut out. Piggy balanced skewed samples with a sluggish, near-reggae bassline Ruiner drew from hip hop beats and a simple melody reminiscent of Pretty Hate Machine’s Down In It, before evolving into a near-orchestral wash of sound. Most of the rest of the album was mid-tempo, with an underworld of unnerving sounds that ebbed and flowed like a stop-motion film of contaminated ocean waves.
![downward spiral downward spiral](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wT7gz2YNF4g/maxresdefault.jpg)
Self Destruct and March Of The Pigs were fast, heavy and reminiscent of Broken but with more emotional depth. It’s what popped out of my head and was the strongest statement I could make. I didn’t do that just to fuck myself up, either. I thought I quite intentionally may have shot myself in the foot commercially. “And I was worried that people that were more into the metal sound of Broken wouldn’t like it. Trent never gave a shit about doing anything to please the fans Chris Vrenna