XX. Notes

Soulmonster wrote:Could it be that the tryout with Zakk happened in June/July 1994 when Paul was also tested? We know they played with a "few" guys to replace Gilby, but so far only Paul has been confirmed. If that was the case then the problem with Slash saying that he hasn't seen Axl since October 31, disappears.

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:Could it be that the tryout with Zakk happened in June/July 1994 when Paul was also tested? We know they played with a "few" guys to replace Gilby, but so far only Paul has been confirmed. If that was the case then the problem with Slash saying that he hasn't seen Axl since October 31, disappears.

There is a 1995 interview with Slash that hasn't been added yet, where he says that the jamming with Zakk Wylde happened just before Slash went out to do his "promo thing" for the Snakepit album release.

Slash did a little promo tour with Eric Dover in Canada (late January) and Europe (in February) before the album's release, where he did interviews (the ones you're currently consulting) and played acoustic promo shows with Dover.

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:Could it be that the tryout with Zakk happened in June/July 1994 when Paul was also tested? We know they played with a "few" guys to replace Gilby, but so far only Paul has been confirmed. If that was the case then the problem with Slash saying that he hasn't seen Axl since October 31, disappears.

There is a 1995 interview with Slash that hasn't been added yet, where he says that the jamming with Zakk Wylde happened just before Slash went out to do his "promo thing" for the Snakepit album release.

Slash did a little promo tour with Eric Dover in Canada (late January) and Europe (in February) before the album's release, where he did interviews (the ones you're currently consulting) and played acoustic promo shows with Dover.

I figured it would be something like this. I am still not convinced - Slash can mis-rememeber and be a bit sloppy with dates and stuff. I will see if I can reach out to Zakk and ask.

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:

Soulmonster wrote:Could it be that the tryout with Zakk happened in June/July 1994 when Paul was also tested? We know they played with a "few" guys to replace Gilby, but so far only Paul has been confirmed. If that was the case then the problem with Slash saying that he hasn't seen Axl since October 31, disappears.

There is a 1995 interview with Slash that hasn't been added yet, where he says that the jamming with Zakk Wylde happened just before Slash went out to do his "promo thing" for the Snakepit album release.

Slash did a little promo tour with Eric Dover in Canada (late January) and Europe (in February) before the album's release, where he did interviews (the ones you're currently consulting) and played acoustic promo shows with Dover.

I figured it would be something like this. I am still not convinced - Slash can mis-rememeber and be a bit sloppy with dates and stuff. I will see if I can reach out to Zakk and ask.

It'd be great if Zakk can help, although it's been many years since then.

Slash's interview was very close chronologically, it was actually during the promo tour in February, so I figure he'd remember what had happened the month before.

Soulmonster wrote:
Yeah, one would hope Anyway, I reached out to Zakk on twitter, no idea if he will reply.

Is it likely, though, that the date of the Howard Stern interview isn't when it was recorded? I thought Stern's shows were live.

Blackstar wrote:There are also other later sources pointing out it was in January 1995: Axl's "From the burning hills..." fax in 1996 and an Axl interview from 2002.

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:There are also other later sources pointing out it was in January 1995: Axl's "From the burning hills..." fax in 1996 and an Axl interview from 2002.

Okay, then it is settled.

It must mean that either the Stern interview was done quite a few days before February 1 (since Zakk says the jamming went for a week), or that Axl and Slash didn't actually meet when Zakk jammed with the band, although Zakk says it was with the whole band...

So, what was it like opening for Guns'n'Roses to a stadium audience?

"It was what I'd expected, and worse. Axl's a friend of mine, we met in LA when he came to the show and asked if we wanted to open for them on some dates in America... we couldn't do it, but as we were planning on coming over here, we thought what better and stranger way to do it than supporting the biggest rock band in the world?"

Was there any worry about the somewhat dubious, even juvenile, image of Guns'n'Roses rubbing off - onto NIN?

"They are that and more. They're a big fucking dangerous live rock band! That's what they do and they do it well, with all the trappings right down to the drum solo. For what it is, they do it better than anyone else.

"I don't care if people want to think we’re cock rock... and another reason for doing it was the strangeness of a synth act being on that bill."

Nine Inch Nails first arrived in the UK supporting Guns'N'Roses in August 1991. A four-man live show that at the time featured Richard Patrick, James Woolley and Jeff Ward, NIN was, however, indisputably Reznor's operation. Brought up in the challenging industrial forefathers of Throbbing Gristle, Test Dept and Skinny Puppy, Reznor went on to collaborate with the Godfather of technogore, Al Jourgensen, on the disco inferno version of Black Sabbath's "Supernaut" that was released under the moniker 1000 Homo DJs, and which was played live with Big Al's Revolting Cocks.

Always possessed with more pop sensibility than his contemporaries, when Reznor released NIN's first album, *Pretty Hate Machine*, it was just that. Despite the raging bleakness and violence of his lyrics, Reznor's songs demonstrated an unnerving flair for catchy, left-hook choruses that were more redolent of British electro pioneers Depeche Mode or Nitzer Ebb--read faggot to the multitudes of hairy Americans.

And indeed, "synth-faggot" is how Reznor described himself on his debut UK tour. Displaying healthy levels of perverse provocation, he relished the idea of supporting Guns'N'Roses at the time.

"It was kind of funny," Trent told *Rage* magazine back then. "Axl phoned me while I was listening to the new Pet Shop Boys album and I was trying to turn it down so he wouldn't hear. And he said, 'Hey, was that the Pet Shop Boys? I just got that! Man, I like that, but I'm too embarassed to tell anyone.' I said, 'Me, too'."

It seemed that baiting the conservative G'N'R audience was a turn on for this fledgling art terrorist.

"No pain, no gain," he stated, "and this will be the ultimate test of that. Here we are on the biggest-ever tour and you've never heard of us. We're some synth faggot band opening for a heavy rock band. I have to go out with that attitude."

Almost directly after Lollapalooza, Reznor took up new fan Axl Rose's offer to open for Guns N' Roses at a couple of stadium shows in Europe. The experience turned out to be "one in a long history of miscalculations I've made with this band," according to Reznor. The differences between traditional heavy metal audiences and the industrial audience were painfully spelled out for him on this sorry venture.

"People were just starting to hear of us over there 'cause our record just came out. Our American label did not license the music over there until about two years after it came out. I'd kind of gone into it, like, 'Well, we did Lollapalooza and that wo rked out okay and in the big picture it benefited us and, well, what's the difference?' Well, it was a _big_ difference. It was the worst of situations. It was us, Skid Row, Guns N' Roses. I like Guns N' Roses for what they do. Skid Row, however, is the epitome of what I don't like about spandex rock. Poseur toughness, bullshit. I hate them.

"So we open up. First song, people are, like, 'Yeah, there's a band onstage,' and they're slowly realizing that we're not Skid Row. Second song, 'Okay, these guys are not Skid Row and I _think_ i hear a synthesizer.' Third song, 'We definitely hear a synthesizer - this is bullshit. These guys suck, they're faggots, let's kick their ass.' There is something about the feeling of standing in front of 65,000 people giving you the finger ... An intense terror took over. In a word, it sucks."

From there, things went rapidly downhill ...

"I decided just to make it the worst half hour of this crowd's life. The point when it actually became humorous was when I saw a sausage flying up onstage at the show in Germany. A link sausage. But we got off the stage with our lives. Another sad mo ment at that date was toward the end of the set I actually saw one poor fucker with a NIN shirt, holding it up. Seconds later, I just saw a scuffling and no more NIN shirt."

Maybe that's because they all wanted it.

"We did somehow sell eight T-shirts that night. Eight out of sixty-five thousand, that's not a bad ratio. It also made me realize that I'm not trying to be all things to all people."

NIN live is more like a field trip to the insane asylum than a theatrical presentation. The lunatic behind the controllable, frenzied head shakes and charged movements continues. "I'm theatrical? What do you mean? 'Well, you call yourself and industri al band.' Wait, never, anywhere, never have I called myself and industrial band, you said it, I never fucking said that."

But trend-hopping European press and audiences couldn't have primed NIN for their worst live nightmare yet - opening up for Guns 'N Roses. If you're looking for dirt on Axl, you wouldn't find it here. This time it was Mr. Rose's charming fans who sent the bottles flying en mass toward the stage. ducking cheap whiskey bottles and longnecks wasn't Reznor's idea of a good time. "I had actually forgotten about that but," he says in a sarcastic huff, "I guess it's OK now," and laughs. "We fuckin sucked. It sucked! The first show I tried to be as good as possible but by the second one my tail was between my legs."

As if it wasn't bad enough being hated simultaneously by a stadium full of stringy-haired rockers, they also had a dressing room right across from Gunners number-one fans and bill-mates, Skid Row. "Before they'd go up on stage we'd hear them listening t o Kiss a lot and doing the old hustle. We tried to video tape it but we couldn't get it. Afterwards, Sebastian would come into the dressing room all sweaty. Have you ever actually seen Sebastian Bach in person? He's like 18 feet tall and his body curv es like this." Trent forms an "S" shape with his hands and does an impression by walking like Bigfoot as he shouts in a nasal, high-pitched tone. "Hey, guys,' a total pest, 'us, mother-fuckers, you want any pot or ecstasy or heroin or drugs? Come on ov er, dude. Rock 'n' roll man!' Then later someone told us he said on stage, 'No fuckin' drum machines on stage, man, this is just rock 'n' roll, we don't play that fuckin' snyth music.' Like he needed to say that anyway." Trent sums it all up, "It's on e of those things when you think it might be a funny idea then you realize, when you're up there, maybe this ain't so great."

Musician: Earlier you talked about almost giving up music after Lollapalooza and your tour with Guns n' Roses. Was there a part of you expecting not to be liked? You talked about wanting to almost alienate people at times.

Reznor: I think it was the insecurity of heavily overstepped boundaries. With Lollapalooza, we were still an up-and-coming thing. The biggest show we'd ever played was 200 people. Now we're in front of this scary, potentially hostile audience of 25,000. I was afraid the other bands might be into this star thing, "I want catering!" But everybody, with the exception of Henry Rollins, was totally friendly. I remember Ice-T playing guitar with us on "HLAH", totally cool guy, very talented. But it was a soul destroyer in terms of the technical problems we were having. My performance started revolving around dealing with what was fucking up rather than communicating with the audience. Plus this is the tail end of about 2 1/2 years of touring, compounded by the fact that my drummer had a heroin problem and... now he's dead. And other band members had traumas and I felt beaten up to the point where I was hiding, I couldn't deal with it. The lyrics from "Broken" started to form around then. Then Axl Rose made contact with us. He was a fan, and wanted to help out. We were going to Europe to do a tour, and we figured out what better way to confuse people than to open for GN'R? So we did, and the audience hated us. We were terrified to start with, and then we're talking onstage in front of 65,000 people in Germany. The first song goes okay. Second song people realize we're not Skid Row, who came on after us. Third song they'd confirmed the fact that they've heard a synthesizer and it's time to *attack*. There's something about the sight of every single person flipping you off in a giant stadium that makes you go instantly numb. I started laughing, then insulted them with anything I could think of. At that moment I see this fucking link sausage come flying up onstage and I thought, okay, Germany, link sausage, you got us. So that was a penis shrinker. Then I looked into the audience and about 20 rows back there's some poor fucking kid holding up a NIN shirt, and I gave him a quick thumbs up. Suddenly there was this scuffle and he was *gone*. Never to be seen again. That night we got the figures for our t-shirt sales. Out of 65,000 people, how many did we sell? Three. Now, I know I saw one of them myself. You would think, just in the general confusion, some folks might have thought, Oh, that's a cool GN'R shirt.

With only the cash to fight TVT to keep him going, Reznor finished Lollapalooza and went from the frying pan into the fire-England. A few dates were already booked that mispaired Nine Inch Nails with the alternative pop band the Wonder Stuff. Second on the bill was Carter USM (that stands for the Unstoppable Sex Machine, in case you were wondering) an Anglocentric dance club group.

With that in store for them, when Axl Rose of Guns 'n' Roses contacted Reznor and asked if NIN would care to open for a stadium show in Germany, Reznor agreed. He thought it would confuse people. And it did.. for the first two songs. Then the 65,000 people realized that this definitely wasn't the second billed band, Skid Row.

Reznor confided to Musician just how that felt: "There's something about the sight of every single person flipping you off in a giant stadium that makes you instantly go numb. I started laughing, then insulted them with anything I could think of. At that moment, I see this fucking link sausage come flying up onstage, and I thought, 'Okay, Germany, link sausage, you got us. So that was a penis shrinker'."

The one pitiful fan in a NIN shirt that Reznor did notice disappeared in a scuffle, and apparently never surfaced again. But perhaps the true gauge of that show was the t-shirt sales. Of the 65,000 strong crowd, NIN won over three people. Well, maybe a few more, but only three felt strongly enough about what they'd seen to buy a shirt.

Lesser men would have crawled back home and never left again; others might have spent the rest of their careers whining interminably to the press about the horror of it all, the more fragile might even have attempted suicide. But Trent Reznor took all the anger and hook and turned it into Broken.

"After our last round of touring," [Reznor] reflects, "I thought Nine Inch Nails was a bloated, stupid thing that had become a parody of itself. I was embarrassed looking at videotapes of us performing. You switch modes from being the intellectual guy who thinks about what he's doing to the guy who just does it on tour. But after the tour, I looked back at some of that stuff and felt like I was becoming another retarded rock guy. I mean, when I started out I had dreams of being Mr. Big Time, but I never thought I'd attain anything. Where I grew up, girls didn't like me and I wasn't a football star or anything. Then suddenly it's like, you're rich, and your nose isn't that big, and girls like you. That can freak a lot of people out."

"But there's a point where the individual has to check in on themselves and realize enough is enough. I realized I was an asshole. I was shitty to people, shitty to old friends and new people I met. I thought, 'My shit doesn't stink anymore.' I'd seen people like Axl Rose surrounded by people saying things like 'Yes, Mr. Rose, that does smell good, can I flush it for you?' So at one point I sat back and looked at myself and went: 'You're a fucking asshole. You've become what you never thought you'd be.'"

Speaking in the Q Interview in our brand new issue - Q308 out now - about his life, his soundtrack work on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, his demons and more, Reznor singles out the 1991 shows with Axl Rose and co as a nadir.

"It was only a couple of show and they were some of the worst performances we [Nine Inch Nails] ever had in front of the most hostile, moronic audiences I've ever experienced," he recalled.

"They were there to rock; what they didn't want was some homo-looking dudes playing noisy synths and they made that very clear to us.

"Our first show was in Mannheim, Germany. There were thousands of people standing there going [raises middle finger] and there were bits of sausage on the stage. I've tried to block it out."

So what do you do when that happens? How do you adapt or calibrate what you're doing next?

Reznor: I don't know. Twenty years ago, it would have been smash equipment and insult the audience and throw a tantrum. Now, it's smash equipment, throw a tantrum internally, maybe. I'm not sure what you do.

I'm trying to think if I should say this out loud, but I will say it out loud because it's what I do. In '91, Nine Inch Nails was kind of the new, hot band that was starting to break in the States. We had just played the first Lollapalooza and our song that had been out for a year and a half had just gotten picked up on MTV; you could feel a kind of momentum. Guns N' Roses was the biggest band in the world at that time, and Axl Rose, who was a fan, publicly asked us, "Come play some shows with us in Germany." You know, play in front of 65,000 people in Mannheim. [I thought], "I've never been there; let's do it." Stepping onstage, I'm sure it didn't take the whole first song for me to realize, OK, this was a huge miscalculation, because the only thing that can be achieved here is confrontation. There's an audience that's here for a certain thing, and what we're doing is not in the wheelhouse of what's acceptable for that thing. And then you question, "Are these people that even I would want to have as my audience?" And generally, no — I don't like this kind of music; I wouldn't come to this concert myself. And then you think, "I should have thought this through before I said yes and flew to Germany." We made a couple of those mistakes on this festival run.

ENGLEHART: You did a show with Guns N' Roses at Wembley Stadium in London several years back, at Axl Rose's instigation. Do you get any feedback from him these days?

REZNOR: I heard from him right before we started this tour. That was kind of when the downfall of Guns N' Roses was just reaching bottom. He was just kind of freaked out and was talking about maybe working on some other kind of project. I said, "Let me know. I'm into at least listening to ideas." I haven't had any other contact.

ENGLEHART: He's got an interesting mind. I think there's a lot more going on in there than people give him credit for.

REZNOR: With Axl? Yeah. I feel a certain degree of compassion, just because he was thrust into something that was larger than anything else and then a lot of weight was placed on him to carry the torch. If I had to pick something that I think was wrong with how they were treated it was that no one had the balls to say "No." As in, "No, it's not a good idea to put out two double albums of mediocre material." But if you said that you got fired. I think that's inherently the problem. I think the guy is talented at what he is doing.

Blackstar wrote:Trent Reznor quotes on GNR/AxlOn the possibility of working with Axl on a side project:

ENGLEHART: You did a show with Guns N' Roses at Wembley Stadium in London several years back, at Axl Rose's instigation. Do you get any feedback from him these days?

REZNOR: I heard from him right before we started this tour. That was kind of when the downfall of Guns N' Roses was just reaching bottom. He was just kind of freaked out and was talking about maybe working on some other kind of project. I said, "Let me know. I'm into at least listening to ideas." I haven't had any other contact.

ENGLEHART: He's got an interesting mind. I think there's a lot more going on in there than people give him credit for.

REZNOR: With Axl? Yeah. I feel a certain degree of compassion, just because he was thrust into something that was larger than anything else and then a lot of weight was placed on him to carry the torch. If I had to pick something that I think was wrong with how they were treated it was that no one had the balls to say "No." As in, "No, it's not a good idea to put out two double albums of mediocre material." But if you said that you got fired. I think that's inherently the problem. I think the guy is talented at what he is doing.

[Juice Magazine, July 1995]

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:Trent Reznor quotes on GNR/AxlOn the possibility of working with Axl on a side project:

ENGLEHART: You did a show with Guns N' Roses at Wembley Stadium in London several years back, at Axl Rose's instigation. Do you get any feedback from him these days?

REZNOR: I heard from him right before we started this tour. That was kind of when the downfall of Guns N' Roses was just reaching bottom. He was just kind of freaked out and was talking about maybe working on some other kind of project. I said, "Let me know. I'm into at least listening to ideas." I haven't had any other contact.

ENGLEHART: He's got an interesting mind. I think there's a lot more going on in there than people give him credit for.

REZNOR: With Axl? Yeah. I feel a certain degree of compassion, just because he was thrust into something that was larger than anything else and then a lot of weight was placed on him to carry the torch. If I had to pick something that I think was wrong with how they were treated it was that no one had the balls to say "No." As in, "No, it's not a good idea to put out two double albums of mediocre material." But if you said that you got fired. I think that's inherently the problem. I think the guy is talented at what he is doing.

[Juice Magazine, July 1995]

July 1995? He wasn't touring with NIN in July, but would start the Dissonance tour in September 1995 and had done an Australian tour in April 1995. So maybe right before the Australian tour in early 1995? Before that he did the Further Down the Spiral tour from August 1994 to February 1995. So maybe before August 1994?

Soulmonster wrote:Could be, I would say GN'R was in a worse state in the beginning of 1995 than beginning of 1994, but it is entirely possible Reznor wasn't that aware of the situation.

Soulmonster wrote:There is this quote from Axl that indicates he had talked about a side project with Reznor as early as 1992:

Axl: Trent Reznor from NIN is one, and Dave Navarro from Jane's Addiction is another guy I want to work with. I've talked to Trent about working with me on an industrial synth project, at least on one song, and I definitely want to work with Dave on something. I've always been curious what he would sound like working with Slash on something[Hit Parader, June 1993; interview from December 1992].

Moby remains as elusive as that monster of the deep

Dave Michaels
Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News

[...]

In addition to scoring a Joel Silver movie, the new rock-happy Moby is currently working with an unlikely studio mate: Axl Rose of Guns 'N Roses - the same Axl Rose who penned raffish, inane songs, including "Used to Love Her" and "One in a Million."

"Axl called me up one day and said he'd just bought the DJ Shadow record and that he really liked it," Moby says. "That to me is the most interesting part of electronic music. That it spreads into places you wouldn't expect it to go."

[...]

[...]
The Minneapolis band toured Europe with Guns N’ Roses after Soul Asylum’s breakthrough success of 1992’s Grave Dancers Union album.

“Now that was a band that was decidedly full of themselves,” said Murphy, who never actually met Axl Rose. “There was a real separation of church and state on that tour. A lot of, ‘Don’t get too close to that dressing room.’ ”

In an interesting case of rock ’n’ roll kismet, Tommy Stinson — bass player for Soul Asylum’s not-always-friendly Minneapolis rivals the Replacements — is now working with Rose on the long-rumored follow-up to the Use Your Illusion albums.
[...]

[Alice Cooper is] also eagerly awaiting the next Guns N’ Roses album, even though no one on earth has any clue when it will be released. Cooper contributed some vocal tracks on GNR’s 1991 LP Use Your Illusion I. But frontman Axl Rose has since fired the entire band and is working on a project that (supposedly) crosses industrial techno rock with lush piano ballads.

“I know Axl pretty well, which basically means I don’t understand him at all,” Cooper said. “I just don’t get it. Guns N’ Roses is the last great hope for hard rock. If they got back together and made a straight rock record, it would sell 15 million copies.”

Recording studio with attached apartment sold

LOS ANGELES — A Hollywood recording studio, with a small apartment built for Guns N’ Roses when the band made an album there about four years ago, has been sold for $1.2 million.

Known as Studio 56, the 10,000-square-foot building was built in 1930 and was known for years as Radio Recorders. It’s where Elvis Presley made such hits as Love Me Tender and Jailhouse Rock. TBoyz II Men are among the studio’s current stars.

Paul Schwartz, who leased the studio for several years, bought it and is having Jeri Serpico, who owns a home-refurbishing company, refinish the floors of one of the sound stages and do some cosmetic work to the exterior and the apartment, now used by one of the engineers.

Serpico is also a partner of Schwartz in his 56 Entertainment production company.

Blackstar wrote:Not sure if I should post this as a separate article in the interview database.

Los Angeles Times/Times Colonist, October 24, 1998:

Recording studio with attached apartment sold

LOS ANGELES — A Hollywood recording studio, with a small apartment built for Guns N’ Roses when the band made an album there about four years ago, has been sold for $1.2 million.

Known as Studio 56, the 10,000-square-foot building was built in 1930 and was known for years as Radio Recorders. It’s where Elvis Presley made such hits as Love Me Tender and Jailhouse Rock. TBoyz II Men are among the studio’s current stars.

Paul Schwartz, who leased the studio for several years, bought it and is having Jeri Serpico, who owns a home-refurbishing company, refinish the floors of one of the sound stages and do some cosmetic work to the exterior and the apartment, now used by one of the engineers.

Serpico is also a partner of Schwartz in his 56 Entertainment production company.

Soulmonster wrote:

Blackstar wrote:Not sure if I should post this as a separate article in the interview database.

Los Angeles Times/Times Colonist, October 24, 1998:

Recording studio with attached apartment sold

LOS ANGELES — A Hollywood recording studio, with a small apartment built for Guns N’ Roses when the band made an album there about four years ago, has been sold for $1.2 million.

Known as Studio 56, the 10,000-square-foot building was built in 1930 and was known for years as Radio Recorders. It’s where Elvis Presley made such hits as Love Me Tender and Jailhouse Rock. TBoyz II Men are among the studio’s current stars.

Paul Schwartz, who leased the studio for several years, bought it and is having Jeri Serpico, who owns a home-refurbishing company, refinish the floors of one of the sound stages and do some cosmetic work to the exterior and the apartment, now used by one of the engineers.

Serpico is also a partner of Schwartz in his 56 Entertainment production company.

Made an album in 1994? There was some work done on the new album but I don't think they spent much time in the studio for that. They did record Sympathy in 1994, though. I can't really understand why the recording of one song would require building an apartment.

Blackstar wrote:I see Studio 56 is listed in the liner notes of the UYI albums as being one of the recording studios.

Soulmonster wrote:Thinking about adding something new to the history section. There are a lot of chapters now, and when reading people might not want to go directly to the next chapter, but instead jump to something else related. So I thought about having links to further reading at the end of every chapter, which will serve as navigational shortcuts.

Here is an example at the end of the very first chapter:



Never mind the style, but any thoughts on the idea?