Trent Reznor, the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails, has revealed that he asked David Bowie to help him through his drug addiction when the pair were on tour together.
Reznor admitted that the darkest period of his life came during the tour to accompany his 1994 album, The Downward Spiral, but he is now sober and has admitted that his new record reflects the period of his life.
Reznor told The Guardian, “ The Downward Spiral felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I’d explode.”
He then added, “I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts but after a while it didn’t sustain itself, and other things took over – drugs and alcohol.”
Reznor also talked about how he asked Bowie for advice, stating, “”It reminds me, when I was in the throes of that [addiction] was when we toured with Bowie, and this was the Bowie that had come out the other side and was happily married. I was nearing the peak of my addiction, and his role to me was kind of mentor, big brother, friend, and also he’d give me kind of shamanish advice.”
Reznor went on to discuss his new album, “Hesitation Marks,” which will be released in September and documents how he overcame this era of his life. “I’m happy that I don’t feel that way any more,” revealed the father of two.
He then added, “I’ve learned to recognise, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I’m wired wrong in certain ways, the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit. This record was written as the other side of that journey. The despair and loneliness and rage and isolation and the not-fitting-in aspect that still is in me, but I can express that in a way that feels more appropriate to who I am now. And often that rage is quieter.”
