David Bowie was right about Trent Reznor. The Thin White Duke’s ability to align himself with the best new talents in any era – from Mick Ronson to Iggy Pop to Lou Reed to Nile Rogers – let him in the early 90s to seek out Trent Reznor. Of all the hard rock musicians to emerge at that time as huge-selling, stadium-packing megastars, he did not seek out Axl Rose or Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder, it was Reznor who he buddied up to, and toured with. And the years have proved Reznor to be the one genuine artist (in the absence of Cobain), among them. Around the time of their massive hit double-album The Downward Spiral, a none-more-black heavyweight slice of personal demons fed through industrial metal, he could easily have just turned into another heroin casualty, chewed up by fame, and at best limping along on desultory albums with ever-diminishing returns.
Instead, he sits now as one of the most admired musicians on the planet, an Oscar-winning soundtrack composer - alongside his collaborator and NIN member Atticus Ross – and leader of the most exciting art-rock unit around. Exciting because they refuse to just sit still in a retro-Goth schtick.
