PRINTReznor's Edge
NIN bassist talks about touring with Trent
Courtesy of Tamar Levine
Industrial-rock stalwart Nine Inch Nails — Robin Finck, Trent Reznor, Josh Freese, Alessandro Cortini and Justin Meldal-Johnsen — brings its Lights in the Sky tour to Mizzou Arena tomorrow.
November 20, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
It was just another day for Justin Meldal-Johnsen before he got the call. The bassist and producer had just ended production on the newest Beck album when Jim Guerinot, Nine Inch Nails’ manager, called him to schedule a meeting with Trent Reznor.
“Apparently I had been on Trent’s radar for awhile,” Meldal-Johnsen says. “They had heard about me and my work and gave me a shot.”
He must have made a good impression because he will be playing bass with the definitive industrial-rock band when the Lights in the Sky Tour arrives at Mizzou Arena tomorrow night. With a career spanning 20 years and garnering 10 Grammy nominations (and two wins), Nine Inch Nails has no plans to disappoint.
Meldal-Johnsen has always been a NIN fan. He eagerly bought every album the day it was released, but despite his love for NIN and Reznor, Meldal-Johnsen had never seen NIN live. He didn’t know what to expect.
“I always liked the audio environment (Reznor) was able to create in his music,” Meldal-Johnsen says. “But I had no idea how that would translate in a live performance.”
Meldal-Johnsen’s story is not that different from Reznor’s, the founder and only original member of Nine Inch Nails. Both musicians started their careers as janitors at Hollywood recording studios. Both musicians have survived the ephemeral sounds and styles of the rock music industry. And both musicians are friends with a man named Josh Freese.
Freese is one of the most prolific drummers in the rock recording industry though he is something of an obscurity to mainstream listeners. Freese joined up with Nine Inch Nails for the 2005 album With Teeth after making a name for himself playing with acts such as Guns N’ Roses, A Perfect Circle and Devo.
Meldal-Johnsen says that he and Freese go way back. “We’re sort of in this small group of guys who are relatively young and do session work.”
Meldal-Johnsen had an in; all he needed was to meet the man.“We had a great meeting,” Meldal-Johnsen says of the May meeting. “We talked about the future (of NIN’s sound) and about what he expected of his band, which of course, is a tall order.”
Reznor and the rest of the band invited him to join the group after displaying his chops in a brief audition. The easy part was over. Meldal-Johnsen says preparing for the NIN tour was the most challenging thing he’s done as an artist.
The next two months were spent in intense practice sessions
before the tour took off in July. Meldal-Johnsen not only needed to learn a 70-song repertoire that stretches back to NIN’s 1989 seminal Pretty Hate Machine, but he also had to integrate himself into an
established band and mesh with Reznor, one of the biggest stars in the music industry.
“It was a new level for me,” he says. “You can’t just play the songs. NIN requires a really high degree of personal ownership in its music. Trent does not want a hype man, he wants NIN to feel like a band, to be a real band.”
Meldal-Johnsen considers himself lucky to be part of a tour that he sees as groundbreaking.
“Trent’s not here to do a standard rock show; he’s here to trail blaze,” Meldal-Johnsen says. “If it takes a stunning amount of money and time, he’ll do it. He just doesn’t care.”
Meldal-Johnsen has played with everyone from Goldfrapp and Gnarls Barkley and was the acting musical director for Beck, but he’s never been a part of anything that looks or sounds like this live: a mélange of hard-rock licks, up-tempo electronica and atmospheric, even contemplative instrumental musings.
“Trent’s an artist in every way possible,” Meldal-Johnsen says. “He wants to innovate, to be exhilarated and inspired as art inspires. He wants people to have their faces melted off.”
Meldal-Johnsen says the Lights in the Sky Tour defies all expectations, even his. “I thought Nine Inch Nails shows might be a bunch of screaming,” he says, laughing. “It’s definitely not. NIN is not about drowning in misery. Its agenda is much more subtle and interesting.”
The overwhelming array of lights, lasers and visual effects, combined with Reznor’s obsessive attention to detail in sound, do more than raise the bar for any rock show. They bring art and integrity to a seething metal sound while giving moody industrial-electronica music an enticing visual component. Meldal-Johnsen sees Reznor’s holistic creative vision as redefining the live-music experience.
“The lights, the ambience, the atmosphere,” Meldal-Johnsen says of the Lights in the Sky tour. “It’s more physical and emotionally visceral than anything I’ve seen.”
With more than 27 LPs, EPs and remixes as well as DVDs and Internet-exclusive releases to its name, Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails has been the standard for hard-rock music since NIN’s debut in 1989.
Full-length releases:
Pretty Hate Machine,1989
The Downward Spiral,1994
The Fragile, 1999
With Teeth, 2005
Year Zero, 2007
Ghosts I-IV, 2008
The Slip, 2008
--Spencer Willems
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Hey, the last N in NIN is backwards (even though I don't how to make mine change). I'm just wondering if this was an accident or something you didn't know how to change?
Posted by Aaron Dohogne on Nov 20, 2008 at 6:54 p.m. (Report Comment)