Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails (abbreviated as NIN) is an industrial rock band, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its musical direction. Reznor was employed at that time as an assistant engineer and janitor at Right Track Studios in Cleveland, and asked studio owner Bart Koster for permission to record some demos of his own songs for free during unused studio time. Koster agreed, remarking that it cost him "just a little wear on [his] tape heads". While assembling these, the earliest NIN recordings, Reznor was unable to find a band that could articulate his songs as he wanted. Instead, inspired by Prince, he played all the instruments except drums himself. This role remains Reznor's on most of the band's studio recordings, though he has occasionally involved other musicians and assistants. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material, and Reznor signed with TVT Records. Chuck Klosterman surmised that Reznor was inspired by the sight of nine inch fingernails on Freddy Krueger. Reznor maintains that he coined the name because it "abbreviated easily", rather than for "any literal meaning". Reznor and Gary Talpas designed the Nine Inch Nails logo, which consists of the letters "NIN" set inside a border with the second "N" reversed. The logo first appeared on NIN's debut, "Down in It", and was inspired by Tibor Kalman's typography on the Talking Heads album Remain in Light. Talpas, a native of Cleveland, would continue to design NIN packaging art until 1997. Written, arranged, and performed by Trent Reznor, NIN's first album Pretty Hate Machine debuted in 1989. It marked Reznor's first collaboration with Adrian Sherwood (who produced the lead single "Down in It" in London, England without having met Reznor face-to-face) Reznor proclaimed this combination "a sincere statement" of "what was in [his] head at the time". After spending 113 weeks on the Billboard 200, Pretty Hate Machine became one of the first independently released records to attain platinum certification. Nine Inch Nails then embarked on a world tour that continued through the first Lollapalooza festival in 1991, where the band "stole the show" from headliners Jane's Addiction despite numerous equipment problems. After a disastrous European reception opening for Guns N' Roses, NIN returned to America amid pressure from TVT to produce a more commercial follow-up to Pretty Hate Machine. In response, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference.