The Last Goodbye

Twenty years.

That’s how long Trent Reznor has been playing live under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. Tonight marked the last night of the Wave Goodbye Tour. The Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, CA. They played 38 songs, with three encores, and tons of special guests, including Mike Garson (of David Bowie fame), Dave Navarro, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Atticus Ross (Trent’s main studio cohort), and Gary Numan.

I was first introduced to NIN through a friend in fifth grade. He kept writing the famous NIN insignia on all our clubhouse posters. I asked, “What’s NIN?” He said in a bratty tone, “It’s Nin. If you don’t know what it stands for, you can’t be in the club!”

He kept yelling “Have you heard ‘Hurt’?!” I responded, “No.” “You can’t be in the club! ‘Head Like a Hole’?” “No.” “Can’t be in the club.”

A day later I heard “Head Like a Hole” on a Time Life Metal compilation commercial on TV. Then I listened to the radio all night long, mainly during the Total Request hours, on Milwaukee's Lazer 103 for “Hurt”.

I got “Closer” instead.

Not long after that, “Closer” came on the radio while my mom was driving a group of the kids she babysat (we were all the same age, our younger siblings were also present, so roughly a group of 10 and 8 year olds). The snotty know-it-all was present. The song came on and I yelled, “Mom, turn it up! It’s . . .”, I turned to the know-it-all, “NINE – INCH – NAILS!”

He said “Oh, this is the bad song.” I could tell he hadn’t heard it, but he knew of it.

The famous chorus “I want to fuck you like an animal”, bleeped of course, but we still got it, sounded. My mom said, “Oh god . . .” yet continued to keep the song on. The entire car was silent. I had never heard anything that sounded remotely like it. I was currently into Weezer, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, grunge and post-grunge. This was synth, hard, and theatrical. It took what I loved about Genesis and Queen and turned it into something forbidden.

My mom said she liked the song, but not the lyrics.

We went to Blockbuster Video soon after that and picked up the Woodstock 94 video compilation. Nine Inch Nails’ “Happiness in Slavery” was featured on it. I had never seen an act like it. The band was covered in mud, Trent was throwing mic stands this way and that, it was seven minutes of noise, screaming, and intensity. I was spellbound.

My brother bought “Further Down the Spiral” around that time, since it was one of the few NIN releases to have been sans Parental Advisory sticker. I didn’t grasp the concept of the remix album, but I was still spellbound. My brother wouldn’t let me listen to the CD, so I snuck a listen at 5:00am one morning before school. Track 2, “The Art of Self Destruction, Part 1” was what did it. This song may forever go down as one of, if not THE, most inspirational pieces of my upbringing. That, “Closer”, and the Woodstock version of “Happiness in Slavery”.

I made it my mission to buy every single Halo (the cataloguing system Trent uses to make it easy to collect official releases of his work). Parental Advisory Halos were stashed at my dad’s, where they were allowed. They wouldn’t have been if they had heard “Closer” at the time. In eighth grade I showed my stepmom “The Downward Spiral” album. She forbid the CD ever to be within earshot after she heard “Closer”, “I Do Not Want This”, and “Big Man with a Gun”, all songs about fucking.

Anybody who knows my own music can tell you my two main influences. NIN was the first and most lasting. They will always be number one in my book. So, tonight is symbolic. It’s corny, but it’s bittersweet for me to say goodbye to a legend in a live sense. Trent will continue making music as NIN, but the live splendour will not be had any longer. I’ve seen NIN live five times. The best way to end my live experiences was at the Minneapolis “Lights in the Sky Tour” stop. Front and center for the biggest show NIN will ever put on.

And now, no more . . .

*NINE INCH NAILS -- LIVE AT THE WILTERN THEATER 9.10.09 -- "WISH"*


Nine Inch Nails -- "The Art of Self Destruction, Part One"