Trent Reznor

Early life

Michael Trent Reznor was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1965, the son of Nancy Lou (née Clark) and Michael Reznor. He is of German and Irish descent, and grew up in Mercer. His great-grandfather, George Reznor, founded the heating and air conditioning manufacturer Reznor Company in 1884. After his parents divorced when he was six years old, Reznor's sister Tera lived with their mother while he went to live with his maternal grandparents. He began playing the piano at the age of 12 and showed an early aptitude for music. His grandfather told People in February 1995, "He was a good kid [...] a Boy Scout who loved to skateboard, build model planes, and play the piano. Music was his life, from the time he was a wee boy. He was so gifted."

Reznor has acknowledged that his sheltered life left him feeling isolated from the outside world. In a September 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, he said of his career choices, "I don't know why I want to do these things, other than my desire to escape from Small Town, U.S.A., to dismiss the boundaries, to explore. It isn't a bad place where I grew up, but there was nothing going on but the cornfields. My life experience came from watching movies, watching TV and reading books and looking at magazines. And when your culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you." However, in April 1995, he told Details that he did not "want to give the impression it was a miserable childhood".

Reznor would later recall, "The first concert I ever saw was the Eagles in 1976. The excitement of the night struck a chord with me and I remember thinking, 'Someday I'd love to be up on that stage.'" At Mercer Area Junior/Senior High School, he learned to play the tenor saxophone and tuba, and was a member of both the jazz band and marching band. The school's former band director remembered him as "very upbeat and friendly". He became involved in theater while in high school, being awarded the "Best in Drama" accolade by his classmates for his roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man. He graduated in 1983 and enrolled at Allegheny College in Meadville, where he studied computer engineering.

Career

Early projects

While still in high school, Reznor joined local band Option 30 and played three shows a week with them. After a year of college, he dropped out to pursue a career in music in Cleveland, Ohio. His first band in Cleveland was the Urge, a cover band. In 1985, he joined The Innocent as a keyboardist; they released one album, Livin' in the Street, but Reznor left the band after three months. In 1986, he joined local band Exotic Birds and appeared with them as a fictional band called The Problems in the 1987 film Light of Day. During this time, Reznor also contributed on keyboards to the band Slam Bamboo and briefly joined the new wave band Lucky Pierre.

Reznor got a job at Cleveland's Right Track Studio as an assistant engineer and janitor. Studio owner Bart Koster later commented, "He is so focused in everything he does. When that guy waxed the floor, it looked great." Reznor asked Koster for permission to record 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".

Nine Inch Nails

While assembling the earliest Nine Inch Nails 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. He continued in this role on most Nine Inch Nails studio recordings, though he has occasionally involved other musicians, assistants, drummers, and rhythm experts. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material, and Reznor signed with TVT Records. Nine selections from the Right Track demos were unofficially released years later in 1994 as Purest Feeling and many of these songs appeared in revised form on Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor's first official release under the Nine Inch Nails name.

Pretty Hate Machine was released in 1989 and was a moderate commercial success, certified Gold in 1992. Amid pressure from his record label to produce a follow-up to Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference, resulting in an EP called Broken (1992). Nine Inch Nails was included in the Lollapalooza tour in the summer of 1991, and won a Grammy Award in 1993 under "Best Heavy Metal Performance" for the song "Wish".

Nine Inch Nails's second full-length album, The Downward Spiral, entered the Billboard 200 chart in 1994 at number two, and remains the highest-selling Nine Inch Nails release in America. To record the album, Reznor rented and moved into the 10050 Cielo Drive mansion, where the Tate–LaBianca murders had been perpetrated by the Manson Family in 1969. He built a studio space in the house, which he renamed Le Pig, after the word that was scrawled on the front door in Sharon Tate's blood by her murderers. Reznor told Entertainment Weekly that, despite the notoriety attached to the house, he chose to record there because he "looked at a lot of places, and this just happened to be the one I liked most". He explained that he was fascinated by the house due to his interest in "American folklore", but has stated that he does not "want to support serial-killer bullshit."

Nine Inch Nails toured extensively over the next few years, including a performance at Woodstock '94, although Reznor admitted to the audience that he did not like to play large venues. Around this time, Reznor's studio perfectionism, struggles with addiction, and bouts of writer's block prolonged the production of a follow-up to The Downward Spiral.

Collaboration with other artists

One of Reznor's earliest collaborations was a Ministry side project in 1990 under the name of 1000 Homo DJs. Reznor sang vocals on a cover of Black Sabbath's "Supernaut". Due to legal issues with his label, Reznor's vocals had to be distorted to make his voice unrecognizable. The band also recorded additional versions with Al Jourgensen doing vocals. While there is still debate as to which version is Reznor and which is Jourgensen, it has been definitively stated that Reznor's vocals were used in the TVT Records's Black Box box set. He also performed with another of Jourgensen's side projects, Revolting Cocks, in 1990. He said: "I saw a whole side of humanity that I didn't know existed. It was decadence on a new level, but with a sense of humor."

Reznor sang the vocals on the 1991 Pigface track "Suck" from their first album Gub, which also featured production work from Steve Albini. Reznor sang backing vocals on "Past the Mission" on Tori Amos's 1994 album Under the Pink. He produced Marilyn Manson's first album, Portrait of an American Family (1994), and several tracks on Manson's Smells Like Children (1995) and Antichrist Superstar (1996). "I went right into doing a Manson record", Reznor recalled of the latter, "which was a way of staying on tour, mentally. Every night was some ridiculous scenario. When that finished, I was really in a low emotional place, disillusioned."

Relations between Reznor and Manson subsequently soured. Manson later said: "I had to make a choice between being friends and having a mediocre career, or breaking things off and continuing to succeed. It got too competitive. And he can't expect me not to want to be more successful than him."

In the video for David Bowie's "I'm Afraid of Americans" (1997), Reznor plays a stalker who shows up wherever Bowie goes. In a 2016 Rolling Stone article after Bowie's death, Reznor recalled how touring with Bowie in 1995–96 inspired Reznor to stay sober.

Reznor produced a remix of The Notorious B.I.G.'s song "Victory", featuring Busta Rhymes, in 1998. Under the name Tapeworm, Reznor collaborated for nearly 10 years with Danny Lohner, Maynard James Keenan, and Atticus Ross, but the project was eventually terminated before any official material was released. The only known released Tapeworm material is a reworked version of a track called "Vacant" (retitled "Passive") on A Perfect Circle's 2004 album eMOTIVe, as well as a track "Potions (Deliverance Mix)" on Puscifer's 2009 remix EP.

How to Destroy Angels

In April 2010, it was announced that Reznor had formed a new band with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross, called How to Destroy Angels. The group digitally released a self-titled six song EP on June 1, 2010, with the retail edition becoming available on July 6, 2010. They covered the Bryan Ferry song "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" for the soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was released on December 9, 2011.

On September 21, 2012, Reznor announced that the group's next release would be an EP titled An Omen EP, set for release on Columbia Records in November 2012, and that some of the EP's songs would later appear on the band's first full-length album in 2013. On October 8, 2012, they released a song and music video from An Omen EP titled "Keep it Together". How to Destroy Angels announced in January 2013 that their first full-length album titled Welcome Oblivion would be released on March 5 of the same year.

As an independent artist

Following the release of Year Zero, Reznor announced later that Nine Inch Nails had split from its contractual obligations with Interscope Records, and would distribute its next major albums independently. In May 2008 Reznor founded The Null Corporation and Nine Inch Nails released the studio album The Slip as a free digital download. In his appreciation for his following and fan base, and having no contractual obligation, he made "The Slip" available for free on his website, stating "This one's on me." A month and a half after its online release, The Slip had been downloaded 1.4 million times from the official Nine Inch Nails website.

In February 2009, Reznor posted his thoughts about the future of Nine Inch Nails on NIN.com, stating that "I've been thinking for some time now it's time to make NIN disappear for a while." Reznor noted in an interview on the official website that while he has not stopped creating music as Nine Inch Nails, the group will not be touring in the foreseeable future.

The original music from id Software's 1996 video game Quake is credited to "Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails"; Reznor helped record sound effects and ambient audio, and the NIN logo appears on the nailgun ammunition boxes in the game. Reznor's association with id Software began with Reznor being a fan of the original Doom. He reunited with id Software in 2003 as the sound engineer for Doom 3, though due to "time, money and bad management", he had to abandon the project, and his audio work did not make it into the game's final release.

Nine Inch Nails's 2007 major studio recording, Year Zero, was released alongside an accompanying alternate reality game. With its lyrics written from the perspective of multiple fictitious characters, Reznor described Year Zero as a concept album criticizing the United States government's current policies and how they will affect the world 15 years in the future. In July 2012, it was announced that Reznor had composed and performed the theme music for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

In December 2024, it was announced that Reznor and Ross would score Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

In 1994, Reznor produced the soundtrack for Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers, using a portable Pro Tools setup in his hotel room. For the film, Nine Inch Nails recorded a song "Burn". For The Crow soundtrack, the group recorded a cover version of Joy Division's "Dead Souls".

Business activity

Dispute with John Malm

In 2004, Reznor's former manager John Malm Jr. filed a suit against Reznor for over $2 million (~$3.17 million in 2024) in deferred commissions. The suit alleged that Reznor "reneged on every single contract he and Malm ever entered into" and that Reznor refused to pay Malm money to which he was contractually entitled.

Weeks later, Reznor filed a counter-suit in the U.S. District Court of New York, charging Malm with fraud and breach of fiduciary duties. Reznor's suit arose from a five-year management contract signed in the early days of Nine Inch Nails, between Reznor and Malm's management company J. Artist Management. This contract, according to the suit, was unlawful and immoral in that it secured Malm 20% of Reznor's gross earnings, rather than his net earnings, as is the standard practice between artists and their management. The suit also alleged that the contract secured this percentage even if Malm was no longer representing Reznor, and for all Reznor's album advances. The suit also described how Malm had misappropriated the ownership rights regarding Nine Inch Nails, including the trademark name "NIИ". According to testimony by Malm, Reznor gave him half of the "NIИ" trademark "as a gift".

Reznor stated that he began to fully understand his financial situation after tackling his drug addiction. Reznor requested a financial statement from Malm in 2003, only to discover that he had only $400,000 (~$651,760 in 2024) in liquid assets. He told the court, "It was not pleasant discovering you have a tenth as much as you've been told you have." Malm's lawyers, however, claimed that Malm had worked for years "pro bono", and that Reznor's inability to release an album or tour and his uninhibited spending were the reasons for Reznor's financial situation. After a three-week trial in 2005, jurors sided with Reznor, awarding him upwards of $2.95 million and returning to him complete control of his trademarks. After adjustment for inflation, Reznor's award rose to nearly $5 million.

Beats Music

In January 2013, Reznor and TopSpin Media founder Ian Rogers were chosen to head Beats Electronics's new music subscription service, Project Daisy, described by Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine as having "hardware, brand, distribution partnerships, and artist relations to differentiate Daisy from the competition". There was some speculation as to what Reznor's role would be within the company, but he was later named chief creative officer. He promised that he and the other members would strive to create a music subscription service that will be like "having your own guy when you go to the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn't have necessarily encountered". The service was officially launched in the United States on January 21, 2014.

Reznor continued on in a similar role under Beats's new ownership at Apple, where he was involved in the launch of Apple Music. He later left Apple, noting working there "felt at odds with the artist in me."

Future Ruins festival

In May 2025, Reznor and Ross announced a one-day music and arts festival Future Ruins, to be held in November 2025 at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. The event, organized by a special-purpose entity Future Remains, focuses on film score composers along with DJ sets of electronic music.

The billed artists included John Carpenter, Danny Elfman, Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, Claudio Simonetti's Goblin, Cristobal Tapia de Veer, and Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka.

The festival was cancelled on October 3, 2025 due to "logistical challenges and complications."

Criticism of the music industry

In May 2007, Reznor made a post on the official Nine Inch Nails website condemning Universal Music Group—the parent company of the band's record label, Interscope Records—for their pricing and distribution plans for Nine Inch Nails's 2007 album Year Zero. He labeled the company's retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia as "ABSURD", concluding that "as a reward for being a 'true fan' you get ripped off". Reznor went on to say that as "the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more." Reznor's post, specifically his criticism of the recording industry at large, elicited considerable media attention. In September 2007, Reznor continued his attack on Universal Music Group at a concert in Australia, urging fans there to "steal" his music online instead of purchasing it legally. Reznor went on to encourage the crowd to "steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'."

While on tour in Prague in 2009, Reznor considered the marketing aspect of a major label when he saw a lot of promotion for Radiohead's then-upcoming tour, contrasting with little promotion for his current Nine Inch Nails tour or any of its recently released albums. At a 2012 panel discussion with David Byrne and Josh Kun, Reznor stated that the marketing from a major label outweighed the aspects of being independent that he liked, namely the ability to release albums whenever he wanted to avoid leaking and to take a larger cut of the profits from record sales. Reznor's first album released through a major label after his return was How to Destroy Angels's An Omen EP released in November 2012 through Columbia Records. On working with Columbia for the release of the EP, Reznor said that "so far it's been pleasantly pleasant".

In 2013, Reznor returned to Columbia Records for Hesitation Marks, the eighth Nine Inch Nails studio album. On the Columbia release of Hesitation Marks, Reznor has stated: "I'm trying to make the best thing I can make... and I also want as many people as possible to be aware that it's out there."

Influences and musical style

Reznor possesses a baritone vocal range. Reznor was initially inspired to create music after seeing the Eagles perform in 1976. He would later recall, "The excitement of the night struck a chord with me and I remember thinking, 'Someday I'd love to be up on that stage.'" Upon forming Nine Inch Nails, Reznor stated that he was initially influenced most by the Clash, even outright trying to imitate them. Another early influence was English musician Gary Numan, with Reznor once saying that he knew he wanted to make music with synthesizers after hearing Numan's song "Cars". This was exemplified years later on the Nine Inch Nails song "Only" of 2005, whose disco-style beats and synthesizers draw from Numan's style. Other English synth-pop acts, including Soft Cell and OMD, gained a foothold on American radio during Reznor's youth, and became influential on his musical trajectory. Reznor mentioned that college radio introduced him to acts such as the English gothic rock band Bauhaus (naming their lead singer, Peter Murphy, as one of his idols), as well as the English bands Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle, which were very inspirational for him. Reznor also said he saw the first Nine Inch Nails song he wrote, "Down in It", as a "total rip-off" of the 1986 song "Dig It" by Canadian band Skinny Puppy.

Reznor's work was described by People magazine in 1995 as "self-loathing, sexual obsession, torture and suicide over a thick sludge of gnashing guitars and computer-synthesized beats". The magazine also said that "[Reznor], like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne before him, has built his name on theatrics and nihilism". Nine Inch Nails concerts were often picketed by fundamentalist Christians. Despite the gloomy public image that surrounded Reznor from then on, his former high school band director considered him to be "very upbeat and friendly" in reality and theorized that "all that 'dark avenging angel' stuff is marketing". Conversely, the owner of the recording studio where Reznor recorded the album Pretty Hate Machine said of Reznor's "pain-driven" stage act, "It's planned, but it is not contrived. He's pulling that stuff out from inside somewhere. You cannot fake that delivery." Pain and sorrow came to be regarded as such defining elements of Reznor's music that a group of fans once responded to the news that his dog had died with comments like "it's good for his music when he is depressed" and that "it's good to see [Reznor] back in Hell, where he belongs".

Reznor expressed the significant influence that English experimental band Coil had on his work, saying that their 1986 album Horse Rotorvator was "deeply influential". In many interviews, he has also mentioned important influences on him from American, English, Irish, and Scottish acts such as The Cars, Devo, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Pere Ubu, Prince, Ministry, Test Dept, Cabaret Voltaire and The Cure's 1985 album, The Head on the Door. According to American musician Todd Rundgren, Reznor told him that he listened to Rundgren's 1973 album A Wizard, a True Star with "great regularity".

Legacy

Reznor's work as Nine Inch Nails has influenced many newer artists, which according to Reznor range from "generic imitations" dating from the band's initial success to younger bands echoing his style in a "truer, less imitative way". Following the release of The Downward Spiral, mainstream artists began to take notice of Nine Inch Nails' influence: David Bowie compared NIN's impact to that of The Velvet Underground. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music". Bob Ezrin, producer for Pink Floyd, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Peter Gabriel, described Reznor in 2007 as a "true visionary" and advised aspiring artists to take note of his no-compromise attitude. During an appearance at the Kerrang! Awards in London that year, Reznor accepted the Kerrang! Icon, honoring Nine Inch Nails' long-standing influence on rock music.

Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose, an early supporter of Nine Inch Nails, was heavily influenced by Reznor in the writing and composition of the band's Chinese Democracy album. Steven Wilson of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree has stated that he is influenced by and much admires Reznor's production work, in particular The Fragile, and in 2008 said that "[Reznor] is the only one [he'd] let near [his] music".

Indonesian singer Anggun said that Reznor was "the man of my musical life", and that The Fragile was "the album that changed my life."

Writing for Revolver magazine on the 25th anniversary of Broken, musician Greg Puciato stated that one of the few vivid musical memories of his teenage years was listening to the EP at age 12, front-to-back, in the first digipak he had seen. Later, after discovering the story behind its release, it became a giant influence on him, particularly "when it comes to [his] own artistic path or output". Timbaland has cited Reznor as his favorite studio producer. Drummer Chris Pennie of the Dillinger Escape Plan said The Fragile changed his compositional mindset from drums to production, as he was "blown away" by its dense yet elegant mix and vocal ideas. He called it one of his two favorite albums of all time.

Personal life

Reznor suffered from depression over the five years following the release of The Downward Spiral in 1994, which was worsened by the death of his maternal grandmother, who raised him; he began abusing alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs, attempting rehab but failing. While on tour in London in 2000, he overdosed on China White, a fentanyl analog he had mistaken for cocaine. He returned to rehab and completed it in 2001. He said in 2006, "There was a persona that had run its course. I needed to get my priorities straight, my head screwed on. [...] I took a couple of years off, just to figure out who I was and working out if I wanted to keep doing this or not." He also said that he was now "pretty happy".

Reznor lived for many years in the Garden District of New Orleans until 2005, when he sold his home to actor John Goodman and moved to Los Angeles. He married Filipino-American singer Mariqueen Maandig in October 2009. They live in Los Angeles and have six children together.

Discography

Notes

^[a] score includes original recordings by Mogwai and Gustavo Santaolalla

^[b] score includes original songs by Jon Batiste

Awards and nominations

In 2011, Reznor and Ross won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and the Academy Award for Best Original Score for their work on The Social Network.

For their work on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Reznor and Ross were nominated for the 2012 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and won the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. Neither man was present to accept the award; Reznor, who has a contentious history with the Grammys, simply tweeted, "Why thanks, y'all."

Ross and Reznor's Gone Girl score was nominated for Best Original Score in a Feature Film at the 5th Hollywood Music in Media Awards (HMMA)—the award was eventually won by Antonio Sanchez for Birdman on November 4, 2014. In a November 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reznor revealed that he values Oscar trophies above Grammy awards: "When the Oscar [nomination] came up, it felt very different. I can't tell if that's because I'm older or it felt like it's coming from a more sincere pedigree."

Reznor and Ross won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series and were nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for their work on the series Watchmen. In 2021, they won their second Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score (this time shared with Jon Batiste) and second Academy Award for Best Original Score, both for the Pixar film Soul. In 2025, Reznor and Ross won a third Golden Globe for Best Original Score, for their work in Challengers (2024).