Happy 30th Birthday to a Beautifully Miserable Album

Friday is music. Playlists. Links. Deep dives. New. Old. Whatever, and wherever my whim takes me. Today, the 30th Anniversary of one of my favourite albums.

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of The Downward Spiral. One of my favourite albums. A record I loved at the time, and have always liked. It’s fair to say that love has only grown, and in recent years it’s been my profound favourite…

I know that last week I also celebrated some music from 1994. And there will be more as the year goes on, as I’m reminded. But I definitely had it planned to commemorate The Downward Spiral on its birthday; most weeks lately I think about writing about Reznor/NIN in some way…

1994 Was A Big Year For Women In Music For Me

When I first heard Nine Inch Nails it was frightening. (Pretty Hate Machine, Broken). And invigorating. It was so wildly different to what I was listening to at that time, but I was instantly interested. It was all at once a tiny bit metal, a tiny bit punk, a little bit (or a lot) goth, there was something ‘pop’ in there too (that reveals itself more across the years, across so many listens). And yeah, the catch—all was “Industrial” and I liked the idea of that even if I didn’t really know what it was or what it was meant to be. And of course I was the right age.

My teen years had been bliss — I was loved, supported, and quietly thriving. Outwardly I was a sports-obsessive, and though never an over-achiever, I was doing things. And getting them done. I was good enough at school, had a part-time job, was starting to write for small papers to build a journalism portfolio, had answered an ad to join my first ‘proper’ band, and was so lucky to be loved and protected by my two parents, in safe, little old Havelock North that the world was never going to crush me.

Privately, I enjoyed writing poetry, and obsessing over music. I started to enjoy darker, weirder movies — as well as all the mainstream dross. And through things like the music of Nine Inch Nails and Leonard Cohen, the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, and films like The Last Exit To Brooklyn and Once Were Warriors, I came to really enjoy ‘sadness’ as a concept. There’s no other way to put it, and it is the most privileged thing ever, but I took a certain comfort from the misery of others. Cruicially, not in the misery of others. I didn’t want them to suffer at all. But through absorbing things that were so profoundly different to my life, I got to see and feel how truly lucky I was. (When I had my first ‘breakup’ and thought I’d had my heart ripped out, so obviously not the case, I was cured in a day: I watched Last Exit To Brooklyn, The Wall and Once Were Warriors back to back. My life — even with a teen broken heart — was a paradise compared. Fixed!)

And in terms of the The Downward Spiral, it was also about external elements. I think that’s why the music has lasted. I discovered it as the secondary element. The real discovery of NIN and Spiral was at first all about the association with Charles Manson; Trent Reznor had rented 10050 Cielo Drive, the site of the murders of Sharon Tate and her associates by Manson Family members in 1969. He’d made the 1992 EP Broken there, and then 1994’s Downward Spiral album. I’m a sucker for almost anything with a Beatles connection, and the Manson story — and the way its tentacles writhe all through pop-culture.

The other huge element is Natural Born Killers. Its soundtrack was like another movie within the film.

The soundtrack was compiled by Trent Reznor, an Executive Producer credit or some such. But he’d also contributed a new piece for it (something Downward Spiral-adjacent) and tracks from the NIN catalogue. The soundtrack had an incedible impact on me. I can remember reading all about people like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson and how they “played” the studio, and I remember thinking that Reznor had “played” the soundtrack compilation in a similar way. In my mind at least.

So I wanted to like the album, The Downward Spiral. I was on board, you could say. Then the music did the rest of the work. Obviously, Closer was the ‘fun’ song, or funny song — its “I want to fuck you like an animal” line could only play for comedy to a bunch of privileged, middle class white teens. Our biggest crisis was if we had somehow blown our allowance on too many CDs and concert tickets that week, and might not have enough for a dozen, and a few pints at the pub that weekend…

But there’s another reading of Closer; the self-loathing, and pit of despair addiction; a character morphing into a grotesque cariacture of himself and phoning in some form of very flimsy bravado. Worse than that, he takes no pleasure in anything, sees everthing as a depravity for that is what he has become. The very visceral idea of “feeling”, as a crutch, a ‘clutch’ even, a very last-ditch effort, is all through The Downward Spiral, culminating of course in the harrowing final track, Hurt, with its sentiment of self-harm for the process of being able to feel anything outside of a numbness.

Look, it’s not lost on me that Reznor, who did battle a very real addiction, has a white, middle class, privileged background. He wasn’t — at this time, or in this way — a hero of mine. But it was on some level relatable. And for obvious reasons.

As I’ve grown up, and grown with not only Downward Sprial, but all Nine Inch Nails music, and then Reznor’s soundtrack work, I’ve seen Reznor grow as an artist.

I hear more in The Downward Spiral these days than I ever did back then. In 1994 and particularly 1995, NIN was some sort of symbol. Now I literally have the patch. I wear it on my jacket. As a reminder of those years, and how this enormously successful album that was adored by many was also still somehow private to me. You can do that. You can have something that is huge and cut a piece of it off and have it for yourself.

I think about that with this album all the time. And how, it’s the same with Leonard Cohen. My parents bought me that amazing collection of Cohen’s poetry and lyrics. They knew I liked poetry and this was their connection to that world. The world knew and adored Leonard Cohen, first as a writer for the page, then as a poet putting words to music for the stage. And all of this before I was even born. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t still have Cohen’s words for myself. It’s been one of my favourite books and companions ever since I first got it. And of course, Natural Born Killers is bookended by Cohen tracks. Songs chosen by Trent Reznor.

I would think about that when I’d be reading Stranger Music while listening to The Downward Spiral, later I might be reading about Charles Manson, or Trent Reznor, while listening to Cohen’s 1992 album, The Future. Which I loved long before I ever saw Natural Born Killers — and then loved even more after.

In 2000, I saw Nine Inch Nails live. It was mind-blowing. And if they weren’t already, from that moment on they’ve been one of my favourite bands, Reznor has been one of my favourite composers/producers. I grew into the music. At first it was some sort of membership card to a club I had no real claim to be connected to. But over the years the music has come to mean the world to me.

Happy 30th You Miserable (Beautiful) Album!

I really must rewatch Natural Born Killers, have not seen it in years, but it’s, oddly, been on my mind a lot lately. Yes, it will be cartoonish, but it was at the time. And everything is with some distance.

A Postscript: Downward Spiral was released March 8, 1994, and I knew about it shortly after and listened to it, but it was later that year with the Natural Born Killers soundtrack and film that I really got interested. And then in 1995, I moved out of home and into a uni hostel. I met many colourful characters. And likely was one myself. I’m lucky to still know many of those people. Some lifelong friends. We’ve been at each others weddings. Our kids have now met. Whole years will go by of course, but if in the same town, even passingly, we will connect. One person I met early on that year gave me a huge education around Nine Inch Nails, and some related music (Skinny Puppy, Ministry). Not all of it stuck, but I was so grateful for the NIN. And many of the other conversations. His name was Andre. I feel like there’s always an Andre that is introducing people to music; that is only in their life fleetingly. I have Andre to thank for a now lifelong love of The Downward Spiral and Nine Inch Nails. I wrote this recently, and thought of Andre for the first time in years. I hope he’s out there somewhere and doing okay.

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Here, completely different to all that, is Vol. 159 of our regular weekly playing. Happy weekend!