City, you’ll see somebody walking the streets and they’re pretty out of it? I was that person: hospitalized, homeless. It’s rare that somebody with the severity of what I had comes back.
I ended up returning to Youngstown because my mom and stepfather came back. As of 1989, I was in a group home. Around ’91, I was hanging out with guys who were high functioning. We were on disability checks but were able to get an apartment. We didn’t have jobs, and we were hanging out at Denny’s, going to see bands and getting high. We had no purpose, but we were always listening to cassettes, and that was what held us together. We’d go down to [the bar] Cedars, and we were into the local scene big-time. We knew all the cool bands that nobody had heard of.
My friend had a cassette of
Pretty Hate Machine
in ’92. It was the most powerful and profound thing I ever heard. To hear what this guy was saying … I was somebody who was in the mental-health system, and I was always trying to reach out of the hole to be normal. My life kind of consisted of partying and not having a good time. I was struggling to really exist and to be somebody. I heard that music and I felt like it became my voice.
The alternative scene was just catching on. I got so many gifts from that time, like PJ Harvey. Before that was punk—the Misfits and the Sex Pistols. I had the leather jacket, and I’d write things on the back. I felt close to Metallica on …
And Justice for All
. I heard paranoia and schizophrenia on the song “Dyers Eve”: “Dear Father/What is this hell/ You have put me through?” But that didn’t seem like what Trent was saying. NIN was so heavy, but it was something you could dance to, and headbangers had nothing to dance to. We weren’t too cool that we wouldn’t dance.
I could relate to music like
The Wall
when I was institutionalized in state hospitals. But NIN was something different, more one-on-one. Pink Floyd was more of a commercial thing, and Trent seemed to me like a guy over in the other county in Pennsylvania, and we were only a year apart.
The first song on
PHM
is “Head Like a Hole.” I think of him in the video. There are blips of jungle people, and you hear that sound:
whoo-ooo
! It’s like in
The Lord of the Rings
when they’re going off to war, fists pounding. To hear that song in a club on a good system, just pounding, beating—ah! I think “Head Like a Hole” grabbed me. I mean to hear that forever and ever.
At that time, I was living in a crappy apartment with little money. Everything was a struggle. To hear him say those lines with such vengeance and to hear that music—it blew me away. He sang, “I’d rather die than give you control.” I could relate. There were so many times I thought I was going to give up, but I would say, “I’d rather die than give
you
control.” I always said, “By the time I turn 30, if I’m not going to school or working, I’m going to give up,” but I chose not to.
The thing that blew me away about NIN was that industrial sound—before I knew of Gary Numan and called itindustrial. It was cool to understand what sampling was and to read the liner notes and see that he was using all these snippets of great music from other people. There was a little of everything in his music, like I heard new wave, but I really got that industrial sound, like Ministry and Skinny Puppy. Industrial was like a factory, thumping and pumping. His music was very sexual, too. He was sexual, everything about him. Being bipolar is like that. It comes and goes and when you’re really manic, you feel excited, like a little kid getting toys on Christmas. You don’t want to come down, and you think you’re connected with women sexually.
It wasn’t just the music that was sexual: it was how he said it. It was weird and kinky and perverted. Lou Reed sang about S&M, but I don’t think there was anything like that in the early nineties. Take, for example, the
Broken
video, where
I ended up returning to Youngstown because my mom and stepfather came back. As of 1989, I was in a group home. Around ’91, I was hanging out with guys who were high functioning. We were on disability checks but were able to get an apartment. We didn’t have jobs, and we were hanging out at Denny’s, going to see bands and getting high. We had no purpose, but we were always listening to cassettes, and that was what held us together. We’d go down to [the bar] Cedars, and we were into the local scene big-time. We knew all the cool bands that nobody had heard of.
My friend had a cassette of
Pretty Hate Machine
in ’92. It was the most powerful and profound thing I ever heard. To hear what this guy was saying … I was somebody who was in the mental-health system, and I was always trying to reach out of the hole to be normal. My life kind of consisted of partying and not having a good time. I was struggling to really exist and to be somebody. I heard that music and I felt like it became my voice.
The alternative scene was just catching on. I got so many gifts from that time, like PJ Harvey. Before that was punk—the Misfits and the Sex Pistols. I had the leather jacket, and I’d write things on the back. I felt close to Metallica on …
And Justice for All
. I heard paranoia and schizophrenia on the song “Dyers Eve”: “Dear Father/What is this hell/ You have put me through?” But that didn’t seem like what Trent was saying. NIN was so heavy, but it was something you could dance to, and headbangers had nothing to dance to. We weren’t too cool that we wouldn’t dance.
I could relate to music like
The Wall
when I was institutionalized in state hospitals. But NIN was something different, more one-on-one. Pink Floyd was more of a commercial thing, and Trent seemed to me like a guy over in the other county in Pennsylvania, and we were only a year apart.
The first song on
PHM
is “Head Like a Hole.” I think of him in the video. There are blips of jungle people, and you hear that sound:
whoo-ooo
! It’s like in
The Lord of the Rings
when they’re going off to war, fists pounding. To hear that song in a club on a good system, just pounding, beating—ah! I think “Head Like a Hole” grabbed me. I mean to hear that forever and ever.
At that time, I was living in a crappy apartment with little money. Everything was a struggle. To hear him say those lines with such vengeance and to hear that music—it blew me away. He sang, “I’d rather die than give you control.” I could relate. There were so many times I thought I was going to give up, but I would say, “I’d rather die than give
you
control.” I always said, “By the time I turn 30, if I’m not going to school or working, I’m going to give up,” but I chose not to.
The thing that blew me away about NIN was that industrial sound—before I knew of Gary Numan and called itindustrial. It was cool to understand what sampling was and to read the liner notes and see that he was using all these snippets of great music from other people. There was a little of everything in his music, like I heard new wave, but I really got that industrial sound, like Ministry and Skinny Puppy. Industrial was like a factory, thumping and pumping. His music was very sexual, too. He was sexual, everything about him. Being bipolar is like that. It comes and goes and when you’re really manic, you feel excited, like a little kid getting toys on Christmas. You don’t want to come down, and you think you’re connected with women sexually.
It wasn’t just the music that was sexual: it was how he said it. It was weird and kinky and perverted. Lou Reed sang about S&M, but I don’t think there was anything like that in the early nineties. Take, for example, the
Broken
video, where
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