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Even Deeper # 3-Fragility Part 4Mar 14 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Part 4 is a look at the successful Fragility world tour as NIN goes to war against the Corporate world and TRL.
NIN vs. Music Corporations as Fragility Continues: 2000-2001 As 2000 begins, Nine Inch Nails was already having trouble selling records for their album “The Fragile” and their 3-CD single for “We’re In This Together” released in December of 1999 wasn’t doing well on radio and MTV. Despite those troubles, Trent Reznor and his cohorts moved on to rehearse for their next part of the Fragility world tour. In early January after rehearsals, NIN left for Japan as they began their very first tour of the country starting on January 10, 2000 in Tokyo. The five-date sell-out tour of Japan was a huge success for NIN as they played three straight sell-out shows in Tokyo’s Bay NK Hall and two other shows in Yokohama and Osaka. After the Japan tour ended on January 15, the band was ready to board a flight to New Zealand, as they become a part of the biggest Australian and New Zealand music festival known as Big Day Out. The Big Day Out music festival was known for bringing the world’s greatest acts to play some of the biggest venues in New Zealand and Australia and in 2000, the line-up for Big Day Out was no bigger than anything in its previous year or since. Headlining the Big Day 2000 festival aside from NIN were Alternative Rock kingpins the Red Hot Chili Peppers along with Foo Fighters, Chemical Brothers, Atari Teenage Riot, legendary Clash singer Joe Strummer, and several other artists including some local bands from New Zealand and Australia. For Trent Reznor and his cohorts, it was a chance not only to play with some of their peers to but also look at the scenery of New Zealand and Australia while hanging out with other bands. The festival started in Auckland, New Zealand on January 21, 2000 to 40,000 people waiting to see their favorite bands. While Foo Fighters and Chemical Brothers put out good performances, it was NIN and the Chili Peppers who made fans go crazy. Even though NIN was performing before the Chili Peppers, fans of both groups put on great performances as the tour went to Australia. On the Australian part of the tour, the festival was becoming a huge success and a lot of credit went to the Chili Peppers and NIN for making Big Day Out a huge attraction. During the Australian part of the tour, NIN spent a lot of time partying with other bands including the Chili Peppers where NIN guitarist Robin Finck sent a video message to fans via Internet where he talked about hanging out with the Chili Peppers and drinking a lot of alcoholic lemonade. While the backstage partying just included a lot of alcoholic fruit beverages, it wasn’t good for Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl when he got arrested for driving drunk on a moped and the publicity turned out to be a laughable incident for festival. Trent and his NIN cohorts later described the Big Day Out festival as “one bad hangover after another” since they had too much fun with their fans and all the other bands. When the band played their last show on the Big Day Out in mid-February of 2000, Trent learned news that “The Fragile” is out of the Billboard 200 album charts after six months of its release. The third NIN single for “Into The Void” didn’t well on the charts or on MTV even though the video for the song received a Breakthrough label for its new approach on music videos. NIN returned home to New Orleans to take a break and concentrate plans on their upcoming U.S. tour. While at home in New Orleans, Reznor also learned that his phone calls to Interscope Records haven’t been returned and the label has been giving him trouble over not just the poor sales of “The Fragile” but the sales of the legendary Alternative Rock band The The who had signed with Reznor’s Nothing label in 1998 and their 2000 album “Nakedself” was doing well worldwide and modest in the U.S. but Interscope wasn’t impressed and wanted Reznor and The The’s leader Matt Johnson to do more commercially-driven music. The two wouldn’t and Reznor who had been in label troubles before in the early 90s with TVT was now facing newer problems with Interscope on the subject of commerce vs. art. While Reznor learned about the truths of the record industry and realized he had to fund the tour by himself with help from MTV2 who decided to sponsor the tour, Reznor decided to focus on the tour dates and the upcoming NIN video for the song “Starf*ckers, Inc.”. For the past few years, Reznor and his former protégé Marilyn Manson had not been the best of friends since their fallout in late 1996 and the two had become estranged. When fans heard the song for “Starf*ckers, Inc.” back in late 1999 and Reznor’s fallout with Marilyn Manson, many fans of Manson felt betrayed giving that Manson wouldn’t have success if it wasn’t for Trent Reznor. While Reznor admitted the song was partially about Manson, he also felt the song was kind of misinterpreted as a song being only about Manson when really, it was about the concept of celebrity. Reznor and Manson started to talk about the video for the song where it made fun of the idea of celebrity. Shot in early April in Los Angeles while the band was rehearsing for their U.S., which was to start in Cleveland, Reznor and Manson shot the video for “Starf*ckers, Inc.” that featured Reznor in a limo with Manson in drag in a carnival where Reznor throws balls at the faces of celebrity including Gene Simmons of Kiss, Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Garth Brooks, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit who Reznor and Manson had both been having a verbal feud with and was one of the reasons for Reznor’s troubles with Interscope since Durst is the vice-president of the label. Another moment in the video included a scene where a fat woman who plays Hole singer Courtney Love, an enemy of both Reznor and Manson, gets dunked into a water tank after Reznor throws a ball into the target. For Courtney Love, it was an unexpected shot from her two enemies. She continued to feud with Manson while Reznor just walked away feeling a sense of closure from his war with Courtney. After finishing the video, NIN continued rehearsals for their upcoming U.S. tour while working on a stage set that featured film collages from David Carson and lighting from noted lighting director Mark Brickman who was famous for his lighting work with Pink Floyd. After rehearsals and final stage preparations including a preview show in Los Angeles, NIN was ready and set for the tour opener in Cleveland, Ohio. On April 12, 2000 as NIN was ready to play the first show of their U.S. tour dubbed Fragility v 2.0, an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper released an interview with Trent Reznor as he discussed his problems with Interscope and its chiefs at Universal along with his thoughts on the current music scene where he felt has now become highly manufactured by record companies and svengalis that makes people unsure who the real artists are and are they making music that are from them rather than moneymakers. Later on that day, fans flocked to the first NIN U.S. show in nearly four years. Opening for NIN for the U.S. tour was a new band called A Perfect Circle that was a side project from Tool singer Maynard James Keenan and former NIN guitar tech Billy Howerdel. A Perfect Circle gave a hard rocking performance that featured songs from their upcoming debut album “Mer de Noms” and NIN fans were impressed by the sounds of A Perfect Circle. Then, NIN took the stage as the band played behind a curtain on the song “Somewhat Damaged” that was reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s 1980 show for “The Wall” when the band played behind a wall of cardboard bricks. When “Terrible Lie” blasted, the curtains came down and a sell-out crowd of 9,000 screaming fans at the CSU Convocation Centre went nuts as NIN played classics and new songs while lights flashed at a pulsating pace along with three visuals screen displaying David Carson’s film collages of dripping rain and other psychedelic-like visuals. The NIN show in Cleveland was a huge success with reviews from several music publications calling the NIN Fragility v 2.0 tour a must-see tour and a bright alternative to the over-the-top extravagance of shows from the Backstreet Boys, ‘Nsync, and Britney Spears. While the NIN show was getting rave reviews and gained several sell-out shows including two sell-out dates in Chicago, the tour was widely ignored by MTV and its TRL crowd along with a bad review from a local critic in Chicago calling the NIN show at the UIC Pavilion on April 21, 2000 “unfashionable” and felt NIN isn’t cool enough in the new world of rap-metal and teen-pop. Reznor responded to that criticism on the second show a few days later asking fans if they had that article so he could wipe his *ss with it and told fans the real music that’s “unfashionable” is the one that’s being played on the radio and MTV. That response proved that Reznor would be ready for a fight against any detractor who dares criticize his music or his band Nine Inch Nails. Shortly after that second Chicago show, Reznor along Danny Lohner, Robin Finck, and Jerome Dillon performed an acoustic-like session of the song “The Day The World Went Away” backstage that became the catalyst for Reznor’s next project as he continued his successful American tour. After playing successful shows in parts of Canada and the U.S. in the east coast, NIN was ready to play a huge sell-out show in New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden on May 9, 2000. As MTV premiered the NIN video for “Starf*ckers, Inc.” on TRL, fans were surprised to see Marilyn Manson in the video and wondered if the did make amends with Trent Reznor. Fans got to find out at the band’s Madison Square Garden show during their performance of “Starf*cker, Inc.” where Marilyn Manson appeared and sang the rest of the song along with a performance of the Manson song “The Beautiful People” that made fans go extremely nuts and reviews of the show buzzed about their performance and reunion. A day later, Reznor and Manson went to MTV not only to talk about the cancellation of the second NIN show in New York City citing Reznor’s throat problems but their thoughts on the current music scene and taking shots on Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst for his egotistical and child-like behavior. After the New York appearance, Manson returned to Los Angeles to work on his album “Holywood” while NIN continued their U.S. tour through the south and the American west coast. During a stop in Miami, Reznor taped an MTV2 marathon special of his favorite videos that included videos from Public Enemy, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain, Pantera, A Tribe Called Quest, Altered Images, David Bowie, and many more along with an interview with Chris Booker about Napster, the current music scene, his favorite videos, and the Spice Girls which Trent admitted about liking them the first time he saw them. The video marathon along with a two-hour special of the NIN U.S. tour was shown on Memorial Day weekend, as NIN was still popular among music fans that didn’t like anything in the mainstream. While the tour was doing well among the heavy competition of teen-pop acts and old rockers like Bruce Springsteen and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Reznor decided to hire a film crew to film a few shows of the band’s U.S. tour as Reznor was having thoughts on releasing a live album. While approaching the latter part of the tour, Reznor saw the finished product from the film crew he hired and found himself unhappy with the results. The concert film looked like a concert that was shot as if people were watching it on HBO or on Pay-Per-View with wide camera shots and stuff. Reznor scrapped the original film and called for a meeting with his band along with engineers Keith Hillebrandt and Leo Herrera and NIN Webmaster Rob Sheridan about the film and decided to buy several digital cameras for the remaining shows of the U.S. tour. There, the band would get a chance to document the tour up-close from a fan’s point of view or from the view of the stage not only to give the film a sense of intimacy with the audience but a feeling of the fact that they were there on that tour. When the tour ended in Denver, Colorado on June 18, 2000, NIN returned to New Orleans to take a small break and prepare plans for a tour of festivals in Europe. Their festival tour started on June 23, 2000 at England’s biggest music Glastonbury where the band played to huge crowd while people waited for the big headliner, David Bowie. The band continued playing music festivals in Germany, Norway, France, Austria, Italy, and Denmark where the band played the ill-fated Roskilde festival on June 29, 2000 that was a day before Pearl Jam played their performance where nine people were crushed to death in a mudslide as Pearl Jam tried to get fans away from the stage but were unable to. On July 1, 2000, NIN was forced to cancel a festival appearance in London’s Lost Weekend festival due to drummer Jerome Dillon’s bout with the flu and the cancellation disappointed many fans. On July 9, 2000 at the Monza festival in Milan, Italy, NIN finally finished their world tour and went home to New Orleans. When NIN returned to New Orleans, the band decided to take an extended break from NIN. Charlie Clouser went home to Vermont where his family was to take a vacation while Robin Finck decided to return to Los Angeles to continue working with Guns N’ Roses on their upcoming album and doing some shows with them for a New Years Eve show in Las Vegas along with an appearance at the 2001 Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro. After Reznor took a break, he decided to focus on finishing up a remix album for NIN with mixes from Clouser, Danny Lohner, Keith Hillebrandt and other mixers including Beneli, Telefon Tel Aviv, “The Fragile” producer Alan Moulder, and “Pretty Hate Machine” producer Adrian Sherwood. Aside from the upcoming remix EP titled “Things Falling Apart”, Reznor looked at the digital camera shots the band took during the latter part of the U.S. tour. Reznor and NIN Webmaster Rob Sheridan realized that the shots they took not only captured the feel that Reznor wanted for the film but also learned they had the technology to create it into a DVD project. Reznor, who is a fan of Apple Computers, used the new filmmaking software that Apple Computers made to not only edit the film but used the audio configurations to give the live music a sound as if the fan was at a concert. In the fall of 2000, Reznor finally finished the “Things Falling Apart” remix EP and was trying to put a release date for the record but was delayed several times by Interscope including for a period of time, the record was going to be released on the same day the new Limp Bizkit record “The Chocolate Starfish & Hot Dog Flavored Water” was going to be released that included a title track that featured lyrics of NIN songs like “The Perfect Drug” and “Closer” where Fred Durst says the word “f*ck” about forty-five times as a dis to NIN. NIN fans and Reznor found the track laughable and critics panned the new Limp Bizkit record as the backlash for the rap-metal band finally began underway. “Things Falling Apart” was then finally pushed to a late November release date where the record would be released on the same day the new Backstreet Boys album “Black & Blue” came out. While working on the DVD, Reznor worked relentlessly on the DVD and only taking breaks to see movies, work on music, or see concerts including a show from his pal Marilyn Manson. In mid-October, Revolver magazine asked Reznor for an interview to promote his upcoming remix EP “Things Falling Apart”. Revolver also told Reznor that would be interviewed alongside one of his biggest heroes in rock music, former Pink Floyd bassist/leader Roger Waters. Roger Waters had been the leader of the art-rock band from 1968 to 1985 where he was the mastermind behind such classic albums as “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Wish You Were Here”, and “The Wall”. After leaving Pink Floyd in 1985, Waters started a solo career where he challenged himself as an artist and songwriter with such albums as “The Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking” and “Amused To Death”. In 2000, Waters was ready to release a new live album “In The Flesh-Live” that showcased his highly successful U.S. tour in 1999 and 2000. Reznor flew to New York City for the interview anticipating the chance to meet one of his biggest heroes in rock music. For music fans, it was a meeting of the minds as a legend like Roger Waters meet a young genius like Trent Reznor. Some even compared Reznor to Waters on musical and artistic drive. For Waters, it was a chance to connect with rock music’s new generation although he had never heard of the music of Nine Inch Nails nor its leader Trent Reznor. Waters at first thought Reznor was going to be this wild rock star, instead, he saw a calm person who was excited to meet his hero. The interview showcased Reznor and Waters’ troubles with the record industry along with the struggle of being an artist in a highly competitive world of commerce. Waters knew about the troubles more than Reznor did and told him to just be himself and do whatever he wants even if the record company doesn’t like it. The two also talked about live performing and their upcoming DVD projects where Waters was surprised at the technological approach that Reznor was taking on his DVD and couldn’t believe how driven he was. At the end of the interview, Waters asked Reznor to send him all the NIN records so he could learn the music of NIN and for Reznor; he felt he gained an admirer in Waters. In late November of 2000, “Things Falling Apart” was released as NIN fans waited to hear the NIN remixes to see if it was good as previous remix records like “Fixed” or “Further Down The Spiral”. Instead, fans and critics had mixed reviews of the remix record citing the remixes felt lifeless and the fact there was one too many remixes of the song “Starf*ckers, Inc.”. Despite the lukewarm response to that record, Reznor moved forward on his DVD project. As 2000 comes to a close, Reznor retained his credibility as one of rock music’s movers and shakers while his detractors like Fred Durst starts to lose respect in the rock community.  |
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