Trent Reznor on Nine Inch Nails’ Rock Hall Nomination: ‘I’m in a death match against Pat Benatar’
Trent Reznor, who’s long been against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has been very vocal in the press about his change of heart.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Reznor said of Nine Inch Nails‘ nomination, “Is it nice to be nominated? Yeah, it’s nice. I don’t know, you know? I’m in a death match against Pat Benatar. Could there be a more absurd? You’re going to have to choose, man: It’s me or Pat or Whitney Houston.”
He continued, “Right, then I look and see that we’re up against Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. Those are bands that by any stretch of the imagination need to be ahead of us in that line. We wouldn’t be us without those guys. Todd Rundgren, same thing. That’s where it starts to get kind of … Alright, I don’t know how I should feel about it. You know?”
Make no mistake, though, Reznor definitely wants in the Rock Hall. When the interviewer said to him it sounded like he was “voting for everybody except for you,” Reznor responded, “Bulls—, I’m voting for myself [laughs].”
Of course, there’s a lot more going on with Reznor than just the Rock Hall. He and NIN bandmate Atticus Ross, whose latest score work can be heard on HBO’s Watchmen, were recently tapped to create the score for the new Pixar movie Soul.
While on the surface it seems like an odd pairing, Reznor explained, “I read something about someone like Robert De Niro years ago — maybe it wasn’t him and maybe he didn’t say it — but someone asked, ‘What’s your take on this movie you’re making?’ He goes, ‘I haven’t even seen the end result. I’m not doing it for that. I’m doing it for the process of doing it.’ And I thought that was kind of odd. Then what I found in my own life is that by taking on these scoring projects, for us, it’s not, ‘How’d it do at the box office?’ or ‘What was the Rotten Tomatoes score?’ It’s nice if it does well. But being in the trenches, collaborating with someone new, learning from them, fighting with them, figuring out their process — that’s the exciting stuff, especially when it’s someone you resonate with.”
Reznor continued, “So someone said, ‘Are you interested in working on an animated film with Pixar?’ Yeah, I don’t think anybody does animation better than they do…It feels very authentic, it feels very exciting and it’s very, very different from anything else we’ve ever done, from the way they do it to how they think about it. And we’re a risky choice for them, so that makes it very appealing. Can we do something like that? That means us working out of our comfort zone. It’s early days but it’s been really cool…Who knows? We’ll see if we can taint Pixar and darken them up.”