Trent Reznor has built a career on making people feel uneasy — first with Nine Inch Nails, then as one of Hollywood’s most decorated composers alongside Atticus Ross — but in a conversation with Rick Rubin on the latter’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Reznor got candid about the two records that rewired his brain before any of that started: a taboo Kiss album that felt like it could get a 13-year-old grounded, and a Frank Zappa record so strange he didn’t understand what he was hearing. Between the two of them — and a Billy Joel album he didn’t even ask for — you can hear the entire blueprint for how Reznor thinks about music today.
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Kiss, Not Concert Piano, Set the Course
Long before Nine Inch Nails, Reznor was a gifted piano student. He told Rubin his teacher had floated the idea of a concert-pianist career — a path built on, in Reznor’s words, endless practice and hard work that “didn’t sound like it was any fun.” What did sound fun was Kiss.
Kiss has come up plenty on Loaded Radio before, including in our breakdown of the most influential metal bands that actually built the genre, where the band’s outsized theatricality and brand-building get their due.
As a 13-year-old, Reznor found the band’s world irresistible precisely because it felt dangerous. “It was exciting, it was taboo, it felt larger than life,” he said, recalling that even owning 1974’s Hotter Than Hell felt like it “might get you in trouble.” That combination — spectacle, danger, and a sense that this was somehow forbidden — was enough to settle the question for him. “It just clicked that I want to be in a band,” he told Rubin. “I want to do that.”
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The Zappa Record He Didn’t Understand — And Couldn’t Stop Thinking About
The real hinge point in the story, though, is Frank Zappa. Reznor described walking into National Record Mart, the mall record store 15 minutes from where he grew up, and hearing something playing over the store speakers that stopped him cold. It was Zappa’s 1979 album ‘Sheik Yerbouti’ — a record dense with profanity, which the store displayed on the counter as a kind of warning label while it played. “I don’t understand what I’m hearing, but wow, man,” Reznor remembered thinking.
It’s a small detail, but it tracks with everything we’ve covered about where Reznor’s head is at these days, including his recent on-record uncertainty about whether Nine Inch Nails will keep touring at all.
It’s a small detail, but it maps directly onto how Reznor still operates: Nine Inch Nails has never been a band interested in immediate, easy comprehension. The confusion was the hook.
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The Billy Joel Album He Didn’t Choose
Reznor’s musical education got a third, unlikelier contributor: the Columbia Record Club, the mail-order subscription service that lured customers in with a cheap introductory deal, then started shipping full-price albums it decided they’d probably like. One of those was Billy Joel’s ’52nd Street’, which Reznor said he didn’t even want. “I listened to the shit out of it because I’d paid full price for it,” he told Rubin, adding that repetition made him actually absorb the record — “there’s some Barry Manilow in there along the way,” he joked about the ripple effects.
Rubin suggested the forced repeat-listening probably made Reznor a better songwriter, and Reznor agreed, drawing a direct line to how differently people consume music now. “In today’s era of hitting skip, or shuffle, you miss that learning curve,” he said. “A lot of my favorite albums I didn’t understand at first.”
A More Recent Influence: Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers
Reznor’s list of formative influences isn’t frozen in the 1980s. Earlier this year, he pointed to David Cronenberg’s psychological thriller Dead Ringers as a major touchstone for the atmosphere he chases in his own music, praising “the incredible sense of dread from the first frame to the end.” He described the feeling in blunt terms: “You’re not sure what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be bad. Love it. It’s been a big inspiration for what I try to do with Nine Inch Nails. Make you feel bad. The whole time.”
That instinct for dread shows up all over the Reznor/Ross scoring catalog too — see our coverage of their score for David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ for another example of the duo chasing that same unsettled feeling on screen.
Taken together — a forbidden Kiss record, a baffling Zappa album, an unwanted Billy Joel record played into the ground, and a decades-later Cronenberg film — it’s a strange but coherent set of ingredients. It’s also a reminder that Reznor’s entire catalog, from Pretty Hate Machine to his and Atticus Ross’s Oscar-winning score work, was built by someone who was trained to sit with confusion rather than skip past it.
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TL;DR
- Reznor’s piano teacher suggested a career as a concert pianist — he chose Kiss instead
- Kiss’s ‘Hotter Than Hell’ felt “taboo” and “larger than life” to a 13-year-old Reznor
- A single spin of Frank Zappa’s ‘Sheik Yerbouti’ at a record store confused and hooked him
- The Columbia Record Club accidentally forced Billy Joel’s ’52nd Street’ into his rotation — and into his songwriting
- Reznor recently cited David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers as a direct influence on the “dread” in his music
FAQ
What Kiss album did Trent Reznor say felt “taboo” as a teenager?
Reznor named 1974’s ‘Hotter Than Hell’ as the Kiss record that felt dangerous and larger than life to him at age 13.
What Frank Zappa album did Trent Reznor call a “life changing” experience?
Reznor described hearing Zappa’s 1979 album ‘Sheik Yerbouti’ playing in a record store as a confusing but formative moment in his musical education.
Did Trent Reznor like Billy Joel’s ’52nd Street’ album?
Reznor said he didn’t originally want the Billy Joel album, which arrived via the Columbia Record Club, but repeated listening made him genuinely absorb and appreciate it.
What movie did Trent Reznor recently cite as a musical influence?
Reznor pointed to David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers as a direct influence on the sense of dread he aims for in Nine Inch Nails’ music.
What’s the album that rewired your brain as a teenager — Kiss-level danger, or something you didn’t understand until the tenth listen? Drop it in the comments. Follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
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