Nine Inch Nails waves goodbye at the Aragon
Rob Sheridan/Tamar Levine
NIN 2009, from left: IIan Rubin, Robin Finck, Trent Reznor, Justin Meldal-Johnsen.
When Trent Reznor announced a string of final final Nine Inch Nails shows—following the band’s ostensible last tour with Jane’s Addiction this summer—in just a few U.S. cities, there was never any doubt Chicago would be among them. New York, of course. Los Angeles, sure, that’s where Reznor lives these days. But arguably more important than either of those is Chicago, the city that played a critical role in the influence and development of Nine Inch Nails.
That all goes unsaid for anyone familiar with the band and its history with Chicago, but standing onstage at the Aragon Saturday for the final of two performances here, Reznor made it clear. “I’ve always been in love with Chicago and the Wax Trax! record label,” he said, noting the fabled indie label that was ground zero for the industrial-music sound of the late ’80s and early ’90s. “I lived in Cleveland… it seemed like all the cool shit was happening in Chicago.” Reznor came to the city to film a couple of videos for Nine Inch Nails’ 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, an experience he described as “the greatest time in my life” Saturday night.
Reznor didn’t really address the audience much before that point, which arrived 17 songs into the group’s 29-song set. He could have said nothing the whole night and still enjoyed a rapturous audience that hung on his every word and sung along to everything, from the opening moments of “Home” to the de rigueur set closer, “Hurt.”
In between were plenty of hits, including some deeper cuts like “Ruiner” and “I Do Not Want This” (from 1994’s seminal The Downward Spiral) and “Dead Souls,” (a Joy Division cover that appeared on the soundtrack to the godawful film The Crow), though most of the two and a half hour set stuck to the favorites, particularly songs from The Downward Spiral (which NIN played in its entirety at one of the New York shows on this tour): “Heresy,” “March Of The Pigs,” “Wish,” “Mr. Self-Destruct,” “Head Like A Hole.”
If anything, the set shared a few too many songs from the set Nine Inch Nails played at Charter One Pavilion May 29th. When he announced these final shows, Reznor mentioned “longer set-lists, possible special guests, cool openers, and other surprises,” so it was easy to hope for some longshots like “Down In It” to make it into Nine Inch Nails’ repertoire. That may not have happened, but Reznor delivered on the special-guest part: goth icon Peter Murphy, who sang lead in “Reptile” and played a couple of his own songs, the somber “Strange Kind Of Love” (featuring Reznor on recorder, of all instruments) and “Final Solution.”
Murphy, looking incongruously tan, was the preening, strutting yang to Reznor’s intense, focused ying. For a few minutes, Reznor wasn’t the seething, angst-ridden frontman of a band whose legacy was built on pulverizing self-evisceration—just a fanboy, playing songs with one of his heroes. Nine Inch Nails shows rarely feature that kind of levity, and it was fun to see, even if much of the crowd clearly didn’t know who the hell the old British guy on stage was.
It didn’t matter. Reznor could do no wrong in the audience’s eyes, especially when he gave them a ray of hope that they hadn’t heard the last of Nine Inch Nails. “We’re not stopping making music,” he said, telling people to check nin.com for new stuff. “Don’t kill yourselves yet—not just yet.”
In the dark world of Nine Inch Nails, that’s as light as it gets.
