Today, we know Trent Reznor as the founder and frontman of Nine Inch Nails.

However, before NIИ caught fire, Reznor was an aspiring musician out of Ohio just trying to make it.

Early on while he was searching for his sound, Reznor played in a number of different bands, each in very different genres:

Here’s a short clip of Reznor playing keys for Slam Bamboo. When the camera pans to a young Reznor dressed head to toe in black, he looks photoshopped among the rest of the band clad in cheesy 80s garb as he hammers away with forced enthusiasm on his keyboard.

During Reznor’s stints with The Exotic Birds and Slam Bamboo, he got a job as a janitor and assistant engineer at a studio in Cleveland, Ohio called “Right Track Records” where he was paid in free studio time.

Around this time, right before his breakthrough, Reznor began feeling the pressure of his career passing him by…

“

I reached the point in my life where I either needed to do this or do something else. I wanted to be a musician. I had an idea of what I wanted to do with my life, but I had not put the work into it to get to that stage. For me, the whole project was an experiment to see what would happen if I focused all my energy into one thing: put my life out of balance and just work on it. That involved starting to write songs.

”

While at Right Track Records, Reznor experimented with a number of different sounds, before eventually landing on one that would become the genesis of Nine Inch Nails, perhaps the greatest heavy metal band of all time.

The writers, artists, entrepreneurs and musicians admire have one thing in common: they’ve taken a ton of swing. So, please, don’t be afraid to swing (even if you might cringe at the footage 40 years later).

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. In NIИ’s early days, it was a one man band comprised of just Trent Reznor. Pulling inspiration from Prince’s musical versatility, Reznor played every instrument (save for the drums) on NIИ’s songs.

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