As AllMusic says, Trent Reznor had been steeped in music his entire life leading up to “Pretty Hate Machine.” He went from playing the piano at age 5 to playing the saxophone and tuba in his school’s bands. He performed in musicals, got into rock music (particularly KISS), and attended Allegheny College for a year before leaving to make it in the music industry. He bounced between a few bands while working at a keyboard store and eventually got work at Right Track Studios. Here, he had the opportunity to get elbows-deep in music equipment and software while working elbows-deep as the studio’s janitor. Eventually, he gained after-hours access to use Right Track Studio’s equipment to record his own work.
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As Louder continues, Reznor was a musical perfectionist. He’d hired band members to work with, but they just got in the way. In a 1990 interview with Propaganda (per Louder), Reznor said, “Collaboration leads to compromise, which can only water down the impact. What would a Van Gogh be worth, artistically, if he had other artists dabbing their paint brushes on his canvas?” Those words echo the “I’d rather die than give you control” lyrics Reznor wrote for “Head Like a Hole” last-minute to fit “Pretty Hate Machine’s” tracklist. As a result, Reznor learned another critical lesson: “I realized the strength of this material was its emotional intensity,” he told Propaganda. “It was emotion-based, rather than technique-based.”
