Growing up in small-town Pennsylvania, Reznor discovered early that he craved life in the extreme, from scary movies to the fire-breathing KISS. He also felt like an outsider at school, and that contributed to a resentment that fueled his aggressive musical style.
"I learned early that I could feel miserable and write about it, much more so than if I was feeling good," Reznor said, sitting in a Culver City soundstage, where the band rehearsed for weeks before going on the road. "I could take that ugly feeling and turn it into something that even has beauty in it.
"I still remember the first time I saw people in a town I had never been to before yelling my words back at me, and I realized the music was cathartic for them, too. It was providing for them the same thing it provided for me -- the friend I never had."
As much as he became a symbol of darkness and alienation in rock, he didn't start living out that character in his personal life until he went on the road in support of "Downward Spiral." He found it easier to deal with people if he had a few drinks or cocaine.
After a while, he checked into a rehab clinic in Florida.
"I had told myself for a long time that an alcoholic was a guy down the street and that a cocaine addict was a guy with his nose falling off," he said. "I told myself I was smarter than that. I was the guy who could get onstage and make music for thousands of people. I was invincible."
After rehab, Reznor began work on "The Fragile" in New Orleans. He was still fragile himself, but he was sober, and he threw himself into the album for several grueling months. Though the words were often generic, the music itself was extraordinary, so haunting and personal in places that it felt like a cry for help.
Looking back on the CD now, he said, "It was a record of complete fear, as if I had tapped into my insides and captured exactly how terrified I felt. I listened to it the other day for the first time in a long time, and I was amazed how frightened I sounded."
At the time, however, Reznor was so happy to have finished the album that he did a stupid thing. He took a drink, his first since rehab. The next day he had two more, and it only got worse when he started touring again. The old insecurities were back.
"For a year, every day off, I'd spend the day sweating in a hotel room, feeling terrible about myself," he said. "I felt I would be ruined financially if I stopped the tour and afraid I would kill myself if I continued."
