There was something about a Nine Inch Nails show in the daylight that just felt wrong. "Maybe," Trent Reznor said in a sly murmur, "it was the fact that it wasn't dark."
Reznor, the angst auteur behind Nine Inch Nails, toured this summer with Jane's Addiction with every intention of retiring from the road. The plan, Reznor had said, was to put the band's concert life on hiatus for a decade or so and to say farewell with a twist, as the opening act for the elder Jane's latest reunion. But there was all that sunshine.
"I chose for us to play first; I thought it would be a respectful thing for Jane's and also be interesting for us to have the challenge of playing often and in daylight," Reznor said. "But then, well, these were the last shows we were doing. We could pull off something better than that, something that leaves a better taste in our mouths."
That something is now the hottest ticket in town -- four sold-out L.A. shows in the next eight days, all in venues that vary from small to tiny in comparison to the band's usual arena settings. On Wednesday, it's the refurbished Hollywood Palladium; the next night, it's the Henry Fonda Theater. On Sept. 5, Nails will play the Wiltern Theatre and Sept. 6, the EchoPlex, the downstairs dance hall below the Echo club.
The 44-year-old music star said the goal was "a very, very limited run of shows and that each would be special and more fan-orientated and not in cavernous arenas, but places where you actually like to see bands. It seemed like a way for fans to wish us off."
The four L.A. concerts follow a similar four-show run in New York and a two-show stop in Chicago. (Nails also will appear Sunday at the Virgin Festival in Toronto.) Reznor said it was appropriate to finish up here, the place he now firmly considers home.
"I'm excited about unpacking my suitcase and burning it," Reznor said, clearly weary after too many months on the road, both with the summer tour with Jane's and the Nails arena tour that began in 2008.
After the final note is played at the EchoPlex, he will turn his attention to his pending nuptials (he is marrying singer Mariqueen Maandig next month) and songwriting, as well as many other pursuits across today's digital entertainment landscape.
He is not giving up music, just the grind of touring and perhaps, he has hinted, taking an emotional break from his older material, much of which serves as a document of his grim days in a dungeon of drugs and booze.
