Trent Reznor On Keeping His Private Life Private

Imhotep has an interview with Trent Reznor. In the piece, we get to hear Trent talk about the second part of Year Zero, the difference in his writing process for With Teeth versus the process used to compose the more recent albums, and, most interestingly to me, why he has made a conscious decision to keep his private life private:

I don’t really want my fans to see me. What I’ve tried to do in the media is not to let my personality get in the way of the music. In a way, that creates its own aura. Today with the Internet and MTV it is easy to reach out and overexpose yourself to people, and I don’t mean like I was embarrassed about myself, but when you listen to a Nine Inch Nails record, I don’t want you to know what I look like, I want you to create your own version about the record.

As I’ve written in my Oeuvre Blog entries, I’ve always been a listener more concerned with answering the question “How does this lyric apply to my own life, to my own experience?” than most. And I suppose my obsession with Nine Inch Nails has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t think about Trent Reznor when I’m listening to the music. I think about me, and about the lyrics, and about whether or not I’m going to break something as I dance around my house like a maniac.

Comment on this article here.