Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

On “We Prick You,” Bowie demands, “Tell the truth,”
as if willing himself completely out of his late-thirties
torpor and into the new, abrasive realm of industrial
rock ’n’ roll (one, of course, fully indebted to him
already).
An offer was made for a Bowie / Nine Inch Nails
package tour, one Reznor was initially somewhat
reluctant to accept. “There were similar sensibilities
in their creation of art,” says Mike Garson, who
would work with Reznor on The Fragile. “Trent,
being young, obviously he grew up on David and he
was a hero to him. But they became peers at that
point.”
“I was afraid to meet him because he is my hero,”
Reznor says. “If I had to say there’s one person I’ve
wished I could be, for a multitude of reasons it would
have been him. I was kind of afraid to really be
around him and meet him, because almost
everybody that you end up meeting like that, they
can’t live up to the superhero that you’ve created in
your mind. And he didn’t in an odd way.” Reznor at
the time was living out the nihilistic lyrics of The
Downward Spiral, addicted to drugs and alcohol and
so full of doubt and self-loathing that the acclaim and
fan worship could only seem perverse. Bowie
recognized his former self in his new collaborator
and tried to offer some big-brotherly guidance.
“I saw a guy that was at peace with himself and
seemed happy, and still was making music that I
thought was good but wasn’t about to die every
night,” Reznor says of Bowie. “I remember a couple