The Surging News reporter Qian Lianshui
Among the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rosters is my favorite band, Nine Inch Nails. Many people have found that this year's list is not so "rock fundamentalist" and very colorful. Also on the list are seven musicians/groups including late pop singer Whitney Houston, rapper Notorious B.I.G., and electronic rock band Deephe Mode. In addition to "The Doobie Brothers" and T. Rex has a full member sitting behind the drums, and the rest prefer to use drum machines and synths to make rhythms.
The 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was shortlisted
In the 1970s, there was a "sound ... light...... drum...... And guitar" ("Let There Be Rock") as a basic feature of rock music redefined by synthesizers. Kraftwerk, the six-nominated and six-time failed electronic rock grandfather, lost again this year, but that did not prevent them from launching a series of synthesizer works that year, rewriting the texture and direction of modern music.
The finalists for this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame all began working in the 1980s. In their active years, despite the frontiers of New Wave pioneers such as "generators", the exclusive use of synthesizers was seen as an aberration in the mainstream field of music creation. But who can stop the mutated human ear from being drawn to the sound of machinery? With the advancement of technology, modern people who were transformed by machines after the Industrial Revolution, once they first tasted the notes spit out by machines, opened their bows and there was no way back.
In 1989, Trent Reznor made Pretty Hate Machine, The Nine Inch Nail's first album, using samples and synthesizers. The songs here are light and depressing, with the shadow of synth rock band Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb, but more violently on the inside, with a swinging spirit of the post-friend, and the lyrics struggle between God, love and death.
Trent Renault on stage at the Nine Inch Nail show in 2009. Visual China Infographic
John Sykes, the new president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, expressed his view of keeping pace with the times in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine last year (although he has been with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 25 years): "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is no longer concerned with a single genre, but a spirit that connects young people together. "No matter what the nine-inch nail makes music with, it does not damage its rock spirit.
They are consistently anti-commercial, hard-headed, and use industrial noise to make songs about pain, displacement, and sex. Gloomy, yes, but also gorgeous. More than thirty years later, Renault's lonely nature remains unchanged. "We are just separate animals, not afraid of cannibalism when necessary. Any idea that humans are beyond this is an illusion. ”
To this day, Renault has not shaken off the uneasiness that gave rise to his first specialty. In the 1990s, he led the band into a period of total self-destruction. The Downward Spiral, which established the band's status, was recorded at 10,050 Chelo Avenue, the mansion where the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate and his friends.
"The self-destruct button has been pressed since the beginning of its creation. I felt lonely and angry about it, feeling like I didn't belong, I had nothing to lean on. Trent Renault, who is strict and almost harsh on music, may want to escape the strong premonition that "he willfully go his own way and end badly".
Heroes cherish heroes. To get to know Nine Inch Nails and Trent Renault better, going through the eyes of another talented musician on his par is a shortcut. Iggy Pop gave an introduction to the Nine Inch Nails at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The speech was short, but it was full of wonderful imagination, careful thought, and incomparable precision.
Here's what Iggy Pope said:
When I first heard "Nine Inch Nails," I thought, "Who is this man?" "I went to look it up and saw a 15th-century Spaniard face. Trent could have played Zorro entirely. If he had been born at the right time, he would have probably become a figure in the brush of Velázquez or El El Greco, whose portrait hangs in the Prado Museum today.
Listening to the "nine-inch nail" — which is often labeled "industrial" — what I hear is actually funk. Closer, for example, could be Stevie Wonder or George Clinton, but in its bones it's a picture of pain, depression, and insatiability, like a never-ending, highly focused emotional breakdown.
The song is like a prelude to the dark lonely party that America is entering today. So, I wouldn't call it "industry," but "the voice of industrial and digital ambition."
I went to hear the nine-inch nail in the scene at The Forum in Los Angeles, the one he played with David Bowie. Trent was in the corner of the stage, hunched over behind the microphone like a dark shadow. Even so, he still firmly occupies the entire space. I've seen this happen a few times (though everyone approaches it differently), like T. Rex at Wembley, Nirvana at the Pyramid Club, and Bob Dylan's Hollywood Bowl '65. This is the hallmark of becoming a master artist – simply put, the ability to connect people at the right time and place.
French writer Michel Houellebecq, controversial and talented, was asked the secret of success, saying, "Tell the truth." ”
Listening to the music of the Nine Inch Nail is like hearing the truth, it brings you closer to God. It was an honor for me to deliver this speech to Trent Renault and the Nine Inch Nails through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Ding Xiao