Sometimes in life we tend to catch the attention of people we don't want without even knowing it.
That's exactly what happened when Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails caught the attention of
the FBI before the band even released their first record. Stay tuned for the full story
In 1989 nine inch nails were about to release their first record pretty hate machine. The
album would be a huge hit going triple platinum in the US and the record was instrumental in helping
popularize the industrial metal movement, but prior to the band even releasing the album they
were unknowingly on the radar of the authorities. Ahead of Pretty Hate Machine coming out the band
filmed their first ever music video for the single ‘Down in It.’ The band at this time was signed
to a small label named TVT records. TVT records didn’t have much money so the video for down in
it was shot on a shoe string budget in Chicago. The video was directed by two people,
Eric Zimmerman and Benjamin Stokes who had worked with another hugely influential industrial band
Ministry. The directors had sketched out an idea for the video, which was pretty simple
Trent Reznor would play a character being chased by several men. As he tries to escape them
he tries to climb to the top of a skyscraper where he slips and falls and well has a pretty nasty
death. The video would end with the two assailants standing over his body several days later.
Those assailants would be played by his bandmates Chris Vrenna and Richard Patrick. Since his body
wouldn’t be found until a few days later in the video, the directors wanted to simulate
a decomposing body so they put cornstarch on his face. The cornstarch also had a special meaning
for the band as Nine Inch Nails did promo shoots for Pretty Hate Machine using Corn Starch and
during live shows in their early days Reznor used to mix chocolate with cornstarch and throw it into
the audiences and onto his bandmates. Reznor would recall in a 1991 why he did this saying “it looks
really great under the lights it's very grungy and it's a sort of anti Bon Jovi anti glamour thing.”
Since the video was shot before the days of commercially available drones and on a shoe
string budget, the crew had to get creative. The overhead shots in the video would be captured by
tying super 8 cameras to weather balloons. One of the cameras which was supposed to capture Reznor’s
body with the two assailants got blown away by the wind and the crew thought they had lost the
footage forever. In actuality the footage ended up one state over in a farmer’s field in Michigan.
A farmer would find the camera and didnt look at the footage instead handing it over
to the state authorities thinking it was their camera that was used to find grow operations.
Once the authorities in Michigan reviewed the footage they thought they had captured
a gang related crime or snuff film. They saw a deceased man with two men standing
over him and a third man running away while the camera seemed to spin out of control.
Nobody knew who Trent Reznor was at this point in time. And t ithe authorities started to review
the background of the film to see if they could figure out where this film was shot.
They saw a city street at night and it was the lights on the local metro
that made the officials realize that the video was shot in Chicago. Eventually, the
authorities in chicago were notified and they even narrowed down the area to where the film was shot
right down to the Fulton River district, which was full of warehouses and parking garages.
The police started to review any reports of crimes that had happened in the area, but couldn’t find
anything. The case eventually find its way to the FBI, but none of the authorities could find any
further information on exactly what happened. It would be the chicago police in a last ditch effort
who started going to local schools and handing out flyers asking for any information about the
video. The move would pay off as it would be one chicago area art student who was watching mtv one
day in 1991 and saw the down in it music video and connected it with the flyer he received at school.
The student notified the authorities who soon got in touch with Nine Inch Nails management
about the lost tape. Nine Inch Nails manager had to demonstrate to the authorities that Reznor
was in fact alive and the tape wasn’t a snuff film. The story didn’t end there though as the
nationally syndicated program news program hard copy even ran a whole story on it. The
program interviewed the authorities who were involved in the investigation as well as the
videos directors and Reznor himself. Here’s the directors and Reznor discussing the investigation
Our top government agency the federal bureau of intelligence couldn't crack the super 8 film,
couldn't crack the super 8 code. When the news came through that ou know this was some sort of
cult killing or i had been killed, this great story um, my initial reaction was that it was
really funny. You know something could be that blown out of proportion and this many people
worked up about it um. And i felt kind of good that the police had made idiots of themselves.
In a separate interview Reznor did with Select Magazine in 1991 he would reveal
“Somebody at the FBI had been watching too much Hitchcock or David Lynch or something."
He also had some pretty harsh words for Hard Copy saying in the same interview
the experience of being on the show was and i quote “Total junk gossip exploitative journalism.
That was the icing on the cake: getting on the worst TV show in America.”
So what's your guys's opinion on this whole story. I don't blame the authorities for doing what they
did I mean at the end of the day it's their job was to serve and protect the public and they were
just following up on leads and this was before the days of the internet so they only had the
video footage to go off. Part of me though is also surprised at the label and even the
band i and their management didn't notify the authorities that they had this s runaway camera
You think they at least would have wanted to recover the footage.So
that does it for today's video guys. Thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button and
subscribe and we'll see you again tomorrow on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.