CLASSIC TRACKS

RICHARD BUSKIN

song about sexual obsession and frustration, Nine Inch Nails Closer was culled as asingle from aconcept album about amans drug-laced decline and attempted suicide; recorded in the house where actress Sharon Tate and four of her friends were brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family; and promoted by avideo depicting asevered pigs head, amonkey tied to across, anaked bald woman and aguy in S&M gear singing, Iwanna fuck you like an animal. An industrial rock classic, Closer titled Closer to God on the labels of most releases, echoing aline in the song was the second single released from The Downward Spiral, the sophomore effort by NINs sole official member, Trent Reznor, who was responsible for composing the albums material, performing the vocals, playing nearly all of the instruments and co-producing with Mark Flood Ellis. It all took place inside a home studio set up at 10050 Cielo Drive in the LA neighbourhood of Benedict Canyon, whichReznor named Le Pig after renting the property and only then finding out about its notorious past: one that had seen the word pig written in Tates blood on the front door that he subsequently installed at his new Nothing Studios complex in New Orleans. The aforementioned city was where Reznor initially intended to record The Downward Spiral, influenced by David Bowies Low (1977), as well as Pink Floyds The Wall (1979), and conceived after hed ended aseries of tours in support of NINs 1989 debut album, the more dance-oriented Pretty Hate Machine. However, financial responsibilities resulted in him choosing to work in LA, and after looking at numerous houses, he decided to rent the one on Cielo Drive for amodest $11,000 per month. In mid-1992, Reznor commenced an 18-month stay there, during which time he purchased instruments, acquired recording equipment and collaborated with Flood on several of the tracks on The Downward Spiral, including Closer. Trent and Iwere working at South Beach Studios in Miami when he got the contract for renting the house and it came with alegal notification about what had happened there, says Sean Beavan, who engineered the album. Until then, he had no idea it was the site of the Tate murders he just thought it was agreat place to install

Nine Inch Nails Closer

Although the shock value of its lyrics and ensuing censorship earned it notoriety, Closer perfectly exemplifies Trent Reznors radical use of sampling and singularly focused musical vision.

154

September 2012 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m

Trent Reznor on stage, 1994.

astudio and so we were blown away when we learned the truth.

Backline & Backing Vox

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Beavan played bass and sang in assorted local bands during his teens, while harbouring adesire to become amusician-producer in the mould of Todd Rundgren. Astint as asession bassist during the first half of the 80s familiarised him with his hometowns studios and saw him appear on records such as Eric Carmens Hungry Eyes, which was aUS top five single from the 1987 Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Meanwhile, engineering live sound for bands led to ajob at Clevelands Great Tracks Recording and then at The Right Track, where Sean Beavan first met in-house programmer Trent Reznor. At that time, playing bass in one of the citys hottest bands, Nation Of One, Beavan was also doing live mixing for most of the other local outfits, including his groups chief rival, Exotic Birds, featuring Reznor on keyboards. Beavan was subsequently recruited to mix some demos Reznor had recorded for the project that would become Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine, and which earned him adeal with TVT Records. At one point, Itold him, Dude, anything you ever need from me, just let me know, recalls Beavan, who spent eight years as part of the NIN team, before mixing front-of house sound on Marilyn Mansons 1996-97 Dead To The World Tour, in support of the Antichrist Superstar album that he mixed and co-produced with Manson, Trent Reznor and Dave Ogilvie. Isaid, Im with you. Ilove this music, and so after Trent finished Pretty Hate Machine, he asked me to go on the road with him and take care of the live mixes. Thats all Ineeded to hear in order to pack my things and join him. While mixing the sound for Nine Inch Nails concert performances, Beavan eventually became an unofficial member of the touring line-up, contributing backing vocals while sitting behind the console. We didnt hide it from the audience, he explains. Ithink Trent liked the idea of an Adrian Sherwood-type dub mixer/producer, where Iwas part of the show. So, being aham, Id thrash around and dive off the console. The shows were just crazy, and when the people sitting at the front-of-house console saw me pick up the mic and start singing, theyd go, Holy shit! Wed always open each show with Terrible Lie [from Pretty Hate Machine], starting with the background vocalists

Artist: Nine Inch Nails Track: Closer Label: Nothing/Interscope Released: 1994 Producers: Mark Flood Ellis, Trent Reznor Engineers: Sean Beavan, Alan Moulder Studios: Le Pig, The Record Plant (LA)
[guitarist] Rich Patrick, [keyboard player] James Woolley and me all screaming terrible lie. Well, one time, when we were playing in Germany, Trent got busy beforehand and put Limburger cheese in our microphones. Then, when we began to sing terrible lie, we all went, Oh, my God! Throughout the first verse, Trent was laughing his head off the smell was gross... We had alot of fun, but Ialso have to say that everyone who worked with Trent was totally into the music and felt honoured to be around him. Accordingly, when Reznor fell out with TVT Records, switched to Interscope and asked Beavan if he would engineer the Downward Spiral project, the latter jumped at the opportunity. By then, Le Pig had already been set up in the Cielo Drive homes living room, where the mutilated bodies of Sharon Tate and her hair-stylist friend Jay Sebring had once been found, and work was underway before Beavan became involved. Trent and Chris Vrenna had already been sampling things to create these crazy soundscapes, and most of the songs had basic structures with various ideas in place, he recalls. Chris would rent movies, listen to them and record sounds with his DAT machine. Youd never think alot of those effects were any kind of music, but he and Trent would take asound, do acouple of things, and all of asudden it would become

Photo: Ian Dickson/Redferns

w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m / September 2012

155

CLASSIC TRACKS
RECORDING CLOSER

Sean Beavan during asoundcheck for aNine Inch Nails show in 1995.

this great keyboard hook or abass part or abig drone. It was all extremely clever, and so when Flood and Icame in, we mainly had to figure out the format for how we were going to record all the different parts.

Le Pig
The studio was equipped with a56-input Amek Mozart console with Rupert Neve modules, two Studer A800 Mk3 multitrack machines, Mac-based Pro Tools and ahost of outboard gear, in addition to Akai S1100 and Kurzweil K2000 samplers; Prophet VS, Digidesign Turbosynth, ARP Odyssey, Oberheim Expander, Oberheim OBMx, Roland MKS80 and Minimoog synthesizers; Doepfer and Oberheim sequencers; aMellotron MKIV polyphonic tape replay keyboard; aRoland R70 drum machine; and assorted Jackson and Gibson guitars. We loved the Amek Mozart console, because if you EQed aMinimoog it would make it sound kind of cooler, says Beavan, who has earned asuperlative reputation during the past couple of decades for his hard-edged, guitar-dominated work with not only Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, but also Guns N Roses, Slayer, No Doubt and System Of ADown. Normally, you hit the EQ button and go, That sucks, whereas in this case it actually made the Minimoog sound fatter. Meanwhile, areally cool piece of gear was John Lennons Mellotron that [producer, engineer and Interscope Records founder] Jimmy Iovine had loaned Trent. Thats what you hear being played at the

start of Strawberry Fields Forever and it still had the Beatles tape loops in there. While the living room served as the Le Pig control room, it was also the venue for most of the Downward Spiral recording sessions, since alot of the material consisted of samples. One such track was Closer, whose demo was pretty damned good, according to Beavan. The songs structure and basic beat were pretty close to what ended up on the record. It had the great hook with I wanna fuck you like an animal and you get me closer to God, and Iimmediately knew it would get radio play and could be ahit. Trent was actually worried that I wanna fuck you like an animal sounded too trite, even though it was the thing that everyone would relate to. He was always so concerned about making real art that hed wrestle with the people-friendly aspects. Still, he obviously reconciled himself to that line, because we kept it.

abasic beat whose kick drum was sampled from Iggy Pops Krautrock-influenced Nightclubbing, co-written with David Bowie for Pops 1977 solo debut, The Idiot. It was like aRoland 808 with all of this noise and hiss, Beavansays. Iremoved the noise but retained the grit. The snare drum was asample that Flood ran through an SSL console for some distortion and aZoom 9030 [Advanced Instrument Effects Processor] for alittle bit of ring modulation. Whenever he would take samples and run them through processing gear, we would say, Uh-oh, Floods putting on the lab coat. The bass part was an Akai sample that he had, while his super synth licks were straight out of the Prophet VS and Akai stuff that we stacked together. While creating the drum pattern by running different parts out of the samplers, tweaking them with outboard gear and recording them, and then doing the same for the bass track, having four outputs meant we could only dump four audio tracks at once. We therefore had all the samplers lined up, running through the console, so we could listen to practically the whole song and tweak things while knowing what the vocal lines were going to be. This is because Trent recorded his vocals fairly early on. As usual, it wasnt hard to lay these down he would get into the mood to sing and, if you didnt have amic up

Mic Technique
Setting the tone for the rest of the track, Closer kicks off with
This photo of Le Pig in 1994 was taken by Trent Reznor during the recording of The Downward Spiral. To the left is the Amek Mozart console.

156

September 2012 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m

in aminute-and-a-half, hed be out the door! We guys who were engineering would refer to it as Vietnam you had to make sure that one or two mics were always available for him to sing at any given moment. You captured the moment with him. It might seem that there wasnt alot of thought behind what he was doing, yet hed obviously been thinking about it for along, long time and he would lay down maybe three tracks of the vocal without ever repeating himself. Hed always ad-lib stuff, and after you picked one of the takes he would never allow you to punch in anything less than an entire verse. Thats the way Trent was: anti-chorus and anti-pitch-shifting on the voice, he was always looking for areal emotional performance. So for nearly all of his vocals wed have one solid take. Wed pick the one that was most emotional, and even if he only messed up asingle word, wed still pretty much grab awhole verse. He wanted it all to flow together, because everything else was so piecemeal. To his way of thinking, whereas the rhythm should be perfect, the emotion should come from the voice and the guitar. So those things were largely performed in asingle take. That is, unless the guitar part was ariff that hed loop over and over again, in which case hed play along to adrum machine for, like, 20 minutes and come up with an entire record of great rock riffs. Id then pick the greatest one, loop two or four bars of it and throw out the rest. The music just flows out of Trent like noone else Ive ever known, even though hell burn brilliantly and then have to play video games for the next eight hours. As with any great artist, theres alot of procrastination, but while hes playing one of those games his brain is still working and at any moment he could come up with something fantastic. Thats why wed always have to be ready to roll. If he suddenly said, I want to sing, Id hand him a[Shure] Beta 58 and run it through aNeve and [Universal Audio] LA2A. Ihad it set up so he could grab amic, Id hit two buttons and off wed go. Most of the time hed hand-hold a58, but every once in awhile wed record his vocal with [an AKG] 414 because it captured the natural sound of him in aroom, which hereally liked. He recorded Closer with aBeta 58, and for some tracks hed have it on amic stand and perform right there in front of the console. In fact, when he did the vocal for Ruiner, he was lifting the mic stand, slamming its base into the wood floor and

This Timeline Micro Lynx was the unwitting victim of Trent Reznors sometimes brutal vocal recording technique.

chipping it, while on another occasion he got so carried away that he sheared the knobs off some [Lexicon] PCM42s. There were three PCM42s in arow and he took thefeedback and modulation knobs off every one of them. Iwas thinking, Fuck! However, when he performed, the emotioncame out, and in the case of Piggyhe was under the console singing into the Beta 58. Thats probably where Sean Beavan would have chosen to hide if he hadnt been ready with amic when Reznor wanted to record, or if hed failed to capture an excellent take and ruined the moment. Fortunately, that wasnt the case. We were always, always prepared to record, Beavan confirms. Wed record the vocals right into Pro Tools, not onto one of

the tape machines, so Trent could take them and do whatever he wanted. Most of the processing he did was external, but he did some internally too.

Proto Tools
As Reznor himself has stated, Ninety-nine percent of the stuff we do even vocals is recorded into the computer first. We getan arrangement together and then dump it to tape. Yeah, thats pretty much what wed do, Beavan agrees, and so the arrangement would constantly change. Wed move four bars here and three bars there and then put it all together. It was like an idea that kept evolving. Things only went to tape if, for example, we were recording 24 tracks of guitar and the tape machine was slowed

w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m / September 2012

157

CLASSIC TRACKS
RECORDING CLOSER

Sean Beavan today in the control room of his Blue Room studios in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

down to achieve aparticular effect. The processing in the computer was interesting, even though it was kind of rudimentary at that time always on the cutting edge,wed do things that no one else had done before. Our effects were created mostly from the ground upon the Kurzweil K2000 which we even used to distort vocals and on the Eventide H3500. We also used the Zoom 9030 pedal alot to create vocal effects with ring modulation and distortion, and of course wed crank the shit out of Neve preamps to get massive distortion like that on Ruiner. One of my favourite mixing tricks was to run the vocal from the computer into the mic input of an SSL channel and turn up the gain until it distorted just right. It gives the vocal areally in-your-face intensity without it sounding amped, and it also works great on sampled snares when you add fast-attackcompression. Thats the snare sound on Closer. Thanks to atechnique learned from Al Jourgenson when he had Trent sing Supernaut for [Ministry side project] 1000 Homo DJs, some of the distorted vocals were created by taking aNeve 1073, running it into [a Urei] LA3, going through agate into another LA3, and sometimes using four LA3s, all the way up. That would be Trents distortion sound, which wed record into the computer.

We didnt record adry signal, because the distorted sound is what would shape his performance. In fact, alot of times the parts were totally determined by the sound. He wouldnt know what he was going to play until we got acool sound up and then it would happen. Like with guitars, wed set up awhole bunch of pedals and then, when he started playing, wed be patching in the pedals and turning knobs, and hed go, Thats cool! All of asudden, hed be making up this cool guitar part because of how wed fashioned the sound. Funnily enough, during all of those takes Idont remember Trent ever tuning his guitar. Hes one of those guys who, whenever he plays, its almost always in tune. And if it isnt, he just bends it into tune. Most of the time Irecorded his guitars direct through the Zoom 9030. He didnt use his Peavey 5150 amplifier very often he always preferred the sound of the direct guitars, because to him they had more brightness; they were hard and more immediate. Thats why he used his Marshall JMP1 alot it had aspeaker simulator output that we would use direct. However, the Zoom 9030 was used the most.

Assembly Line
Working in anon-linear fashion, Trent Reznor, Flood and Sean Beavan assembled all of the Downward Spiral tracks according to Reznors own improvisational style,

constantly experimenting and refining things as he saw fit, and also redoing them when Le Pig experienced electrical problems. One of these was related to grounding issues; another resulted from Reznors dog somehow switching off abank of noise reduction units. Closer wasnt among the affected tracks, and thus presented less of achallenge during the creative night-time sessions when, free from music business distractions and relaxed by several hours of playing video games, Reznor could focus on the job at hand. From acommercial standpoint, we wereaware that the song lasted over six minutes and that theres virtually no singing for the last three-and-a-half minutes, says Beavan. However, Trent always operated on the basis that if you make something beautiful, people will follow you. Radio was never abig concern. He just focused on doing the same as bands like Kiss and Depeche Mode, attracting people by putting on an amazing show. He not only wanted to make great music; he also wanted to make cool and unique music. So wed try to make sure there was always something new and interesting happening to keep every part of the song fresh; adding different elements every four bars to keep it flowing. That was the mantra. Alan Moulder and Ispent almost as much time mixing the track at the Record Plant (West) as recording it, and things

158

September 2012 / w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m

were constantly being added. In fact, it was during the mix that Trent added the ending keyboard line that sampled piano with all of the distortion on it. He added that and the backwards music towards the end of the mix after insisting It needs just one more thing. That one more thing turned out to be brilliant and the signature to the song. At this point, Trent was super-busy getting the tour together, meeting with lighting designers, set designers and on and on. So when he wasnt around, Iwould be the one to tell Alan what we were looking for and how to put everything together, and Alan was terrific, telling me, Grab afader and do what youthink there. Hes an incredibly generous person, and Ihave to say that half of what Iknow about mixing Ilearned from Alan Moulder. Just watching the way he listened was an eye opener. He got the rough mixes and, after listening to each one on headphones and in the studio, hed say, Damn, its always beat the demos! Thanks to Floods help, the roughs were pretty freaking awesome, and so for Alan, the huge challenge was to make them that much greater. Which is what he did, even though every mix took at least five days, due to Trent being so meticulous and wanting us to come up with vocal effects that had never been used before. That often meant getting out the Eventide H3500 to achieve things like the crazy, almost ring-modish vocal at the end of Closer. It must have taken two-and-a-half hours just to get that sound, which was supposed to evoke alienation and decay in the form of an insect-like buzz. This was arecurring theme throughout the record. Insects seem almost alien in ahuman-centric world and theyre ever-present in naturally decaying matter. The drone of buzzing automatically sets people on edge because they know that, beneath the surface, death and decay are waiting. Im telling you, alot of thought went intoTrents songs. It was in the middle of mixing The Downward Spiral with Alan Moulder that Sean Beavan was also asked to mix several songs on Marilyn Mansons debutalbum, Portrait Of An American Family, which Trent Reznor was co-producing with the featured artist. Iwould spend part of the day working with Alan on The Downward Spiral, Beavan says, and then mix the Manson

record at night, enabling me to get about four hours of sleep.

The Upward Spiral

Released on 8th March 1994, the highly acclaimed Nine Inch Nails album was most successful in the US, peaking at number two on the Billboard 200, en route to amassing more than four million sales there. It also reached number nine in the UK, establishing NIN as asignificant force on the Transatlantic 90s music scene. In addition to the obligatory remixes, Closer was available in three different versions: the 6:13 album track that segues into Ruiner; the 6:26 single that features more piano at the end; and the heavily edited radio-friendly single that, with silent passages in place of any perceived obscenities, was deemed fit for airplay by the broadcasters. That was never popular, Beavan comments, but after reversing the fucks didnt work, Icut them out and left blank spaces as away of silently saying, fuck you. Promoted on television by the aforementioned and equally censored Mark Romanek-directed video, Closer proved to be Nine Inch Nails mainstream breakthrough record. It peaked at 41 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at 25 in the UK, and went Top Fivein Canada and Australia, projectingTrent Reznor into the industrial rock stratosphere. The rarest of things occurred, he subsequently remarked about the tracks success, where the song sounded better to me seeing it with the video. And its my song. Meanwhile, Sean Beavan currently amember of his own trip-hop/pop-rock LA band, 8mm, alongside wife/frontwoman Juliette and drummer Jon Nicholson looks back on the Downward Spiral project as probably one of the greatest times in my life. Every day after asession, at around six or seven in the morning, Flood and Iwould sit on abench outside the Cielo Drive house, looking at the beautiful, 270-degree vista of Los Angeles, Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean, and he would tell me how to be aproducer. Here Iwas, working with an amazing artist in Trent Reznor and going to producer school with Flood, who was imparting the secrets of the universe. For me, it was adream.

w w w . s o u n d o n s o u n d . c o m / September 2012

159

Mix with the best!

Besides the excellent interviews and fascinating, in-depth recording and mixing articles, Ican always depend on Sound On Sound for complete, unbiased reviews of the latest pro-audio gear. Bob Clearmountain, engineer, producer and mixer, Grammy Award winner (Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, INXS) As aprofessional Iadmire Sound On Sound as one of the most trusted and credible sources of inspiration and information. Jack Joseph Puig, mixer, producer, Grammy Award winner (Rolling Stones, U2, Mary J Blige, Black Eyed Peas)

The Worlds Best Recording Technology Magazine

This article was originally published in Sound On Sound magazine,

September 2012 edition

follow us on Twitter find us on Facebook go to the SOS YouTube channel visit the SOS forum

Subscribe and Save Money!

Visit our subscriptions page at www.soundonsound.com/subscribe for more information on the Sound On Sound App go to: www.soundonsound.com/app
Sound On Sound, Media House, Trafalgar Way, Bar Hill, Cambridge, CB23 8SQ, United Kingdom Email: subscribe@soundonsound.com Tel: +44 (0) 1954 789888 Fax: +44 (0) 1954 789895

All contents copyright SOS Publications Group and/or its licensors, 1985-2012. All rights reserved. The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this article but neither Sound On Sound Limited nor the publishers can be held responsible for its contents. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers.