Nine Inch Nails: Live 1995

NIN Live (1995): Trent Reznor, Robin Finck, Danny Lohner, Chris Vrenna, Charlie Clouser

Director: Simon Maxwell | Executive Producer: Cordelia Plunket | Director of Photography: Crescenzo Notarile | Editor: Tim Waddell | Lighting/Set Designer: Roy Bennet | Sound: Sean Beavan

On August 8th, 2013 on the Nine Inch Nails EchoingTheSound message board, a new member by the name of ‘Norton Canes’ created a thread called ‘What’s This Concert Footage?’ and it caused quite a stir.

Norton described finding the VHS at a video production house in Camden, London. While working in the library, hundreds of film tins arrived marked “Nine Inch Nails.” Director Simon Maxwell was assembling multi-camera concert footage. After weeks of editing, he flew to Los Angeles to show Trent Reznor—but Trent had changed his mind, wanting something more intimate rather than an epic multi-angle production. The completed film was shelved. Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle / Coil) was later recruited to re-cut it. Before leaving the company, Norton had a VHS copy made.

Setlist from the VHS: Mr. Self Destruct, Sin, March Of The Pigs, Piggy, Reptile, Gave Up, Happiness In Slavery, Eraser, Hurt, The Downward Spiral, Wish, Suck, The Only Time, Down In It, Head Like A Hole, Closer, Dead Souls, I Do Not Want This, Something I Can Never Have

It came out that Simon Maxwell also directed the videos for Hurt, Eraser and Wish on Closure. The footage was from Dallas, Texas and Omaha, Nebraska in February 1995. Sean Beavan said an additional show was recorded (2/14/1995 St. Louis) with intent of releasing a live companion album.

This footage has been sought out by long time NIN fans. There have been several reasons why it didn’t come to fruition — Trent wasn’t satisfied with the film, it looked “too much like a Bon Jovi HBO special,” and the alternative lighting scheme wasn’t representative of the rest of the tour.

Fast forward 9 years to April 6th, 2022. Norton popped back up on ETS with the VHS finally ripped. Norton was kind enough to send the original VHS to the NIN Live Archive for proper transfer.

PAL-VHS → Panasonic FS200 VCR (S-VHS + TBC On) → S-Video/RCA → TBC-1000 → Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt → Mac Mini → Final Cut Pro → .MOV (PAL ProRes 422)

This VHS was archived and preserved. Nothing more. It is too big of a legal hot potato to host here on the archive. It has been sent off to NIN management and Kraw. I hope that one day Trent will do something with the footage.

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