What Fans Don't Know About Trent Reznor

As the chief creative mind and musician behind Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor rose to a position as one of the coolest, darkest, and edgiest musicians of the 1990s, an era positively lousy with cool, dark, and edgy rock guys. But everybody's got to start somewhere, and Reznor's first forays into music were decidedly not as unassailably hip — or as tortured — as stuff like "March of the Pigs" or "The Perfect Drug." 

After his parents divorced when he was six, Reznor was raised by his maternal grandparents just outside of Pittsburgh. "He was always a good kid," grandfather Bill Clark told People in 1995, adding that Reznor had a calm childhood filled with fishing, skateboarding, Boy Scout events, model plane construction, and playing the piano. "Music was his life from the time he was a wee boy. He was so gifted," Clark added, while Reznor's childhood piano teacher likened his jaunty playing to that of Harry Connick Jr. 

That musical foundation paid off in school — Reznor played tenor sax and keyboards for the jazz and marching band and was such a good musical theater performer that he was named "best in drama" by his classmates prior to his graduation in 1983. Reznor apparently thrilled and delighted audiences as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, according to a Fresh Air interview.

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