Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor discussed his plane almost crashing in a new Quietus interview.
As coffee is being drained and coats are being put on I (perhaps slightly unfairly) blindside the NIN duo with a heavy existential parting shot and ask them when the last time they were in a situation where they had reason to think, ‘I’m not going to get out of this without death or serious injury’?
Ross is the model of English reserve, timing and delivery when he says: “As a middle aged father I don’t tend to get into those kind of situations any more. Let me see… I lived in New York just after the acid house period, just before I got clean and I won’t go into detail but I had some very… ah… well, I did have had a gun shoved in my mouth once. That was probably the most terrifying one. A more recent example was our flight from fucking Coachella to Vegas. I wasn’t sure we were going to survive that.”
Reznor nods: “I don’t know how typical it was…” He mimes a plane flying along and then dropping vertically before carrying on as before but much lower down. “Bassnectar was on the flight too. And I remember him sitting next to me and I wasn’t sure who he was at first. But when you have a near death experience on a plane, that changes everything. We may have been holding hands by the time we regained altitude. I never used to be conscious of it but now I’m aware that I’m in a flying tin can of potential death every time I step onto a plane.”
I tell them I’m not trying to unsettle them in any way but if I get on a plane and there are famous musicians on my flight I think, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. It’s my time. I’d better text my girlfriend and tell her that I love her.’
