Nine Inch Nails Reschedule Final Gigs So Reznor Is "At Full Power"

Nine Inch Nails have rescheduled the last two dates of their Wave Goodbye tour after an illness sidelined Trent Reznor last week. Reznor and NIN were supposed to perform their last-ever show on Saturday, September 6th at Los Angeles' Echoplex, but now the band's September 10th show at the Wiltern has the distinction of being the final ever NIN concert. The band will also take the stage tonight at Los Angeles' Henry Fonda Theatre.

According to TMZ, while flying from his farewell shows in Chicago to Los Angeles, Reznor developed a clogged ear. Reznor still performed September 2nd at L.A.'s Palladium, but oversang and strained his voice because he couldn't hear himself clearly. "Sorry about the hassles with the show not happening last night and tomorrow's rescheduling. If it would have been possible to pull these off, I would have," Reznor wrote last week on the NIN.com page. "I appreciate your patience and understanding — we're attempting to make sure that everyone has the best experience possible and we're at full power."

Like Nine Inch Nails' Palladium performance, the band was once again joined by Gary Numan for a pair of songs, frequent NIN cover "Metal" and Numan's 1980 single "I Die: You Die." Unlike the Palladium performance, The Downward Spiral wasn't performed in its entirety, but the set list did feature a heavy sampling of Pretty Hate Machines tracks and an encore of Joy Division's "Dead Souls" and Reznor's "Hurt."

Related Stories:
• Nine Inch Nails Cancel L.A. Show Due to Trent Reznor's Illness
•Nine Inch Nails Wave Goodbye to New York With Bauhaus' Murphy
•Nine Inch Nails Perform Full "Downward Spiral" as Wave Goodbye Tour Gets Underway

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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