10 Great Rock Albums Recorded In Really Weird Ways

10. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Out of all the places in America to record in, Trent Reznor just had to pick the building where some of the country’s most renowned murders took place.

Nine Inch Nails’ seminal hit The Downward Spiral represented Reznor at his most dangerously fragile, suffering from drug addiction and refusing help so that his pain could manifest into art. That album came into being in 10050 Cielo Drive, the home where Sharon Tate and company were murdered by Charles Manson.

The band rented the building in 1992, dubbing it “Le Pig” after a message written in Sharon Tate’s blood on the front doorway, and Reznor has said he immediately felt disturbed and terrified by the place. More than anything, he described the house as “peacefully sad”. Setting up a studio within, Nine Inch Nails spent the next 18 months there working away on their magnum opus.

In December 1993, as the band drew to a close on the project, Trent met Patti Tate by pure coincidence who asked the musician if he was exploiting her sister’s death. It stunned Reznor and changed his perspective on things. He had recorded there out of his interest in folklore perhaps without thinking of the humanity of things.