12 Things Only Nine Inch Nails Fans Would Understand

11. The Fragility Tour Was NIN's Most Memorable Live Configuration

Reznor has taken his industrial rock opera around the world many times over the years, each time hand picking a troupe of musicians to take care of the more fiddly bits that he couldn't be bothered with most of the time. Like playing instruments. Even old Rez knows that he would struggle to present the whole Nine Inch Nails affair live on stage all on his lonesome. These aren't street busker tunes he's pumping out here, it's hardly the sort of thing he could pull off with just a harmonica, guitar and cymbals strapped to the inside of his knees. The upshot of throwing a new band together for each tour is that every line-up is different, feels different, gels differently. Of all the years, all the sweat, all the tours, it was 2000s Fragility Tour - in support of the monstrous The Fragile - that came closest to a perfect live configuration. The fusion between Trent, guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Danny Lohner, synth maestro Charlie Clouser and drummer Jerome Dillon was just pure chaos magic. Finck, Lohner and Clouser - all recurring characters in Camp NIN - thrashed and spilled over one another throughout the tour, all so perfectly unhinged; a wild yet composed war on stage while Dillon pounded out a death-roll as a backing track and Reznor thrived in the eye of the storm. This was the first and only time that Nine Inch Nails truly felt like a proper cohesive band on stage, not just the Trent & Friends Show.