Guitar virtuoso Richie Kotzen, currently making waves with his project alongside Iron Maiden‘s Adrian Smith (Black Light/White Noise), recently shared a surprising revelation: he almost joined the ranks of industrial rock icons Nine Inch Nails. Speaking with Hot Metal, Kotzen unveiled that this near-alliance with Trent Reznor almost became a reality.
Interestingly, Kotzen‘s past as a guitarist for the hair metal band Poison apparently presented an obstacle in the Nine Inch Nails world. He recounted in the same Hot Metal interview receiving an invitation from then-NIN bassist Jeordie White to audition. Kotzen impressed Trent Reznor during his tryout, who indicated that management would be in touch.
He revealed: “The closest band that I ever came to joining was Nine Inch Nails — and nobody knows that. This is a true one.”
“I was friendly with the bass player from Marilyn Manson [Jeordie White] who was playing in Nine Inch Nails. He said to me, ‘Listen, you’ve got to come down. We’re having a hard time finding a guitar player.’ So I went down to Third Encore and I spent the day. Trent told me, ‘You’re by far the best guy that we’ve tried. I would love to have you in the band. I’m gonna have my manager reach out to you.’ And I left that day thinking, ‘Wow, okay, I’m gonna join another band.”
However, the anticipated follow-up never happened. Apparently, Reznor had a change of heart, concerned about the potential media narrative surrounding a former Poison member joining Nine Inch Nails.
“And then a week went by. And then another week went by. And I ran into Jeordie and I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, basically, [Reznor] said he didn’t wanna open up Rolling Stone magazine said see ‘Nine Inch Nails gets former Poison guitar player Richie Kotzen‘. He didn’t want the association with a hair metal band in that camp. And, you know, aesthetically, when you think about the fanbase and you think about how people would read into something, I can kind of could see that; I could see the point. So I jokingly said, ‘Hey, I’ll do it under an alias,’ ’cause I wasn’t doing anything at the time and I think he’s, you know, a genius and I would have loved to have worked with him.”
Although Kotzen was a member of Poison between 1991 and 1993, appearing on their Native Tongue album, this was after the band’s most significant period of fame in the 1980s.
Reflecting on this near miss with Nine Inch Nails, Kotzen acknowledged that external perceptions have influenced his career path before, though he values his time with Poison and the resulting album.
“That wasn’t the first time that that stopped me going in one direction or the other,” he reflected. “Now, on the other side of the coin, I don’t regret having been a part of Poison because I think that we made a really great record. And so I would much rather have that record live where it’s living than have done any of the other stuff that I could have done. But that’s kind of how the music business is. It’s not just about the music; a lot of people listen with their eyes. And it’s unfortunate in a situation like that. But it is a reality. And it’s more in the rock world, by the way.”
