Nine Inch Nails Master Tapes To Be Auctioned
The master recording of Nine inch Nails‘ 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine — including Trent Reznor’s first hit, “Head Like a Hole” – will be auctioned on August 17th in New York. Pretty Hate Machine (along with recordings by KMFDM, the Connells and others) was presented as collateral by the band’s first label, TVT Records, when it borrowed $23.5 million from Prudential Securities in 1999. TVT, which has had big hits in the past year with Atlanta rap groups Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz and the Ying Yang Twins, paid back $10 million of the loan, but Prudential sued to foreclose. The recordings are estimated to go for as much as $16 million.
This story is from the August 25th, 2005 issue of Rolling Stone.