The feud between Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson (2024)

Nine Inch Nails creator Trent Reznor was pivotal in helping to establish Marilyn Manson, ultimately guiding the musician throughout the formative years of his early career. However, as time went on, their relationship soured, and Reznor washed his hands of Manson, who had been accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

Reznor and Manson first met in 1989, when the latter was merely Brian Warner. He had interviewed the Nine Inch Nails founder for a music publication in Florida, and the pair stayed in touch. Warner had recently started making music as Marilyn Manson, and along with his band, he supported Nine Inch Nails when they came to Florida in the early-1990s.

Manson secured a deal with Sony Music in 1991 but failed to release any music for the label before being released. However, Reznor pulled him out of his rut and provided a home for Manson on his recently-founded label, Nothing Records. The Nine Inch Nails member also agreed to produce Warner’s debut album, Portrait Of An American Family.

The pair later worked together on the follow-up, Antichrist Superstar, but tensions began to grow between the two artists in the studio, and there was reportedly a physical confrontation. Things escalated further when Manson became a superstar following the album’s success.

In 1998, Manson released his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, which contained several salacious stories about Reznor, including one involving the pair and intoxicated women. As soon as the book was published, the Nine Inch Nails founder refuted the claims and still denies them.

The pair briefly reconciled in 2000 when Manson unexpectedly joined Nine Inch Nails on-stage in New York, but their relationship collapsed again shortly after. Speaking to Mojo in 2009, Reznor clarified that there was no love lost between them and explained his true feelings toward Manson. “He is a malicious guy and will step on anybody’s face to succeed and cross any line of decency. His drive for success and self-preservation was so high, he pretended to be f*cked up a lot when he wasn’t,” he said.

Over the next few years, Manson claimed in an interview with Arizona Central that he held “no bad feelings” toward Reznor and said: “he helped put me out into this world”. While the Nine Inch Nails frontman told Rolling Stone in 2015: “We were good friends at one point in the past, and we became not such good friends.”

Surprisingly, two years later, Manson told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that they had repaired the broken relationship. He revealed: “He goes and he said in the email something along the lines of, ‘It really pisses me off that music’s not dangerous anymore, and it reminds me of how great you were, and I was and the time, the era.”

However, after the infamous excerpt from Manson’s book resurfaced on social media in 2021, Reznor released a public statement denouncing his former friend. He said: “I have been vocal over the years about my dislike of Manson as a person and cut ties with him nearly 25 years ago. As I said at the time, the passage from Manson’s memoir is a complete fabrication. I was infuriated and offended back when it came out and remain so today.”

While the pair were once close professionally and respected each other as musicians, they were never best friends. Considering the allegations against Manson and Reznor’s strong statement in 2021, this situation is unlikely to change.

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