Ongoing History Daily: The health hazards of being in Nine Inch Nails
In the early days of Nine Inch Nails, anything in the band needed hazard pay and an excellent health care plan. Gigs were so rough and violent that injuries were common. And I’m not talking about violence in the audience. I mean violence onstage.
It was anarchy. It was mayhem. And people got hurt. Equipment was routinely destroyed, and the injuries could be terrible. Richard Patrick, who played keyboards for a time, eventually needed back surgery to repair some of the damage. When he first walked into a doctor’s office, he was asked if he was a star football player because he was in such rough shape. Even after the surgery, he walked with a limp for a decade.
His knees still aren’t the same more than 30 years later.
