In 1994 through 1995, Nine Inch Nails embarked on the Self-Destruction tour in support of its new album The Downward Spiral. More importantly, the tour also cost the world 137 Gibson Les Pauls, which were destroyed in the process.
A Perfect Circle guitarist Billy Howerdel was a guitar tech for Nine Inch Nails at the time and he tells Premiere Guitar that as he was fixing up one of the Les Pauls, he screwed up and figured he was fired. Little did he know that they'd be annihilated anyway.
“So I was soldering, and I laid the soldering iron down, and it just slipped, and I [burned the finish.] It hit the finish. I was like, ‘Oh my god…’ I felt like, ‘I’m fired, right?’
“And then the tech next to me was working on stuff, and it’s almost like going into war. He just goes, ‘Dude, that’s the least of your concerns. That is not a big deal as of what’s going to happen tonight.’
“This was ‘The Downward Spiral’ tour in ’94-95—this thing got launched into the truss within minutes. This guitar actually got the headstock ripped off it within the first couple of weeks working on it, maybe even the first week. This got put in the crowd, someone ripped the headstock off, it went missing, and I got another guitar of this exact color that came in. I fashioned this thing [headstock] on there poorly, it’s at the wrong angle, it went on a couple different times. I don’t know if you guys can see, if that angle translates, but it’s not the right pitch at all.”
MetalSucks points out that Les Pauls ran about $1,200 back in the days the tour was running, and that times 137 with inflation adjusting comes out to about $267,500 in modern day money… holy shit. The music business was a pretty different place 20+ years ago, huh?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxoHvr2ICYA[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTEPprm2bKM[/youtube]
