Trent Reznor pulled no punches in his criticism of Chris Cornell's Timbaland-produced solo album earlier this year. But now the Nine Inch Nails frontman has revealed that Interscope, his former label and Cornell's current home, attempted to give him the same treatment back in 2005.
Reznor told Sound Opinions: "In the case of Cornell, I don't know Chris. I do know what label he's on now, and I do know who's whispering in his ear. And heavily on the 'With Teeth' album, I turned that record in and I would get back, 'Hey you know, you might wanna... maybe we need to put some beats on this record'. I'm not making this up. 'What do you mean, beats?'. 'Well, this urban thing is really taking off. You'll get it in the club. You know, what if we had Dre or somebody...' And the part of me that wants to be the open-minded artist says, 'I'll consider that'" I even went so far as Timbaland doing a - trying to do a remix - at Interscope's dime of 'Hand That Feeds', which was laughably terrible. And when I turned in 'Year Zero', which I thought had the coolest beats I've ever come up with, I hear 'Yeah, we need some cool beats'. It's like, 'You know what? Suck me'".
He concluded: "And I'm sure there was someone whispering in Cornell's and he can put that off as some kind of socio-cultural experiment, but what it was was a money grab. And when you do that, you're saying to other people that look up to you it's okay to do that. And it's not okay to do that. It isn't".