After taking a several-year sabbatical from the spotlight, Nine Inch Nails is on tour and reclaiming the stage. Trent Reznor, the only official member, singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist of Nine Inch Nails, will be performing at the Frank Erwin Center with his band Friday, March 24. Tickets are on sale now – and you can be sure that you won’t want to miss seeing the man who put underground industrial into the mainstream music industry.

Though he is supported in concert by a (somewhat) regular backing band, Nine Inch Nails IS Trent Reznor. The melodic, traditionally pop structured songs, industrial edge and tortured lyrics are his. Reznor’s innovative use of pop sensibility with industrial sounds isn’t such a leap of logic when considering his own personal history.

Early on in Reznor’s life, he was classically trained on piano. He picked up tenor sax and tuba along the way and joined his high school band. While he was in school, Reznor also performed in musicals. This somewhat genteel image was perfectly juxtaposed with his admiration of Kiss.

Though Reznor dropped out of college, he didn’t let his education stop there. While he was a janitor at a recording studio, he was teaching himself computer applications and eventually became a studio engineer. He got a small break on the big screen when he appeared in the Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett movie Light of Day. He was the keyboard player for the band in the bar scene. This is a scenario that would be repeated many times in his future and in front of his own sold out audiences. Reznor’s other contribution to the big screen came when he produced a single for the movie soundtrack for David Lynch’s (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Elephant Man) film Lost Highway.

After releasing Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, The Fragile, And All That Could Have Been and Downward Spiral, Reznor seemed to drop off the radar. Nine Inch Nails fans were rewarded for their loyalty last year when he released With Teeth. Reznor gestated on this album for a long time, layering detail upon detail, creating and perfecting his most recent soundscape.