By: Adam Graham, The
Detroit News
DETROIT — As a member of Nine Inch Nails, Chris Vrenna played to crowds of
rabid rock fans around the globe. But now he's getting ready to step in
front of an entirely different kind of audience: a classroom full of
college students.
Vrenna, the Grammy winning former drummer for NIN and a member of the Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame for his work in the band, begins at the University
of Michigan this month as an assistant professor in Department of
Performing Arts Technology in the School of Music, Theatre
& Dance. He's had several appointments in the field of academia,
including stints at Wisconsin's Madison Media Institute and Athens State
University in Alabama, but he says UM is his dream job.
"If someone would have asked me five or 10 years ago, 'What would be your
dream teaching gig?' I honestly would have said University of Michigan,"
says Vrenna, on the phone from his new home in Ypsilanti late last month.
"I grew up a Wolverines fan — my dad went to Michigan way back in the '50s
— so you're talking to a guy whose fondest memories of me and my father
were Saturday afternoons in the '70s and '80s watching the Michigan-Ohio
State rivalry game every year. It really is a bit of homecoming for me.
And I get to wear all my Michigan swag, which admittedly was hard to do in
Alabama."
Vrenna grew up in Erie, in northwestern Pennsylvania, and was playing
drums by age 6. His father was very encouraging, and would drive him to
and from gigs when he was playing club shows in punk bands while he was
still in middle school.
While he was a student at Kent State University, Vrenna was asked by his
friend from a nearby town, Trent Reznor, to join his band at the time,
Exotic Birds. Vrenna dropped out of school to join the group, which he
says caused the biggest fight he's ever had with his parents.
Exotic Birds didn't quite pan out, but Reznor was already working on music
for his new band, Nine Inch Nails. He asked Vrenna to join, and the band's
success helped mend those old wounds with his parents over dropping out of
college. "You know, a couple of videos on MTV later, a couple of cool
tours, and they were like, alright, I guess this is gonna work out," says
Vrenna, 57. (Years later, he was able to finish his schooling at Kent
State and earn his degree.)
Vrenna's days in Nine Inch Nails, which stretched off and on from
1989-1996 (he's perhaps best known for his drumming on "March of the
Pigs," from 1994's "The Downward Spiral," which unfolds in a headspinning
29/8 time signature) led to work with a slew of hard rock and alt-rock
bands, including U2, Metallica, Green Day, the Smashing Pumpkins, Hole,
Megadeth and, very briefly, Guns N' Roses. He also worked on a lot of
compositions for video games, including entries in the "Doom" and "Quake"
series.
In the '00s, Vrenna spent years playing and touring with Marilyn Manson
before he hit a wall, he says. "I kind of had a meltdown and quit Manson
in 2011," says Vrenna. "It was seven long, dark years of that lifestyle,
and it was gonna kill me if I didn't try to break out of it."
Through a friend, Vrenna — who records solo projects under the name
Tweaker — began talking to groups of high school students in Los Angeles
and found it immensely fulfilling. He was then invited to lecture at a
small college in Wisconsin, which coincided with a shoulder surgery that
sidelined his playing days.
That led to him teaching a course at the now-defunct Madison Media
Institute, which is how he officially entered the world of academia. The
late-in-life career path — he started at 45 — culminates with his UM
appointment, where he's teaching 300 and 400 level classes in the sound
recording and production fields, including a class in recording sound for
games and film.
Vrenna, who earned his master's degree from Southern Utah University in
2020, comes to Ann Arbor ready to fully immerse himself the region's music
community and culture. "I really want to put myself out there," he says.
"As soon as I get my Michigan business cards, I plan to make trips in and
out of Detroit all the time." Tops on his list are the Motown Museum,
Third Man Records — "I've never met Jack (White), but I would absolutely
kill to meet that guy," he says — Saint Andrew's Hall and the Fox Theatre,
places he hopes to facilitate relationships and potentially take his
students on field trips.
One thing he's not counting on is the cachet of Nine Inch Nails among
today's college students.
"They don't know," he says, relating his own stories of not knowing
artists and bands that came out before he was born. "In Alabama I used to
help run a summer arts camp for high school kids, and two or three times
I'd get someone asking, 'Hey, would you sign a CD for my mom?' (Laughs.)
It's so far removed now that (students) really don't know. But that's the
nature of college. You get older every single year, but your students stay
the same age."
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