To Mexico and back with Nine Inch Nails' newest member
Justin Meldal-Johnsen, NIN's newest member, tells MOVE about his adjustment to the band and his widely varied projects.
Published Nov. 11, 2008
If Justin Meldal-Johnsen's career can be defined in any simple terms, it has been one part luck and one part talent.
While working as a janitor at a recording studio at 17, a chance encounter with David Campbell began the session musician's lasting musical partnership with the composer's son, Beck, and a casual e-mail he wrote to Trent Reznor, after the latter distributed an album online, got him into Nine Inch Nails earlier this year.
On the day MOVE spoke to the newest addition to the ever-changing live NIN lineup, he was taking calls in Mexico before another performance.
"We're in Monterrey right now," he says. "It's been crazy, dude. They're not as used to seeing huge productions come through. They get big, big, but we're kind of pulling all the stops, doing the whole enchilada, so to speak. That was a horrible pun."
Horrible or not, Meldal-Johnsen means what he says. The band's always impressive lightshow has developed into a 3-D extravaganza of epileptic proportions.
"They (our fans in Mexico) commit 100 percent when we play, and we give back a lot to them," Meldal-Johnsen says. "It's a really emotionally cathartic, wild ride playing a show down here, man, 'cause they go all out."
The Afroed bassist has been enjoying this cathartic ride for several months now, but the thrill remains.
"If anyone ever heard me complain, I'd urge them to immediately slap me," he says. "I have no complaints. Every day I wake up and am like, 'Wow. Am I really here?' I could die tomorrow and be happy essentially."
His voice rises from its naturally low, husky tone to a more excited rhythm.
"I'm totally being frank with you," he says. "This isn't just some sort of line. I'm telling you, like, it's a big deal. When I get onstage and I get to be a part of this thing and to have a particular emotional bond with this audience and I get to be part of that particular phenomenon, the honor - it's huge."
If luck and chance got his foot in the door, talent is what landed Meldal-Johnsen the gig. His disparate credentials read like the unusual suspects - Macy Gray, Ima Robot, Garbage and Dido, among others. He has learned to glide from genre to genre and lend his talents to the mindset of any artist who asks for his help.
Even his jump into a massive operation like Nine Inch Nails, which is built on precision, was surprisingly fluid enough for Meldal-Johnsen to leave a lasting mark.
"Trent doesn't hire musicians so they can be robots, especially at this stage in his career," he says. "This is why I'm here. He's looking for someone that can give more dimension to the whole picture. I don't say that out of vanity or tooting my horn. I'm saying that that's literally, when I had an initial meeting with him, what he explained to me, and it turned out to be very much the truth."
Despite his wide success in various genres and formats, Meldal-Johnsen remains a simple, gracious man with a kind word for his collaborators and an open mind for his work.
Delving outside of his day job, he recently worked on Bret Easton Ellis' "The Informers" as music supervisor, a step up from contributing to "Nacho Libre" with Beck. He explains his involvement on the film with a single word - "accident."
"I'm from L.A.," he says. "It's a town where you're inevitably bound to make some connection with the movie business. You can't help it. You're always going to be privy to some sort of the movie business or whatever."
After a ridiculously self-deprecating comment, Meldal-Johnsen describes the impact working on film scores has had on his songwriting.
"It's funny you ask, because I was just thinking about that the other day, and I was writing some music for the eventual solo album that's going to surface from me in some decade down the road if I can ever stop being lazy and get it done," Meldal-Johnsen says.
Coming from him, a man who seems to always have a new project to complete, this statement sounds absurd. But he continues.
"I was working on something, and I realized that I'm starting to have this affinity for very, very slow intros to songs," he says. "Likewise, I'm also having an affinity for extremely abrupt beginnings. I seem to capitalize on both of those things for dramatic effect. Those sort of devices that are used in film - I'm starting to exploit them and I didn't even know it."
Nine Inch Nails has given Meldal-Johnsen a lot of opportunities - to see new parts of the world, play different music and watch Will Ferrell movies with Trent Reznor. NIN has always been a band that works in unusual ways, with touring members flitting in and out of the lineup, but Meldal-Johnsen understands the bigger picture.
"Trent knows that people in his band have other pursuits, and he's not going to restrict me from doing more film music or doing another Beck record or whatever comes down the road," he says. "We have nice latitude to do what we want. Nine Inch Nails is a busy, busy business, and I like it like that. For now, it's just like, 'Wow. We got a long way to go.'"
