Nine Inch Nails - Happiness In Slavery

In the world of oddball releases and fascinating stuff that never really came out, Trent Reznor deserves some kind of award. He's been involved in so many projects, both actual and rumored, that have never come out, are unconfirmed, were never finished or mutated into something else that the air of mystery surrounding him is nearly impenetrable. He was involved in Tapeworm, which will likely never see an official release despite being finished in one form or another (label conflicts, mostly with Maynard James Keenan's label's then-involvement), he helped produce a weird Robert Smith album that didn't involve The Cure in any way and never came out, he's covered, or rumored to have covered, songs by Kiss and Soft Cell that may never see the light of day (Love Gun and Sex Dwarf, just in case you're wondering), and that's just the tip of the iceberg. So, this find is a very small chip in that mass of frozen water, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Apparently, during the Broken campaign in 1992, Trent's then-new label, Interscope, decided to release Happiness In Slavery as a single. In retrospect, I'm sure everyone involved can see why this was bound to fail, but if you're not aware, I'll give you the run down.

Exhibit A: Incredible music video featuring cystic fibrosis spokesperson and performance artist Bob Flanagan being tortured, destroyed and eventually consumed and excreted by a machine, all in very gory detail. He also appears completely nude in the video with his genitals being clearly visible.

Exhibit B: Normal rock, pop or alternative stations generally wouldn't play anything so incredibly loud or discordant, especially with lyrics about slavery with a love/hate undercurrent running throughout.

Exhibit C: Listen to the song. I love it, but it should be obvious why many people might have hated it. Maybe you could slip this in on the dance floor with some similarly hard stuff, but that club would clear out quickly if it wasn't heavy into the goth or S&M scene.

Exhibit D: Not as big a deal, but non-stereo FM radio stations apparently received complaints and had problems playing songs from the Broken EP as they were never intended for mono playback and could damage some speakers. I can't confirm this, but I've heard reports.

I feel exhibits B and C kind of cross over each other, but I'm sure you get the point. Anyway, Interscope released a promo-only CD single featuring a version of the song labeled the Flaccid Edit (it's just a shorter edit if I remember correctly), as well as a rather odd promo 12". The 12" featured both the Fixed version of the track, which was a more club friendly version of the song, as well as the original Broken version, but it also contained two otherwise unreleased remixes, the Sherwood Slave Mix, created by Adrian Sherwood, and the PK Slavery Remix, created by Paul Kendall. The Sherwood version is pretty short, coming in just over two minutes, and featuring some odd spoken word vocals, most likely performed by Sherwood himself, and some dub effects. It's pretty cool, but not terribly essential. The PK version is another somewhat club-friendly version, being mostly instrumental but featuring a healthy dose of synths, some screams from Trent and some sirens to alert you of something, probably that you're listening to a Nine Inch Nails record.

As cool as this record is, the unreleased remixes simply aren't the greatest, making it pretty clear why they didn't come out, but they are nice to have nonetheless. The strangest thing about the record is probably the label, which denotes it's a VIP Advance Copy, with the I in VIP having been created from the old Interscope Records logo. Since it never came out officially, one is left to wonder if the label came to their senses late in the game for this single. Interscope was distributed through Atlantic at this time, so the powers that be may have decided they were pouring too much money into a niche artist. After all, at least circa 1992, there wasn't much money behind industrial-labeled acts, at least not directly from major labels. Interscope started as a really peculiar label, offering it's signings a lot more freedom than most majors would ever consider. Remember, Interscope brought us Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Marilyn Manson and other rather cutting-edge artists for the time in it's early days. After all, who can forget Gerardo? Perhaps he was a sign of the awful things to come when Interscope got too big and started to believe that will.i.am and Timbaland were the solutions to the music industry's problems.


Nine Inch Nails - Happiness In Slavery

01 Fixed Version
02 Sherwood Slave Mix
03 PK Slavery Remix
04 Broken Version


PS - In all seriousness, Gerardo wasn't that bad for his time. The hotties in his videos were insane! On top of that, he also became an A&R for Interscope, and is responsible for bringing Enrique Iglesias and Bubba Sparxxx to the label. Okay, maybe he really was that bad.