Jerome Dillon
October 2005
Los Angeles



I have always loved drums; I believe it started when I was a child and my little brother decided he wanted to become a drummer. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to observe him and a few other friends who are also drummers grow as musicians, developing their unique styles and perfecting their craft, while I watch in wide-eyed wonder and appreciation for their skill and talent.

Having been a Nine Inch Nails fan since 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine, in 2000 I found myself eagerly anticipating the start of NIN’s first tour in five years for the newly released album The Fragile. I attended a private dress rehearsal held in April of that year at Los Angeles’ Grand Olympic Auditorium. Trent Reznor returned to the stage with three members of the band’s previous incarnation – Charlie Clouser, Robin Finck, and Danny Lohner – and despite the fact that I knew nothing about him at the time, it was immediately evident that the new drummer was a force to be reckoned with.

Jerome Dillon brought something truly original to the live Nine Inch Nails experience – a style of drumming that took Reznor’s mostly electronically-produced industrial beats and translated them into a sound infused with everything from the rock background of Dillon’s former band, Howlin’ Maggie, to unexpected jazz and R&B influences. Dillon went on to spend the next five years working with NIN, both as the live drummer and as a contributing musician during various studio sessions. During the break between the “Fragility” tours and the release of NIN’s latest album with_teeth, Dillon began working on his first solo album, the nearLY project. But nearLY was put on hold when Dillon returned to the stage with NIN in early 2005 for a series of U.S. club dates immediately followed by an extensive overseas tour.

The second U.S. leg of the “Live: With_Teeth_2005” tour commenced at Cox Arena in San Diego on September 16. That show was cut short when Dillon experienced what what was later determined to be an irregular heartbeat. Within the span of the next two weeks, Dillon was hospitalized once again and three shows were cancelled. The Internet rumor mill ran rampant with erroneous reports of Dillon’s condition while he for the most part remained silent, choosing instead to hold off on making any announcements until he had concrete information to share.

Dillon played what would turn out to be his final show with Nine Inch Nails on October 1 at the Hollywood Bowl. Replacement drummers were brought in to finish out the tour while Dillon took time off to have his condition properly diagnosed and treated. Throughout the month of October, there was a great deal of new activity taking place at JeromeDillon.net, which provided clues signaling the revival of and a potential release for the nearLY album, as well as clarification about what really happened in San Diego and a complete reassurance from Dillon himself that the condition wasn't serious and that he was indeed in good health. There was however, still no word of Dillon’s return to playing with NIN. Finally, on October 28, Dillon issued a statement via his message board announcing he had officially left the band. The following day, I sat down to talk with Dillon.

Despite having been brought to the forefront with Nine Inch Nails, Dillon has also spent these last five years of his career showcasing his musical talents through a variety of collaborations – from working on the soundtrack of cult iconic filmmaker John Waters’ Cecil B. Demented to playing drums for synth pop pioneer Gary Numan – and his diverse array of work gives him a unique and universal musical appeal. Now, with the completion of nearLY’s album reminder, it will no doubt become clear that Dillon is more than just a drummer; he’s also a highly skilled and creative songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer.

For anyone who has not had the opportunity to see Dillon perform, it's a brutal yet fascinating spectacle, and one might expect some of that raw energy to spill over into his non-performing persona. Yet while there's a palpable intensity to him, he is a refreshingly down to earth, soft spoken, approachable and all around nice guy. Making the interview experience all the better was the fact that Dillon has the freedom of not being tethered to a record label or management company, so there were no real constraints over what he had to say or how much time he would be given to say it. He was genuinely interested in speaking with TIMBT, eager to talk openly about himself and his work.

Let’s start right off the bat with your departure from Nine Inch Nails. What do you want to say about what went on there?

Well, number one, it’s been fairly documented recently that I had some health issues that kind of stalled the momentum of the tour. To be totally honest with you, I still have a lot of guilt over the three shows that were cancelled due to my issues. But, these were definitely things that were beyond my control. It absolutely did look like there was something seriously wrong with me there for a minute. Anyone that has ever worked with Trent or knows the Nine Inch Nails organization knows that shows do not get cancelled unless it is something serious or could potentially be something serious. The show has to go on.

So, that said, it did not end up being anything serious. Lucky for me, it turned out to be an easily treatable condition that was addressed and diagnosed. Actually it took a little while to diagnose it, but as it turned out it wasn't anything that could end my career. The drag about it was that it took three cardiologists, three separate doctors/specialists, to find what exactly what was going on, which is why more than one show was cancelled. Let me tell you firsthand, it's embarrassing when everyone around you thinks you're dying. Anyway, I returned to L.A., saw a specialist, got diagnosed, started medication and played one of the best shows of my life at the Hollywood Bowl forty-eight hours later. Josh Freese was brought in to cover a couple of shows and I was going to rejoin the tour in a few weeks. I was given complete documentation from two specialists stating that I was treated and could immediately return to work. Obviously, that's not what happened.

What did end up happening was I came back to L.A. and started gathering myself because it was a pretty scary time. I had never had anything like that happen before and I (and everyone around me) was stressing out like a motherfucker. I don't really want to get into specifics but it was definitely time for me to make my exit at that point. It really had nothing to do with my health because I was and am feeling great. But it had a lot more to do with the fact that emotions were running very high and there was a lot of stalled momentum. The band was under the gun because we had just gotten to a point where we were gelling musically and really starting to sound good. And those guys immediately had to switch gears and get into trying to find a replacement, first of all, and then work a replacement in. I know they had to work really hard to do that and I know there was a lot of stress that was caused as a result of my absence. I feel shitty about that but it really wasn't anything that I could control. I think all of that kind of built up and it was obvious to me that I didn't fit in anymore. I just had a completely different outlook on things. No big deal. The most important thing is that I'm healthy and that I can continue to do what I love and what I'm really good at.

As a result, a lot of positive things came out of it. Many things that would not have happened to me, had I been still on the road with Nine Inch Nails, have happened since I’ve been home. So as negative of a situation as it was, some positive things did come out of it. As bad of a situation as it was with my health and thinking that there was something seriously wrong when there wasn’t…all of that stuff led to other things that are happening right now. And obviously, I wouldn’t be doing this interview with you now if it wasn’t for the fact that I was in Nine Inch Nails for the better part of six years. I’m incredibly appreciative for all the doors it has opened for me, and the things that have happened to me during the course of that time.

I know there was a span of time between the release of The Fragile and the release of with_teeth. Was that when you started working on the nearLY project?

The nearLY thing was…as soon as I got off the road from The Fragile tour, I went home and I was really kind of depressed. Not kind of depressed, I was really depressed. I kept telling myself that I had no reason to be, because it had been the best thing that had happened to me in my career up to that point. It was a great record and I thought that band really played well together. Charlie, Danny and Robin are all great musicians and I was really lucky to just kind of fall into that the way that I did. But I still got off the road and was so depressed and I think part of it, to be honest with you, was that I was really, really concerned about Trent. He's been very honest and forthcoming about his alcohol abuse in interviews and he's not bullshitting. I thought that he was doing irreparable damage to himself and that it was going to end in tears. So when I got home from the tour that compounded with other things in my personal life were taking a toll. As much as that experience and that tour was the best thing that had ever happened to me professionally, on a completely different level, it was one of the worst things that had happened because I wasn’t ready to be in a situation where I’m working with this guy that I really respect and care about and watching him try to destroy himself day after day.

So, during the time off I went home and I decided take a vacation by myself and go to Australia and kind of figure things out and maybe also try to wash away, cathartically in some way, a lot of what I picked up on the road. I came back to L.A. and within about a month or two I called a friend of mine who’s an engineer and sound designer named Brett Pierce. He and I just started going into the studio – we found a really nice room and we put all of our gear in it and then we just started experimenting with different musical ideas. That was kind of the impetus for the nearLY thing.


And then Trent called me and asked me to come down to work with him on what ended up being the Still record, which is the companion disc to the live [And All That Could Have Been] recording. Up to that point I had really been struggling musically, on my own, playing a bunch of instruments I had no business even attempting to play. It wasn’t proving to be very fruitful. And Brett, because he’s a friend of mine, had no problem telling me how bad I sucked. So, then Trent calls and my self-confidence is at an all time low and I go down to New Orleans thinking I’ve got nothing to say as an artist or writer or whatever and feeling kind of beaten. I got down there and the situation with the Still record was basically that it was Trent, myself, Alan Moulder, Keith Hillebrandt and Leo Herrera. All of us were just bouncing ideas back and forth. Some of those musical ideas that were worked on were things that were left off of The Fragile. Trent basically had almost finished those on his own anyway. But the other songs, the reinterpretations of old songs and some new songs as well, were all of us just bouncing ideas back and forth.

It was such an incredibly inspiring time that something broke open in me. I also really loved that we were primarily working with acoustic instruments, which I have a soft spot or an affinity for. During those sessions, I just really felt like I was able to think clearly and focus in on a lot of things that I needed to in order to write from an honest place. I went back to L.A. and my identity crisis as a musician had kind of just lifted off of me and that’s when we really started making some headway. Song ideas were all of the sudden sounding like songs instead of just musical tones or textures.

And you went back to working with Brett Pierce?

Yeah. And I felt like, within the span of the next six months, we got primarily everything that’s on the record now, and another maybe 20 or 30 songs. So we were able to move very quickly. After that six or eight months, I started really seriously looking for a singer because I only knew a few things about the record: Number one, I wanted it to be honest. Number two, I did not want it to be a rock record, at all. And I knew that I did not want to sing. I had generated some vocal melodies and lyrics on my own, but I was more intrigued by the idea of bringing somebody in that actually is a singer, that’s what they do, and bouncing ideas off of them to a certain extent. But also having somebody that’s going to come in and have a completely different take on what it is that I am trying to create and bring their own thing to the table.

It turned out that that singer was kind of under my nose that whole time – Claudia Sarne, who was in a band called 12 Rounds on Trent’s label. She and I had known each other and I’d even played drums on the 12 Rounds record that never was released. She was a perfect fit and the first two songs went down like in three days: we got great vocal takes and great melodic ideas. The thing that really intrigued me about her as well was that she wasn’t just a singer that was just coming in and trying to come up with vocal melodies or just trying to sing over the top of what was already there. There are certain bands that I’m not a fan of where it always sounds like the vocals are an overdub. It never sounds like the vocal melodies and lyrics are inside the music. And they’re just kind of…

Sitting on top of it.

Yeah, exactly. With Claude, she would come in and after a couple of days learned my chord progressions on piano and she would play and sing at the same time. So it seemed like a much more organic, natural process as opposed to her just coming in and singing and it sounding like it’s riding over the top of the music. It seemed like a perfect fit. Also, my friend Greg Dulli had expressed interest in wanting to be involved in the record. So I picked an old Afghan Whigs song that I was a fan of, one of his songs. We ended up redoing that as a cover and I tried to turn it into a torch song without it sounding like “Endless Love”. You know, a terrible duet between two people that are shitting on each other musically.

Let’s stay on the lines of the nearLY project. I thought it was absolutely gorgeous. It plays very much like a movie soundtrack. Before you sent it you suggested it be listened to in the dark, alone at night, loud – so that’s what I did. And I found myself just sitting there in the dark visualizing things, images popping into my head, because it has a very visual aspect to it. Then there are certain sounds throughout the album that reminded me a lot of soundscapes from David Lynch films. So it’s got a very cinematic element to it and I would just like to hear you talk about that.

Wow, thank you very much. I’m a huge David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti fan so that’s a compliment in the highest order, so thank you.

You’re very welcome.

All of the things that you mentioned were definite conscious attempts on my part to create something that is kind of sound-scapey and maybe a bit filmic as well, cinematic. But I didn’t want to be tethered to any one type of approach. I didn’t want to write a bunch of instrumental music that no one’s ever going to want to listen to or try to do something that is overtly theatrical or pretentious. But like I said before, I just knew that I didn’t have it in me to do a rock record.

I also was experimenting around with trying to document in some way musically a recurring dream that I’d been having for about five or six years. And it wasn’t a good one. It actually started when I was in the band I was in before Nine Inch Nails and it continued for about the span of five or six years. It got to the point where I literally was keeping a microcassette recorder next to my bed at night. And I was getting a little bit further in the dream each time I was having it. Without sounding like “pretentious art dickhead” I started literally humming melodies that I was hearing in my head when I would wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night, into the microcassette recorder. A lot of the piano melodies that are on the record were actually in the dream.

So I started experimenting with that, trying to figure out a way that I could musically document what was happening in melodies that I was hearing, or thought I was hearing, in my sleep, during my waking hours. That became extremely difficult in the studio, especially for Brett to deal with, because he thought I was losing my fucking mind or that I was doing something that was incredibly…I don’t know, maybe a bit too ambitious and also ridiculous at times. But there’s no question that I’m glad that I did it and the main reason for this is that now there’s a part of my life that’s totally documented and it’s documented musically. It’s not just where I was at as a musician, but exactly where I was at in my life for a few years. It’s hard for me to listen to the record now because I have those associations with the dream or the nightmare, however you want to look at it. But I feel that it’s definitely a cathartic thing and it feels like, ok it’s over, I can move past it and move on to whatever the next thing is. Although it’s not by any means a commercial record, the overall reaction and response to the record so far has been really positive. I’m right now in the process of finalizing a licensing deal for film and TV with one particular company.

How much of the album is you on instrumentation and production and how much of it is outside collaborators that you brought in to work with you?

Claudia obviously had a lot to do with it; when she came in she kind of streamlined things because we knew at that point, Brett and I, that certain songs were just not going to work with her being the primary singer. So we were able to immediately eliminate probably twenty songs. That brought it down to one certain batch and on those songs I had played everything up to that point, with the exception of the live strings, which there’s a lot of – live cellos, viola, violin. All of the live strings were played by various people that I had hired to come in: Tanya Haden was one, her sister Petra Haden was one and Ivy Sebastian. There were various people that I used.

There are definitely some sound design elements that Keith Hillebrandt added. Keith, who was the sound designer for Nine Inch Nails, really has a gift for frequencies unlike anything I’ve seen before. He’s a large part of the reason – I’m sure Trent would agree with this – that The Fragile came out sounding the way it did and the reason that The Fragile doesn’t sound like any other Nine Inch Nails record. It’s a lot of those textures and tones and things you necessarily can’t hear in the mix, but if you take them away you feel their presence is lost. He’s very good at that. I think there are two songs [on the nearLY album] that he came in and helped with sound design and also helped with the overall mix. There are a couple of friends here and there, but primarily the record is me. I mean, it’s me pretending that I know how to play everything, produce and orchestrate.

               

You talked about how when you were having this dream you started humming into your cassette recorder and that’s how you got a lot of the melodies for the record. Where did the lyrics come from?

I had some vocal melodies and lyrical ideas. All the songs had titles before Claude ever even came in. For instance, there’s a song on the record called “prins hendrik” and Prins Hendrik is a hotel in Amsterdam where Chet Baker fell to his death. The chord progressions for that song were written there. All of the songs on the record are held together by various melodic and lyrical threads that run through them. They’re not very apparent at first, but after you listen to the record a few times you’re going to notice that a piano melody that’s on one song will be a vocal melody that’s in another song. A chord progression that’s played on piano during one song is actually the bass line that’s in another. So a lot of that work had been done prior to Claude coming in, but that said, she had quite a bit of input in terms of helping me to tie all these themes together and make our way through the record lyrically so that things were cohesive. There is a very definite beginning, middle and ending to it. She had a big part in that. Brett even, to a certain extent, was involved in the continuity of it and trying to make it sound, in the end, like a record as opposed to a bunch of pieces, parts that were just thrown together. So the majority of the work was the three of us.

But before Claude ever really came in and before Brett even co-produced the record with me, I definitely had an idea of what I wanted and what I was going for, emotionally and otherwise. Musically, emotionally and the gamut, I knew exactly what it was that I wanted to get and they worked really hard at helping to facilitate that.

Can you talk about what it was like to be in charge of a project as opposed to being brought in as a collaborator, either for Nine Inch Nails or some of the other work that you’ve done?

That’s a good question. I wasn’t nuts about it. I liked the freedom… Even in a situation like Nine Inch Nails, where Nine Inch Nails is Trent and if I come into a studio situation or a live situation or whatever, I knew that there were certain boundaries to that situation musically. Because it is him and because it is his unique slant on making music and his voice, I was always going to have to deal with certain parameters. I got very good at maintaining those parameters, because first of all Trent and I have very similar tastes in music and very similar sensibilities musically. So it wasn’t really too much of an effort on a lot of levels. But that said, I got really good at knowing what my place was. There were times also during the Still record where he asked me to play guitar, and on this last tour I was playing upright bass with a bow on one song. It was good in the sense that I think he knew he could count on me musically. And he knew that no matter what instrument I was going to be playing, I was going to be able to play something that was going to sound appropriate without him saying, “Dude, don’t do that,” or, “What are you doing with a banjo?” – you know, that kind of shit. He knew that I was going to have the right sensibilities because we had worked together for so long.

When I was doing my own thing, it’s like all of a sudden your mind starts playing tricks on you in the studio and you’re coming up with a guitar part that you think is great. Then, ten minutes later I'm listening to it and I look at Brett – Brett’s got a weird look on his face as it’s coming through the speakers and I’m like, “What, what’s going on?” And he says, “Dude, I’m sorry but it sucks. And I’m like, ”Oh fuck, it does… Ok, well, let me go for a walk and come back and try it again.” That was the hardest part. I’d never found my own identity on any other instrument besides drums. That was the only thing that I’d ever really focused in on in terms of trying to find my own voice. But the interesting thing was that in the end my limitations as a guitar player and a bass player and piano player were the inherent qualities that ended up giving me my own characteristic identity on those instruments. A lot of that faltering and tripping over the guitar neck kind of vibe added to the record’s emotional instability. I think I’m at a point now where I’m realizing what my strengths and weaknesses are and I’m trying to use the weaknesses to...

To your advantage?

Yeah, to my advantage.

Let’s talk about the business aspect of putting out a record. What are your plans for releasing nearLY? I know you mentioned that you’re putting together a deal for film and TV licensing; were you ever planning to release it just as a straight out record?

It was actually supposed to be released last year on Bjork’s label, One Little Indian, and those people were genuinely supportive at a time when I really didn’t know if the record was going to see the light of day. I knew that I wanted to finish it and put it out somehow, whether it was released on the Web or whatever. But they were there at a point where I didn’t think there were going to be many labels that were going to pay attention to it because it is so completely un-commercial. The deal just didn’t end up working out for various reasons. I was also at a point where I was getting ready to leave for a tour with Nine Inch Nails and it wasn’t something I was going to be able to be around to oversee. I mean, we were in production rehearsals and it was a very busy time; also, we didn’t have a full band together. Jeordie and I were still auditioning people at that point and there was a lot going on. So I bailed on that, and bailed on the idea of immediately releasing it at that point and sat on it for the better part of this year.

Since I’ve been home from the tour there’s been a lot of positive response and feedback from various companies. I would really like to put it out but the situation would have to be perfect. I would really have to feel like it was with a label that really understood the core of what it really is and knew how to go about promoting that in some way, shape or form – getting it out there. I just feel like it will have much more of a lifespan in film and television. It’s that kind of record. So we’ll just have to see what happens. But to answer your question, it’s a very long-winded way of me saying I don’t know. I’m talking to various people right now and it will be released by second quarter of next year at the latest.

Did you ever think about self-releasing it or alternative means of distribution, like you said, on the Web? Were those serious considerations for you?

Sure, just because things are so moving in that direction right now and they have been for a while. I’m holding out hope that there’s still enough people out there that enjoy the trip to the record store, because I know I do. I don’t download songs, even at iTunes. I just don’t do it because if I am really into a band or an artist then I want the whole thing, you know?

Yeah, the physical.

Yeah. I want the artwork and I’m an immediate gratification kind of guy. I want that thing in my hand. I want to be able to look at it and devour it and digest it. I still do that with records and it still takes me a while, you know, a month to two months to really get everything. Those are the records that I really enjoy, you know what I mean? Those are the records that I am willing to spend money on, something that substantiates it, so I don’t go out and buy guilty pleasures anymore and I don’t even download them. If I happen to hear a song when I’m in my hotel room on tour then great. Or if I happen to hear it on the radio when I’m in a cab or something then great. But that one song is not going to make its way into my life unless I really feel like I’m into that artist or into something that they have to offer.

Are there any plans or thoughts about touring for the nearLY release or making it a live entity?

I would never rule out that possibility, but because of the density of the record it would be really difficult. I mean, there would have to be at least ten to thirteen, fourteen people in the band. I like The Polyphonic Spree, but I would never want to be in that situation. I did see a band called Rustin Man, which is two of the guys that are from my favorite band Talk Talk, and Beth Gibbons from Portishead. And that was very similar in a lot of ways to the way I kind of perceived nearLY being if it ever went live, where the musicians are just free to explore and there’s nothing on tape, there’s no backing tracks, I’m not playing with a click and there’s no limitations; everyone is just able to kind of freeform explore at certain points in the set. I would have to take a percussionist, I would have to take live strings, and I would have to take at least one if not two keyboard players along with several guitarists in order to get it across. Rustin Man did that really effectively without it sounding gratuitous or overdone in terms of production. It was a great show, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

What would your role be in a live setting? Would you stay on drums?

Yeah. I definitely know my limitations.

How much are you involved in the business side of this production, compared with the creative side?

As far as nearLY is concerned, it’s all me at the moment. I did have management for a while that was kind of overseeing the day-to-day things, but it just got to a point where I knew if it was going to get to where I wanted it to be, it was going to have to be me looking over things. It was nothing against them, it was just I really knew all along in the back of my mind that it was going to need to get licensed and it was going to need to be shopped to licensing companies and that was going to be a major part of it. So I just decided to take that upon myself and make those contacts.

Can you talk about your musical background, how you got started in drumming? You mentioned you played some other instruments – when did those come along? And do you see yourself trying to perfect your playing on those other instruments or do you prefer to stick to drumming?

I was always around music as a kid because my mom was a classically-trained pianist. Then in her forties, she was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis and so she stopped playing. The piano was sold to buy my second drum kit and as long as I was rehearsing or really working at being a musician I didn’t have to work a job. So I got to the point where I got to be a pretty good drummer; I felt good about where I was at and I wanted to start writing my own songs. I had originally started on piano at age five and played for maybe four or five years and then it was all drums up until around 18, 19. Then I started playing guitar around 21, 22. And yes, I would like to become a much better piano player and guitar player than I am. It’s something that I do work on, but that said, I also feel like I’m very definitely meant to play drums. That will always be my primary instrument. It’s what I was originally drawn to and I feel like I was drawn to it for a reason, either through a means of expression or aggression. Or just to drive the family crazy.

How did you develop your sound and your style? You’re self-taught on everything, except piano, you said?

For the most part. I mean, I definitely did take piano lessons and I also studied with a couple of drummers from my hometown that I really respected, jazz guys. I wanted to learn as much as I could about the instrument and how to play as many different styles of music as I could so that I could get to a point where…you know, it’s the old saying – you have to know the rules before you can break them. Then I just got to a point where I really started developing my own style or my own identity on drums when I was in my twenties.

I think that was a large part of why I originally got hired in Nine Inch Nails, because it was very definitely a perfect fit for Trent’s music and also the kind of approach that he has to a live setting. I think that’s why we ended up working together as long as we did. I fully intend on spending much more time on piano and guitar. I’d like to also play drums with someone that no one expects me to play drums with; you know, fall into a musical situation where it could not be any more different than my identity or my musical approach with Nine Inch Nails.

That said, do you have ideas for people that you want to work with?

I’m actually talking to a couple of people right now. Those situations are going to arise next year and one of them I’m really excited about. The opportunity or just even the idea of being able to play with this songwriter is incredibly exciting to me. I’m hoping that it pans out.

What is some of the mental or physical preparation you go through before you play?

With Nine Inch Nails, it was important that I had my shit together on many levels. I always made sure that I was going onstage prepared due to the violent shenanigans that would sometimes occur. I would spend about fifteen minutes of warming up in terms of just actual playing backstage. Then maybe just a little bit of trying to focus; not necessarily mediating, but just trying to feel like I’m getting out on stage and feeling centered. That’s another reason it was such a surprise to me that I would have any kind of health-related issues, because I train constantly. I’m always in the gym and I was doing a ton of cardiovascular training leading up to this tour, just so that I knew that I was prepared for it. I take my job very seriously...too seriously at times.

I read some things on the Web and I know Trent has already addressed this, but it was really disturbing to me that people would assume that it was excessive partying that could lead to Nine Inch Nails canceling shows. I mean, anyone that knows Trent, especially anybody that’s ever worked for him, would know that he would not fucking tolerate that for a second. If anybody, especially at this point, had substance abuse problems they just wouldn't be there. It’s disrespectful for them to be living that kind of lifestyle around Trent and he’s not going to deal with it. Management’s not going to tolerate it. It’s just not going to be a part of it.

I didn’t read them myself because I was pretty busy at the time trying to find out what was wrong with me – but I did hear that there were a lot of things that were said on the Web. And there were many completely erroneous reports in various music magazines online and otherwise that were saying that I had a congenital defect. I even heard from a friend of mine who’s in Velvet Revolver who called me and said, “Dude, I heard you had a stroke on stage. I read it online today.” That compounded with the comments about excessive partying – Jerome’s evidently got a substance problem that he needs to address – or whatever, in terms of drugs or alcohol, it’s just not true. It was frustrating for all of us at that point because the band had just gotten back from Japan and Australia and we were sounding so good and everything was firing on all cylinders and then that happened and it totally undermined the momentum that we had gotten going at that point. But when that happens, you just have to step back, reevaluate and deal with it and be tough.

What was the transition like for you coming from Columbus, Ohio, to L.A.? What made you make that move?

I’d gotten to the end of my rope with the band I was in, Howlin’ Maggie. I really enjoyed the time I was in that band, but it had definitely reached a point where I couldn’t go any further musically, artistically. There was inner turmoil as well. So I left. At the time I had a very serious girlfriend that was here in Los Angeles and I made the move, I think it was in July of ’98. I came out and didn’t have much luck for a while. I played with a few people and things were going ok, but nothing that would substantiate me staying here for a long period of time. I think when I went down to New Orleans to audition for Nine Inch Nails I had like thirteen dollars left. That said, though, I definitely got lucky. I got really lucky because I was only completely unemployed for about six months as a musician before I got hired by Nine Inch Nails.

Were you looking for a band situation or were you just looking for –

I was looking to eat. I mean, I literally could not get hired anywhere. I turned in a résumé to Guitar Center, the drum department. This was in ’98, right at Christmas time, because they told me they needed help. So I turned in my résumé and I called back and called back, and they didn’t hire me. Then in March, I got the gig with Nine Inch Nails and I went back to buy some gear with a friend of mine and the guy in the drum department recognized me and said, “Hang on a second dude, we’ve got your résumé up on the wall in the office because we realized you’d gotten the gig with Nine Inch Nails and we didn’t hire you.”

So then how did you make the transition from playing Howlin’ Maggie’s style of music to going into Nine Inch Nails?

The band that I was in prior to Howlin’ Maggie was a band called Nevermor. It was actually pretty terrible but we were really good friends. My cousin was in the band, and it was just kind of an excuse to drink a lot and basically play ridiculous raves, I think is what they were called at that point. I had experimented around a lot with electronic drums and playing a half-acoustic, half-electronic kit. So going into a situation where I was playing a lot of drum samples and things wasn’t all that foreign to me, and that kind of helped. In terms of making a transition musically, I think I just naturally knew what I had to offer as a musician and I just did what I do. I wasn’t trying to play like the old drummer, or wasn’t trying to really do anything that was that drastic, either. I kind of went in with the idea that if they want me for the band then they’re going to see that and if I’m right for it then I’ll get it. And lucky for me it worked out that way.

How did you go about taking the drumming that was written for Nine Inch Nails, which for the most part, is mostly programmed, right?

Yeah.

So how did you take that and turn it into live drums?

Well there are certain characteristic sounds that Trent fabricated in the studio with Alan Moulder and Flood and other people. Like, there’s certain snare drum sounds and certain bass drum sounds and certain tom sounds that you hear and you immediately associate them with “March Of The Pigs” or any Nine Inch Nails song, because they’re all so vastly different. When those things are programmed, the first thing that we noticed is that when Nine Inch Nails goes live, a lot of those samples still have to be there, just because they are so characteristically right for those songs. They are also part of the characteristics that make you immediately know what song it is. So we experimented around and actually I think Chris Vrenna had experimented around with putting those sounds out on a live drum kit.

When I joined the band, I also actually mic’d up the acoustic drums, which they didn’t really do; before they were all triggered. I mic’d up the acoustic drums and got more of an acoustic, fleshy sound out of the drums as well. When you do that you can also play more dynamically because you’re not tethered to the electronics or the sampled drums all being at the same volume every time that you hit them. It took a while to work that out in rehearsals for The Fragile tour; I spent a lot of time with the techs working that out. Robin Finck had spent a lot of time with his tech as well because there were so many different types of guitar tones and textures that he wanted to try and recreate as best he could. We both worked very hard to try and keep it from always being a scenario of like, “Ok, we’ll just throw that on a sampler or we’ll put that on backing tape,” or whatever. We played that stuff.

That was a serious feeling of accomplishment after that tour, feeling like we had done that record justice because when we first sat down and listened to it we thought there was no way we were going to be able to do it live. It’s too dense and there’s too much there. How are you going to make your guitar sound like that? How am I going to try and play something that I need three more arms to pull off? I think we did a really good job with that. On the with_teeth stuff the biggest challenge was the fact that Dave Grohl is a fantastic drummer and has a very definite style that’s all his own. I just don’t naturally play that way…it’s not how I play. So working what he did on the record and his nuances into my playing was also a challenge – putting my own stamp on it and making it feel like I own the material.

Were you more concerned with recreating it note-for-note, or like you said, giving it your own stamp? And how much leeway did Trent give you on that sort of thing?

Trent’s MO is if you don’t have the right musical sensibilities and if you’re somebody that he thinks he’s going to constantly have to watch over to say “No dude, don’t play the snare like that” or “Don’t play bass like that” or whatever, then you’re not going to be in the band. He doesn’t want to always be the guy coming in and saying, “No this isn’t the way I wrote it,” or “No, that’s not going to work.” He wants to hire people and have people in the band that he knows that are going to immediately be able to take what he did, interpret it themselves and add their own fire and intensity and emotion to it. If you can do that, then great; if you can’t, then he doesn’t have the time to waste.

How much time did you have to prepare between when you were hired by Nine Inch Nails and when you went into the studio? Because you did live drums on “We’re In This Together”, right?

I did. That was at a point where I had just gotten hired. The record was still being worked on, actually, when I got hired.

So you just jumped right into it?

Yeah. The record was almost done. But that song was a serious bone of contention with everybody because it took so long to finish it and it took like three weeks to mix it. It was just so dense and there was something always wrong. Alan and Trent would think, “Ok, we got it nailed, it sounds great. The mix sounds great.” Then they would go in and listen to it a few hours or a few days later and it would be, “Wow, it’s terrible…why is it terrible?” And they couldn’t figure it out. At the end it proved to be a couple of very simple moves that had to do with the drums. I was part of that because the drums for the choruses needed basically to be completely re-cut. So Trent said, “Do you want to give it a shot?” and I said sure and that was that.

Then how much time did you have in between when you were hired on and when you guys went out and started touring?

That’s a good question. They set me up with a separate studio that they rented out for me to be learning the old songs and the new songs so I would be prepared when the band went into rehearsals. Also at that point we didn’t know for sure who the guitar player was going to be so there was a huge audition process that was going on as well. We didn’t know if Robin was going to come back or not and luckily he did. That tour would not have been the same without him.

Speaking of band members for Nine Inch Nails, you’ve been in two different incarnations of the band now. Can you talk about how that might have changed things in terms of playing for you? I’ve noticed that Danny and Charlie played a slightly different set of instruments than Jeordie and Alessandro do. Did that change the dynamic of the band and how you guys had to work the songs out for the live setting?

I think when we started rehearsing with the new band – and once again we had a really tough time finding a guitar player – but once everything was in place, I know I felt this way and I’m pretty sure Trent felt this way, it would have been a mistake to try and make this band try to emulate what was going on before. A lot of those musical ideas and the approach to playing certain songs, like “Hurt”, we completely reinterpreted for this tour. Certain songs just had to be completely reworked. Also, they needed to be reworked because they wouldn’t fit the context of Trent’s new record. Does that answer the question, or not really? Or was the question more in line with how did the two bands differ from one another?

Well, did you find yourself having to change anything you did in terms of your set up or your style of how you were going to play this particular set of songs because these two new band members were playing different instruments?

Ok, gotcha… Yeah, I noticed that I had to play more notes to compensate for the fact that there was not a Theremin on stage. No, I’m just kidding. I knew that I really wanted to play much bigger sized drums than I did on the last tour. I felt it needed it and the new record required it. So there was definitely a learning curve there trying to get used to playing drums that were on the average about two to three inches bigger than the ones I’m used to playing across the board. That definitely affected the sound of the band and made it, I think, sound a whole lot more powerful this time around than it did last time. Things just sounded thicker and more brutal.

Also there’s the fact that Aaron is a completely different type of guitar player than Robin is. Aaron’s coming from a much more punk rock aesthetic and it’s much more a kind of searing tone and attack vibe than Robin. Robin is much more about fluidity and has his own unique sense of timing and groove. Aaron has a completely different take on those types of things, just intuitively as a musician. So that was the major drastic thing. Jeordie and I really didn’t have much trouble locking in as a rhythm section, which was good. We immediately kind of just fell into a pretty good routine and pocket with one another.

Let’s talk about your other collaborations and other projects that you’ve worked on. How did the arhythmiA project that you did with Keith Hillebrandt come about?

We were down in New Orleans and Keith and I did a remix of the Nine Inch Nails song called “La Mer”. He and I got to talking and he had already done, I think, a CD ROM for another company. I’m not sure what it was but he had noticed through our working together that I was really into rhythm and polyrhythm in terms of trying to juxtapose rhythms against one another. He thought it would be interesting to try and collaborate on something where I’m bringing that to the table and he’s bringing everything he knows about sound design to the table. So we got together and started generating ideas rhythmically and otherwise. It led to something that was even more way out of the box than we ever thought it would be and we were really proud of it. But it was pretty intense… you have to have a pretty long attention span to get your head around some of the stuff that’s on there.

We put it all together and were really proud of it, you know; we thought it was great and what a huge accomplishment. Then we sent it out to all these companies and nobody bid. Everyone looked at us like, “What are you doing? Do you even know what a drumming CD ROM is like? Here’s what it’s like….” Then they would show us a Mick Fleetwood CD or Shawn Pelton or any one of these drummers that I do respect, but it was a completely different vibe. It’s like you could hear them just hitting a snare drum or a kick drum or something in a room that sounds like a typical L.A. studio with wood parquet floors and you know…that’s not what we were going for.

What we were going for was something that was the completely opposite end of the spectrum of that. We wanted to challenge people. We wanted to assemble a complete arsenal, assault, of drums that don’t sound clean, that are manipulated and processed, heavily, through a whole batch of effects and gear. Also, all of these polyrhythmic ideas are all done at different tempos in different time signatures so that someone who does have a keyboard or someone who is a musician, or maybe even not a musician, can put that thing in and immediately start creating something on their own through just experimenting. There’s no set way, or there’s no manual on how to use any of that stuff that we generated. You can just install it into your computer and go with it.

Finally, someone at Sony called us back like six or eight months after we began shopping it and was like, “When did you send this to us? This is great. We really like it.” They even gave us a bit more money to go back and do more so that we could release two complete volumes of it. There was enough source material for one and a half, but there wasn’t enough for two. So we went back into the studio and did some more source material and went to Keith’s place and processed it and then ended up releasing it. I think it’s been out at least a year, two years now.

And it’s been doing well? You’ve gotten a lot good response from it?

Yeah. That as well has opened a lot of doors. I’ve gotten a lot of response and mail, and Keith has as well, from people that didn’t know that he could do those types of things or didn’t know that I could play that way. And it definitely got us out of the box. Also, it’s a really good feeling of accomplishment when you do something like that, that you really believe in and everybody’s scratching their heads at you and looking at you like “No, this is not going to fly. No one’s going to care about this,” and then a company like Sony comes in and says, “Ok, we believe in it and we understand what you were going for.”

Can you talk about some of the other artists you’ve worked with? I know you worked with Gary Numan. You mentioned the 12 Rounds record that unfortunately didn’t get released. You did some work on the Cecil B. Demented soundtrack. And then you’ve done a lot of with Greg Dulli, right?

The 12 Rounds record actually was a heartbreaker, because that’s a beautiful record. I always thought to myself if I ever took the nearLY thing live, there are at least two or three songs on that record that I would love to play live because Claude wrote some really beautiful songs on that record. There’s one called “Chicane” that, every time I hear it, it literally brings me to tears. I think I only played on one or two songs on that record. Once again I just happened to be in New Orleans at a time when Trent was overseeing the production on it and asked me to help out.

The Greg Dulli thing is, he and I are like brothers. We’ve known each other for a long time; he’s from Cincinnati, Ohio. So anytime he needs anything he calls me and vice versa. The Gary Numan thing…I met Gary in London after a Nails show. We went back to the hotel bar and his guitar player and I were pissing in stalls next to each other in the restroom and he said, “You know, Gary loves the way you play drums. But he would never ask you because he’s too shy.” And I said, “Ask me to do what?” And he said, “Well, he’d love to have you play on something of his.” I’ve been a Gary Numan fan since I was, you know, fifteen or something. I’m a huge fan. So I immediately went back upstairs and into the bar and was like, “Please, let me play on your record.” It just ended up happening very quickly. He sent me some mp3 files about two weeks later – it just so happened that Nine Inch Nails had a break then – and I took the mp3 files down to a studio in Silverlake. A friend of mine, Jamie O’Connell, has a studio called Monkey Den. We just went in and went for it and I think we got two songs done in one day or something like that. It was cool and I think it turned out great and Gary was really happy with it as well.

I’m trying to think of anything else. There was a very small amount of time that I worked with Weezer when we were off the road, when Nine Inch Nails was taking a break. Those guys are super cool guys. Especially the bass player, Scott; he's a great guy and I really enjoyed that time. I worked with Dave Navarro for a little while on a break. He basically just hired me to do Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien; he was doing a press and TV jaunt. I really enjoyed working with him as well. He was not at all what I expected. He was a very down to earth and funny dude. Really smart and definitely knew what he wanted; a nice guy. I enjoyed working with him as well.

Who are some of the artists you would like to work with?

Oh well, unfortunately most of them are dead, but there’s a long list of them. Jeff Buckley, Mark Sandman, Marvin Gaye. I don’t know… I think there are a few true artists around that are doing great work: Chris Whitley, Joseph Arthur, Tom Waits, Iron and Wine, Lisa Germano. Like I said before, I really want to branch out and explore different sides of myself musically. And I don’t really want to limit myself right now. There are a few people that I’m talking to that I would love to work with next year. But once again, anything is possible. I’m pretty busy right now and I want to stay that way. I love playing drums and luckily the phone has been ringing and I’m getting the chance to work with a lot of people that I not only respect musically but I like them as human beings as well.

Do you ever, or can you, see yourself working as a mentor for an up-and-coming band? Have you ever done that before, or is that something that you would want to do?

In terms of getting into production?

Yeah, sort of helping someone along those lines.

I did that with one particular band from my hometown and it kind of backfired, blew up in my face. But I definitely at some point would like to move into production in terms of finding somebody that already has a real definite identity. Maybe they’re not established yet, but they at least know exactly what they are as a band because I’ve unfortunately worked with or been around a lot of people that are all struggling, not really knowing who they are or what they are as a band or as songwriters yet. But it would be really exciting to me to fall into a situation where I just get to bestow upon them the knowledge that I’ve gotten from years of working with different people and helping to streamline and that sort of thing. That would be really exciting to me. I think that’s a little ways down the road right now. I’ve still got a lot of work to do on myself before I get to that point.

Can you talk more about not necessarily the film and TV licensing but rather creating more music for film and TV – is that something that you’re looking to do?

Sure. I did a lot of work with a film composer friend of mine, Basil Poledouris. He would hire me to either play drums or come in and kind of oversee things in terms of programming or orchestral percussion or what have you. And being around him, I learned a lot. He’s a really intense character and incredibly gifted composer. I unfortunately saw the bad side of the business being around him; I saw what it’s like to become emotionally attached to something that you’ve written and feel like you’ve totally hit the ball out of the fucking park and then the producer comes in and says it’s shit. That’s not something that I ever think you can ever really get used to…writing music not for yourself, but for somebody else to the point where even if it’s something that you feel like you’ve outdone yourself or you really made something extraordinary, it always could potentially fall on deaf ears.

It seems like a difficult thing to do because you’re coming at it from an artistic perspective whereas they’re looking at it more…I mean, it’s business.

Right. I have a friend who’s a film composer; his name is Eric Colvin. He’s got the best attitude in the world about it. He’s like, “I’ve got my studio, I’m a businessman, I’m no longer a musician. I gave up music, writing music, being a musician years ago.” And this is a guy that really knows what he’s doing. He’s a great piano player. He’s a great drummer. He’s really gifted but he got to that point where he just shut it off. He no longer has an ego about anything. He no longer emotionally connects, or allows himself to be emotionally attached to anything that he writes. I don’t know that I could ever shut that off.

I don’t know that you’d want to…would you?

It definitely works for him. He’s a really happy guy. He’s very successful. And a lot of people hire him because he is so malleable. It’s what he does and what he does well. Follow your bliss.

So what do you think is next for you? Do you see yourself working on another personal, cathartic project like nearLY?

Probably not...

Or are you looking to put together a band?

Probably not…I don’t know. If the opportunity presents itself I would not hesitate to take nearLY out on the road; put the musicians that I really respect together in a band that could really kick ass and play it live. But I just don’t see that as being a realistic possibility. It would take too much tour support. It would be too ambitious of an undertaking. I will most likely be touring with someone next year and I'm looking forward to being in a completely different musical situation.

Do you have any other musical ideas that you’re working on right now in terms of writing your own stuff?

A little bit. Writing songs with people and recording at various studios in L.A., and also dealing with paperwork for my record.

The business side.

Yeah, all the things that go along with protecting yourself and making sure that everything is in line on the business side of things. But that said I’ve got a few things lined up to play drums in the studio with people right up until the holidays and I've been asked to score strings for a couple of records. That’s pretty much it.

One last question for you: as a photographer I have been very intrigued by the nearLY Web site and your own site. They have a very unique and very beautiful visual component to them.

Thanks.             

I noticed that some of the photography on the nearLY Web site is credited to you. So I was wondering if you could talk about that. For the nearLY project in particular, how important is the visual side to you and how involved are you in putting all that together?

Once again, I’m going to walk a fine line here without trying to sound incredibly pretentious. But I knew the visual side of the record was going to be key and I didn’t want to hand that over to somebody. When I’m not playing drums or working on music, most of the time I’m either reading, painting or taking photographs. All of the photographs that were generated for the nearLY record were done with Polaroid. I just, for some reason, got really into that texture for a while and the way that things translate. So I started messing around with different concepts that I thought were easily relatable to the record. I always thought that once the record was released and the artwork was out, people would get it and they would see how things were related. It would all make sense why the Web site looks the way it does and why the photographs are the way they are.


Now, I just think that it’s once again incredibly ambitious of me to think that, because they’re all very cryptic and kind of disjointed. I’ve kept that nearLY site up without really updating it for a long period of time and it has stayed pretty cryptic because I didn’t want to completely update it or overhaul the site until the record was ready for release. So I’ve made a conscious effort at making the JeromeDillon.net site – which started off as basically just a Nine Inch Nails fan site – more of an official site and working with the person that runs it, figuring out ways of making it more of an official site. There are regular updates on it now. I’m also posting photos that are personal ones taken by photographers or myself or what have you and making it feel like it’s more of a place where it shows exactly what’s going on with me musically and otherwise. We’re going to continue to work on that in the next few months and really get it up and running. And probably, I would imagine that the nearLY site would be up and running by the first of the year in terms of a complete overhaul or update.

Are you done with all the artwork for the actual album?

Yeah. The record was pretty much done with the exception of the final master in November of last year. But we had to revisit some things in terms of the mastering, just really kind of refining it. Some minor changes needed to be made and those were all done just a few months ago.


As of press time, TIMBT has learned that nearLY's reminder will be released online and in independent retail stores nationwide on December 20 - preorders are available now at Kufala. More information about Jerome Dillon can be found at his official web site or at the nearLY web site.