Richie Kotzen has revealed that he almost joined Nine Inch Nails, but the opportunity was cruelly taken away when his glam metal past caught up with him.
"The closest band that I ever came to joining was Nine Inch Nails - and nobody knows that," Kotzen tells Australia's Hot Metal Mag. "This is a true one.
"I was friendly with the bass player from Marilyn Manson [Jeordie Osbourne White, a.k.a. Twiggy Ramirez], who was playing in Nine Inch Nails. He said to me, 'Listen, you've got to come down - we're having a hard time finding a guitar player'. So I went down to Third Encore [a rehearsal studio in North Hollywood] and I spent the day.
"Trent told me 'You're by far the best guy that we've tried, love to have you in the band I'm going to have my manager reach out to you'. I left that day thinking, 'Wow, OK, I'm going to join another band!"
Sadly, Reznor's tentative offer of employment was withdrawn after Kotzen's glam metal past was taken into account.
"A week went by," continues the Poison/Mr Big/Winery Dogs/Smith-Kotzen man. "Then another week went by. I ran into Jeordi and said 'what happened?'
"Basically he [Renzor] said he didn't want to open up Rolling Stone magazine and see 'Nine Inch Nails gets former Poison guitar player Richie Kotzen'. He didn't want the association with a hair metal band in that camp."
Kotzen, who was a member of Poison from 1991 to 1993 and played on the band's fourth album Native Tongue, says that while he understood Reznor's reasoning, he was disappointed because he loved Nine Inch Nails' work so much, and even offered to work under an alias.
