“I didn’t know much about Nine Inch Nails before I worked on The Downward Spiral tour. I went to see them with Maynard [James Keenan, Billy’s A Perfect Circle bandmate] and [KISS legend] Gene Simmons on that tour in Hollywood – how crazy is that? The show was such an assault. When I worked with the band it was full warfare – you could truly get hurt as there were broken parts from instruments and mic stands flying through the air.
“In the middle of the show, there was a screen that came down between the band and the audience. The crowd couldn’t see through it, so when it came down it gave a chance for us techs to clear up the disaster that was the stage, which was covered in stuff. As I was cleaning up, Trent [Reznor] was lying on the ground with the wind knocked out of him. There was a digital clock on the side of the stage counting down to when the next song starts. The time kept ticking down and Trent was still on the ground. I shouted, ‘Let’s go, buddy’ and it was down to about 10 seconds. So I said, ‘Do you want me to play this?’ and he quietly replied, ‘Yes.’ I knew all of his parts but never did I think I’d play them, but I started playing Eraser in front of a sold-out arena of 15,000 people. Up until that point I’d only played in front of humans three times in my life. The production crew were stood at the side of the stage thinking, ‘What the fuck?!’ that I’d lost my mind and had delusions of grandeur. Afterwards, Trent said, ‘That was fun, let’s do it every night,’ so we did that song for the next two weeks of shows. That was pretty cool.”