Ex-Nine Inch Nails drummer now professor

DETROIT — As a member of Nine Inch Nails, Chris Vrenna played to crowds of rabid rock fans around the globe. But now he’s getting ready to step in front of an entirely different kind of audience: a classroom full of college students.

Vrenna, the Grammy winning former drummer for NIN and a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for his work in the band, begins at the University of Michigan this month as an assistant professor in Department of Performing Arts Technology in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He’s had several appointments in the field of academia, including stints at Wisconsin’s Madison Media Institute and Athens State University in Alabama, but he says UM is his dream job.

“If someone would have asked me five or 10 years ago, ‘What would be your dream teaching gig?’ I honestly would have said University of Michigan,” says Vrenna, on the phone from his new home in Ypsilanti late last month. “I grew up a Wolverines fan — my dad went to Michigan way back in the ‘50s — so you’re talking to a guy whose fondest memories of me and my father were Saturday afternoons in the ‘70s and ‘80s watching the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry game every year. It really is a bit of homecoming for me. And I get to wear all my Michigan swag, which admittedly was hard to do in Alabama.”

Vrenna grew up in Erie, in northwestern Pennsylvania, and was playing drums by age 6. His father was very encouraging, and would drive him to and from gigs when he was playing club shows in punk bands while he was still in middle school.

While he was a student at Kent State University, Vrenna was asked by his friend from a nearby town, Trent Reznor, to join his band at the time, Exotic Birds. Vrenna dropped out of school to join the group.

Exotic Birds didn’t quite pan out, but Reznor was already working on music for his new band, Nine Inch Nails. He asked Vrenna to join, and the band’s success helped mend those old wounds with his parents over dropping out of college. “You know, a couple of videos on MTV later, a couple of cool tours, and they were like, alright, I guess this is gonna work out,” says Vrenna, 57. (Years later, he was able to finish his schooling at Kent State and earn his degree.)

Vrenna’s days in Nine Inch Nails, which stretched off and on from 1989-1996 (he’s best known for his drumming on “March of the Pigs,” from 1994’s “The Downward Spiral,” which unfolds in a headspinning 29/8 time signature) led to work with a slew of hard rock and alt-rock bands, including U2, Metallica, Green Day, the Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Megadeth and, very briefly, Guns N’ Roses. He also worked on a lot of compositions for video games, including entries in the “Doom” and “Quake” series.

In the ‘00s, Vrenna spent years playing and touring with Marilyn Manson before he hit a wall, he says. “I kind of had a meltdown and quit Manson in 2011,” says Vrenna.

Through a friend, Vrenna — who records solo projects under the name Tweaker — began talking to groups of high school students in Los Angeles and found it immensely fulfilling. He was then invited to lecture at a small college in Wisconsin, which coincided with a shoulder surgery that sidelined his playing days.

That led to him teaching a course at the now-defunct Madison Media Institute, which is how he officially entered the world of academia. The late-in-life career path — he started at 45 — culminates with his UM appointment, where he’s teaching 300 and 400 level classes in the sound recording and production fields, including a class in recording sound for games and film.