Richie Kotzen Almost Joined Nine Inch Nails

04-08-2025

(Hot Metal) Richie Kotzen has dropped a major bombshell by revealing he once agreed to join industrial rock pioneers Nine Inch Nails. Kotzen, whose latest album with Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith - Black Light/White Noise - was released on Friday, made the revelation about an abortive alliance with Trent Reznor during an interview with Hot Metal.

"The closest band that I ever came to joining was Nine Inch Nails - and nobody knows that," Kotzen told us. "This is a true one. I was friendly with the bass player from Marilyn Manson (Jeordie White aka 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 (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!"

It's likely the events occurred when Robin Finck - a former member of Guns N'Roses - was out of NIN, between 2000 and 2008. Kotzen continues: "And then a week went by. Then another week went by. I ran into Jeordi and said 'what happened?'

"'Yeah,'he said, 'basically he (Renzer) said he didn't want to open up Rolling Stone magazine said 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.

"And, you know, aesthetically when you think about the fan base and the you think about how people would read into something, I can kinda could see that, I could see the point.

"So I jokingly said 'hey, I'll do it under an alias' because I wasn't doing anything at the time and I think he's, you know, a genius and I would have loved to have worked with him."

Kotzen appeared on Poison's 1993 record Native Tongue.

"That wasn't the first time that that stopped me going in one direction or the other," he reflected. "On the other side of the coin, I don't ... I have no regrets being a part of Poison because I think we made a really great record.

"So I would much rather have that record live where it's living than have any of the other stuff that I could have done any of the other stuff that I could have done."