Nine Inch Nails: Mudstock 1994 (Documentary)

A fan-made documentary about Nine Inch Nails’ performance at the 1994 Woodstock festival composed of television broadcasts (mostly from MTV), videos recorded by the band themselves backstage and the first four songs of the set. The documentary seeks to reflect what the youth and musical culture was like thirty years ago at the festival and the anticipation for Nine Inch Nails’ performance covered in mud that brought the band to fame. Nine Inch Nails were considered to have the largest crowd density at the event, overshadowing many of the more mainstream bands of the time. In the interview after their performance, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor claimed he thought his band’s performance was “terrible“. Reznor admitted that while he disliked playing at such a large show, it was done for the money: “To be quite frank, it’s basically to offset the cost of the tour we’re doing right now.“ The story behind the band being covered in mud was consistently presented by the band in interviews as being a spontaneous mud fight that happened just before they took the stage. However, backstage footage shot by James Woolley, published in 2024 and included in this documentary, revealed that the mud look was actually a pre-planned and carefully calculated act, in order to leave a stronger impression on the audience. Reznor’s mud-covered stage outfit from the show is now part of the collection at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. With NIN’s induction in 2020, an exhibit about the concert was also installed.