Nine Inch Nails recorded their lauded album THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL in the house where the infamous Charles Manson killings took place - but only selected the venue for convenience.

The cult band insist they only realised the sinister history of the house, where Roman Polanski's actress wife Sharon Tate and her group of friends were brutally murdered by Manson's 'family', after they had chosen to record there. However, they decided the macabre element fitted nicely with their dark image.

Singer TRENT REZNOR says, "We didn't go searching for that house, it crept up on us.

"We chose it only because it was the best location, and when the facts came out we just thought, 'Well, that's an interesting piece of weird of Americana we just inhabited.'"

And when Reznor heard that the gloomy residence was to be destroyed, he demanded a souvenir from the remains of the former house of horror.

He recalls, "They were tearing it down, so I had the front door shipped to my studio in New Orleans, which out of pure necessity, had been a funeral home 10 years before."

31/03/2005 21:25