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 said. “This is a true one.

“I was friendly with the bass player from MARILYN MANSON (Jeordie White, a.k.a. 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. I would love to have you in the band. I’m gonna have my manager reach out to you.’ And I left that day thinking, ‘Wow, okay, I’m gonna join another band.”

It’s likely the events occurred when Robin Finck — a former member of GUNS N’ ROSES — was out of NINE INCH NAILS, between 2000 and 2008.

Kotzen continued: “And then a week went by. And then another week went by. And I ran into Jeordie and I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, basically, Reznor said he didn’t wanna open up Rolling Stone magazine said see the headline ‘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 fanbase and you think about how people would read into something, I can kind of could see that; I could see the point. So I jokingly said, ‘Hey, I’ll do it under an alias,’ ’cause 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,” Kotzen reflected. “Now, on the other side of the coin, I don’t regret having been a part of POISON because I think that we made a really great record. And so I would much rather have that record live where it’s living than have done any of the other stuff that I could have done. But that’s kind of how the music business is. It’s not just about the music; a lot of people listen with their eyes. And it’s unfortunate in a situation like that. But it is a reality. And it’s more in the rock world, by the way.”

He continued: “I later went off and played with Stanley Clarke. I was in Stanley Clarke‘s band with Stanley Clarke and Lenny White. Stanley Clarke is an innovator and a legend. He didn’t give a shit what band I was in before then. It was about the music. So that’s kind of the cool thing about jazz and jazz fusion — it really is about the music. And rock — although I’m a rock guy; I love it — as much as they want you to believe it, it’s not really about the music. It’s about the music and a lot of the other stuff that come along with it. So you just have to kind of put that hat on when you’re in that realm.”