After spending over three years touring with and lending some recorded guitar parts to Nine Inch Nails, Richard Patrick decided in 1993 that he needed to go out on his own. He has said that he pushed NIN mastermind Trent Reznor to go more guitar-heavy with his pioneering industrial band, something that most certainly happened on the groundbreaking The Downward Spiral album in 1994. It would go on to sell more than 4 million copies in America.
Patrick felt confident with his own artistic vision, and with his band Filter he would eventually follow a similar trajectory to NIN whereby he would pave the way for the music, with band membership shifting over the years. After leaving Cleveland, where he had spent many of his formative years and joined up with Reznor, Patrick journeyed to L.A. with his demo for “Hey Man Nice Shot.” He has claimed he was signed by Warner Bros. within a day of presenting it to them. Eight months later, he returned to Cleveland to work on Filter’s first album, Short Bus, which would be launched by the song that landed him the deal. We explore the meaning behind “Hey Man Nice Shot” below.
Patrick found the lyrical inspiration for “Hey Man Nice Shot” from the January 1987 suicide of Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer. It occurred on the day Dwyer was to be sentenced for 11 counts of bribery for which he had faced up to 55 years in prison and a $305,000 fine, according to an Associated Press article from the time. No money was said to have exchanged hands. The public official spent 20 minutes on live television proclaiming his innocence, then shot himself to death. The incident shocked family, friends, and political associates, not to mention the viewing audience.
“When I was 24, I didn’t have life experience other than, ‘I’m in a lot of pain,’” Patrick told the Hammer and Nigel radio show in 2013. “And I don’t want to say that, because Trent’s already in pain, and I don’t want to be the guy that’s in pain. So I started to focus on current events, and one of the things that I had seen was this guy R. Budd Dwyer that had shot himself. I thought about the guts [it took] to do that, just either the insanity or the clarity or whatever. It’s very awkward—I actually met one of his relatives. And I was like, ‘It’s an anti-suicide song.’ Of course, if he holds a press conference, it’s going to affect people. I never really admitted to it until the song was already a huge hit, and then the record company started spilling the beans, leaking it a little bit.” From: https://americansongwriter.com/the-gruesome-truth-behind-the-meaning-of-filters-hey-man-nice-shot/
