Former Nine Inch Nails guitarist James Woolley, one of the few musicians to be identified with the groundbreaking group outside of Trent Reznor, passed away over the weekend. The news was announced in a Facebook post by his ex-wife Kate Van Buren late yesterday (August 16).
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Woolley joined NIN in 1991, replacing Lee Mars. “He brought coolness to playing keyboards, which isn’t as easy to do as playing guitar or drums”, Van Buren wrote. “Those years were truly magical and quite an adventure”, Van Buren wrote.
Woolley left the band in 1994, during the run of Self-Destruct-and not long before the release of The Downward Spiral, the album that transformed Nine Inch Nails into a full-fledged household name.
He had earlier worked with Die Warzau, a Nine Inch Nails opening act, and subsequently returned to that band.
She says: “James always stayed close to his children”. She added that he’d suffered from “significant neck and spine injuries” later in life.
Filter’s Richard Patrick, whose tenure in Nine Inch Nails briefly overlapped with Woolley’s, shared a photo he had taken with the keyboardist. A Best Metal Performance GRAMMY® victor with NIN for his work on the live performance track “Happiness In Slavery” for 1995, James was an active creative collaborator, having worked with other bands such as Die Warzau, Sister Machine Gun, 2wo, and V.O.I.D.
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We’d like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family, friends and loved ones of James Woolley.
