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.
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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.
A Song Inspired by an Infamous Suicide
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.”
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Initially a One-Man Band
While he was working on Short Bus, Patrick started jamming with different musicians in Cleveland. Ultimately, he chose to record all the instruments over a drum machine with Brian Liesegang engineering and producing. Patrick was inspired by a rhythm that Al Jourgensen had played from Ministry’s Lard album and came up with the big guitar riff that drives the song, which would break the band through to the mainstream. The song starts with quietly brooding and ominous verses before erupting into chaotic choruses.
“There was a real anarchist approach to recording on Short Bus,” Patrick explained in the liner notes to the retrospective compilation The Very Best Things (1995–2008). “The attitude was, ‘I’ll see how it goes, I don’t care if it ends up on radio, and we’ll fix it later in the mix.’ I had gone back to Cleveland and took that drunken kid that I’d turn into, tapped into my raw musicality, and just relied on spontaneity and the instincts that sat inside of me.”
Patrick would obviously need a band if he was going to tour and promote Filter’s debut album. Around the time of the Short Bus release, he moved to Chicago, built Abyssinian Sons Studio, and assembled a band consisting of guitarist Geno Lenardo, bassist Frank Cavanaugh, and drummer Steven Gillis. They toured with him and and appeared in the video for “Dose.” Liesegang also became a core touring member.
[AS OF THIS WRITING: Filter Is on the International Tour Trail! – Get Tix Right Here]
A Misunderstood Industrial Pop Rock Hit
Augmented by a nightmarish, washed out video, “Hey Man Nice Shot” was released on April 25, 1995, two weeks before the arrival of Short Bus. The song built up to being a radio hit, eventually peaking at No. 10 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart and No. 19 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart. The single spent seven weeks on the Hot 100 singles chart starting in August and quickly peaked at No. 76. An alternate mix of the song was used in the 1996 black comedy The Cable Guy starring Jim Carrey.
The song fit the zeitgeist of the time—bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, NIN, and Tool were popular—and along with the release of the second single, “Dose,” and a steady regimen of touring, its rise up the charts led to Short Bus attaining Gold status in October 1995 and Platinum status in May 1997. Filter’s sophomore album, Title of Record, boosted by the No. 12 pop hit “Take a Picture” that spent 20 weeks on the Hot 100, would also go on to sell a million copies—but in half the time.
Filter told the Hammer and Nigel Show that people originally thought he wrote “Hey Man Nice Shot” about the suicide of Kurt Cobain. But he explained in a Rolling Stone interview that the lyrics had been written before Cobain’s death, and he was pleased to be able to confirm that with former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl when they met years later.
When Patrick’s record label started revealing that his words were inspired by the unintentionally televised suicide of R. Budd Dywer, his widow became upset and complained to Warner Bros. about it. “She contacted the record company and was like, ‘This is terrible. Why are you letting these guys do this?’” recalled Patrick to the Hammer and Nigel Show. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute. There’s nothing that says it was about R. Budd Dywer. It’s just people talking about it.’”
I wish I would’ve met you
Now it’s a little late
What you could’ve taught me
I could’ve saved some face
They think that your early ending was all wrong
For the most part they’re right
But look how they all got strong
The Demo That Made a Career
Ultimately, this dark song was the breakthrough that gave Patrick and his band Filter the notoriety they needed to make their mark on the masses. Since Short Bus, the group has released seven more studio albums, including their latest, The Algorithm, which is their first release in over seven years. They have been touring again as well. And Patrick has certainly not shied away from equally intense topics over the years since “Nice Shot” became a hit, on songs like “Soldiers of Misfortune,” “Absentee Father,” and “The City of Blinding Riots.”
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