Tom Morello names the greatest live band of all time: “The future is unwritten”
Best known as the guitarist behind Rage Against the Machine and its anarchistic rap metal, Tom Morello is eminently influential in his field. However, even during the 1990s, he proved himself to be quite the polymath, exploring different stylistic approaches and flexing his songwriting and production muscles in a series of collaborations, including those with Primus and Johnny Cash.
In more recent years, Morello’s musical journey has made several unexpected stops in fruitful collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, and Ollie Sykes. Each new liaison has broadened Morello’s horizon from roots firmly planted in the heavier rock genres, namely heavy metal and punk rock.
Long before he became infatuated with hip-hop and politically charged songwriting, Morello idolised bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Alice Cooper. In a similar vein to these heavier artists of the 1970s was Kiss, the guitarist’s first and most pivotal musical infatuation.
As a child, Morello became entranced by Kiss as a complete package. Not only did he enjoy the hard glam-rock music, but the four-piece’s face-painted visage sparked his imagination like the comic books he read at the time. “Kiss was the band that really made me fall in love with rock and roll music,” Morello told Pitchfork in 2020. “I was a huge comic book collector, and it was a band composed of superheroes, as far as I could tell. It’s hard to paint you a picture of the mystique of a band like that at the time.”
Bands of Kiss’ ilk captured Morello’s imagination in the early 1970s and set him up for some heady teen years in the seminal yet fleeting age of punk rock. Like most of his peers, the Rage guitarist adored US punk by the likes of Ramones and Black Flag, but his favourite hailed from across the pond.
In 2003, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame invited Morello to induct his favourite punk band alongside U2’s Edge. The Rage guitarist remembered The Clash as the greatest live band he had ever seen. “I had the good fortune to see The Clash play at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago when I was a teenager,” he said. “It was an experience that changed my life. Even before the first note was played, the transformation began.”
Similar to his childhood fascination with Kiss, Morello’s fascination with The Clash extended far beyond the chord progressions and catchy grooves. “I bought a t-shirt in the lobby,” he continued. “I was used to buying heavy metal t-shirts that had pictures of wizards and dragons on them. But this Clash shirt was very different.”
Morello’s Clash t-shirt stated, “The future is unwritten”. The phrase could easily have pertained to the band’s future, but for Morello and a crowd of screaming fans, it posed a challenge. “There was a sense of community in the room that seemed like absolutely anything was possible,” he added. “I was energised, politicised and changed by The Clash that night. I knew that the future was unwritten and maybe we fans of that band were going to write it together.”
If Morello’s career success could be attributed to just two bands, Kiss and The Clash seem to have made the most crucial impact. He may have since become a fan of Bruce Springsteen and Bring Me the Horizon, but nothing can irradicate those core memories.
