The guitarist Tom Morello said was out of everybody’s league: “Miles above and apart”
When people talk about the past, being the good old days of music, there are always a few names they bring up as a means of proving they are right. Because it is true, when they mention living through the days of Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell or Jimi Hendrix, it feels truly difficult to propose a name that can challenge those greats.
There’s something about the last name that feels all the more powerful in that respect. With history guiding us the way, we can walk down a pathway of musical influence that ultimately traces back to Hendrix. He was a pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement and almost changed the way in which music viewed the guitar player. He gave musicians permission to step forward and embrace virtuoso status.
Because Hendrix turned the art of guitar playing into something so complex, so transcendental, and so elusive, it provided an opportunity for genres to be explored. Sure, he began as a blues guitarist like the rest, but within that were touches of psychedelia, soul and R&B, which paved a way for future artists to blend sounds of their own.
One such band was Rage Against The Machine. The Californian band pioneered this idea of rap rock and funk metal, building off the platforms laid out by Hendrix. So, it comes as no surprise that the band’s guitarist heralds him as one of his key influences.
Morello cites Electric Ladyland as his creative north star, explaining, “It’s another link in the chain of a genius artist continuing to explore the endless imagination that he had, and his mastery of an instrument. He was in a lane entirely by himself that was miles above and apart from other electric guitar players of the era.”
Within that record, he heard the essence of funk that would ultimately allow Morello and co to explore ideas of their own and understand how that specific genre could marry up with traditional rock ideas.
He explained, “One thing about Hendrix was that he really delved into the funk too. His right-hand grooves were devastating. ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return)’ is one of the all-time heavy jams, and it’s like a union of man and guitar and mission that is the pinnacle of what you can do on the instrument. There were no boundaries to the ideas that he could express on the instrument, and it was really that record, more than any other, that exposes that.”
It’s not just funk that can be heard on that iconic album. The aforementioned genres are showcased in tracks like the spacey, ‘Burning of the Midnight Lamp’, to the R&B of ‘Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)’ and the outright avant-garde ‘1983… A Merman I Should Turn To Be’.
While Rage Against The Machine never released one specific album as far-reaching as this, they certainly took influence from Hendrix’s bravery to push sonic boundaries. If Hendrix had the chance to witness Rage in action, I’d have no doubting he would be a fan of their music.
