The movement Tom Morello was ashamed of creating: “My apologies”
Any musician would normally be proud to say they were an innovator of a particular genre. Anyone can try to make music that they want to in the hopes that there’s a market for it somewhere, but if you can make something that resonates with people enough to follow you for generations, that’s something you should want to cherish. Black Sabbath may hold that title with heavy metal, and Van Halen might arguably hold that title with glam rock, but Tom Morello wasn’t as comfortable when he found out what Rage Against the Machine started.
Then again, it’s not like Morello and the band were the first people to start merging rap and rock together under one roof. There had already been acts like Beastie Boys, who approached rap on rock’s terms, and the collaborations between the likes of Aerosmith and Run-DMC had embedded themselves into the public consciousness.
Those were still all in good fun, but Morello wanted to create something serious that no one had heard before. Unlike acts like Public Enemy, which used a DJ to provide all of their accompaniment, Morello turned his guitar into a personal turntable, creating sounds that would have been unthinkable for any average guitar player.
Although Morello could play solos that could melt faces, he never saw that as the reason he was put on this Earth to make music. Zack de la Rocha was writing lyrics about the political unrest he saw around the world, and if that needed a voice behind it, it was going to be a lot more than just another Yngwie Malmsteen-style solo.
Since the name of the game became more about sounds and groovy riffs, the biggest fans of Rage Against the Machine ended up picking up guitars of their own for the growing nu-metal movement. This wasn’t about politics anymore, though. If you listen to the likes of Limp Bizkit, half of their catalogue tends to be about bringing back the meat-headed side of rock and roll.
Despite being the genre founders, none of the band took kindly to being lumped into the same category as other nu-metal outfits, including a stunt where Tim Commerford decided to crash the stage at an awards show where Limp Bizkit was being recognised. By the time the Woodstock 1999 festival happened and ended with riots and disrespect to audience members, Morello had had enough of it all.
Looking back on the movement with Loudwire, Morello said that he would have taken back the influence if he could, saying, “For better or worse, Rage Against the Machine seemed to have planted the seeds for the genre that sprung up known as nu metal. My apologies. Rage Against the Machine created a genre and a total fanbase that we did not serve. We made records every four years. In that gap, labels were like, ‘How can we get a band that sounds like Rage but sang about girls and showed up for video shoots?’”.
While some amazing bands still emerged from that scene, they always seemed tangential to the mainstream, with Deftones combining that sound with shoegaze-style haze and Linkin Park bringing back an inherent hookiness to the genre. Nu metal certainly had its time in the sun, but Morello would have sooner forgotten about it if it meant fans didn’t have to suffer through the lesser bands sporting JNCO jeans.
