‘Biko’: The song that made Tom Morello realise “music really could change the world”
Over the past three decades, Tom Morello, known best as the guitarist of Rage Against the Machine, has explored a diverse array of musical styles. His collaborations with iconic figures such as Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, and Ollie Sykes in recent years have expanded his musical horizons and deepened his understanding of rock history.
In the early 1980s, Morello embarked on his music career by forming his first serious band, the Electric Sheep, with future Tool guitarist Adam Jones joining him on bass. His early inspiration was most apparently centred in classic hard rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Kiss, and Alice Cooper.
With such music under his skin, Morello developed his own style of coarse, head-banging riffs that would ultimately shape Rage Against the Machine’s provocative tunes. Morello provided the perfect storm to accompany Zack de la Rocha’s rap-style vocals, which often prevailed with a political agenda. The band made its first dent in 1992 with the eponymous debut album, an LP buoyed handsomely by the signature lead single ‘Killing in the Name’.
Following a riotous 1990s, Morello broadened his scope, taking an interest in artists his younger self might have cast to one side. Among these is the legendary singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen. In 2000, Rage Against the Machine put themselves on Springsteen’s radar by covering ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’.
Shortly after, Springsteen endeared himself to the band, inviting Morello to join his E Street Band for several special concerts on his 2008 tour. They also performed ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ together during the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert series in 2009.
Having established a firm friendship, Springsteen and Morello teamed up in the studio in the early 2010s while the former recorded his seventeenth studio album, Wrecking Ball. Following the album’s release in 2012, Morello again joined the E Street Band for the Wrecking Ball World Tour.
In 2021, Morello discussed his five favourite albums of all time. Alongside selections from Ozzy Osbourne and Jane’s Addiction, he revealed his love for another unlikely legend. Metal and punk enthusiasts often like to distance themselves from prog-wave proponents like Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, but Morello cuts against the grain, even if just for the latter’s popular experimental album, 3.
“Peter Gabriel’s 3 is a spectacular album of ennui and desperation,” Morello said of the unique album. The album arrived in 1980 as the former Genesis frontman’s third solo effort. It was distinguished for its inventive blend of synth textures and oblique rock composition that maintained accessibility in spite of itself. The album also heard the singer reunite with Genesis drummer Phil Collins.
Continuing, Morello discussed a few highlight tracks. “‘Games Without Frontiers’ is the track that draws you in with its brilliant, disjointed poetry and equally disjointed, brilliant Robert Fripp guitars,” he said. “‘Family Snapshot’ is a quiet and terrifying assassin’s novella, and ‘Intruder’ is even scarier than that.”
Shedding light on the South African anti-apartheid movement, ‘Biko’ resonated with Morello the most as a politically motivated artist. “One of the greatest human-rights anthems of all time about the martyred South African dissident Stephen Biko,” he said, describing the song. “It is a song that galvanised the global anti-apartheid movement and stirred in me the realisation that music really could change the world.”
Tragically, Stephen Bantu Biko died in 1977 while in police detention, but his legacy lives on in Gabriel’s poignant lyrics, “You can blow out a candle / But you can’t blow out a fire / Once the flames begin to catch / The wind will blow it higher”. Listen to ‘Biko’ below.
