The song Tom Morello wants to be remembered for as a guitarist: “My favourite elements”
Many would argue that there haven’t been enough guitar heroes since the golden age of rock music passed in the 1970s, and yet, Tom Morello stands firmly in place as an easy rebuttal of this claim.
His work with Rage Against The Machine was far more inventive than most of what the band’s contemporaries were doing, fusing together a smörgåsbord of styles that few had previously considered possible to be married together cohesively in one song.
The band were praised for their three studio albums of original material for being sonically abrasive yet packed with grooves, full of unique technical moves that others would be too afraid to pull off, and somehow managing to blend together elements of metal, hip-hop and funk. Whether or not you’re a fan of his contributions to music, Morello ought to be considered something of an innovator at the very least as a result of this alone.
The material he’s worked on in the years since Rage Against The Machine, such as joining forces with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell to form Audioslave, and his work alongside Public Enemy in more recent times, has only served to further support all claims that he’s one of the most versatile and creative forces in rock music and beyond.
It’s not just in his immediate circles that he’s highly regarded, either. As a diehard fan of Bruce Springsteen, he’s been fortunate enough to work alongside his idol, and this isn’t something you can simply do by expressing your fandom for an artist – this is entirely based on the wealth of talent that he possesses as a musician, and the fact that his flexibility as a guitarist means he can effortlessly slink between styles is one of the greatest strengths he can offer.
However, what sits highest for Morello in terms of his own achievements, because during a 2002 interview with Guitar World, he answered the question – ‘What is it that he wishes to be remembered for long after his career comes to an end?’, explaining what he felt was his crowning moment as a guitarist, and the song that he feels he ought to be recognised for centuries to come.
“‘Killing in the Name’ contains some of my favourite elements of guitar playing,” he argued. “It’s got the huge riff, the propulsive chorus and the ‘angry insect’ guitar solo. The song also features a dissonant breakdown, followed by the ‘cavalry charge’ outro, which makes for a fine rocking time all around. These are all things that I enjoy, and that was the very first time they all came together in one song.”
He continued by reminding readers that ‘Killing in the Name’ was the first single that Rage Against the Machine had released, and that there couldn’t have been a better way of introducing everything they were about as a group. “It launched our sound as a band as well as my sound as a guitarist in a defining way. I have two parallel voices in my guitar playing, the quirky-noises-as-musical-passages concept and the anthemic riffage, and they are well-represented in this song.”
From its aggressive funk-metal riffs to its frenetic lead guitar work, Morello couldn’t have marched into the spotlight with a more defining and boisterous track, and there’s perhaps no more righteous song released in the whole of the 1990s. It’s not just fantastic in terms of its anger or its political protestations, but also in terms of the guitar innovation on display from Morello, and that’s something that never seemed to ever slip from his grasp from this moment onwards.
