Tom Morello on the album that “saved and redeemed hard rock music” in the 1980s
In the 1980s, synths seemed to be taking over the world. MTV had found a way to twist experimentation into a profitable platitude. Rock ‘n’ roll was an unruly character squeezed out of the mainstream and very nearly out of existence. Of course, there were hair metal bands and pioneers of something fresh in the form of groups like The Smiths and Sonic Youth, but the original, gritty spirit of rock ‘n’ roll as it once was seemed to be waning.
Granted, there were huge bands selling monumental amounts of records still, but they were stadium stars, a world away from the socially grounded subculture that bore them. Tom Morello has always been a star with his finger to the pulse of that side of the art form. While music might have been getting heavier, in the opinion of The Rage Against The Machine star, true heaviness is not just borne from roaring amps and antics.
As he once explained, “It dawned on me that folk music – the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger – could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.” From his view, there was one group that took that tenet and empowered it with, well, loud amps and everything in between.
In his view, Jane’s Addiction’s groundbreaking debut album, Nothing’s Shocking, from 1988, was not only a great record, it was a vital one for the survival of an entire genre. “Jane’s Addiction saved and redeemed hard rock music with this tour de force,” Morello said of the album when chatting with Spin, championing the record as one of his all-time favourites.
It was their unique mix of delish bravura and bold originality that first allured him, commenting, “The band unapologetically embraced bold metal riffs, fused them with an underground artistry and brilliant street poetry that created an unprecedented alloy of rock and roll greatness.“
But then the songs also stood on their own. “The Santeria magic, the gorgeous acoustic ‘Jane Says,’ the Jim Morrison-like ruminations on the bulldozer track ‘Pigs in Zen,’ and the bone-crushing ‘Mountain Song’ launched the Lollapalooza Nation,“ he said. “This album has romance, mysticism, deep insight, and in my humble view, remains the greatest ‘alternative rock’ album to date.”
The album might not have broken the top 100 in the US, but plenty of influential records have befallen a similar fate. From the Velvet Underground to David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen, a plethora of lauded debuts have been shunned by the mainstream and changed the world all the same—adding a new dimension to music.
As Brian Eno once said, “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!”
Nothing’s Shocking resides in a similar camp, and one of those bands it inspired were called Rage Against The Machine.
