“Historically important”: Tom Morello on the one show that shifted rock culture
To a certain degree, every band strives to be considered as unique in some way, but as far as unique prospects go, there haven’t been many more unusual than Rage Against the Machine. Merging rap, rock and funk in a fashion that hadn’t really been attempted by any other acts in the past, it’s hard to trace their major influences in a linear fashion, given how they seemingly pulled from many disparate backgrounds.
Despite being proponents of the above three genres, their tastes and influences have always been much more far-reaching than those of these areas. Given their highly political lyrics, it’s easy to identify punk and hardcore as being major influences on both their sound and ethos as a group, but at the same time, there are plenty of moments that suggest heavy metal played a huge part in shaping their sound, albeit having ditched the machismo that often accompanies the genre in both its image and themes.
The band’s guitarist, Tom Morello, is one of the great sonic innovators of his generation, and has expressed a fondness for a wide variety of musical styles that have helped shape his unconventional style. Not only is he an appreciator of a hodgepodge of music from far-reaching origins, but he’s a true historian of music who not only loves everything he listens to, but knows every fine detail about it.
Given his predilection for musical discovery, you can almost guarantee that if Morello says something ought to be taken note of, it’s certainly worthy of recognition. When he sat down to discuss some of his favourite records of all time with The Line of Best Fit, it was inevitable that it would be a great opportunity for the guitarist to offer his sagacity on a mixture of classics, underappreciated gems, and highlights from his own career, although he also took time to pick out a gig that should have gone down in history.
When you think of legendary gigs, there are a handful that are repeatedly mentioned such as Woodstock 1969 and Live Aid, but very few discuss the time The Rolling Stones were supported by Guns N’ Roses and Living Colour at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1989. Morello, on the other hand, believes that this is a show that should have gone down as one of the most significant in musical history, and explained his reasoning to the publication.
Calling the show “historically important”, he noted how the differences between the three acts felt like an inspired booking that people should have taken notice of to a greater extent. “It was the kind of bill that no one had seen before,” Morello enthused. “Here’s the established, kings of rock and roll, here are the upstarts with this badass, sort of new gutter rock and roll and here’s an all-black band playing rock and roll in a football stadium. I remember that day in LA. It felt like the culture shifted in an important way.”
While nobody talks about this show specifically, it was clearly an eye-opening moment for Morello, who noted that it marked a significant blurring of boundaries between genres and would ultimately have helped guide his own musical projects towards the varied sounds they produced. There are still shows that cater to specific audiences and fans of a certain genre, but these days, people are far more open to attending a concert with a varied bill, and Morello believes that this may have been the catalyst for it.
