Tom Morello’s six favourite guitarists of all time
In the world of rock and roll guitar players, Tom Morello has always been mathematical in his approach to the instrument. Throughout his career, Morello has looked at his instrument as an experiment by itself, looking to expand the horizons of what was possible on the guitar outside of the shredding that had become popular throughout the 1980s. Despite tearing down the walls of hair metal at the start of the ‘90s, some of Morello’s biggest influences circled back to the glory years of shred guitar.
When talking about some of his biggest influences, Morello singled out some of the best in classic rock, from Jimmy Page to Jimi Hendrix. As things moved towards his upbringing, Morello mentioned Randy Rhoads from Ozzy Osbourne’s band having a huge effect on him, telling Sean Stewart: “Randy Rhoads was the poster that was on my wall and I would practice eight hours a day”.
Rhoads was known for his classical approach to metal music, bringing a melodic light into ‘The Prince of Darkness’ on songs like ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘Mr Crowley’. Morello also incorporated that into several of Rage’s solos, making some of the most difficult solos of the ‘90s on tracks like ‘Take the Power Back’, which features rapid-fire picking he inherited from Rhoads.
Every guitar player’s job is about blending both the light and the dark side of music, and Morello found inspiration from both sides of the fence, going on to say, “It may be a toss-up between David Gilmour for the emotion and Tony Iommi for the riffs”.
David Gilmour’s work with Pink Floyd has always been filled with emotion, bringing humanity into some of Roger Waters’s tortured songs like ‘Time’ and ‘Money’. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Iommi’s ability to turn riffs on their head made for some of the most sinister-sounding hooks on Black Sabbath’s first records, from ‘Iron Man’ to ‘War Pigs’.
Outside of guitar players, Morello also has a healthy respect for hip-hop and rap music, often using his guitar to emulate what would have previously been used by DJs in acts like Run-DMC and Public Enemy. When first thinking of his role in the band, Morello talked about stripping things back and even keeping a notebook of the different alien sounds that he could make with his guitar that didn’t necessarily within the format of a traditional guitar solo.
While being interviewed for the series Metal Evolution, Morello talked about his unique approach to his guitar playing in length, saying, “In Rage Against the Machine, I was the DJ in the band. That got me thinking about the instrument in an entirely different way. While I loved people like Eddie Van Halen, I thought there was enough of that happening already. So I started to look at the eccentricities of my playing, and we started to hear something that we hadn’t heard before”.
Those different avenues eventually led to Morello reaching for different textures across Rage records, like the alien noises on ‘Ashes in the Fall’ or the DJ style break in the middle of ‘Bulls on Parade’. While Morello might worship at the altar of the guitarists that came before him, everything that he plays comes from an eclectic musical stew.
Tom Morello’s favourite guitarists:
- Jimi Hendrix
- Jimmy Page
- Randy Rhoads
- Tony Iommi
- David Gilmour
- Eddie Van Halen
