Guitar innovation? Sometimes it seems like it's all been done before. Chuck Berry established the DNA for rock 'n' roll guitar way back in the 50's. Since then, various artists like Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Stanley Jordan, Steve Vai, and Metallica have forged their own sylistic permutations. What's left? A lot, presumablly. And Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is living proof. Though he's certainly not the first guitarist to experiment with bizarre noises and unorthodox techniques, his effots are groundbreaking - perhaps even the most significant rock-based guitar devolopement in the 90s. Guitar One visisted with Morello to get the lowdown on his formative guitar years, and to get an upclose look at his signature techniques.
What inspired you to begin playing guitar?
Originally, I was drawn to the guitar by bands like Led Zeppelin and Kiss. Those were the bands that first got me to buy records, concert tickets, to put posters on my wall, and to strum along with "Nobody's Fault But Mine" and "Detroit Rock City." When I was 13 years oldn I bought a $50 Kay guitar and a $50 Kay amplifier. I purchased that guitar because it was the one with the most knobs that was within my two-digit price range. From there, I proceeded to conquer the Kiss and Led zeppelin catalogs. I went down to the local Libertyville, Illinois, music shop, plunked down my five dollar bill, and took my first lesson. I said "Alright, I want to learn 'Black Dog' and 'Detroit Rock City'." They said "Well, Mr. Morello, we're sorry, but this first lesson is going to be about learning to tune the guitar." I thought the idea was a horrible waste of time, but decided that if I had to pay my dues, I had to pay my dues. So I went home and learned how to tune my guitar, came back the next week, and said, "Alright, it's on. 'Black Dog' and 'Detroit Rock City.'" "Once again, they shook their heads and said, 'No, no, this week we're learning the C major scale.'" At that point I had had enough .I let the guitar sit for four years gathering dust in the closet until I bought the Sex Pistols record Never Mind The Bullocks. That same week that I bought that record, I was in a band. Before I knew how to play an E chord, I was in a band. We were writing our own songs, I was completely inspired by the punk revolution and the philosophy that you didn't need to have a wall of Marshall stacks, or a $10,000 Gibson guitar to make music that was powerful.
Were you self-taught from that point on?
Yeah. From that point on I was completely self-taught. At first, I was practicing about an hour a day. Eventually, after I graduated from college, I was practicing about 8 hours a day. By practicing regularly, rather than playing six hours on the weekend and letting the guitar sit all week, I saw a steady growth and developement in my playing from that persistence. Once I recognized that was happening at an hour a day, then I kicked it up to 2 hours a day, and then to four hours a day. It was to the point where it was really obsessive. I would not play one hour and 56 minutes a day, I would play two hours a day. Come hell or high water, if I had a 103 degree fever, I would play two hours a day. If I had a big exam the next morning, and it was 2:00 in the morning, I would play until 4:00 in the morning, without exception.
Can you describe your typical practice routine?
It's varied over the years. I've always felt that I started playing guitar late. I started at 17, but I always thought that I was very much behind. All of the guitar magazines described how Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, or whoever, started when they were nine years old. I just felt that I was so far behind that I was going to have to work that much harder to catch up. Since I believe that I have no natural ability whatsoever, I had to fight for every single inch of guitar prowess. So when I was practicing for eight hours a day, for two hours I would just practice scales. Then for two hours I would study theory from this book I bought called The Guitar HandBook. That was incredibly helpful. Then for two hours, I would write songs. Then for two hours I would work on crazy noises and stuff like that. But during that time when I was practicing so much, I started to sound way too much like other contemporary players. When I had a love for Randy Rhoads, I was sounding like Randy Rhoads. At one point I started copying Al DiMeola too much. What draws people ot the instrument is the love for guitar players that play a certain way. You can't help but try to emulate that. I mean, even though it wasn't intentional, it was hard to avoid copping Eddie Van Halen. He was basically "the shit" then. That was a hurdle I had to get over. But my practice routine in the lat six years has been dramatically differnet. I practice very little now, and the practicing I do do is concentrating on the eccentricities of my playing - the little mistakes, glitches, and original ideas that make me sound like Tom Morello, as opposed to guitar players that have come before.
Do you understand music theory?
I wouldn't say real well, though the endless hours that I spent sort of puzzling it out on my own certainly bleeds through in my playing. When I opened a book and actually started studying music theory, I found that I had stumbled on alot of the things during my own hours of practicing that I was now able to put names to. The modes, for example. I puzzled out alot of that before really knowing what it was, and how to relate them to keys and whatnot.
Can you illustrate the way you internally mapped out the fretboard?
Yeah. I gave guitar lessons for a couple years. I was basically paid to picture the fretboard for my students on a daily basis. The first scale I stumbled upon was the minor scale. I forget the modal name.
Aeolian mode.
Yeah, the Aeolian mode. When I look at the fretboard, that's what I see in whatever key. Then I picture the modes as I shift up and down the fretboard.
So you see the extentions around one core fingering?
Correct.
Give me three riffs that changed your life.
The first one would have to be the first track on Never Mind The Bullocks, "Holidays in the Sun". When I put that record on, I said, "Oh, no." It was really a revelation. Another riff that changed my life would have to be not a guitar riff, but Run-D.M.C.'s "King of Rock". That was the first time I heard rock and rap synthesized in a devastating way. It had all the crunch and satisfying wallop of all the best hardrock, with something urban and savvy. It was so much better lyrically than the average Dokken song. The third riff that changed my life...I'll take the "Immigrant Song" - the mother of all F-sharp riffs, which has been one of Rage Against the Machine's favorite keys through the years.
Tell me about important milestones in the development of your playing?
The first one would be the realization that you didn't need to have the money, gear, or technique of a Jimmy Page of Yngwie Malmsteen to make powerful music. I was a suburban geek in a basement in the Midwest, and my favorite records were made by this guy who was sitting along the shores of Lock Ness conjuring these mystical riffs and majestic rock. I thought, "That's so far out of my grasp." But the realization that I didn't have to be like that was important. The second milestone would probably be even before Run-D.M.C. I was in Europe when I was 19 years old, and I heard a record by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in a record shop. It was the first time I had heard rap music. It was called Revival, and I immediately bought the 12-inch. That literally changed my life, and broke me out of the mold of white suburban rock. Until that, it had all been either punk rock or hard rock. I didn't really know that other kinds of music even existed. Sure, my mom had James brown and Stevie Wonder records around the house, but I thought, "Man, those don't really have kickin' guitar solos. That can't be music." So that trip to the record shop was a huge change. Ever since, it's been important to me to incorporate that element into my music. Thirdly, it has nothing to do with music at all. It would have to be the political element -my political awakening in high school and college. That inspired me to try forge a music position -whcih came from Woody Guthries, early Bob Dylans, and later artists like Public Enemy-and make heavy music that is polical relevant.
When did you begin to develope your originality as a guitarist?
During the year before Rage Against the MAchine. I always had these quirks in my playing-like messing with the toggle switch. After my Kay guitar, I bought a Gibson Explorer. I got the Explorer just at the time when everbody was getting those "Eddie Van Halen" Kramer one-knob guitars. That was the cool guitar to have. And here I was, weighted down with this bug chunk of wood that had all these volume and tone knobs. It was quite unhip. So I thought as long as I had the thing, and it was paid forl I might as well find some application. So one day in my college dorm, I was messing around with the toggle switch and a wah wah pedal. My roommate, my long-suffering roommate who had to endure my jamming for two years already, said "Oh no, you bought a keyboard." And of course it wasn't a keyboard. I had stumbled upon playing arpeggios with the toggle switch and wahwah pdeal. I thought perhaps I was on to somethin. That was sort of the first revelation that there were others way sto fiddle with the guitar.
What other artists or instrumentalists do you listen to for that kind of inspiration?
It can really be anything. In the first Rage practices, the whole band had sort of a hip hop influence. It was my job to basically play deejay. So I looked to artists from Terminator X, the Bomb Squad, and Public Enemy, to Jam Master Jay and Run-D.M.C., to just turning on KDAY (local LA hip hop radio station) and checking out the noises that deejays were making. Then I tried my best to approximate them on guitar. That really took my playing to another realm. The toggle switch now became like a deejay's kill switch. I started thinking about the guitar in a entirely different way. I didn't look at it as a way to apply music theory to chords, notes, and scales. I looked at it as a piece of wood with six wires and a few electronics that could be manipulated in a much wider variety of ways. And then I used it not as just the icing on the cake, but as the whole meal. I began to try to craft songs out of the noises and textures.
Creatively, have innovative guitarists like Eddie Van halen and Adrian Belew had an effect on you?
Oh definately. But I think with both of those guys, and Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix too, the core is a song that is made up of traditional guitar playing. Then during the solo they go off into this crazy thing, whereas songs like ours like "Bullet in the Head", "Township Rebellion", or the solo in "Bulls on Parade", the emphasis is much more on the non-traditional guitar playing. A uigar playing who had a huge influence on me is Andy Gill from Gang of Four, who deconstructed the guitar ina way that really affected me and made me think. It sortof sounded like he was palying a different song than the rest of the band. When I first heard his playing I thought "That's awful." Only later did I realize the genius in it.
How important is speed and technical ability in your playing?
If you catch me around 1am jamming along with an Al DiMeola record, you'd get one answer, but within the context of Rage Against the Machine, sometimes it's a tool. If I had not practiced for hours on technique, I wouldn't be able to play the solo on "Know Your Enemy". Even though that solo incorporates some very non-traditional elements, and sounds like almost a sequenced thing, my fingers are able to move fast enough to make it happen. Not in any kind of traditional rock-soloing way. All of that has really been stripped away.
Let's talk specifically about some of your signature sounds. Tell me abou the toggle switch technique.
I have two pickups and two volume knobs. One of the volume knobs is set to 19 and the other is set to zero. So as I switch between the pickups, the toggle switch then acts as a kill switch. Wtih my left hand, sometimes I fret notes, or rub my hand along the strings-whatever, just something to generate some sort of sound whcih I can then turn on and off wiht the toggle switch. You can hear that technique in "Bullet in the Head", in the intro to "Know your Enemy", in the deejay scratching solo in "Bulls on Parade", and numerous other places. It's my favorite little trick.
How about the DigiTech Whammy Pedal?
The original was really a dream come true. I have no patience for rack gear, so I've longed for a harmonizer in a stomp-box setting. WHen the Whammy Pedal came along, it was really ideal. I like to combine it with the toggle switch. It just adds one more variable to the pallet of sonic ideas you can use to paint with. I used it a lot on the first record, there's a feature where you can set it to play two octaves above the note you're playing. It's ideal to have something that high when you're trying to recreate deejay sounds. You can cop all the noises on the early Death Row releases - like the Dr. Dre stuff.
Both music and the lyrics are powerful in Rage Against the Machine. How does your collaboration with Zack work in order to make sure that the two of you are in sync?
With each song, it has happened in a very different way. With the first record, we wrote most of those songs during the first month we knew eachother. Zack had a book of poetry and lyrics, and we just bashed those out in the first rehearsals. For Evil Empire, it happened over a much longer period of time. "People of the Sun" was a song that came together in about the length of time it took to play it, whereas "Down Rodeo" took months to get the arrangement and lyrics to work together. So there's no real set way that we go about it.