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RAGING GLORY
Street smart Harvard grad Tom Morello's high tech tricks and angry
licks fuel Rage Against The Machine's hip-hopping mad grooves.
By Jeff Kitts
GUITAR WORLD, July 1993
If any band has a right to try and change the world, it's Rage Against
The Machine. Unlike the majority of middle-class rock musicians who write
lyrics about racial injustice, civil unrest, economic decline, media
manipulation and other controversial subjects for the shock value, each member
of the politically charged, Los Angeles-based Rage Against The Machine are
personally familiar with the unpleasant side of life. Sometimes *too*
familiar, as 28-year-old guitarist Tom Morello will attest.
"My mom is Irish and Italian, and my dad, who left when I was a year
old, is African", says Morello, a graduate of Harvard University. "I grew up
in a small suburb of Illinois, and some people there didn't like the fact that
I was black and my mom was white. I got into a couple of fights at school,
and one time I even found a noose hanging in my garage!"
Such experiences fuel the hostile, almost violent mix of rock and
hip-hop that Rage Against The Machine's quartet of angry men gear towards an
entire *nation* of frustrated, rebellious adolescents.
"There are a lot of angry, intelligent young people out there right
now, and our music tries to articulate that sense of alienation and
resentment", says Morello. "People leave our shows with more on their minds
than when they came in - they're even *more* pissed off."
This summer, Rage Against The Machine will reach over one million
disgruntled American youths when they join Alice In Chains, Fishbone,
Arrested Development, Primus, Front 242 and Dinosaur Jr. on the third annual
Lollapalooza festival tour.
"I appreciate everything that Lollapalooza tries to do", says Morello.
"Every audience member gets to see seven or eight bands for around $3.00 per
band, plus sample some exotic foods and maybe expose themselves to some
important political issues. It's great that any kid can be opened up to that
kind of cultural diversity in one afternoon."
Guitar World recently took advantage of a rare opportunity to speak
with Morello, an innovative player whose bizarre mix of fleet-fingered
noodling, driving riffs and space-age sound effects have made Rage's
self-titled debut one of this year's finest - and the guitarist one of the
most exciting young rule-breakers in modern rock.
"I can't express the things I have inside me with just a standard
blues scale", says Morello. "There's 18 years of suburban angst and alienation
inside me that sometimes can only be leaked out with a horrible, feedback-
screeching pterodactyl whoop."
GW: Nothing's exploding overnight, but things seem to be moving along quite
nicely for the band. Is it all what you expected?
TM: To tell you the truth, we didn't expect things to be happening quite so
quickly for us, although it is what we had *hoped* for. We want people
to discover Rage Against The Machine the same way we discovered Primus,
Jane's Addiction and other bands that we like - by word of mouth from
knowledgeable people, not from Kurt Loder.
GW: What about Rage Against The Machine do you think kids find so appealing?
TM: A lot of these kids, as well as ethnic minorities and women, have felt
completely left-out and abandoned by their country over the past 12 years
that Reagan and Bush were in the White House. I just think there's a lot
of dissatisfaction among young people today, and our music taps into that
vein.
GW: How do your fans react to the band's political side?
TM: To tell you the truth, when we first got together, I thought that our
political side would alienate the people who just got off on the music.
But it's the complete opposite. I think it's because young people today
are a lot more disenchanted than they were a few years ago, and they need
music that speaks to them on that level.
GW: Times have changed.
TM: They sure have. In the late-Eighties, music and entertainment were
completely escapist in nature - like, get a six-pack on the weekend, and
if you buy the right kind of acid-wash jeans, you'll get that beautiful
girlfriend you see in the beer ads. But now, people are waking up to the
fact that there is a lot of injustice in the world that needs to be
confronted. With our music, we hope to jar people out of their complacency
- and, to a certain extent, it seems to be working.
GW: Why does the band avoid the traditional methods of promotion - such as
MTV videos, edited radio singles, even interviews?
TM: When a band starts doing things like that, they open themselves up to
misconception. We know that what we're doing musically is very real, but
if all of a sudden it's blown up on the cover of Circus magazine or all
over MTV, people might view us as just another flavor-of-the-month.
Actually, we have done a couple videos - but you'll never see them on MTV
because there's a whole lot of cussing goin' on. [laughs] As far as
editing any of our tracks to get radio airplay goes, we feel there are two
kinds of bands: bands that do that, and bands that don't - and we don't
want to be in the former category. The profanity in our lyrics is very
much an integral and effective part of our music, and editing songs for
airplay just isn't what this band is about.
GW: But you are planning to do a video for the song "Bombtrack", correct?
TM: Yes. I really hate 99 percent of all MTV videos. MTV reaches about 40 or
50 million homes, and all you in videos - and on most of television in
general - is sexism, misogyny, homophobia and all kinds of misinformation.
All we want to do is be able to open up some people's minds for four
minutes or so. We plan on doing the most pissed-off video the MTV audience
has ever seen, and hopefully we'll be able to puncture that fabric of
misinformation that unfortunately exists.
GW: As the band's popularity increases, do you find that you *do* have to
compromise a bit more, and maybe do things you don't necessarily feel are
right for the band?
TM: Actually, as the pressures of greater exposure press in on the band, we've
become more militant in our desire to maintain underground credibility.
We're very sensitive to the fact that it's easy for any band with
underground roots to, all of a sudden, be uprooted by mainstream success
and be ground up in the marketing machines. That goes for everything from
doing videos and interviews right down to selling t-shirts - which are
printed up by our 17-year-old friend, and we make 30 cents apiece on.
GW: Tell me more about your family history.
TM: Well, my parents met and got married while my mother was in Africa,
teaching history on a U.S. military base. It was during Kenya's
independence movement, and my father and his side of the family were
involved in the Mau Mau insurrection against the British. My father was
part of Kenya's first United Nations delegation. We haven't heard from
him since he left us. I'm looking forward to touring Africa so I can
knock on his door and go "Hey dad - what's up? Here's a tape." [laughs]
GW: What was it like being raised by your Italian/Irish mother?
TM: Well, it was pretty interesting, to say the least. She grew up in a tiny
town in central Illinois, where we moved to after my parents got divorced
in New York. In 1965 or '66, when she was looking for a teaching job, this
little town called Libertyville was the only town in the Chicago suburban
area that would allow us, as an interracial mother and child, to live in
the same community where she taught. Most schools said that, because of
me, she would have to live somewhere else is she wanted to teach there.
So eventually she got a teaching job in Libertyville, and I spent 18
years there. In fact, I was the first person of color to live in the
community of Libertyville *ever*.
When we started looking for apartments, the real estate agent had to
go door to door and ask the local residents if they would mind a one year
old black child and his white mother lived in their community. Most people
were cool with it; but some weren't. But overall, it was a pretty positive
place to grow up.
GW: When did you start to play guitar?
TM: When I was 17, which was pretty late compared to the other guys in my high
school; most of those guys could really shred before I had even learned a
chord. In fact, I was in a punk rock band while I was in high school, even
before I could play - the fact that I actually owned a guitar got me in
the band. [laughs]
I spent a ridiculous amount of time practicing during those first few
years, including the time I went to Harvard University. It became an
obsessive compulsive thing, where every day, without fail, I would
practice for two to four hours - even if I had a temperature of 102, an
exam the next day and was studying until four in the morning, I'd practice
until six a.m. After I graduated, I practiced for eight hours every day!
GW: What kind of things did you practice for so many hours?
TM: I broke it up into four two-hour slots, with a half-hour for lunch: two
hours of pure technique, which was something I always felt I needed to
catch up on; two hours of theory, which I learned mainly from a brilliant
book called The Guitar Handbook; two hours of songwriting: riffs, grooves,
etc.; and two hours of play time, where I would play along with songs on
the radio and work on creating real trippy noises and broadening that
aspect of my playing.
GW: Do you practice differently today?
TM: Oh yeah. I used to feel that I improved when I practiced for long hours
every day, but now I'd rather divert my energies to experimenting with the
instrument. Instead of practicing scales for six hours, I'd rather just
*look* at the guitar for ten minutes, pick it up and then try to, for
instance, play the same sound that a rhinoceros would make. [laughs] A lot
of my practicing also happens while we're on stage, during the solo spots
- I'll often attempt to play something that I've never played before.
GW: Did you ever take lessons?
TM: I took two guitar, both of which were real disasters. When I was about
13-years-old, I got my first guitar, a Kay, which I bought for $50 because
it had the most knobs on it. [laughs] So I went down to the local guitar
shop, plunked down my five bucks and told the guy I wanted to learn "Black
Dog" and "Detroit Rock City". They guy told me, "No. Today we are going
to learn how to tune the guitar." So I went home and practiced tuning. The
next week I went back and plunked down another five bucks, and asked him
to teach me those two songs. He said, "No. Today we're going to learn the
C major scale." I turned around and walked out, and that was the last
guitar lesson I ever had. In fact, I didn't pick up the guitar again until
four years later, when I heard a Sex Pistols album.
GW: Not many people, let alone rock guitarists, attend Harvard. What was
that experience like?
TM: I majored in Social Studies, which encompasses economics, history,
political science, and graduated with honors in 1986. Like most people
who attend Harvard that aren't super-rich, I went on a scholarship. One of
the reasons I was able to go to Harvard was because if the school wants
you to attend, they make sure you're there, regardless of your financial
situation.
As much as Harvard is a great place to learn, it's also a big, evil
corporation that does things like invest in companies doing business in
South Africa. During my time there, I was involved in a lot of student
protests, strikes, sit-ins and other things to change the school's
politics.
GW: After graduating from Harvard, you move to Los Angeles. Why?
TM: Well, while I was growing up, my only source of music information was
reading Circus and Hit Parader, and I knew from those magazines that there
was a large community of musicians in L.A. I was interested in doing
something that was both musically adept and politically conscious, and I
figured that, since the pool of different musicians in L.A. was so large,
I'd be more likely to find what I was looking for there than anywhere
else. [laughs] I moved to L.A. at the height of the glam scene, and the
biggest bands in the area were Faster Pussycat, Jetboy, and Guns and
Roses.
My first real experience in L.A. was pretty grim. The first time I
flipped through one of the local music papers, I found an ad for a metal-
type band looking for a guitarist. So I called the bass player and we
agreed to exchange tapes. Ten minutes later, his manager called me and
almost immediately asked how long my hair was. I told him it wasn't very
long, and he then asked if it was at least shoulder length. When I said
no, he asked if I was blond! He told me that the band was getting all
this interest from record companies and publishing companies, and that
they were looking for a very specific-looking type of player. And I was
like, "But you've never heard me play - I could be the perfect guitarist
for this band, and you don't even want to exchange tapes because my hair
doesn't meet your requirements?" The he suggested that maybe I could get
a wig, and then finally said that it probably wouldn't work out. [laughs]
GW: Zack [de la Rocha, vocals] is an incredibly intense performer. What were
your first impressions of him?
TM: The first day that Zack came to jam with us, he was just this little guy
with a cheap PA who came in and started rapping - and at that point I had
no intention of being in a rock band with a singer who rapped. [laughs]
But once I read his lyrics and heard him sing, I was so blown away that I
knew Zack was the right guy.
GW: At what point did you start using the guitar in such an unorthodox manner
- creating unique sounds without fancy effects?
TM: It probably goes back to when I was in that first punk band in high
school. Like I said before, I barely knew how to play then, and my goal
was to never learn anything from anybody. [laughs] And that sounds great
in theory, but it made band rehearsals a real mess. So I started using
all this horrible feedback and taking the neck of the guitar and bending
it over my head and making all these weird noises. But that was punk, so
it was ok. I guess that was the seed of the whole thing, but then I got
more into practicing Rhandy Rhodes and Eddie Van Halen scales and Jimmy
Page licks. Only in last couple of years have I begun to find my own
voice on the instrument, which is very different from the more traditional
types of guitar playing.
GW: Two of your more intriguing solos appear on "Killing In The Name Of" and
"Know Your Enemy". Tell me about them.
TM: For "Killing", I play a real simple Barnum & Bailey Circus kind of thing.
I use a harmonizer pedal set a couple octaves up, and just play real fast,
trill-picking blues scales that sounds like the attack of a hornets nest
when you manipulate the pedal in a certain way. For "Enemy", I use a
harmonizer set to a fifth. Much of it's just random noodling, and the
real staccato part at the end is just me flicking the toggle switch on
and off. I have one volume knob set to 10 and the other set to zero, and
I just hammer the note with my left hand prior to the downbeat, so when I
flick the switch on, the note is already going.
GW: What kind of gear do you use?
TM: Not too much, really. Just a 50-watt Marshall half-stack, a wah pedal for
one song, a flanger pedal, an analog delay, a DOD EQ that I just for a
boost on the solos, and a harmonizer. I don't use any rack gear. My main
guitar is an Eighties stock Telecaster with single-coil pickups. My other
guitar is just a mutt I've assembled from parts of other guitars over the
years; I've never really been happy with it.
GW: You seem to rely quite heavily on the Digitech Whammy Pedal.
TM: I use it because I have a great fear of expensive rack gear. [laughs] The
harmonizer pedal works really well in conjunction with the non-traditional
ways that I manipulate the guitar - like using hip-hop samples and
industrial noises. The harmonizer has almost a cheezy sound - not like a
big, expensive piece of gear. To me, it has a texture that you can't get
with one of those Eventide harmonizers. Take Steve Vai: he uses some
interesting harmonizer effects, but I think his sound is ultimately too
processed and stale - my pedal sounds more like an Eventide harmonizer
for garage bands.
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