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“It got me out of a sonic safety zone that I had been in with Rage Against The Machine”: Tom Morello on the Fender Stratocaster
“One of the things that differentiates the Strat from other great electric guitars is the sound of those other guitars leading the player. With the Stratocaster, the player leads the sound.”
Image: Kevin Winter / Getty Images
2024 marks 70 years of the Fender Stratocaster, the guitar that has been synonymous with rock ‘n’ roll since its release in 1954. To celebrate the milestone, Fender has unveiled a bunch of limited-edition Strats releases; the big F also recently unveiled an all-star cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child (Slight Return) featuring some of rock and guitar’s best.
Joining the occasion is Tom Morello, who speaks in a new interview about his musical journey with the Strat and how it once “got me out of a sonic safety zone that I had been in with Rage Against The Machine”.
“Well, my introduction to the Strat was at the inception of [rock supergroup] Audioslave,” Morello tells Rock Sound. “I had never played a Strat before that. When we formed that band, I wanted a different six-string colleague to help me forge my guitar path in that band.”
“I got a Strat, and it felt right in my hands,” says the rocker. “I brought it home and immediately wrote ‘SOUL POWER’ on it as a North Star to guide my sonic travels with the band. And it really did provide that. It got me out of a sonic safety zone that I had been in with Rage Against The Machine. It allowed me to adapt and play music with Chris Cornell and Timmy [Commerford] and Brad [Wilk] and expanded the possibilities of what it was that I could play.”
According to Morello, there’s a certain magic to the Strat that other models just can’t provide. He explains that “one of the things that differentiates the Strat from other great electric guitars is the sound of those other guitars leading the player. With the Stratocaster, the player leads the sound.”
“Off the top of my head, some of my favourite Strat players would be Jimi Hendrix’s feedback frenzy and David Gilmour’s emotional melodicism. Then there’s Jeff Beck reconstituting the instrument, Wayne Kramer inventing punk rock on it, and Andy Gill with Gang Of Four, who used the guitar aggressively. They are all playing Stratocasters but with hardly any sonic bleeds between their styles.”
“So, when I got my hand on the Soul Power Strat, I knew it would allow me to explore myself as an artist in a new way simply by channelling my inner six-string soul power.”
In other news, Morello is set to take stage at this year’s Download Festival alongside Queens of the Stone Age, Fall Out Boy, Avenged Sevenfold and more. The musician, whose signature Soul Power “will be there representing 100%”, says that his set will feature a mix of Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine jams.