“Can you take five minutes away from playing Fortnite, and I’ll teach you the first three notes of Stairway to Heaven?”: How Tom Morello helped his son fall in love with guitar

Tom Morello has shared how he got his son to step away from the screens to learn some guitar.

The Rage Against The Machine guitarist encouraged his son Roman, who is now 13, to learn one of his favourite songs by stepping away from gaming in short five minute increments to pick up just a few notes at a time, leading to what eventually turned into a whole song – and not an easy one at that.

• READ MORE: “They didn’t want any toggle switch playing or guitar pyrotechnics”: Tom Morello reveals how his pre-RATM band tried to limit his influence – and drown him out with keyboards

Morello occasionally shares the stage with Roman, and talking to The Australian for a new interview (behind a paywall), he shares, “The crazy part about it is I’m now kind of used to it. At first, it was a thrill; he’s a little kid! He’s 13 years old, and he has a kind of moxie that I didn’t get ‘til I was in my late 20s. But now he’s just another guy in the band who I can count on, and that’s the part that is pretty trippy,” he says.

Of his journey into teaching him to play, he recalls, “It was during pandemic times; there were a lot of guitars around the house, and the kids had no interest in [them] whatsoever. I knew that he was a fan of some classic rock, and he liked Led Zeppelin – so one day during lockdown, I said, ‘Can you take five minutes away from playing Fortnite, and I’ll teach you the first three notes of Stairway to Heaven?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you four minutes’ So I taught him the first three notes, and the next day I said, ‘Hey, give me another four minutes, let’s learn the next thing.’”

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He adds, “So he was six notes in – and on the third day he asked me if he could learn the next notes. That was really building those early successes; not biting off more than we could chew, not starting with something boring like scales, or even tuning the guitar. It was just like, ‘Here’s a song you like – let’s play that song.’

“It’s not the easiest song in the world, but we played it in its entirety — and then he wanted to learn the solo to that. I just thought, ‘Let’s run before we walk,’ and long before he knew the names of any chords, I taught him improvisational soloing,” he says. “So I’m now the rhythm guitar player in the household; I just play some chord progressions, and he shreds over it, and that’s how he got it started.”

Find out where you can catch Tom Morello live this year.