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“If some awful gig already has two Yngwie Malmsteen-level shredding dudes, it doesn’t need a third hamster running on that wheel”: Tom Morello on developing his own guitar style
“I was playing solos that sounded like every other heavy metal guitar player. I was really great at it and it didn’t matter at all,” says the guitarist.
Image: HELLE ARENSBAK / Getty Images
Rage Against The Machine virtuoso Tom Morello has opened up about a key moment in his guitar career that veered him off the well-trodden path of traditional “shredding”.
Speaking to Guitar Interactive Magazine at the recent Download Festival, Morello shares how he shifted his focus from being a “musician” to being an “artist” after realising that the world doesn’t need more “Yngwie Malmsteen-level” shredders.
“I was playing solos that sounded like every other heavy metal guitar player. I was really great at it and it didn’t matter at all,” says the guitarist. “So, rather than being a musician, I concentrated on being an artist. Instead of trying to be famous, I made music that was completely authentic.”
He adds that “it was really in the earliest years of Rage Against The Machine that I began to self-identify as a DJ.”
“We were opening up for two cover bands in a college on a Wednesday afternoon – a throwaway gig. At soundcheck each of the other bands had a top-notch Yngwie Malmsteen-level shredding guitar player, and that’s what I was trying to be.”
“If some awful gig already has two of those dudes, it doesn’t need a third hamster running on that wheel,” Morello explains.
And so instead of practising scales (“At the time I was practising eight hours a day,” says the musician), Morello began practising making “mistakes”.
“I started deconstructing the instrument. It was just a piece of wood with some wires and some electronics. And if I can make a noise, then that noise can be the centrepiece of a song or a solo. That was the moment I stopped just being a musician and started being an artist.”
Watch the full interview below.
In other news, Tom Morello has announced his first-ever full-length solo rock record due later this year. The album’s first single Soldier In The Army Of Love, co-written with his “guitar wizard son” Roman, will be released on Friday, 28 June.