Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello admitted he didn’t really identify himself as the guitarist of the band, but rather something else.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the rocker explained his role in RATM and what influenced him to pick his current role. He said:
“I self-identified as the DJ in Rage Against the Machine. And so, I began practicing Jam Master Jay’s scratch licks, and Crystal Method’s and Prodigy’s textures. I would sit in my living room, just listen out the window, and try to approximate anything I heard — whether it was a helicopter, a dog barking, a lawnmower going by… If you do that, you might not sound like a helicopter, or a dog, or a lawnmower, but it just framed my playing in an entirely different way.”
Morello’s Journey With A ‘Hallowed Instrument’
The rocker started his guitar journey at 17 years old and began with ’emulating’ legendary names like Eddie Van Halen. In his words, it took him a lot of time to realize that he didn’t have a unique sound. This is when he stopped looking at the instrument as a ‘hallowed instrument.’
Last year, Morello talked about how he approached breaking away from traditional guitar playing in an interview with Total Guitar: