{ Lick That Riff! }

Hello Everybody, How are you all?

So to another Hero Worship post! And to another truly great guitar hero, especially one of the 90s and 00s. Tom Morrello! The amazing guitarist better known for his work in Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave.

What Total Guitar said about him:

You know him by his: Revolutionary but slightly camp head-gear, aswell as Page-esque riffs and wacky sound effects.

Greatest Moment: That dentist drill solo on, “Killing in the name of”. Now that’s how a whammy pedal should be played!

The early 1990′s was a great time for guitar music. Grunge was in full swing, Guns N’ Roses were still on the scene and Madchester still had a few classic albums to bear. But Axl, Slash and co were bloated and about to implode, Northern bands like Happy Mondays and Stone Roses were destined to the same fate, and Grunge was about to kill the guitar solo. Things looked grim.

But then something completely unexpected happened. An unknown band from Los Angeles released a single with a riff that must have had Jimmy Page weeping with envy, and a solo that sounded like nothing that had ever come before. The song was “Killing In The Name”, the band, Rage Against The Machine, and the guitarist, Tom Morello.

Rage and Tom blew up overnight and soon you couldn’t go to any rock club or student union without hearing a King-Kong sized RATM riff. Part of their success was due to good timing; they fused rap and rock at a time when kids with long hair and Doc Martens were happy to wear Cypress Hill or Ice Cube T-shirts. Guitar-wise, Tom Morello was a child of the 80′s and so not adverse to the odd spot of shredding, but his muse was hip-hop. That much is obvious on the band’s self-titled debut album, which came with the tagline: No samples, Keyboards or synthesisers were used in the making of this record. Tom could tear up the fretboard all right, but he could also sound like a scratch DJ. The results were nothing short of revolutionary. Shuttering lead lines, radical divebombs and turntable-like scratches. Guitars weren’t meant to sound like that! Fer chrissakes!

Since then Rage rapper Zack and the rest of the band have parted company. Zack was replaced by ex-Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell and the group surfaced as Audioslave. The hip-hop elements that made RATM such a unique prospect are gone, but Tom’s riffs are just as deadly and his solos still break the boundaries of what’s expected from a rock guitarist. For that we salute him. It’s just a shame about those hats.

Tom Morello is a great guitarist! His riffs are truly an inspiration. There’s just so many amazing riffs tha the’s done, from Chocise to Killing In the Name, to Guerilla Radio to Sleep Now In The Fire. He is definitely a guitarist that everyone should know, and everyone should know, or attempt at least one of his riffs.

Thanks for reading again guys and I hope you have enjoyed this weeks Hero Worship.

Other posts in the series:

• Weller
• Valensi

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