Tom Morello has opened up about the early days of Rage Against the Machine and revealed a little-known connection to Tool’s Maynard James Keenan in an interview shared by Lipps Service.
The guitarist traced the band’s formation back to his time with drummer Brad Wilk and detailed how various musicians, including Keenan, passed through his orbit before Rage Against the Machine came together.
Morello said he first connected with Wilk after the drummer auditioned for Morello’s former band Lock Up. “I met Brad before I met Zack,” Morello said. “Brad had auditioned for Lock Up… he and I just played great together.”
After Lock Up broke up, Morello said he called Wilk immediately to keep working together. He remembered Wilk’s Music Connection advertisement citing John Bonham and James Brown among his influences, which Morello said accurately reflected the drummer’s powerhouse style.
Wilk later received an offer to join Pearl Jam before the band’s debut album Ten was released. Morello joked that, after hearing the demo, he told Wilk it would never go anywhere and urged him to stick with their project. While Wilk was away, Morello began playing with other musicians, eventually meeting bassist Tim Commerford and Zack de la Rocha.
“That was the first time three-quarters of us jammed together,” Morello said of the early session with Commerford and de la Rocha. He explained that it still did not feel like a complete band until Wilk returned.
Before Rage Against the Machine’s lineup solidified, Morello and Wilk also jammed with Keenan. “We began jamming with different bass players and singers, including Maynard at one point,” Morello said. “It was in some 18-year-old bass player’s bedroom — me, Brad, Maynard, and some guy named Noah jamming. There’s a recording somewhere. Some of those riffs later ended up elsewhere. Maynard’s the dude who taught me how to do drop-D tuning.”
Morello said Keenan showed him the tuning while playing a riff that would later become Tool’s “Sober.” Morello said the first riff he played after learning it became Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom.”
“Those two were sort of a song one afternoon,” Morello said. He added that when Rage later became a band, he jokingly asked Keenan for his half of the idea back.
The story highlights how closely the formative circles of Tool and Rage Against the Machine overlapped. Rage Against the Machine formed in Los Angeles in 1991 with Morello, de la Rocha, Commerford and Wilk, while Keenan was simultaneously moving toward the lineup that would establish Tool.
