(Credits: Far Out / alterna2 / Raph_PH)
Sun 1 March 2026 23:00, UK
While a large portion of the people who get listed as the greatest guitarists of all time tend to have been at the peak of their activity between the 1950s and 1980s, every once in a while, someone like Tom Morello comes along to shake things up and cause heads to turn.
His sudden impact on the world of rock music came courtesy of his work on Rage Against The Machine’s incendiary debut album in 1992, which instantly won him and the band a legion of fans for how dramatically different the release was to all of the acts that critics were labelling as being their contemporaries.
With a novel fusion of rap, rock, funk and metal, Rage Against The Machine was a record unlike anything else that the world had previously heard, and the sort that is rightfully regarded as being a singular and highly influential release that would go on to reshape the landscape of the many parent genres that they were able to fit under.
What made Morello as a guitarist so exciting was his technically proficient style that incorporated sounds that others weren’t brave enough to attempt previously. Utilising a number of effects that were able to bring plenty of character to his parts, as well as his extensive use of the toggle switch on his instrument to imitate a scratching sound similar to those heard on hip-hop records, this embrace of technology as part of his craft was a far cry from what other exemplary guitarists of the era were trying to do as they streamlined the size of their pedal boards.
Morello is obviously a guitarist first and foremost, but he has other ways of perceiving his craft because of its fusion of genres and styles, and his constant desire to innovate and push things in a forward direction not only separated him from other guitarists but also many of the perceived conventions that came along with the instrument itself.
In order to distinguish himself, he had to come up with his own way of playing guitar in order to avoid falling into the same traps as other metal or rock guitarists of the era were guilty of stumbling into, and even went as far as to call himself a DJ for the fear that he’d start earning comparisons to artists he wanted to distance himself from.
“It was really in the earliest years of Rage Against The Machine that I began to self-identify as a DJ,” he explained during a 2024 interview with Guitar Interactive Magazine. “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.”
He went on to further justify how much he resented the idea of being just another Malmsteen imitator and how he wanted to be seen in a different light. “If some awful gig already has two of those dudes,” he added, “It doesn’t need a third hamster running on that wheel.”
There’s obviously a market for the Malmsteens of the world, but to be perfectly honest, one is enough, and the world of rock ought to be thankful for the fact that Morello chose to pave the way for a new generation of guitar innovators instead of becoming another carbon copy of the Swedish shredder.