The Rage Against the Machine song “Killing In The Name” is their biggest hit, released in their self-titled debut album in 1992. It became one of the most influential songs from the past decades and has an amazing guitar riff written by Tom Morello.
The musician recalled in an interview with Strombo (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), how he created that iconic guitar riff.
Tom Morello recalls how he came up with “Killing In The Name” riff
“The riff from that song… I came up with that during a guitar lesson I was giving to some Hollywood guitar player, teaching him about Drop D tuning. And I was actually doing it on a bass, and I said, ‘Well, it sort of reconfigures the fretboard, so that when you play.”
“If it was in the normal tuning, might be this, instead it might be this.’ It sounded kind of cool. So I had my little Radio Shack battery operated recorder. I hit the record button, played it just a couple of times through, went back to the guitar lesson, and then the next day, went into rehearsal with that,” Tom Morello said.
It was actually the records company’s idea to keep the lyrics the way they were
During the same conversation, he also revealed that it was actually the record company’s idea to keep the curse words in the song and send it to radio stations anyway. It wasn’t the band’s idea, since they initially thought the song would never be played on the radio because of the lyrics
“We buried that song on our demo tape. It was song six on the Rage demo. The first time it came to the forefront was because of Michael Goldstone, the A&R guy, who was, for a while, kind of like the fifth Beatle of the band. He was very, very smart, caring, and had the right stuff to say.”
“He suggested that it should be the first single, with one caveat — we do not edit any of the lyrics. Sixteen fuck-yous and one motherfucker. We’re not going to edit it, and we’re going to send that to the radio. And I remember being in the Epic office, going, ‘*You* want *that*?'”
He continued:
“I wish I could tell you it was the band’s idea. It was not. There was an understanding that, what was confrontational was what was going to work. And at one point, like, someone in that world suggested the part of the song where it stops, like, ‘Maybe, it went smoother through?'”
“And I had learned from Lock Up (his previous band), to never again (Executives’ ideas). Like ‘That’s great. When you put your band together, you make it go smoothly through that part. It’s just going to be what it is.’ And it’s crazy… I just got the billion stream thing show up at the house, and it’s so bananas,” Tom Morello said.
The band briefly reunited in 2022 but the tour was cancelled after the vocalist Zack De La Rocha ruptured his Achilles tendon. Later on the drummer Brad Wilk confirmed that the group disbanded again.
