Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello recently sat down with Rolling Stone to explain the weird roots behind the band's hit track "Killing in the Name". According to Morello, the song was influenced by Maynard Keenan of Tool and was originally an instrumental track the band would play at live shows.
"'Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me' is a universal sentiment. While it’s a simple lyric, I think it’s one of [Zack de la Rocha’s] most brilliant. And to me, it relates to Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass said, the moment he became free was not the moment that he was physically loosed from his bonds. It was the moment when master said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘No.’ And that’s the essence of “Fuck you, I will not do what you tell me.” And that’s why it’s encouraging to hear it shouted at the Fed goons who are shooting tear gas at American citizens.”
"I was teaching guitar lesson to an accomplished local scenester musician and was showing them how to play drop-D [tuning]. Maynard Keenan of Tool had taught me how to do drop-D. I was actually playing bass at the time, a crappy Ibanez bass. And I was like, ‘When you play drop-D tuning, it just sort of suggests different patterns to your fingers.’ And the first pattern I played was that riff. I said, hold on one sec, and got my little Radio Shack recorder and recorded that.
"And then it was originally an instrumental. There’s a Rage Against the Machine video from Cal State Northridge – which is our first public performance – where we open the show with an instrumental version of ‘Killing In The Name’ and Timmy [Commerford], I think, came up with hat really cool [bass riff]. [Brad Wilk’s] crowd-bouncing beat is there from the very, very beginning.
"And then Zack laced it with the historic lyrics. We actually left the lyrics off of the lyric sheet of the first record, because it’s I think it’s two lines, 16 ‘fuck yous,’ and one ‘motherfucker.’ And we’re like, in the midst of all this grand political poetry, let’s just that one stand for itself.
"The dunna-dunt [before de la Rocha raps, ‘and now you do what they told ya’] that was an important part! I remember our A&R guy, Michael Goldstone, who’s a genius. He’s got Pearl Jam. He was really the fifth Beatle early on. He was a great help, but he wanted us to take that part out of the song.
"I think he heard ‘hit single, as long as he doesn’t have that crazy part where it just stops a lot!’ That was a bit of a lift from Zeppelin’s ‘Good times, Bad Times,’ that part. We’ve felt pretty confident that needs to stay in the song, and I think history has borne that out."
"Killing in the Name" is off Rage Against the Machine's 1992 self-titled album. That album would go on to sell over 3 million copies in the United States, and more recently would be the soundtrack to protests across the United States.
[via The PRP]
