“It happens all day,” Tom Morello says, speaking about the number of requests he gets from artists looking for him to sprinkle his secret guitar sauce on new pieces of music. “I do a lot of it, too,” he says. “I’ve donated guitar solos to younger bands. They’re fans of Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave, and they want me on their songs.”
He admits he can’t accept every request that comes across his desk. “Hey, I’ve got a lot going on,” he says with a laugh. “These days, I’m driving my kids to a lot of high school baseball games.”
Recently, the guitarist received an offer he couldn’t refuse when noted video game composer Masayoshi Soken reached out and asked if he’d consider contributing a song for the latest update of Final Fantasy XIV.
Morello admitted that he wasn’t much of a gamer, but he understood the significance of the Final Fantasy franchise, and he was delighted at the prospect of working with Soken.
There was just one problem, however; Morello would have to turn in a ready-to-go track within 36 hours. Fortunately, the guitarist was already working on some new music with producer Tyler Smyth, so the prospect of banging out a banger wasn’t out of the question.
“I said to Tyler, ‘I’ve got a hot riff, and you’ve got some beats. Maybe we can do this,’” he says. The producer then rang up his friend Caleb Shomo, singer with the metalcore band Beartooth, and asked, “Do you want to make a song with Tom Morello right now?”
In no time at all – 48 hours, to be exact – the collaboration yielded the monster jam Everything Burns, a feral blend of rap-metal and electronica that features, one might expect, one hell of a gargantuan riff.
When you’re noodling, do you have some sort of litmus test that makes you go, “That combination of notes does the job”?
It’s not overthought. Sometime around maybe 1991 [or] ’92, I began to be able to write music that I loved, and was able to tap into some of the essence of the Tony Iommi and Jimmy Page-ness of it all. From that time, these big-ass riffs have kind of been low-hanging fruit. It’s like, “Stick to the dots, try a little syncopation and don’t be afraid to be equal parts funky and heavy.”
Is it deceptively easy? One wrong note could make all the difference between a classic riff and one that’s just “eh.”
Oh, sure. Some of the longer riffs through my history, like Testify or Down Rodeo, where there was sort of a more simple version of the riff, I said, “Well, if it’s going to happen four times in a row, perhaps it’s a journey that stays true to coming back to the one, but then adds some extra heavy metal flavor along the way.”
So in the case of Everything Burns, you already had the riff.
It was around in a rudimentary way, and it was sort of looking for a home. I have a lot of riffs hanging around, and this was one that Tyler and I had been tinkering with. When this opportunity came up, I was like, “Okay, hold on one second. Let’s see if Beartooth wants to jump on.”
When I was A/B-ing in my car, I liked the version that, while it doesn’t have a guitar solo, it’s about as guitar-y as anything I’ve ever done. There’s no lack of guitar on this song
At what point did you realize that the combination of you, Tyler and Caleb was working?
It was maybe two hours after Tyler reached out to Caleb. Caleb dropped everything to do this. He’s a great singer, and he’s also a producer himself. He’s got a studio. He wrote and produced the vocals to it, came back in about two hours with a first draft, and I was like, “Holy shit, that’s a jam!”
I did notice the lack of a solo. Is that something you wrestled with?
I wouldn’t say “wrestle.” There was, however, a version of it that had sort of a more expansive middle section. At the end of the day when we were mixing, it felt like it didn’t add to the power of the song. It felt more like I was just sticking a solo in.
When I was A/B-ing in my car, I liked the version that, while it doesn’t have a guitar solo, it’s about as guitar-y as anything I’ve ever done. There’s no lack of guitar on this song.
As for solos, there will be plenty more to come, let me tell you. I’m in the midst of working on what will be my first solo rock album. I made some Americana albums and some EDM-influenced records, but I want to make a record that is going to be an unapologetically Tom Morello solo rock record.
Any idea when we might see that?
In this day and age, what is an album? We’ve released three singles from this album over the course of the year and a half. There’s a lot of intense work ahead. I hope I’ve got maybe three or four songs in the can and another sort of five or six in the hamper. I’ve got a lot of touring coming up this summer. I’d love to try to get it out before then.
And you’ve been touring with your son.
That’s something I’m most excited about, continuing the collaboration with my son, Roman, who has become quite a technical guitarist. He’s been a collaborative partner on a couple of songs, and that will continue. [Laughs] One of my favorite parts about working with Roman is that if we have disagreements, I’m able to send him to his room.
You can’t do that with everyone.
No, I can’t. [Laughs]
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
