HIS WORK WITH RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, AUDIOSLAVE AND PROPHETS OF RAGE HAS MADE HIM ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ROCK GUITARISTS OF HIS GENERATION. AND FOR THE READERS OF TOTAL GUITAR HE HAS A SIMPLE MESSAGE. “IT’S LESSON TIME,” TOM MORELLO SAYS. “SO WASH YOUR HANDS AND TUNE YOUR GUITAR. BUT IF YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE OR THE OTHER... WASH YOUR HANDS!”

Words Amit Sharma

Once you can play something 150 times perfectly, you can move on... “It was a very fateful day when I learned how to alternate pick properly. While I was self-taught, I would occasionally take myself to a guitar shop in Highland Park, Illinois, if I wanted to learn a song – where a hippie stoner teacher would show me my favourite Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath songs that I couldn’t figure out on my own. One day he was off sick and so I got sent to a room with the other guitar teacher, who was Michael Angelo Batio... The famous four-necked guy before he was famous! I had one lesson with him. He sat me down and told me to play something. I scrambled my way through some leads, trying to show off and sounding very hackneyed. He said, ‘It sounds like you want to play fast but you don’t know how!’ and I said, ‘That’s accurate, sir!’ So he wrote a series of exercises on one sheet of paper – fundamental picking exercises using quadruplets and triplets in different modes. He forced me to start slow and said once I had mastered the exercise, I could click the metronome up by one and eventually move on. I believed what he told me and it was a lesson that changed my life and led me to able to play solos like Take The Power Back and #1 Zero many years later.”

Whatever  it takes

Morello’s autobiography is out now, just in time for Christmas!

PICKING IN THE NAME…

Hone your plectrum skills, Morello style

These kinds of rhythms are the kind Tom trained with. The 16th notes on beat 3 are the fastest part, so choose your picking method carefully on the preceding notes – there are several ways to pick this line!