Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on the Lipps Service podcast, Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello revealed that he learned drop D tuning from Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan. Notably, that session also sowed the seeds for Tool‘s “Sober“ and Rage Against The Machine’s “Freedom.”

Morello said the following:

“We began jamming around, jamming with different bass players, different singers, including — we played with Maynard [James Keenan] at one point… It was in some 18-year-old bass players like bedroom. Me, Brad [Wilk], Maynard, and some dude named Noah jammed for… There was a recording somewhere… It was some of the riffs that later would be [used] elsewhere. Maynard‘s the dude who taught me how to do drop D tuning. He did. Quick sidebar: this is like for fans of Tool and Rage Against The Machine.

So Maynard, you know the Seattle sound was the thing, they were doing drop t-tuning, I didn’t know how to do it. So I was over at his place, and he showed me, and he was playing a riff that would become [Tool‘s] “Sober“. And the first riff that came out of my fingers when he showed me Drop D tuning was the riff from ‘Freedom‘, Rage‘s song ‘Freedom‘, and those two were sort of a song one afternoon.

And then later when Rage became a band I said, you know, ‘I don’t know if you remember, but we were jamming on that thing one time and like I’d like my half back please’ [laughter] .’ …I think Tool were off and running at that point.”

[via The PRP]