The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time : Rolling Stone

24 "Killing in the Name"
Rage Against the Machine (1992)

In 1991, a year before rage against the Machine released their debut album, Tom Morello was giving a guitar lesson in his tiny apartment in West Hollywood, teaching his student the hard-rocking riffs that are characteristic of drop-D tuning (in which the lowest string is tuned down to create heavier chords). Because Morello's Telecaster had a locking nut, preventing it from drastic tuning changes, he taught the technique using an Ibanez bass. "I just came up with the 'Killing in the Name' riff," Morello says. "I stopped the lesson, got my little Radio Shack cassette recorder, laid down that little snippet and then continued with the lesson." The next day, Morello brought his riff with him to a studio in North Hollywood. "We were off to the races," he says. Though Morello points out that the bone-crushing song was a collaborative effort — "Timmy C.'s magmalike bass, Brad Wilk's funky, brutal drumming and Zack [de la Rocha]'s conviction meld with the guitar" — "Killing in the Name" introduced the world to Morello's off-kilter attack, which would include substituting an Allen wrench for a pick and slamming the toggle switch like a DJ scratching records. "We were melding hard rock, punk and hip-hop, and I was the DJ," he says. "It allowed me to emulate a lot of noises that I heard on Dr. Dre and Public Enemy records." AUSTIN SCAGGS