“He showed me chords and pinch harmonics” Tom Morello pays tribute to childhood friend Tool’s Adam Jones, the “sole talented musician in our high school band”
It’s pretty rare that your high-school band will spawn one good musician, let alone two world famous guitar players, but not all bands are like The Electric Sheep, clearly.
Because this was the band that a young Tom Morello and Adam Jones played in together when they were teenagers, long before the former made his name in Rage Against The Machine and the latter in Tool. Now, Morello has reflected on the pair’s longstanding relationship in a lengthy Instagram post that praises his former bandmate, who it transpires taught him a lot of what he knows now.
READ MORE: Tom Morello: “If you’re a hard rock guitar player, you don’t care about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because none of your favourite bands are in there”
“Shout out to my old friend Adam Jones!” Morello writes. “Always a tremendously creative and innovative visual artist, Adam was also the bass player and sole talented musician in our high school band, The Electric Sheep. He showed me chords, ‘pinch’ harmonics, drove us to see Judas Priest at Alpine Valley in his pick up truck for inspiration and was ceaselessly encouraging to me when I was a beginning guitarist.
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“Adam was my roommate briefly when he first landed in LA and paid his rent by sharing his extensive (and exotic) VHS collection with us,” Morello adds. “He was also responsible for helping jump start my career when he dragged me out of bed on a work night to go all the way downtown to Al’s Bar where a great band called Lock Up was playing. I later joined the band and got a record deal. I was impressed when Adam landed a job at Stan Winston Studios and became a successful prosthetic make up artist, working on Jurassic Park and the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.”
In their early days in LA, RATM and Tool would sometimes play together. Of this time, Morello says: “I saw his band Tool at their first show and was stunned,” says Morello now. “They arrived fully formed and fully great.
“They also were kind enough to invite Rage Against The Machine to open for them numerous times in Hollywood clubs which greatly helped grow our following and get us attention. I’m proud and pleased that all these years later he and his band are thriving and kicking ass around the world. Cheers buddy!”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
