When Tom Morello Pretended to Be in Jane’s Addiction
Before Tom Morello became a guitar god - thanks to his hugely successful stints in Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave - he took the stage and pretended to be in a different band: Jane’s Addiction.
Morello recalled the experience during a recent interview on the Tuna on Toast podcast.
“This would have been New Year’s Eve ‘88 maybe,” the guitarist explained to host Stryker, looking back at the gig more than 30 years later. Morello’s band at the time, Lock Up, was recruited by Jane’s Addiction “not to open up for them but to impersonate them.”
Morello, who admittedly was a “big fan” of Jane’s, happily agreed to participate in the prank.
“The lights go down, the crowd roars and out onstage comes me in a Dave Navarro wig,” Morello recalled, noting that he and his band played the song “Pigs in Zen” “to the best of our limited ability.”
You can watch Morello's interview on the Tuna on Toast podcast below.
“I’d been to a lot of shows, but I remember the feeling that I got from the crowd,” the guitarist admitted. “There are bands that people like, there are bands that people love and then there are bands that people believe in. And the intensity off of that crowd - it wasn’t for me, I was an imposter! But I felt that kind of, almost like religious intensity.”
The impersonation was short-lived. Morello estimated he got through about half the song before the real Jane’s Addiction came onstage to perform. Still, the experience had a profound effect on the future rock star.
“I remember going, like, I’ve never been in a room with that before,” Morello admitted, adding that at the time he hoped “to one day be able to try to create something that creates a feeling like that.”