Ongoing History Daily: Tom Morello’s messy guitar strings

Rage Against the Machine probably won’t ever tour again, but knowing Tom Morello, he’ll keep working in music. If you do get a chance to see him life, notice that he never cuts his guitar strings at the tuning pegs of his guitars. Why? This has puzzled longtime fans.

The answer is extremely simple. According to Tom, he leaves the headstock of his guitars messy because it looks cool. That’s it. After starting out like almost every other guitar player and trimming things back, Tom decided no, this wasn’t the way to go because everyone else was doing it. Not cutting his guitar strings showed some kind of rebellious disregard for the status quo.

In other words, “I won’t do what you tell me.”