Tom Morello Tells Lars Ulrich Why Rage Against The Machine Broke Up

When Tom Morello appeared on Lars Ulrich's Beats 1 show, It's Electric!, the pair got pretty deep, chatting about why Rage Against The Machine quit making records after 2000's Renegades.

The guitarist said things were so bad, he was surprised the band even lasted as long as they did.

“I’ll put myself first and foremost," Tom said of why the Los Angeles rap-rockers disbanded. "It was a lack of emotional maturity in being able to deal with each other as people. We had political vision and the shows never suffered, but we just couldn’t agree on stuff and that sort of unearthed feelings that made it hard to make records. I think there were competing visions of what Rage was supposed to be and competing feelings about what it was like to be in the band that we didn’t deal with.”

"My glass half full version," he added, "is that for a band that had extremely combustible elements, to be able to have made four records and to be able to have played the shows that we did, I think it’s a miracle".

Tom also spoke about how things were successfully patched up for the 2007 reunion, because the pressure was off and they could just have fun with it.

“We had a great time," he explained. "We had fun onstage, offstage, playing ping pong, going out, to me it felt like there was a lot of camaraderie, but one of the things we kind of helped that and took off the table was everything that had been controversial before—writing music, doing interviews, having a manager—we’re just not going to do that stuff. We’re just going to play shows and have a nice time and be able to look each other in the eye and have a nice time and not be anything that had stirred controversy in the past.”

Watch the full interview below.

Tom Morello's new album The Atlas Underground is due out on October 12.