Interview: Tom Morello
By Jeff on Sep 30, 2007 in Interviews, Music | Comments
I've been singing theseNightwatchman songs for about five years. So, actually singing in the studio was not much of a stretch. The bigger leap of faith came at the outset, when I had to make the transition from electric guitar shredder to the folky singer-songwriter. That was the bigger plunge, there. It was a trial by fire. I had a comfort zone in playing loud hard rock music in arenas, with a lot of radio hits.
Was it odd not having Tim and Brad, your rhythm section behind you?
It was odd... yes, the whole thing was odd. I couldn't remember lyrics. The whole thing was very challenging, but, at the same time, it was the fact that it initially was scary and felt outside of a safety zone. It felt like something I should be doing.
That's good energy, right?
Exactly. It felt like it was a great artistic leap forward.
You've been politically active for a long time with your music, but what was that the main impetus for The Nightwatchman persona and strapping on the acoustic? The Bush administration taking over the reigns?
Well, the main impetus to actually make a record was the day after the 2004 election. I can't sit on the sidelines. It is great to do the work in theAxis of Justice organization, with Serj Tankian, and the organizing, educational and the charitable things that we do. But I'm a musician, that's my vocation, and I need to get out there, even if it is one coffeehouse at a time.
I need to be using my creative power to try to stem the tide. I try to practice what I preach. Since I was a 17 year old, I've been railing on and on about how people need to unapologetically and uncompromisingly use their voices as blunt instruments to fight for social change. I decided to finally take my own advice.
Sounds good. It's working out so far. Back in 2003, when you went on the "Tell Us The Truth" tour with that amazing lineup, you were quoted as saying, "Media consolidation needs smashing and globalization needs unmasking." How do you think we've done in the past four years since?
Well, we haven't exactly... the media continues to consolidate in odd, sort of cannibalistic ways. Globalization has met important resistance in that time, but I think that the anti-war efforts have usurped the thunder of the anti-globalization movement. I think they're two branches of the same tree. The lies that are unmasked by pulling at the loose seams of the Iraq war, you'll find the same dark river runs beneath both those springs. ... a number of crazy metaphors all thrown into one pot... [laughs].
They're all apropos, though. What do you do to fight this?
I think as an artist, what you have to do is use the time that is allotted to you, and the voice, and the audience that is afforded you, to say your peace. And that is definitely what I am doing on "One Man Revolution."
The record is basically one man and a guitar. I consider it pretty challenging. It sounds simple, but because it is political, it is pretty heavy stuff. Sadly, your average person doesn't want to be bummed out when they listen to music. Do you find that as a challenge as you're trying to reach a bigger audience?
I've always enjoyed being bummed out by listening to heavy stuff... [laughter]
Like some of my favorite records, like Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" is one of the greatest albums of all time. You're not going to dance to that. It is not exactly great date music. [laughter]
I've always been drawn to heavy music, and that has meant, for much of my life, music made with Marshall Stacks. In recent years, I saw very clearly that sometimes the heaviest music is just made with acoustic guitar. Three chords, the truth, and a little bit of harmonica.
Nice. I really love "The Road I Must Travel," too. It's a bit different than the rest of the songs on the album. It is an excellent drinking song, Tom.
[laughs] I'm named after my Irish great grandfather, Thomas Fitzgerald. There's a little bit of a Celtic kick to that one.
Dare I say jaunty?
Yeah.
It brings back some good Pogues, Joe Strummer-ish kind of feel.
Good, I'll take that.
Obviously guys like that — and I would say Billy Bragg, and the old guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Segar — were big influences on you?
Yep, all big influences. Billy Bragg and Springsteen's "Nebraska" were the two records that introduced me to that kind of music. I even dug back and found the early Dylan, and the Woody Guthrie, and some of the latter day Johnny Cash. Those really spooky records. "Unamerican."
There was just something that you can feel the heat of truth off of those records and those songs in a way that is absent in an awful lot of recorded music. That's something that I definitely want to try to tap into.
I think you've accomplished that. Especially with Billy Bragg. That kind of feel, just when he hits the stage and the first note, you're like "all right, I've got to listen." Everybody else, be quiet, don't sing along. Let's listen to Billy...
Billy Bragg was a really big influence. Rage Against The Machine shared the bill with Billy Bragg on several European festivals. As a fan, I would go check him out, and I just thought it was audacious -- in the middle of these festival shows where it would be Rage, Aerosmith, Sepultura, you name it, Peter Gabriel with a full band -- and Billy Bragg would come out there by himself, with a guitar, and held his own. Kicked a lot of other band's asses!
That was really impressive to me, and that was something that I also saw with Springsteen on the "Ghost of Tom Joad" tour, where he would totally command these arenas and these theaters. It was as dark and as powerful as any Slayer concert, but done in a very different manner.
I actually met Billy Bragg at one of your shows. On the "Tell Us The Truth" tour back in 2003. I was so awestruck, he was the nicest guy...
He's the nicest guy.
Tom, a lot of people who listen to our little radio show... we're music geeks. We think you might be a bit of a music geek too.
Well, we'll see.
I'm not going to give you trivia, of course. I'm just going to talk about music. You've been playing a lot of great benefit shows at the Hotel Caf in LA. That's just a wildly diverse group of amazing people. Wayne Kramer, Ben Harper, Jerry Cantrell, Nino Bettencourt, Alexie Murdoch, it goes on. How do you get these guys? Do they come to you or do you go get them?
It's a combination of both. It's snowballed in the way that people have been ringing up. Today is Tuesday night and people have called in asking, "Are you playing tonight?" I'm like, "No dude, there's no show." It started out very much in the spirit of those original open-mike nights.
My friends and I would go down and basically play to entertain one another, doing music all for the right reasons, you know, no one makes sense. The Hotel Cafe shows are very much like that. We charge $10 to get in, so that's the people's price at the door, and 100% of the proceeds go to homeless charities in Los Angeles and San Bernardino. In a 250-seat club you get to see Cypress Hill, Alice in Chains, Ben Harper, Alanis Morissette, and Mick Mars from Motley Crue!
We'd blow the doors off of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams."
Yeah, you always end every show getting everyone possible on that small stage with you.
Yeah, that's the part that I like. Everybody plays a few songs on their own but then, like an hour before the show starts, whoever manages to make it there we rehearse an hour's worth of music.
Cool!
It's just some of the wildest, most chaotic and wonderful evenings that I've ever been involved in with rock and roll.
You play many, many benefits in the L.A. area for immigrant rights, hotel workers, South Central farmers, homeless, etc. I would think doing shows for the needy would attract the attention of the mainstream media, but it doesn't. They seem to have no problem embracing the larger Bono and Oprah causes. Why? Is it because a lot of your things are politically charged or just too local and small?
Well, sure. Maybe Oprah has a better publicist; I don't know. [laughs]
I think she probably has the best ever in the history of publicity.
[laughs] Well first of all that's not the reason why you do them.
Of course.
It's always been part of my make up. Doing those shows doesn't even seem particularly odd to me. It's doing music for the right reasons. If someone is willing to pay $5, $10, or $75 to go see a show where the money goes to a good cause rather than to gasoline for the Ferrari then it seems like a fine day's work.
You play a lot of small shows with up and coming bands and indie bands. Can you name an indie band or two that you played with that we should know about?
Sure. There's a band that I'm actually working producing their first record. They're called Outernational... from New York City. They're kind of like a world music Rage Against the Machine.
Sounds promising!
They're a great band. There's also a fellow that we've had a couple of times at the Hotel Cafe named Ike Reilly.
He's on tour with you, correct?
We're playing some shows together. He's great. He has a record that just came out today. Off the top of my head those are two.
Nice. This is getting back to music geekiness - I saw Audioslave in Philly a couple of years back and you guys did an awesome cover of "Working Man" by Rush.
Yes.
I think it was an homage to your opening band Burning Brides, the power trio?
It actually was. It's funny how something like that would get in the set and stick. We just did it as a joke at sound check in Toronto. Which if funny, of course, because no one in our audience was old enough to even get the joke except for my guitar salesman. So, it's sort of like we're very self-satisfied, like, "Hey, check it out! Isn't Canada going to be nuts?" But then it stuck in the set so it was a hit.
Who are your favorites - like old gems - to cover when you're playing a concert?
Well it's kind of hard. It's different with the rock band than it is with the Hotel Cafe shows. When you're with your band, and you're on tour, there's a kind of preciousness about everybody's got to get here and learn the song and at the shows I whip out a list of 10 songs and we spend about one minute on each one and then we play it.
Yeah.
Let the chips fall where they may. That's really just scrolling through my iPod, whether it's from the drug days of Aerosmith to - you know "Kick out the Jams" is one of my favorite songs to play live. Ben Harper did a beautiful version of "Get Up, Stand Up" the other week.
Nice.
Probably one of the all time highlights of the Hotel Cafe shows was the Alanis Morissette-Nuno Bettencourt duet of Extreme's "More than Words"...
Wow! Really?
... which was just a tear-jerking version.
Did you well up there a tad?
I did - it was pretty fantastic. I realized that everyone in the room knows every word to that song. Alanis also did a pretty bitchin' cover of Rage's "Gorilla Radio" too.
That's very cool. Hey Tom, what's the oldest concert T-shirt you actually still wear?
Actually still wear?
Yeah. Or what is the prized one, the one you'll never throw away?
I've got two prized ones. I'm a very, very skinny person but how I ever fit in to these shirts is a marvel. They look like they're for toddlers. I've got a 1977 Led Zeppelin shirt. When I was a child I went to that show. And then The Clash - I believe it was 1982 - the "Combat Rock" show.
Sweet.
Those are my two.
Yeah. I actually have an '82 Clash. They opened up for the Who and Santana back in Philly and I still have that shirt, but I'm not skinny like you, Tom.
[laughs] Well the person that wore my Clash shirt was half the size of me.
Like many fans of Rage, I've read reading amazing reviews of the Coachella show. How was it getting the old band back together?
It was awesome. We hadn't played together in seven years and during those seven years I think the political mood in the country was one that needed rage, now more than ever, and also those songs kind of never went away.
I've been to see some of my favorite bands from the early 90's play shows and the audience was in their thirties. This was a show that was packed with 16 year old kids who knew every word to every song. I think that the rebel spirit that is in the Rage Against the Machine music is one that will probably continue to speak to people.
It's invigorating and hopefully it will inspire you guys to do more together.
Yeah.
Yeah?
Well we're doing a second Rock the Bells show in New York, so I think it's four or five more shows this summer.
That's what I wanted to hear! One last question Tom... What's a good day for Tom Morello?
A good day for Tom Morello always involves hiking through the hills with my dogs. That is the solace - because they don't know whether I've just come from a band meeting, or I'm on my way to an arena show, or if I just broke a string. So, I just put on the iPod, listen to some Arcade Fire and run through the hills with my dogs.
And they just look at you and say, "Tom, pick up my poop."
We hike in rural enough places that we kind of just let that go organic.
Sweet. Tom, thanks so much!
Adios.
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