“I was in spandex pants, reading Karl Marx.” From birth in Harlem to graduation from Harvard to stripping, Rage Against The Machine and fighting the KKK: this is the incredible life story of Tom Morello
Like so many other young men of his generation, in the mid 80s, Tom Morello came to Los Angeles to pursue his dreams of a life in rock’n’roll. It did not, initially, go well: for a time, the closest the Harvard-graduated guitarist got to a career in the entertainment industry was working as an ‘exotic dancer’, grinding to Brickhouse by The Commodores at bachelorette parties.
“My friends were all saying, ‘Damn, that must be so awesome’, but, no, it was not,” he recalls, with the faintest of shudders. “Even on the fringes of sex work, the dehumanising aspects were unpleasant.” Happily, today Tom is rather better known for his work alongside Zack de la Rocha, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk in Rage Against The Machine, alongside a career CV that takes in acclaimed work as a solo artist, with Chris Cornell in Audioslave, as The Nightwatchman and with Prophets Of Rage. And, while Rage’s future is uncertain at best, sitting in a North London hotel restaurant on the eve of his appearance at Download 2024, the 60-year-old guitarist is buzzing with anticipation for the road ahead, a path he’s previewed with the release of an excellent new single, Soldier In The Army Of Love, co-written with his 13-year-old son Roman, a gifted guitarist in his own right.
“I’m not going to make too many promises for what comes next,” he teases, “but let’s just say that there is more music upcoming that leans heavily into those
50 megaton Morellian riffs.”
You were born in Harlem, before you and your mother moved to Libertyville, a suburb of Chicago. Do you have any memories of Harlem?
“Yes, we used to go back there in the summers. My mom was a single white parent with an African child, and she made a lot of friends there. Harlem was a stark contrast to the suburbs where I grew up, where I was the only Black person. It was great. I remember spending time in people’s homes, and parks, and barber shops. A couple of years ago, the African-American priest who baptised me in Harlem visited my house in LA, so my time in Harlem led to some lifelong relationships.”
As a kid, when did you see your first overt display of racism?
“It was in the playground, really early. I always knew that I was different. There was passive-aggressive racism from other kids, born out of innocent ignorance. But there was really mean stuff too: hearing the ‘n’ word was not uncommon, and when I was 13 years old, a noose was put in my family’s garage. Libertyville was this kind of bucolic, charming Chicago suburb on the one hand, but there was a sort of underpinning of real fear.”
Did you feel threatened?
“Sure. I mean, looking back on it, it’s just your life in a way, but there was this background static. Every day there was the possibility of what are now known as micro-aggressions, and sometimes macro-aggression. And then you get to dating age, and it becomes very sharp. I’d be standing on a doorstep waiting to go out on a date, and I’d hear these arguments going on behind the door, and all of a sudden, you know, my date would have ‘come down with a cold’ or something.”
You’ve talked before about how hearing the Sex Pistols’ debut album Never Mind The Bollocks was Year Zero for you as a guitar player. Did you understand what it was saying lyrically?
“Well, my first emotional reaction to the Sex Pistols was fear, after reading about them in Creem magazine. It was this movement where people would wear safety pins through their bodies, and were unwashed, and I remember being physically frightened, like, ‘Oh my gosh, what if this were to come here?’ Later on, of course, I was like, ‘I hope to bring this here myself!’ Did I understand the lyrics? I certainly understood the spirit of it. The day I got the cassette, I listened to Holidays In The Sun and Anarchy In The U.K. and God Save The Queen maybe 100 times apiece, because it was a revelation. It was absolutely as powerful as any of the metal that I had previously liked, but there was no BS, there was no pretence. It was just as heavy, but it was raw and it felt more authentic.”
Did you start to dive deeper into harder and nastier music?
“Well, the next band to come along was The Clash, and that was where I realised that I may not have to separate my point of view from my guitar riffs. That was a real revelation, that you could weave your convictions into your vocation, even if your vocation was rock’n’roll.”
After graduating from high school you studied at Harvard. Apart from the intellectual, scholastic side of things, what were the best lessons you learned there?
“I was doing an Honours major in political science, and at the same time practising four, six, eight hours a day on the electric guitar. It was insane. I was walking through the halls with my Gibson Explorer and my spandex pants, reading Chaucer and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, and then getting my Phrygian scale work in at the same time’ til, like, three in the morning, every single day. I guess the greatest lesson I learned from Harvard was that callings are real, because that’s where I really felt a calling to play guitar. But I was the only person from my town that had ever gotten into Harvard, so I didn’t want to drop out, even though I knew that my calling was different than the curriculum.”
Did you go on any protests?
“Oh, all the time. Since I was 17 I’ve been at the picket line. There was a Harvard kitchen workers’ strike that I was involved in, there were anti Ku Klux Klan rallies…”
That was still necessary in the 1980s?
“It was, absolutely. There was a riot at one around ’84, ’85. And then there was the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which was huge. We built a shanty town in Harvard Yard around graduation, as the alumni were coming back and being milked for donations, to shame them into divesting from the racist apartheid regime [in South Africa].”
Was there ever a possibility that you might not follow your rock’n’roll dreams?
“I worked for two years as the scheduling secretary for [Californian] Senator Alan Cranston, and that cured me of ever wanting to go into straight politics. Aside from that, I tried to sell Iron Maiden t-shirts on Hollywood Boulevard, with my Harvard degree, but they wouldn’t have me. My only other work experience had been at a Renaissance Fair, so I could, like, juggle and joust.”
How are your jousting skills?
“Not as good as my juggling skills.”
You arrived in Los Angeles in 1986, as the hair metal scene was exploding…
“And I couldn’t get arrested. My misconception was that the Sunset Strip would be filled with Steve Vais, but instead it was filled with Faster Pussycats. My Harvard calculus of how to get a record deal went out the window in the first two weeks there.”
Tom Morello – Soldier In The Army Of Love (Lyric Video) – YouTube 
Eventually, you did get a breakthrough though, with Lock Up, who were signed to Geffen.
“Well, yeah, initially I didn’t know there was another side of town, the east side, where there was an entirely different scene, and I owe my introduction to that to Adam Jones from Tool, my high school friend, who was my roommate at the time… well, more like squatting with me – roommates pay rent! But that scene was very different from the Sunset Strip, with bands like Jane’s Addiction, Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and it was so welcoming. Lock Up were my favourite local band before I joined them.”
Was failing to get anywhere with that band something of a rude awakening?
“It was terrible. Everyone at home thinks you’re a millionaire overnight when you get a major label record deal, but we were dead in the water after maybe 15 minutes of attention from the record label, after our first single didn’t take. It probably didn’t help that we had perhaps the worst album title in the history of music.”
Something Bitchin’ This Way Comes.
“That’s it. But getting dropped from Geffen was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”
What was the plan from there?
“Well, I abandoned ship with the idea of never making records, never being famous, never being a rock star. I was teaching guitar, and we lived on about five dollars a week and somehow scrambled together the rent. And then, in August of ’91, I started jamming with what became Rage Against The Machine. I remember the first time we jammed on what later became Bombtrack, and then it was just sort of full steam ahead. But there was no commercial ambition, zero. I had been on a record label, and it was horrible, and I didn’t anticipate any interest. No one who liked metal liked hip hop then, and there were no interracial rock bands on the radio, period. So why would you sign one? And I was crystal clear that I was not interested. But then Nirvana exploded, and the ‘Lollapalooza Nation’ began to emerge.”
Did you enjoy the early years with Rage?
“Um… elements. Being in a band has challenges. I was very proud of the chemistry that we had, that we were able to create that music and play those shows. I will say this: I really appreciate how those songs have made their way into the world. Rage Against the Machine have played 19 shows in the last 14 years, but the reason it doesn’t feel like that is because Rage live on in people’s hearts.”
I read a quote recently, from an early Audioslave interview, where you said, ‘I don’t think Zack liked a single riff I wrote after 1992.’
“Ha ha ha! Really? OK, well, that’s not what I want this interview to be. I’ve done a lot of interviews where if I even touch on Rage, every quote is pulled out as clickbait. I’m just not interested in that.”
After The Battle Of Los Angeles in 1999, was it becoming obvious to you that things were coming to an end?
“When Zach left the band in 2000, it was clearly time. But Tim and Brad and I were very enthusiastic about what the next chapter was going to be. I had a huge cache of ideas, a lot of seeds I hoped would flower, and a lot of them did, in Audioslave.”
Doors were immediately opened for Audioslave because of the combined history of Rage and Soundgarden, but you’re talking about two of the greatest rock bands of the past 40 years, so the bar was sky high.
“Yeah, we were pretty clear on that. But again, the thing that I learned from getting dropped that first time was that I honestly do not care what people think. If you let that be the thing that steers you, you’re lost as an artist. And so we just made music that we loved, that came from a completely innocent and authentic place.”
Presumably, you knew Chris Cornell had addiction issues?
“I didn’t at all. But I learned. People live their lives in different ways, and with Chris, for the entire time I knew him, there was a lot of mystery. He was mysterious, he really was the person you hear in those lyrics. It wasn’t until some time later that we pieced it together. But I believe that the good fortune of all us having met bought him 16 more years. That band was so liberating, it really felt like the horizon was completely open. And you know what? Standing onstage with Chris Cornell beside you is pretty great.”
We touched on Rage’s comeback earlier. You once described the band to me as a missed opportunity: does that apply even more in the light of how the reformation went?
“The way that I look at it now is that when that door closed, 100 windows opened: artistic experiences, life experiences, social justice activism… experiences that would not have existed otherwise.”
You were the only bandmember who showed up for Rage’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Did that disappoint you?
No. People in bands have different perspectives, and that’s what makes bands great. There are a lot of groups that are deserving of being in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and I think Rage is one of them. It’s a nice validation of our belief in that band.”
So is the new single, Soldier In The Army Of Love, a taster for a new Tom Morello solo album?
“There’s an album coming, it’s in process. But on the single, with Roman, I’m relegated to being the rhythm guitar player. He’s got chops like crazy. All the riffs in the song are his, and he plays the guitar solo. It’s a multi-generational 50 megaton riff monster of a song about the redemptive power of rock’n’roll. The album will have some [1978 Bruce Springsteen album] Darkness On The Edge Of Town elements, and we’re doing some songs with Shooter Jennings, but this will be the first Tom Morello rock solo record ever.”
You posted footage from your mum’s 100th birthday party online last year. She must be proud of what her little boy has achieved.
“She’s very proud. But she was just as proud of me when I was playing Little League baseball, and if I’d been a plumber or a dishwasher, she would be just as proud.”
Soldier In The Army Of Love is out now