Tom Morello
Tom Morello
Thomas Baptiste "Tom" Morellois an American musician, singer-songwriter and political activist. He is best known for his tenure with the band Rage Against the Machine and then with Audioslave. Morello was most recently a touring musician with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. He is also known for his acoustic solo act called The Nightwatchman, and his latest group, Street Sweeper Social Club. Morello is also the co-founderof the non-profit political activist organization Axis of Justice, which airs a...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth30 May 1964
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Music and the arts feed our souls, but a decent wage puts food on the table. Musicians, fans of music, and grassroots political organizations are a potent force to fight for social justice.
There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist.
If aliens came down and challenged us to a Battle of the Bands to decide the fate of Planet Earth, I would feel very confident putting early Van Halen forward as our champion.
The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.
A musicians or artists responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth.
Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn’t understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn’t understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
My music is made for the people who are willing to stand up to change this world themselves.
A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs.
America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.
Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.
Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against The Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades
We were playing some RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and SOUNDGARDEN songs in the past, but we'll probably be playing a wider variety of those this time out. Between RAGE , SOUNDGARDEN and TEMPLE OF THE DOG , there's 11 or 12 records of our own that we could draw from, so it's pretty exciting.