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
I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders.
Being a musician is a given for me-I didn't have much choice in the matter.
Always question the authority.
Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.
I came late to the genre of folk music.
I find it ironic that now water is more expensive than music. On the one hand, record companies can't go crying when they've gouged consumers for decades, charging exorbitant prices for CDs that cost 29 cents to make. On the other hand, when music is free, musicians starve.
I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time.
I didn't grow up with my Kenyan family. I grew up in a small, conservative suburb of Chicago.
You can kiss my Kiss-loving ass because Kiss was never a critic's band. It was a people's band.
The real estate agent had to go door-to-door in the apartment building we wanted to rent, asking if it was OK for this interracial family - my mom is white and I was a 1-year-old half-African kid - to live in the apartment building.
I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop.
Whenever I set out in a new direction, whether it's with a new band or being a frontman or writing a comic book or entering into movie scoring or anything like that, I wouldn't say that I do it fearlessly.
Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.
There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages.