Revolutionary rocker Tom Morello (Oct/Nov ’08) has been at the helm of politically charged music since he co-founded Rage Against the Machine in the early 1990′s. Renowned for his unorthodox guitar playing style, and penchant for performing in some of the world’s biggest arenas, his sophomore solo album The Fabled City (Epic) finds him unplugged, though rocking just as hard. Here, Morello talks about his latest album, the political climate in America and what we really to do in order to make real change.
GIANT: Can you talk about your alter-ego as the Nightwatchman for people who don’t know about your first solo outing?
Tom Morello: About six years ago as an antidote for my arena rocking with Audioslave, I began writing folk music and playing and signing acoustic songs at open mic nights around at clubs around Los Angeles. I developed a body of material that felt to me as honest and as hard hitting as anything as I had done in any of my electric bands. Then I began playing these songs at countless union rallies and anti-war protests and from the tear gassings at the FTAA protest in Miami to the tear gassings at the G8 protest in Rostok, Germany, the Nightwatchman was there singing his songs of hope and retribution. Then a year ago, April, I released a record, A One Man Revolution which was produced by Brendan O’Brien who had previously produced Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam and toured the world on that record. And this new record, The Fabled City, which comes out September 30 and the reason that this record has come out under the name Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman is because I’ve incorporated much more of my rocking musical nature into this, and sort of combined my rock work as the Daywatchman with my acoustic work as The Nightwatchman.
You’re definitely known for being politically outspoken and having radical left wing views. What are your thoughts on this upcoming Presidential election?
Well, as the half Kenyan Harvard graduate from Illinois who’s not running for president this year, I think I have a unique perspective. And my perspective is this: I think it’s a shame that we only have these two political parties to choose from. I worked for a United States senator Allen Cranston for two years as his scheduling secretary and even though his views, his personal views were very progressive, he spent most of his time calling up rich guys and asking them for money.
And that money doesn’t come for free. While clearly in this election, one candidate is better than the other one, I still don’t think that you can ever put your hopes in elected officials. The way that change, positive, progressive, radical of revolutionary change has always occurred from below. Not above. So no matter who is elected, I don’t think that alleviates anyone’s responsibility to continue to struggle and organize and fight for human rights, economic justice and a more fair and decent world.
Now if you were in this position and had to outline a plan for “change,” what steps would you take?
Well, it depends on the specific issue. But the first thing would be to end this horrible, immoral war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to hold accountable the war criminals who began it and have committed torture in its name. I think that you can’t move forward with free, just and human rights driven society without holding the criminals responsible who are in office right now. The people who are in office right now are responsible for war crimes. With regards to issues of economic injustice; we live in a country with a huge GNP, and yet there are people without homes, there are people who are hungry, there are children who are malnourished. I think that’s just a crime. I think that there needs to be a basic commitment on the part of society to make sure that no one will go hungry at night, that everyone will have a home and that no one will live in poverty while other people float around on their yachts. That seems like a good starting point.
Switching gears back to your project. One of the things that took people back with the first Nightwatchman album was that you were signing on the record.
Yeah. [laughs]
People have always known you as an experimental guitarist, and here you are signing. What was that like? Was that something that you had to convince listeners that you were as capable of as you were at guitar?
Well it’s certainly something people had to get used to. I mean, it’s audacious! I’m the guy in Guitar Hero 3 [laughs]. I’ve always felt that music, in order to resonate, needs to be inherently dangerous. I think not only is the Nightwatchman music both musically and politically dangerous, it think its something’s that’s dangerous for me as an artist to step outside of a very comfortable zone from being an electric guitar hero and follow in the footsteps of other musical heroes. It’s not following in the footsteps of Jimmy Page and Jimmy Hendrix, it’s following in the footsteps of Paul Robeson, and Woody Guthrie and early Bob Dylan and not being afraid to rely on three chords and the truth as opposed to rely on shredding guitar solos. Having said that, on this record and upcoming tour, I’ve loosened the reins quite a bit and this record is much more expansive musically and it includes grooves and riffs and guitar solos and the upcoming tour I’m playing it’s going to be pretty much 50/50 electric guitar and acoustic guitar.
Listening to the album, there’s a lot more rock influence and heavier grooves, especially like the song “The Lights Are On in Spidertown.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s the thing too. I felt a lot more comfortable. After touring a year behind the One Man Revolution record, the shows had a lot of inherent excitement in them that I wanted to capture in this record. In playing on the Justice tour, I brought out a thing called the Freedom Fighter Orchestra, which is this rotisserie of talented musicians and I’m going to bring them out on this Nightwatchmen tour as well and really open up the boundaries of really going for it on the electric guitar as well as playing the creepy political acoustic songs.
A lot of people don’t know this or maybe they don’t make the connection with your name, you’ve done a lot of work production work in film, you’ve done a lot of production work with other musician’s albums. What’s that process like for you to go in and score a movie or produce on someone else’s album?
It’s a very different process. The one thing that I enjoy about being in a band or doing solo stuff is that you’re the bottom line when it comes to creative control. When it comes to film, there’s a film company, and a director and a music supervisor, so it’s been fun lending my guitar work or my scoring to movies but I really prefer being an artist you, know. I like it better when the buck stops with me!
Your arsenal of guitars symbolizes the different set of personalities for you and your playing style. What’s the thought process behind designing your instruments such as the Sendero Luminoso or Arm the Homeless guitar?
Sure, sure. With both my acoustic and electric guitars, personality counts for a more than vintage. I think there’s maybe one guitar in my collection that cost more than $300. The “Arm the Homeless” guitar was something that was Frankensteined together through the years. It was an expensive custom made guitar and it was horrible, and through the years I’ve stripped away everything except the basic block of wood and customized it and that’s been my go to guitar throughout my electric guitar history. With the Sendero Luminoso guitar, I wanted to the ability to do Drop D tuning, which is the tuning that’s heard on the songs like “Killing in the Name,” “Freedom” and “Testify” and I couldn’t do that with “Arm The Homeless” because it has a locking but on it. So at the time, I had a roommate who had a [Fender] Telecaster, and I traded him an amp head for that Telecaster and it just happened to be the one that he had and I wrote “Sendero Luminoso” on it and the next thing you know, that became the main guitar for a lot of the Rage Against the Machine hits. I like that because it’s got single coil pickups so it doesn’t sound like that traditional heavy metal sound. It has buoyancy to it to help it play those riffs. With the Nightwatchmen work, thing that’s different about this acoustic guitar work from other artists is that it’s played on a nylon string guitar as opposed to a steel string guitar. The songs that I wrote that project on is my girlfriend’s cheap nylon string guitar that was just laying around the house but it didn’t have a pick up in it so I called the guitar company Galvador that makes these inexpensive nylon string acoustic guitars and they were willing to send me over one (laughs) and they were able to send me over one and so I plugged it in and I wrote “Whatever It Takes” on it and that’s been The Nightwatchman sound from day one.
You’ve been called the “DJ” of the bands and projects that you’re involved in. How do you shape these sounds?
That came from the early days of Rage Against the Machine where we were combining hard rock, punk rock and hip-hop and my playing was an amalgamation of artists like Jimmy Hendrix and Randy Rhodes but then also Dr. Dre and Jam Master Jay and also trying to incorporate the sounds and textures of in both hip-hop and techno like with Crystal Method and The Prodigy. But using an electrical guitar to try an approximate those sounds. And it really got me thinking outside of the box and that’s where I really found my own voice on the instrument.
There’s a lot that’s riding on this upcoming election from rising gas prices to the global wars that are going on. What do you see as the immediate change that can happen with whomever takes office and how realistic are your expectations?
Well, I definitely think in this next political election America is going to get the president it deserves. If after eight years of Republicans in office and of George Bush’s economic and military crimes, if the people of the United States elect a Republican, then seriously, I can’t help you [laughs]. Having said that, just because a Democrat – if Barack gets elected, that doesn’t mean that its going to be all unicorns and rainbows from here on out. Democratic administrations have committed war crimes of their own and I think that can’t ever sit back and allow elected officials to change the world for you. Change really has to come from and be generated by the intellect, the creativity and the power from the people, like the people who are reading your magazine. I will say this though; racism is as American as baseball, apple pie and Nascar and if the United States were to elect a semi-progressive African American it would be definitely be a step towards civilization. But, like I said, that’s just one piece of the puzzle. The rest of it has to be done by you and me.
The Fabled City is in stores now.
