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“There’s never been a musician who wore his heart on his sleeve like Joe Strummer”

On 23 March 2003, Tom Morello stood before a couple of hundred inside New York’s Waldorf-Astoria for what he calls “one of the most nerve-racking experiences of my whole life.” The guitarist had faced far larger crowds before – as a member of Rage Against The Machine, he was already a pro at rocking arenas and even stadiums – but his appearance at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame that night was a solo flight, and he was there to pay tribute to and induct his heroes, The Clash.

“I guarantee you that no one has rewritten a speech for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame more times than I did,” Morello says with a laugh. “There must have been about 80 drafts of that. I took it very seriously. And, of course, Joe had just passed a couple of months before, so there was that as well. I wanted to make sure that I got it right.”

As a teenager in Libertyville, Illinois, much of Morello’s musical sensibilities were informed by his love of heavy metal and, as he puts it, “surburban rock.” All of that changed the day a classmate turned him onto The Clash’s London Calling. The idea of merging unapologetic, politically charged lyrics with fabulously obstreperous rock – public service announcements with guitar – was planted in Morello’s mind. It was an combustible paradigm, one that he would ignite with explosive results in Rage Against The Machine.

On the eve of the 10-year anniversary of Joe Strummer’s untimely passing (he died on 22 December 2002), Morello sat down with MusicRadar to reflect on the influence The Clash had on him and to remember the late musician who helped to fuel his own musical consicousness.

Read the full article at Music Radar.

With everything from the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, to the protests that are still ongoing in Egypt, the topic of democracy, revolution and change has been at the forefront of many conversations. And there is perhaps no better time for the documentary “Let Fury Have The Hour,” an exploration of the artistic response that comes in the wake of oppressive political climates.

The feature directorial debut from acclaimed author, visual artist, and filmmaker Antonino D’Ambrosio chronicles how a generation of artists, thinkers and activists used their creativity — and their creations — as a response to the reactionary politics that came to define 1980s culture. To help tell the story, D’Ambrosio rounded up an array of folks including John Sayles, Chuck D, Shepard Fairey, Lewis Black, Ian MacKaye, Billy Bragg and many more to talk about how the heyday of Reagan and Thatcher informed their creative output. Also sharing his experiences is Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who in this exclusive clip explains how it’s the power of the people that invokes massive change, not politicians.

Read the full article at IndieWire.

Also, Rage Against the Machine may never play again

As Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut turns 20 years old, it follows a year after a little record called Nevermind reached the same milestone. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Tom Morello describes hearing Nirvana for the first time. He says bassist Tim Commerford played them at an early Rage rehearsal.

“They cranked that thing in the truck, and we listened to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ like, 15 times,” Morello recalls. “I mean, now it’s a song and a band and a record that is oversaturated in a way that I don’t know that I’m ever going to get off on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ again. But I remember that first night, very clearly, those guys cranking it up. We were moshing around in the parking lot of our rehearsal space.”

Morello has already said Rage wouldn’t be reuniting for new material, bucking the trend set by the influential bands from Soundgarden to Black Sabbath. In the Rolling Stone interview, he won’t rule out the possibility that the band might neverplay live again, either. “Whether or not we ever play music again in any capacity is unknown,” Morello’s quoted as saying. But he won’t close the door on playing again either, adding later, “Every show we’ve ever played might’ve been the last.”

Rage’s reissued and remastered debut, titled Rage Against the Machine XX, came out last month, with demos and B-sides in the deluxe edition. Listen to the “Mindset’s a Threat” demo here.

Read the full article at Spin.

“Like on the early Dylan records, I was going for a certain quietness”

ACOUSTIC WEEK: During his career with Rage Against The Machine, Tom Morello blew people’s minds by making his guitar sound like a turntable, an air raid siren, a theremin, a sci-fi ray gun – in short, anything but a guitar. And so it came as a double head trip when the unorthodox axe hero rechristened himself The Nightwatchman, a folk-based protest singer for the 21st Century, and wielded a nylon-string acoustic that sounded like, well, a nylon-string acoustic.

In Rage, Morello created his otherworldly audio sensations with an abundance of imagination and a series of non-high-end, Frankenstein-type electrics given memorable names like Arm The Homeless and Soul Power. “Misfit toys,” he lovingly calls them. In similar fashion, to complement his rich, stentorian baritone as The Nightwatchman, he utilized, for the most part, a budget-priced Ibanez Galvador nylon-string acoustic dubbed “Whatever It Takes.” (He later added a steel-string Gibson to the proceedings, one he calls “Black Spartacus.”)

Read the full article at Music Radar.

Rage Against The Machine matter in a way few bands ever do. Righteously angry and fiercely intelligent, they also proved that political rock didn’t have to suck. They made rap manifestos that rocked and heavy riffs you could dance to.

Their debut album went off like a bomb twenty years ago this month. Over the next two decades the shockwaves changed countless lives, including mine. To mark the anniversary the band are re-releasing the record in a box set that also contains footage from the band’s first ever public performance at Cal State Northridge in 1991 as well as their Finsbury Park victory concert in 2010. They’ve also thrown in the original demo tape of 12 songs that they recorded before they’d even played a show.

I don’t need a calendar-based excuse to listen again to Tom Morello’s incendiary guitar riffs, but it doesn’t hurt. Morello’s a genuine Harvard-educated political heavyweight as well as a technical pioneer who famously used his guitar’s toggle switch to simulate a DJ’s scratching. I caught up with the rebel with a cause to find out what he remembers about making the album, politicising a generation of fans and the moment it all kicked off at Reading.

Read the full article at NME.