Rock in a Hard Place

Tom Morello is one of the leading political musicians of our day. "People will read a book or pamphlet only once, but a song they can sing again and again in their heads," he says.

The son of a Kenyan anti-colonialist and an American public high school teacher, Morello grew up in Libertyville, Illinois. After graduating from Harvard in the mid-1980s, he moved to Los Angeles to become a musician.

Morello may be best known as the innovative guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, a politically charged rock band that was one of the first to meld heavy metal and rap. Rage Against the Machine lent its name and time to various causes, from the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, to boycotts of sweatshop labor. Their liner notes read like a political website, and they performed at the protests outside the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where the police broke things up afterwards with tear gas and rubber bullets.

In 2000, singer Zack de la Rocha left the band. Rage Against the Machine has not played since that September. Morello now plays in Audioslave, along with Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk of Rage Against the Machine and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame. They released their 2002 self-titled debut to rave reviews and are currently writing songs in Los Angeles after spending the past year on tour.

Although he is recognized for his shredding electric guitar playing, Morello recently began performing folk songs as the Nightwatchman. In a deep baritone, he sings dark, somber tunes accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. The Nightwatchman debuted nationally during the Tell Us the Truth Tour, a multi-city circuit that focused on media consolidation and economic and environmental justice.

I met up with Morello on a brisk November day in Madison, Wisconsin, on the opening leg of the Tell Us the Truth Tour. He was wearing what I call Midwestern chic: a blue long john shirt with a T-shirt over it, jeans, black gym shoes, and an IWW baseball cap. After the interview, he greeted his mom, Mary Morello, an activist in her own right, in the hotel lobby. She had traveled up from Illinois to see her son perform.

When did you first learn guitar?

Tom Morello: I started kind of late, when I was seventeen. I got the Sex Pistols record, and had the punk rock epiphany of "I can do this, too." Prior to that, I was a big fan of heavy metal music, which involved extravagance. You had to have huge walls of Marshall amplifiers and expensive shiny Gibson, Les Paul guitars. You had to know how to play "Stairway to Heaven" and have a castle on a Scottish loch, limos, groupies, and things like that. All I had was a basement in Illinois. None of that was going to come together for me.

When I heard the Sex Pistols and the Clash and Devo, it was immediately attainable. I thought, this music is as good as anything I have ever heard, but I can play it this afternoon. I got the Sex Pistols record, and within twenty-four hours I was in a band.

Tell me about growing up in Libertyville.

I integrated the town. It is an entirely white conservative northern suburb of Chicago and I was the first person of color to reside in the town. My mom and I moved there in 1965. She was applying to be a public high school teacher in communities around the northern suburbs. In more than one of them, they said, "You can work here, but your family cannot live here." They were explicit about it. I was a one-year-old half-Kenyan kid, and they told my mom, "You're an interracial family so you can live in the ghetto in Waukegan or go to North Chicago or somewhere like that." Libertyville was the first community that allowed us to court real estate agents to find an apartment.

And even then, the real estate agent had to go door to door in the apartment complex where we rented to see if it was OK with people. One reason we succeeded, I think, was because I'm Kenyan. They could use that. Kids would come up to me in fourth grade and say, "I've been meaning you ask you this, and I don't know how to say it, but are you the prince of Africa?" Seriously. This rumor followed me through my college years. I was nineteen years old, I was on a date, and this kid says, "I don't know how to say this but are you really the prince of Africa?" I think that germ was started by the original real estate agent who was trying to sell the family to the locals.