Tom Morello
Thomas Baptist Morello is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and political activist. He is known for his tenure with the rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Between 2016 and 2019, Morello was a member of the supergroup Prophets of Rage. Morello was also a touring musician with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Under the moniker the Nightwatchman, Morello released his solo work. Together with Boots Riley, he formed Street Sweeper Social Club. Morello co-founded Axis of Justice, which airs a monthly program on Pacifica Radio station KPFK in Los Angeles.
Born in Harlem, New York City and raised in Libertyville, Illinois, Morello became interested in music and politics while in high school. He attended Harvard University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies. After his previous band Lock Up disbanded, Morello met Zack de la Rocha. The two founded Rage Against the Machine, going on to become one of the most popular and influential metal acts of the 1990s.
He is best known for his unique and creative guitar playing style, which incorporates feedback noise, unconventional picking and tapping as well as heavy use of guitar effects. Morello is also known for his socialist political views and activism, creating the solo project The Nightwatchman as an outlet for those views while playing apolitical music with Audioslave. He was ranked number 18 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of greatest guitarists of all time. As a member of Rage Against the Machine, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.
Early life
Thomas Baptist Morello was born on May 30, 1964, in Harlem, New York City to parents Ngethe Njoroge and Mary Morello. Morello, an only child, is the son of an American mother of Italian and Irish descent and a Kenyan Kikuyu father. His mother was a schoolteacher from Marseilles, Illinois, who earned a Master of Arts at Loyola University, Chicago and traveled to Germany, Spain, Japan, and Kenya as an English language teacher between 1977 and 1983.Morello's father participated in the Mau Mau Uprising and was Kenya's first ambassador to the United Nations. Morello's paternal great-uncle, Jomo Kenyatta, was the first elected president of Kenya. His aunt, Jemimah Gecaga, was the first woman to serve in the legislature of Kenya and his uncle Njoroge Mungai was a Kenyan Cabinet Minister, Member of Parliament and was considered one of the founding fathers of modern Kenya. Morello's parents met in August 1963 while attending a pro-democracy protest in Nairobi, Kenya. After discovering her pregnancy, Mary Morello returned to the United States with Njoroge in November and they married in New York City.
Denying paternity of his son, Njoroge returned to his native Kenya when Morello was 16 months old. Morello was raised by his mother in Libertyville, Illinois and attended Libertyville High School, where his mother taught American history.
Morello developed left-leaning political proclivities early, following in his mother's footsteps. He described himself as having been "the only anarchist in a conservative high school" and has since identified as a nonsectarian socialist. In the 1980 mock elections at Libertyville, he campaigned for a fictitious anarchist "candidate" named Hubie Maxwell, who came in fourth place in the election. He wrote a piece headlined "South Africa: Racist Fascism That We Support" for the school alternative newspaper, The Student Pulse.
Morello graduated from high school with honors in June 1982 and enrolled at Harvard University as a political science student that autumn. His band Bored of Education won the Ivy League Battle of the Bands in 1986 with Carolyn Bertozzi, a laureate of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, on keyboards. Morello graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies. He moved to Los Angeles, where he supported himself, first by working as an exotic dancer:
Adam Jones, a high school classmate, moved to Los Angeles as well; Morello introduced Jones and Maynard James Keenan to Danny Carey, who would form the band Tool.
From 1987 to 1988, Morello worked in the office of U.S. Senator Alan Cranston ; however, this proved to be a negative experience for Morello, who decided to never pursue a career in politics:
Musical influences
At age 13, Morello joined his first band, a cover band called Nebula, as the lead singer. Nebula covered material by bands including Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller Band and Bachman–Turner Overdrive. In this same year, Morello purchased his first guitar. Around 1982, he started studying the guitar seriously. He had formed a band the same year called the Electric Sheep, featuring future Tool guitarist Adam Jones on bass. Morello wrote original material for the band that included politically-charged lyrics. Tom has cited Randy Rhoads as an influence when giving a speech at Randy's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, stating that he had a poster of the guitarist on his wall, he also told Rolling Stone Magazine that the late Eddie Van Halen shaped his guitar style, calling him "Our generation's Mozart.". Morello has said that he was profoundly influenced by Run-D.M.C and Jam Master Jay in particular.At the time, Morello's musical tastes lay in the direction of hard rock and heavy metal, particularly Kiss and Iron Maiden. As he stated in Flight 666, he is a huge fan of Piece of Mind, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, Rush and Black Sabbath. In an interview with MTV he said Black Sabbath "set the standard for all heavy bands to come". He cited Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi as one of his biggest influences as a riff writer. Morello developed his own unique sound through the electric guitar. Later, his musical style and politics were greatly influenced by punk rock bands like the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and Devo, and artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. On Queen he said, "It's one of the few bands in the history of rock music that was actually best in a stadium. And I miss Freddie Mercury very much."
Recording career
Lock Up (1987–1990)
In the mid 1980s, Morello joined the band Lock Up, for which he played guitar. The band's debut album, Something Bitchin' This Way Comes, was issued by major label Geffen Records in 1989. Lock Up had disbanded prior to Morello forming Rage Against the Machine.Rage Against the Machine (1991–2000; 2007–2011, 2019–2024)
In 1991, Morello was looking to form a new band after Lock Up disbanded. Morello was impressed by Zack de la Rocha's freestyle rapping and asked him to join his band. He drafted drummer Brad Wilk, whom he knew from Lock Up, for whom Wilk unsuccessfully auditioned for a drumming spot. The band's lineup was completed when de la Rocha convinced his childhood friend Tim Commerford to play bass. After frequenting the Los Angeles club circuit, Rage Against the Machine signed a record deal with Epic Records in 1992. That same year, the band released their self-titled debut album. They achieved mainstream success and released three more studio albums: Evil Empire in 1996, The Battle of Los Angeles in 1999, and Renegades in 2000.In August 2000, in Los Angeles during the Democratic National Convention, Rage Against the Machine performed outside the Staples Center to a crowd numbering in the thousands while the convention took place inside. After several audience members began to throw rocks, the Los Angeles Police Department turned off the power and ordered the audience to disperse, firing rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd.
In late 2000, amid disagreements on the band's direction and Commerford's stunt at the VMAs, the disgruntled de la Rocha quit the band. On September 13, 2000, Rage Against the Machine performed their last concert, at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. Although Rage Against the Machine disbanded in October 2000, their fourth studio album, Renegades, was released two months later. 2003 saw the release of their last album, titled Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, an edited recording of the band's final two concerts on September 12 and 13, 2000 at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. It was accompanied by an expanded DVD release of the last show and included a previously unreleased music video for "Bombtrack".
After disbanding, Morello, Wilk, and Commerford went on to form Audioslave with then-former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell and released three albums and a DVD from the band's concert in Cuba. De la Rocha started working on a solo album collaboration with DJ Shadow, Company Flow, and the Roots' Questlove, but the project was dropped in favor of working with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. Recording was completed, but the album will probably never be released. So far, only two tracks have been released: "We Want It All" was featured on "Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11", and "Digging For Windows" was released as a single.
Reunions
On April 29, 2007, Rage Against the Machine reunited at the Coachella Music Festival. The band played in front of an EZLN backdrop to the largest crowds of the festival. The performance was initially thought to be a one-off, but the band played seven more shows in 2007 and in January 2008 played their first shows outside the US since re-forming, as part of the Big Day Out Festival in Australia and New Zealand. In August 2008 they headlined nights at the Reading and Leeds festivals.The band continued to tour around the world, headlining many large festivals in Europe and the United States, including Lollapalooza in Chicago. In 2008 the band also played shows in Denver, Colorado, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention, respectively. In July 2011, Rage Against the Machine played at L.A. Rising, a concert formed by the band in Los Angeles, in which they headlined and played with other artists, including Muse and Rise Against.
On November 1, 2019, it was reported that Rage Against the Machine were reuniting for their first shows in nine years in spring 2020, including two appearances at that year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The planned summer 2020 tour was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rescheduled tour began in July 2022, but remaining tour dates in North America and Europe needed to be postponed after De la Rocha tore his left Achilles’ tendon. In 2024, Wilk announced that the band would no longer be touring or performing live.