Tom Morello

often while the head bang. Like many of us, he struggled with the isolation of lockdown, so he turned to his music. It's the force he's used for decades to help bring a positive change to the world. This time around, it helped bring a positive change to himself. After crafting guitar parts in his home studio, he sent them off

to an astonishing assortment of friends and collaborators. The first fruits of the project released the mid October as The Atlas Underground Fire, and now he's back with another record from his self described Saw Conspiracy. Earlier this week, he announced The Atlas Underground Flood, a sister record featuring the likes of Ben Harper ex Ambassadors and Jim James due

out December three. We talked about is creatively productive, quarantine, is legendary guitar playing, and what it's been like teaching his son to shred. He's a proud papa. Indeed, I'm so happy to welcome Mr Tomrollo. I hope you enjoy our conversation. But you are extremely busy, as everybody knows,

so I I am extremely grateful for your time. I'm speaking to you shortly after the release of your latest sonic conspiracy, The Atlas Underground Fire, and by the time this comes out, listeners will be very well aware that there is a sister album on the way, The Atlas Underground Flood. I wanted to start by asking about the relationship between those two albums. Is Flood a continuation of

Fire or is it an altogether different perspective? Yeah, no, these are record These are my Plague albums, their records that were both made, you know, during the height of lockdown, and uh, there's they are sister records in a way. It's sort of my stab at take the clashes London calling, making a making a record of sort of a double album that is united in purpose. Uh, united in intent, united in sort of authenticity and ferocity, but is sonically

very very diverse, with no olds part. Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I think that's so unique about these two albums is that I feel like for every other album you've made, it seems to come from place of wanting to help people other people, and it sounds like for these pairs of albums it was almost really the inverse. It was sort of designed. It came out of a need of wanting to help yourself and to help you remain being a musician at a time

when that was looking harder and harder to do. Absolutely, absolutely, I mean, I recorded those albums here in my studio. I have a studio here, but I don't know how to run it. Um there's normally an engineer who sits here, but during lockdown, there was no engineer coming uh. And inspiration came from a very surprising place. I read an interview where UM Kanye West was bragging about recording the vocals to a couple of his albums onto the UH

voice memo of his phone. So I just started recording guitar into my my my phone on a folding chair in front of my amp. Over there just playing some guitar riffs and then sending those riffs to producers, engineers and artists around the world, and that became the building blocks for these records. But first and foremost, it was a way to sort of assert that, in this crazy time of kind of fear and anxiety, that I could still be a musician of the guitars on this record.

On these two records were recorded into the voice memo of my phone, which is something I hadn't anticipated and may lead to me throwing out all those expensive microphones. I mean, that is crazy. Has that new approach changed your approach to composing in the long hall? I mean, did it open any doors for you creatively? I imagine that sort of not having all of the accruterments of you know, the studio, maybe my can play a little freer. I don't know. Yeah, it was, it was. I mean

it was. When I set out recording those guitar rists, it really was not with the intent I'm going to make a double album. It was like I need to try to survive Thursday, you know, you know, and and this is one way it's too like I love this,

I love playing guitar, but there's no way to connect. Now, there was a way to connect, you know, on these records, I mean from they span from you know, bring Me the Horizon in Brazil, two Idols in the UK to Sam Abdulhadi and Palestine to Bruce Bringsteen in New Jersey, Refused in Sweden. I was just kind of like these rock and roll pen pals, you know, there's kind of global connectiveness during a time where there was no human connection. I mean, giving Kanye is indirect involvement on the album,

I'm almost surprised that he didn't make a guest appearance. No, I didn't know. I didn't I didn't think to reach out for Evnick. Can you talk to me more about the collaborative process. Was it a case of finishing a sketch or riff and thinking, oh my god, I think I know exactly who that would be for. Or did you reach out to art a bunch of artists that you wanted to work with and kind of say here's

ten things. Yeah, it was each of those ways was implemented in some ways that it was the where every day felt like it was kind of exactly the same. There was almost this roulette wheel adventure to these songs. You know, I come up here on Tuesday, I'd record four riffs. I'd send them to I don't know, pick Um, you know, uh, Jim James, my morning Jack, Like, which are you feeling any of these? Number three? Okay, great,

let's have that be a starting point. Another time it might be like a track that is kind of more put together, bring me the horizon is responding to these risks. Other times, whether it was phantogram or some Abdulhati, they might send me something as a as a starting point. There were really no rules to it, and the the unexpectedness of that daily sort of creative process was really like an elixir of health and hope during that kind of crazy time. That was what I was gonna say.

It must have been so exciting for you to send these out into the world, and really a lot always have no idea what they might send back. I mean, were there any what were some of the biggest surprises for you? Well, I'll say, I mean there's there's there

were there were quite a few big surprises. But um, like some Albdo Hottie for example, she's a young Palestinian DJ, just fantastic young artist, and you know, I sent her some of my usual kind of Black Sabbath led Zeppelin riffs that the normal, the normal stuff, and she's like, I like these, but I don't know what to do with these. I was like, thank you for your candor.

I appreciate that. Why don't you start the process. So she sent me this kind of like eight minute long kind of Arabic trance track that was entirely out of sort of my wheelhouse and experience. But I was like fantastic, Like I put on my headphones, put on my kind of like coal trane ears and just let go and just jammed over it. A few times, sent those those sort of wild tracks back to her to apply her production genius. So that was like that was the process.

Like every day it was some new eddie, some new streams, some new routes, some new bridge, some new way to create, and eventually I amassed this body of material. Now it's two records, because in this day and age, putting out a double album doesn't make sense. But there there always was the intent that Fire and Flood would would be would be sisters, and they that they would be together. Um and you know, I I look at this project is it's is both a solo album and very much

a collaborative effort. Um is a solo album, and that there is a kind of purity of overall vision and curation, and and my guitar is the common voice and all these songs, but none of these songs I couldn't I

couldn't have made any of them on my own. They're all a product of the individual chemistry of the great and diverse artists I had the honor of working that sounds are so diverse, And as you said, you know, I mean, you think about making a you know, in quotes, a quarantine album, and it seems like this really isolating, claustrophobic thing. But this is truly a global record, and you think of all these artists that are not only located in different places, but are bringing their own experiences

into it. I mean, I'm hard pressed to name an album where one of the vocals is for coorded by somebody who's basically scaling everest, you know, I mean, you know, I mean this is as was the case with Mike Poshner during that Yeah, I mean, that's that's crazy to me.

How they you know, their experiences are now sort of part of the DNA of this record, I mean, and DJ Sama to me, wasn't she recording in the midst of the Israeli Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, she would sort of during the mixing of the song, she disappeared for a couple of days. I'm like, are you okay? And

fortunately she was. But yeah, you know, and then there's you know, Springsteen in New Jersey Sinking Highway to Hell all will I'm completely alone, you know, every day here in the studio, like you know, doing but whatever, the normal sort of plumbing. And you've mentioned, of course the unifying feature of these records, of course, your electric guitar. You've been very vocal in uh, I mean, throughout your career, but in recent interviews, especially about how you feel the

electric guitar is. I'm gonna make sure I'm getting the quote exactly right. The greatest instrument that humankind has ever devised. And you will get no argument for me whatsoever. But I wanted to ask Askew, why what is it about the electric guitar that makes it such an effective tool? Friend? Conduit paint? But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.

Co conspirator, um, yeah, I I mean, there's one I'm maybe somewhat prejudiced on this on this topic, but but there's no instruments, you know, before or after the creation of electric guitar that has both the the the can have the subtle nuance that the electric guitar has as

well as the stadium destroying rock power. There's nothing else there's because it's also and there are certainly, you know, there are crowds that go wild to E d M music and this, this, that and the other, and hip hop, which is all fantastic, and I go wild too, don't get don't get me wrong, but there's something about the visceral hands on you know, man made or human made quality of like touching those strings and feeling the force of that or being able to be sort of introspective

with a nuance. And but the second part of the thesis is not that the just that the electric guitar is the greatest instrument on the planet, that it's an instrument the future and not just a past, because there's a lot of guitar players that are traditionalists, and you know, all the good guitar playing has been done, so we just play something that's just like that, and that's what those are the those are the goal posts. I do

not subscribe to that. I believe these records are in the first Atlas Underground record in two thousand eighteen, and these two records are an assertion the electric guitar has a bright future. But I think that that future is

found in sometimes unconventional ways. I never want to let go of the big riffs, of the crazy guitar solos, of the expressiveness of the instrument, but I want to find a context for those riffs, for those solos, and for that that expressiveness in unexpected places to push the guitar into the future. That's why there is punk rock on this record. That's why there is there is uh A d M bass drops on this record. That's why there's heavy metal on this record. That's why that's there's

folk songs on this Who to ask? There was a quote you gave recently, and I'm paraphrasing, but something where you said, for the first ten years of my musical career was practicing scales. In the second ten years, I was practicing animal sounds on guitar. Uh what point, I mean, at what point did the guitar become not strictly an instrument to be mastered, but something to be used to express yourself in ways that you know are unconventional and

aren't necessarily traditional. Yeah, when we pick up an instrument, Uh, there are two categories in which people may find themselves. There are musicians and there are artists. Um. And for the first tenure, first first ten years of playing guitar, I had worked very, very hard at and put in my ten twenty hours to become a technically skilled musician. I couldn't write songs that I like. I mean, I could shred my ass off like Steve I or Baby van Halen. I couldn't write songs that I liked, and

I didn't have my own voice on the instrument. It was around the beginnings of Rage against the Machine where I began self identifying as the DJ and the band right. I started to look at the instrument in an entirely different way, recognizing and realizing the electric guitar is a relatively new instrument on the planet. It's just a piece of wood with six wires and a few electronics that could be manipulated in a wide variety of of ways. And I remember the me being inured as a young

guitar magazine reader and all my favorite guitars. Almost like to a to a person would say, well, it's all been done on the guitar, and I was like, how do we know? Are we sure? Have we? I mean, this is a short time. Is there a study? Is there a study that proved so? I? And but then once I got outside of that box and did start practicing animal noises and R two D two noises and helicopter noises, and you know, my inspirations went well beyond

Chuck Barry, Betty Van Halen and Metallica. UM. It really like the blinders came off and all of a sudden I was I felt like, well, this is who I am on the instrument. And that's when I took the tentative first steps from becoming a musician into becoming an artist. And the thing that really boggles my mind is that you were came to guitar relatively late in life as far as you since go, I think, like late teens.

I mean, one of the only people I can think of it picked up guitar that late was Robert Johnson, and he he had the devil to help, that's correct, which I imagine you did not. I mean, how did how did you first find your way to the guitar. Yeah, I mean, given my Catholic upbringing, that was not an option.

But yeah, you're at He's the only guit Robert Johnson started playing at eighteen, and he's the only other guitar player I've ever heard of and began making the big game sort of notable as the guitars began making records that late. Um. I had a guitar when I was thirteen years old. I took two lessons that were so off putting. It sat in a closet for the next four years, UM, gathering dust. And for me it was

punk rock music. I I admired the big rock stars of the day, the led Zeppelins is that now, But it really felt like it was unattainable. And you had to have a ten thousand dollar Les Paul and a wall of marshals and a and a castle on a Scottish lock and some sort of gorgeous cheek bones and hair and groupies and like to even they like get a ticket into the party, you know exactly I had, you know, I had a dance basement in Illinois. Uh, and so when I heard that, you know, the sex

Pistols in the clash. Those were records. It felt like they were made in damp basements wherever those people were. They were singing about topics that were neither you know, dungeons, nor dragons nor groupies, and I could relate personally, relate to, like the real life stories they were telling about, you know, injustice and struggle and what how it sucks to be seventeen whatever, whatever it was sort of entailed in those songs felt like relatable, and more importantly, it felt like

you could play those songs this afternoon. No, you could write a song like that this afternoon. And so the day I began, the day I began as a guitarist was within twenty four hours of getting the Sex Pistols cassette. I didn't know how to play a chord on the instrument. I didn't know how to play a note on the instrument. I went into the drama club of my school and announced the punk band was forming. I'm the guitar player. If you want to be in the band, raise your hand,

no experience required. That makes me wonder if the Sex Pistols started roughly the same way too. Yeah, yeah, yeahs possible. I mean yeah, you uh, spent some of the time in the last year, and I have teaching your your son, your I think ten year old son how to play guitar. Uh. Has that changed your relationship to the guitar in anyway as now as a as a teacher to to a student in front of you, Yeah, very much. So. Well, first of all, I reflect in beginning to teach him,

which was during lockdown. Um, I reflected on those two awful guitar lessons I had convinced me to not play for four years. So I did not repeat that pattern, and I made the experience one which was all about fun and immediate success and you know, like run before

you walk and let's have a good time. But yes, it has changed my guitar playing considerly because now I'm kind of the second best guitar soloist in the family, and so I spent most of my time as a rhythm guitarist, you know, strumming the chords for Pink Floyd songs or whatever, while he just shreds his little butt off. I mean, I love and seeing his collaborations and your collaborations with Nandy Bush Well, I mean, for anyone who

has the misfortune of having not seen her. She's this incredible I think she's eleven years old, this musician from England who will just melt your face on any instrument that you want. I mean, that has to make you feel good. I mean, the saga continues in a absolutely absolutely. I had become kind of Instagram friends, but she does these amazing covers of songs, including some audio slave and Rage against Machine songs. So I sent her one of my signature Ender Soul Power guitars, so we sort of

became friendly, and then she reached out. It was like, do you want to, you know, write a song? He is that I would love to write a song with you, But I got a nine year old kid over here who's kind of ahead of me right now. Maybe you guys write a song together. And they did. They wrote a great song called The Children Will Rise Up. We got Jack Black in the video and it really you know, it says when the song was recorded, they were nine and ten years old. They're the ones they wrote it,

they played, they play the inst I produced it. But it just it's pretty awesome, you know. And then I cannot I'm not gonna lie that when my kids solo comes up, in that one. You know, it's like it's just sixteen bars of just pure like fatherly pride. As he's sure, I mean, he's he's he's either got it or you don't. That has got to be the best feeling in the world that I mean, congratulate, you've done good.

You've done good. It is, it's awesome. I'm speaking of of you know, a different note, but speaking of young women with guitars. You you've been working to get a group of young young musicians out of Taliban occupied Afghanistan. I was wondering what the latest was with them, and for there's any ways that that we can continue to to try to help. Yeah, the good news is that they are safe in regular contact with people who are in contact with them, and um, but they you know,

I have been Uh. This is a great musician, Lannie Cordova. He was in like a metal band in the eighties and you know, he kind of got the religion of love and he moved moved to Afghanistan to help street children, people who have who had would endure trauma, especially on girls would endure trauma and because of the war and

had lost their parents or for and whatnot. And he made a school for them and they had a lot of the The creative part of the school was they all learned to play guitar and they would sing songs and we did some collaborations and videos together. Was wonderful, wonderful girls, you know. And then after the Taliban takeover, they were you know, on a they were marked for death, you know, because they know we're playing Western music and

had an American teacher and whatnot. And so they've been in hiding since then, and we've been working very very very diligently trying to get them um first to Pakistan and then you know, and then somewhere else. But but they're okay, they're okay, and uh, I hear from them periodically, and we're still doing all every means, both above and above board and blowboard to try to, you know, get them to safety. This was wonderfully here. I mean, I

was thinking, this is probably the last eighteen months. I would imagine the first time in quite a while that you weren't literally on the front lines of marches. I'm thinking specifically of the protest for the murder of George Floyd. Uh. I've heard numerous clips and I've also heard anecdotally from friends that your music was being sung and chanted at these protests. What is it? I wanted to ask you, What is it about music that makes it such an

effective method to transmit emotion and enact change. Yeah, well, I mean there's certainly a lot of evidence to support that thesis. You know, there's never been a successful social movement in this country without a soundtrack, really, you know, and with and um, you know, from the Union struggles to the civil rights movement to the anti war movements,

from Vietnam to Iraq um that music. Music is a unique art form, and the music and pre dates you know, written language and so like, there's something about a tribal gathering with rhythm and rhyme that feels like the truth in a like something that's like deeply hardwired into our reptilian DNA that really can feel like the truth. And and that's why I think that music can steal the

spine of those who are standing up to injustice. Again, put wind in the sales of movements that you feel that connected us in that same connection that I felt

with a band like the Clock. I was growing up in a small town in Illinois where not a lot of people shared my point of view, you know, but there were four musicians six thousand miles away that did and it made me one feel not alone too, made me feel like these ideas that I had were not were they were global ideas, you know, they were global ideas, and that there's friends and comrades here and abroad that perhaps together we can have our hands on the steering

wheel of history. And so for me, it was very frustrat like I was. I got my year old mom here, my nine year old mother in law here, so I was really like lockdown and didn't get to participate on the front lines of you know, the Black Lives Matter

and the George Floyd protests over the summer. I did contribute music to those and was happy to see music from some of my other bands played, you know during those as Um, your music was really among the first that I was aware of as a as a tween or young teen that was political music that didn't sound like you know, the Weavers or Woody Guthrie or or or Bob Dylan, and I um, it was actually was a teacher was my ninth grade English teacher turned me

on to to to your music. She played it in class and taught us the poetry of of of what you were saying. And you know, I'll remember her and be grateful to her for the rest of my life for you know what what she what she taught us all as thirteen fourteen year old kids, I was wondering, who were some people in your life? Imagine your mother being one of them who steered you towards the good stuff. This music, you know that really has the power to to to enlighten. Yeah, well I was sad my my mom.

There was music in my family, like my grandfather was a talented pianist, my great uncle played in Chicago symp the Orchestra. But I was as an only kid with a mom who was like a full time you know, with a full time job, there's not a lot of She wasn't bringing home record, you know, it might have been a Temptations record or a classical record around the house. But that journey was one that I sort of had to find on my own. So you know, first for me that it was heavy metal, that was like what

I responded to. First. I love comic books and that led me to kiss, and then kiss led me to this one and that one. Um, but it was. It was the message that was contained first in punk rock music and then hip hop music that made me realize that there's a that there's a a cross road. Like I, I didn't choose to be a guitar player. That chose me, and so I was kind of like stuck with this vocation.

But I also had this set of ideas that I couldn't abandoned in my life's work, and so I would look to artists that had successfully merged those two the clash public enemy, um, you know. I later on sort of discovered some of the act the folk acts that you're talking about, you know, Wood he got three and uh,

phil Oaks and the Weavers and whatnot. But it really was to me like the overarching lesson I think is bigger, and that is to not leave behind who you are in what you do, not just music, whether you're an interviewer, a carpenter, a student, or whatever. To not leave behind your convictions in your vocation. And I made one record I've made twenty This is the twenty one and twenty second records of my career, Fire and Fire and Flood.

The first record I made was I was sort of a junior partner in a band called lock Up Before Rage Against Machine and and we kind of did everything that the record company asked us to do, and the producers suggested this, it felt like sort of counterintuitive. We got dropped from the label. You know, I was twenty seven years old. I had missed my grab at the Brass ring, but I still was a musician. I couldn't

help that. That wasn't going to change. So I made a solemn vow, and that was to never again to play a note of music that I didn't believe it. And over the course of the next twenty one albums, I've held true to that, whether they're folk albums or Atlas Underground albums or Audio Slave album or whatever. Um and that's been the guiding north star, which it remains

today on Fire and Flood. Do you have advice for people who, you know, maybe haven't found their voice yet and are still sort of looking for what exactly that is that they have to say or how to say it? Sure? Sure, I mean I think that the the it's a very

simple marker of success in this day and age. You know, unless you're some TikTok star, you know, that's that's a different case you have to ask somebody else about that, that's not going to But if you're a musician, I think the only measure of success these days is to play music that you love and believe it. And if you're in your basement with a couple of friends, or if you're at a stadium in Argentina, if you don't

have that, you don't have anything. So like my my suggestion would be if people art need to find that

what is just like right, what's true? Don't try to write like I used to try to, like write songs like that sounded like songs on the radio, or write lyrics like some of my favorite lyricists wrote rhyther than writing things that I thought you know, like right what you think, right about your situation, right about what you know, and it doesn't meant and don't here's things you don't have to be good like My entire solo career was launched. But there was a there's a place called Covenant House

in Hollywood. It's a teen homeless shelter in Hollywood, and I was doing some work with them, and it was like a Thanksgiving advantage and this kid got up there, his teenager got up there and he you know, he his story was a hard one, and he got up there with you know, a guitar that was out of tune and a voice that was shaky, and it felt like he was playing like everybody's soul in the room was at stake. And I'm like, that's it, Like that's

the whole thing right there. That's it. Like if you've got one moment in your life where you do that, like you've lived better than most you know, I mean being being seen, being heard and connecting. I mean I can. I'm hard pressed to think of something that's more worthy. Yeah, has the last eighteen months, with all of its hardships and you know, and that's putting it mildly, has it

taught you something new about yourself that you didn't know before? Um? Well, it's had one that that sort of revealed of vulnerability

that I did not know was there. Like I like, I've been you know since I was seventeen years old, have worked with a manic motor on music and this that big projects but whatever, and it read me made me really realized that like that there's you know, I was sort of it was really tough, Like the first that first year was really really challenging in ways that like I'm always the fixer, and I'm the type a guy, and I'm the here's the plan, and this is what

we're gonna do, and all of a sudden, I was like, I don't know if Thursday is gonna be okay this week?

You know. Um, but I did. I did find that the music was a, if not an entirely redemptive outlet, it certainly was a lifeline and it was something to hold onto that provided a you know, like like a sense of self that that reminded me of, you know, at the core of who I am, regardless of the particular circumstances of the day, and without getting too personally, everybody's good and I know your mom just had a birthday recently. Everybody's good, healthy, feeling good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

my mom is. I were doing this in my studio is in my mom's basement. So once again I'm playing guitar in my mom's basement like I did when I was seventeen years old. And she still has like critical comments about what she hears through the roof from told me just to She's like, I'm not sure about that second song today, Tom, And like thanks, thank you for your input. There were Yeah, well now that we're you know, hopefully coming out of this whatever you have, you wanted

to define this. Um, yes, you have plans to do a an Atlas Underground tour when the Pandemics had a subsize after the sort of rescheduled rage dates and yeah, yeah, there's there's there's no there's no plan on the books right now. I mean I was I was very heartened by one of the first Alace Underground record had twenty collaborators on it, and I was able to craft a tour of Sean Evans, who is the artistic director for Roger Waters. He did the Wall tour and the US

and Them tour. We put it. We didn't have the same budget. We put a tour together that you know that you didn't miss the fact that they weren't all there was like sort of part illegal rave, part like art, you know, sort of underground art ex Barbara Cruger art exhibition, part heavy metal mash mosh pit. And so there is a wave a way to really tour this creatively. But right now I'm looking forward to getting this music out. It's a really important like there there's you know, during

an inhumane time. Music can really restore a sense of humanity. And but part of that, part of that process isn't just It isn't writing just writing music. It isn't making music. It's putting it out and connecting, you know, and knowing that someone's here. And again, it can be three people in a basement, or it can be you know, a billion streams of a kpo. It's like connection that that

that solidifies the experience, as you know. And so making this music has been great, but it's not complete until it's out in the world and it's available for you to listen to or download illegally or whatever you want to do. It's full circle for you. It started with you connecting with you know, Bruce or whoever, and then now it's other people connecting to it from you. I Uh, before we go, I have to ask, it's been you know, a month and a half and you release the Atlas

Underground fire, the Atlas Underground flood. Is there an Atlas Underground earthquake or an Atlas Underground hurricane or any other element there? But I said, let's hope we don't go

back into lockdown. So I just like I do, look forward to really, you know, and it has been certainly the longest since I've been on stage, and that you know that the live rocking field, whether it's a folk concert or whether it's a big, bombastic Marshall Stack concert, like that feeling of connection and sort of the the unpredictability of the live experience. That's what I'm hoping two is all about. Right on a second beat, sir, thank you so much for your music and your time today.

It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you, Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your thoughtful questioning, and thanks to everybody out there cheers. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.