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Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera, that you can apply to your own life. You will get plenty of all of that in this special episode, which features an interview from my 2017 TV show Fearless.
The less is in parentheses because the objective is to teach you to fear less, not to be fearless. Fearless features in-depth long-form conversations with top performers, focusing on how they've overcome fears and made hard decisions, embracing discomfort and thinking big along the way. It was produced by Wild West Productions, and I worked with them to make both the video and audio available to you for free. My dear listeners, so thank you, Wild West.
You can find the video of this episode, which is gorgeous. I think they did an incredible job on YouTube.com slash Tim Ferris. Remember, two Rs 2s's, YouTube.com slash Tim Ferris. And eventually, you'll be able to see all of the episodes for free at youtube.com slash Tim Ferris. So you can swing over there and see what is currently up.
Before we get started, just a little bit more on Wild West, spearheaded by actor producer and past podcast guest Vince Vaughn Wild West has produced a string of hit movies, including the internship, couples retreat, four Christmas's and the breakup.
In 2020, Wild West produced the comedy, the opening act, starring Jimmy O'Yang and Cedric, the entertainer. In addition to Fearless, their television credits include Undeniable with Joe Buck, ESPN's 30 for 30 episode about the 85 Bears, and the Netflix animated show F is for family. Wild West has also produced the documentaries, give us this day, game changers, subtitle, Dreams of Blizzcon, and Wild West comedy show.
And now, without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation from Fearless. I'm Tim Ferris, author, entrepreneur, angel investor, and now TV host. I've spent my entire adult life asking questions, then scouring the globe to find the answers. On this show, I'll share the secrets of pioneers who have faced their own fears. We'll dig into the hard times, big mistakes, tough decisions, and how they got through it all. The goal isn't to be Fearless. The goal is to learn to Fearless.
Welcome to Fearless. I'm your host, Tim Ferris, and on this very stage, we'll be deconstructing world-class performers of all different types to uncover the specific tactics they've used to overcome doubt, tackle their hardest decisions, and ultimately succeed on their own terms. So my guest tonight is a revolutionary, and I mean that literally, his musical talents have resulted in the sale of more than 25 million albums and garnered two Grammys.
Rolling Stone has recognized him as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and yet, he's only had two formal guitar lessons. He's a founding member of Rage Against the Machine, Audio Slave, The Night Watchmen, and Prophets of Rage. Please welcome to the stage musician, singer, songwriter, and author, Tom Morello. Hello. Hello. You guys ready for a show? So thank you so much for taking the time for us. We're going to start with a video, and then we'll work back which one that sounds right.
Let's go. Let's go. A smattering of greatest hits in Barnard Animal Noises. What is it like to try something for the first time and then go present it to others, whether it's to your bandmates or to an audience? Well, as a guitar, when you pick up a guitar, you do so because you like guitar playing and guitar players. So the natural instinct is to play like your favorites.
In my case, it was sort of my punk rock heroes and then Randy Rhodes and some of the heavy metal guitar players, and amassing that technique. It wasn't until, like maybe late in my college career when I was saddled with it, at the time everybody liked the Edward Van Haleng guitar because it only had one knob on it, the volume knob. That was the coolest thing. I didn't have one of those. I had a guitar with a whole bunch of knobs on it, so it was quite uncool.
But one of the knobs that did have on it was a pickup selector switch, which chooses between the two, you know, which pickup you're going to hear sound out of. And I found that if I manipulated that, the toggle switch with one of the pickups on zero, the other on ten, it worked as kind of a kill switch. And then I could, you know, play notes here and it sounded like it was a staccato kind of playing that I had never heard a guitar make. Then I began practicing the eccentricities in my playing.
And once I got out of the rut of thinking that I needed to sound like other guitar players, the horizons were wide open. And the nail in the coffin of traditional guitar playing for me was an early rage against the machine gig in the San Fernando Valley. We were opening up for two cover bands. And the cover band had very technically talented guitar players.
They get shred like crazy and play beautifully and brilliantly. But I thought to myself, if I'm on a bill with three other guitar players who have that level of useless technique, I don't need to be the fourth one. And so I veered the ship dramatically towards concentrating on the eccentricities in my playing and things were very unique.
And then trying to forge that into music. Now, that did not always meet with popular acclaim, both in my band and, you know, in the world at large, because I would be, I'd play the guitar with a pen or with an Allen wrench, which is the thing that you used to kind of change the tuning on it. Or, and then I began rather than trying to, rather than practicing other guitar players' licks, I would just look at the world of sound.
And sometimes I would sit in my apartment and just listen. And if there was a lawnmower outside, I'd do my best to approximate that. If there was a television program with, you know, about World War II or about the Lions of the Serengeti, whatever was coming out, I would just do my best to approximate it.
And while I couldn't play those sounds exactly, I was amassing a catalog of noises and textures and rhythms that were totally unconventional and then building them into the rock and roll songs of Rage Against The Machine. I remember the exact moment, the exact room where I first heard Rage Against The Machine. I won the same 1992, I was in Japan, first time overseas for the first time as an exchange student, and I was in my bedroom and some of my friends had sent me the first Rage album.
And I remember listening to it, and I was always a metalhead. And I was like, what the fuck is this? This is a, the sound is so unique, and we're going to back into that. So we won't dig into that part of the chronology right now, but I like your hat. It's been a good year. I'm in a very good year. So where did your parents meet? I think this might be good.
Yeah, my, my mom comes from a small coal mining town in central Illinois called Marseille's Illinois. It's spelled like Marseille France, but it's in central Illinois, so it's pronounced Marseille's. And for some reason, my mom is a single woman in the early, in the mid 1940s, left the trail of the world by herself for about 20 years. She taught all around the globe and eventually found herself in East Africa teaching in Kenya, where she met my dad.
And you were born in the US, born the US. Yeah, yeah. So they, they, they part, they part ways. And my dad was part of the first UN delegation, and then they split, he went back to Kenya. She went back to Illinois. Have you ever explored why your mom decided to travel the world by herself? Yeah, it's a question that she hasn't been able to answer to my satisfaction. My mom is 93 now, and I still ask her that periodically.
But there's something, you know, sort of unique in her constitution that made her boldly, you know, she lived in Spain, Japan, Germany, right after World War II East Africa. She was fearless in her travels. And I've inherited at least a pinch of that Libertyville. When did you go?
Yeah, so, so we live for, you know, as a single mom now living in the big city. She moved back, where she had support from family. And then the challenge then became finding a teat mom was overly qualified to teach world history and US history, not just from her travels, but from her studies.
You have a master's degree found it difficult to find a place for us to live because this was 1965. And while she the high schools in the northern suburbs were happy to have her as a teacher, they warned her that we as an interracial family, meaning me a half African one year old and her and Irish Italian white lady would be unwelcome to dwell within the city.
But they should teach there. We have to live somewhere else. And the real estate agent though, when it had to go door to door in the apartment building where we were renting to ask permission from the other, the other tenants letting them know that this was going to be an interracial family and how they sold us to the locals was basically saying, look, this is not an American Negro. This is a very exotic African child.
And that worked swimmingly well until I was old enough to date their daughters. And then you could be the king of Nigeria and no, no, no, dads are going to be a little. All right, plus one for exotic, but I have bad news. So that was my introductory, I literally integrated the town of Libertyville, Illinois, according to the real estate, that there were the priors of my arrival. There were no people of color residing within its borders.
That was at one. How would you describe growing up in that town in that part? On the one hand, it's this idyllic Chicago suburb. You can ride your bike, you can fish, there's fields to play football in and it has a tremendous public high school system, public school system.
But then every once in a while, you might find a noose in your family's garage. Did that actually happen? Yeah, I saw a couple of nooses growing up. One was in the garage and I was 13, another was when I was 15 just walking past the browns chicken. And so that was a part of the, those were threads in the cloth of growing up there, which I kind of took for granted. I had great friends and great experiences, but it was not a racist free environment.
How did your mom, if she did, encourage you to respond to? Well, I, yeah, I mean, she, my mom remains the most radical member of the Morello family to this day. And I was at a daycare place. I was probably four years old and there was an older kid, a couple of years older, who was race taunting me and beating me up or being very physical with me on a daily basis.
I would come home to my mom and she, at four years old, taught me about a fellow by name of Malcolm X. She said, you must stand up. You must stand up. That's your condo. You must, the story, the story is pretty dramatic. So she said, she said, you know, you have to stand up for yourself, you have to stand up against racism wherever and whenever it rures its head. I'm like, mom, I'm four.
And she said, she gave me like, the person was, you know, had a particular litany of epithets that they were calling me. And so she gave me, I had to memorize something to say back. I forget it was like, you know, cracker ass cracker. I don't know what it was. I didn't know what any of the words meant. I'm like, this sounds like it was going to be trouble tomorrow.
And then she like, you know, she like, bald up my fist and said, you go out of my, this sounds horrible. It's a big kid horrible. So I go there like dreading daycare than the following day. And I, you know, and I'm there and the kids on me and their N word and me and their attacking me. And I'm like, you, hacker ass smacker, whatever I got really remembered.
And I take a nice start going out and it causes such a rocket. I'm losing the physical battle, but it causes such such a ruckus that the person around the daycare for the first time paid attention to the disagreements. And I got to with smug satisfaction watches the young racist child's mouth was washed out was soap in front of the whole crew. And I went, there might be some of this Malcolm X.
What, what affected that? How about you? I know it sounds like a very generic, maybe boring question, but. Well, as someone who didn't grow up with that. Yeah, well, people, people asked like, how were you politicized? And it wasn't from reading, you know, known Chomsky in high school. It was recognizing that there was, there was grave injustice on the playground.
And that's something that was, it's part of my DNA was that I had a very sort of a strong base of support in my home and a feeling of self worth that came in sharp contrast to, you know, like, I had many good friends. I mean, this was not, you know, it was not. There was clan in Libertyville, but there was, it was a lot of great friends and a lot of great teachers, a lot of supportive people.
But I, you know, I did come up regularly as people who did not think because of the color of my skin, I was as smart as they were. I was as good as they were that I was, you know, decent a person as they were. But I came, I had the, my spine was steeled by the love, care, and resilience of my family to know that I'm just as good as anybody in the room. And, you know, and. So, well, and so it was with, with confidence that I went into the, you know, that sometimes the troubled stuff that came up.
Do you self identify as black? Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I thought, I mean, why I'm genetically half white as the only black guy in an all white town. You're pretty, I was the blackest black, black ever got. None more black man. So, when did music enter the picture? Yeah, I did. I loved rock and roll from the time, you know, maybe 11 or 12 years old and, you know, kiss was my first concert.
And it, you know, it dovetailed with my love of comic books and sort of the superhero elements. But then the aggression of the electric guitars of, you know, the bands like AC, DC and Black Sabbath. I was, you know, full 7, 11 suburban parking lot metal all up and up and down the line. And I love music. And I actually played in a band when I was 13 years old as a singer before my voice change. I was able to do a pretty good, Robert plant impression.
But when it, when it descended into the rich milk chocolate baritone, you're here today. I was clear that I was not going to be auditioning for AC DC. So I just switched to guitar. I mean, I've had the experience, I think, like a lot of kids. My first album ever bought was Master of Puppets. Oh, sure. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to be a Kirk in it. Loan be hold.
Desmoralized a few years later. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to be demoralized when beginning guitar. When I first purchased my guitar at 13, it took me four years to actually play it. But I took a couple of guitar lessons and I wanted to learn Led Zeppelin and Kiss Song. So I plunked down my $5 at the music store and said, teach me these. And they said, no son. Today we have to learn to tune the guitar. That sounded like a huge waste of time.
So I said, well, you know, I'll put in my dues. I'll put in a week's worth of dues and learn how to tune this thing. So I came back the next week and said, now it's time for Detroit Rock City, right? It's like, no, this week we're going to learn the C major scale. I'm out. That is some BS man. That's a waste of everybody's time. And so the guitar sat in the closet for four years. And at 17, I had the punk rock revelation that many do.
Like until that point, like all the bands I loved, it seemed completely inaccessible. I had a basement in suburbia on which to practice. And these guys had castles on Scottish locks. And you know, in groupies and limos and guitars across $10,000, I have $50 guitar in a basement. When I got the Sex Pistols cassette, I was literally in a band within 24 hours of purchasing the cassette without knowing how to play one note on the guitar.
I ran into the Libertyville drama club and announced we're going to be a band. I've got a guitar. So I'm going to be the guitar player. The first three of you that raised their hands are in the band regardless of musical experience. So what was the guys raised and then at that point, how did you? Well, we wrote songs. There were three bands in my high school. And one of them was Destiny. And that was the pretty boy band.
They got all the ladies. They played sticks, Kansas, Journey, and they just owned the school. And then there was the Bad Boy band, Epitaph. And now they covered Black Sabbath, ACDC. And they would not stoop to play a school function. It was grudges with ripped jeans and weed. And we all like admired them from a distance. We're all afraid of them and admired them.
And then there was the electric sheet, my band, the drama club band. And we didn't have the technical ability to play other band songs. So we had to write our own. So from day one, we were writing our own. And from that band, two of the founding members of that band went on to form Rage Against the Machine and Tools. So we were vindicated in the end. Did you want to be a guitarist or was it just...
I wanted to be a part of it in some way. And then I had a guitar. And then the thing about punk was it's like, there was no longer a barrier. It's like the bands that I liked, like the clash and the sex pistols, with no musical experience, my level of technical ability was not too far distance from theirs.
And yet they were my favorite bands, making the best music that I had ever heard. So I had a formative experience seeing the band, the clash, which was my favorite band of all time, playing at the Eragon Ballroom in Chicago. And in my high school band, the electric sheep, I had a sort of a cheap music man amp on a chair in my mom's basement where we would practice.
I saw the clash play at the Eragon Ballroom. And I'm used to seeing these bands play these huge venues with walls of Marshall stacks, some of which are dummy cabinets. But I saw Joe Strummer on stage of the Eragon Ballroom. He had the exact same cheap music man amp, Amplifier-Lighted, on a chair on stage of the Eragon Ballroom. And that was the revelation that made me realize, it's not, oh, I can do this someday. It's like, I'm doing it.
You're all doing it. We're all doing it. We're all just in bands. And that felt pretty good. What was the process of teaching yourself guitar? The guitar at first was an instrument to be in a band. And then it later became a calling. Like, I had a very interest. But it was when I was about 19 years old where sometimes you choose the thing, sometimes the thing chooses you. And I really felt the guitar chose me. I had no choice in the matter.
And then I applied my OCD to the instrument and was practicing it sometimes up to eight hours a day, 365 days a year. Are you doing it by ear? Are you just trying to mimic or entirely by ear? I never really had the ability to, I never had the strength of like learning songs off record. The other thing, you know, to sort of do a psych 101 analysis of why I fell so deeply into that, I think as a grown-up looking band, it was a matter of control.
There are a lot of things sort of growing up that did not have control over. There was sort of a race issue. There was maybe a, you know, romantic, you know, sort of a deficit issue. Things that you just didn't have control over. I had control over this. Like, it's my will and my will alone that will determine the outcome of what happens if I apply myself to this.
Like, it's just me that makes the decision here. And that was very, very appealing. And then when you start playing two hours a day, you notice like the tide rises quickly. So you bump that to four hours a day and all of a sudden, like everyone around who's marveling at, you know, when you go to eight hours a day, that's when it kicks in. Pretty clever. Now, clearly, well-spoken guy, how did Harvard go to the picture?
Well, I was the first person from Libertyville, Illinois to ever go to Harvard, knowing I've ever applied before. Yeah. After I got in, the floodgates opened and now it's recognized as the passion of intellect and culture. You all suspected it might have been. Yeah, I mean, you just need... You just need one exception to the rule, right? And to show what's possible. Yeah, yeah. What were the most important things, if anything, that you took from that experience at Harvard? At Harvard.
I mean, one, there, you know, some lifelong friendships that came out of it. And also, like, the reality of you have to take risk if you're going to change the world. There was big anti-apartheid demands. We built a shanty town in Harvard yard during the graduation when all of the, you know, the alum come in our ass for, you know, to give a lot of money back to the university.
And we completely ruined Harvard yard by a Soweto-like shanty town in the middle of it. And we're all threatened with, you know, expulsion or this, that or the other. And you just have to make a choice. Like, are you going to do the safe thing or are you going to do the thing that's right? So you graduate, did you continue with the poly sign? Yeah, I graduated in political science. And then, but with the, like I said, it was a call.
I had interest, but music and rock and roll was a calling. And I knew as soon as I graduate, I was going to move to Hollywood because that's where the rock magazines told me I needed to go to pursue my dreams. And then, so I load, I loaded up the Chevy Astro van and drove and drove into the sun. All my crap in the back and a dream in my, at about $1,000 on a dream.
Was your mom's support? I should have, I should have paid better attention in X10 because $1,000 lasted about four days when I moved here and all of a sudden I was destitute. What did your, my mom was very supportive. She, I mean, given her history of kind of, a bucking convention, it was not surprising, but she was completely supportive. And I took, I had got a Harvard degree and I'm going to go move to Hollywood to try to play rock and roll. She's like, great.
Come on. Did you have any plan B in your head? There was no plan B. I arrived in Hollywood with big ideas about how I was going to form my dream band. I don't know exactly what it was going to be, but I knew the groups that I liked then were run DMC, and they were the heroes Smith, public enemy like I wanted there to, it wanted it to be political and so. So I naively put out ads and all the local press saying, shredding guitar player seeks awesome Marxist frontman.
influences run DMC and iron maiden I did not get a lot of replies to that not a lot of replies that so I had on my apartment in Normandy I put a little thing outside the door with applic- basically job applications to join my band my band does not exist and that no one's
heard me play a note of music but somehow you're gonna walk up these stairs and apartment in Normandy sit on the landing and what are your contacts in the music industry yeah what are you like that went very very very poorly let's talk about the exotic dancing I got one thing
to say about that the reigning gonna pay itself so I have so many questions you got a bachelor at party I got I got a cassette tape of brick house so I know this show I gave you this whole thing on fearless I which want to ask a thousand
questions about this so the first is what was your stage name there was no stage name there was was a it was a duo was like we had like sort of it was batch two bars yeah it was a duo it's like me and another dude we had like a routine what were do you have any like signature moves
they're they're lost to the you know the dusty annals they're worth signature moves like that we know it was yeah we would arrive in suits and you know with some lame excuses to why we've barged in on this batch or at party oh excuse me we thought
this was the such and such to brick house and then just off to the races when did you first hear lock up I was playing in some like join some bands just to be in bands that were not particularly good bands but there was a band called a local band called lock up um it was playing a place called
Al's bar in downtown LA it was it was a life changing moment I saw what this then became my favorite local band it was a band that combined you know sort of elements of the chili peppers and it was funky it was hard and it was but it was new it was what alternative music would later become
but was bubbling around in the underground in Los Angeles um later I have to be rehearsing in the same place as this band lock up they heard me playing through the walls when they got rid of their guitar player we connected and I joined that band and that band eventually got signed to
Geffen Records which is my foot in the door to the record industry when you guys got signed what was the response well I mean it we get so it's the it's the brass ring it's the thing you've heard about you think you know when you're in suburban Illinois you when you get a record deal
that you're a millionaire yeah exactly the opposite you know you're if you were penniless before now you're in debt and penniless to you know to the record company and with every cliched bad dicking that happens to artists happen to that band they you know they try to manipulate and change
the band sound to make it more commercial uh money wise we're completely screwed over uh at the end of the day we had like a second guaranteed album that we're gonna you know we didn't make it on the first one but we're gonna get it we're gonna try this time they just said we're gonna drop the
band right now and you don't have the money to sue us so too bad wow and that was that and I thought well I tried and um I had my grab at the brass ring it didn't work out so that being the case um I'm just gonna make music I'm a musician that's what I am I'm just gonna make music that I believe in
and not care about making getting a record deal or any of that anymore so ridge against the machine coming together of those band members how did how did uh Zach come into the fray well Zach and Tim have known each other since they were kids and grew up together and it was just sort of a
fortunate combination of of musical convergence um Brad and I played together for a while then he went all he knew Eddie better he left to play with a fledgling version of Pearl Jam for a minute so during that time I met Tim and Zach then Brad came back and finally we got in a room in August of
1991 I think was the first time the four of us went to room together how did you develop in some of what we saw in the beginning were you already there or were you looking for inspiration yeah a lot I mean the the the left of center guitar playing that um the barnyard animal noise stuff uh
well I had some of those arrows in my quiver it really wasn't until rage against the machine when I was the DJ in the band it was a band we we probably put on the records all sounds made by guitar bass drums and vocals because there are a lot of sounds on those records that are not traditionally
associated with guitar bass drums and vocals um and I was very much influenced by you know um Terminator X of public enemy in the bomb squad that produced those records and by Jam and by Jam master J and by and by and by Dr. Dre and like the sounds on those records I rather than practicing
Chuck Berry and Jimmy Hendrix licks I would try to approximate the sounds that I heard on those records and while I wasn't always able to get them exactly right it just put my mind in a completely different place and maybe look at the instrument guitar in a very different way it's a relatively
new instrument on the planet and there's no reason to assume that it has predetermined limits based on the records in your collection and it's just basically a piece of wood with some wires and few electronics that makes sound and should you try to make sound in different ways and then make
music out of that sound that became I started practicing in an entirely different way and it helped form a uh a sound that felt like it was authentic if you're challenging the boundaries of any genre music your burst your saying what came before is not all that there has to be there can be
something beyond that that is yet unimagined if you say you do that in a musical context you can also do that in a societal context and so part of the you know exploring those sounds was not just because I like to hear a guitar make it quacking noise because it's trippy and fun to do but also
it really challenges the boundaries of what has come before in the instrument and perhaps leads the idea that we can challenge boundaries beyond that music when did you know it was working yeah and then how did your experience lock up change how you did yes yes the the well I knew it was working the
first time we ever performed in front of other humans was at a host party in Huntington Beach and I had been in a lot of bands and I had never seen I've been in a lot of bands and been in a lot of shows seeing a lot of band I never saw an audience respond to music the way that people responded
to rage against machine at the first show ever played it was like the parents were out of town that you know we we knew five songs it was at a maybe a friend of Tim and Zach's uh living room in Huntington Beach we played the first the first song we ever played in front of people's song called
Take the Power Back and a pit started in the living room they thrashed the living room went ape shit for five songs then that we just played those same five songs again and they went double ape shit and I never felt anything like it um and that's how was from day one with I mean the the
chemistry of that band was like that from day one and the reaction was like that from day one now when it came to interacting with the evil music industry that we had you know that I've been burned by it would I think it was very helpful to have that experience because I didn't I knew
it was like having a record deal doesn't mean anything doesn't mean anything so there was nothing to hold over our heads they would call up you know record companies managers publishing company everybody would call up and say you know we'd like to take the band to launch and say we're not interested unless you fax me over a document that says in every any transaction we ever have the band has 100% creative control over what they do and veto power over anything that you do then we'll
have a launch with you. Did you guys have a financial cushion or anything like that? I had a futon cushion but not have a financial cushion. No we had between us then I think we had one job and two cars. Was there any disagreement in the group about how to take those calls or
not take those meetings? I mean it was a you know we talked about that stuff you know I had been I had been through it but you were maybe a few years older than the other but we were it was all the decisions were collaborative there is an excitement when you know heads of record companies come down and offer you the world and but we dampened down that excitement and took our time make it a
decision. When did you pull the trigger? Well we met there was a fellow by the name of Michael Goldstone who had signed Pearl Jam who was ascendant at the time and he you know saw us play and he said something that no that no one else said and the people wanting to sign the band based like a
two song because that you know and he came and he said I'm not sure I want to sign your band I thought that was an interesting thing for someone to say and that opened the discussion and he was very interesting he was the fifth beetle for the beginning he was a very important like collaborative partner. Let's take a look if we can that's one take a look at one of the videos we have for rage against the machine.
Okay I remember thinking at one point when I'd seen footage of a number of performances and every time I saw I think I remember thinking of myself this is the only band or I'm wondering if the audience is going to tear the stadium auditorium to pieces what was the magic there? What you didn't expect
to. I mean I think that the shows were just so insane like they were so incendiary and like and Sack is a tremendous patronist musician and lyricist but as a frontman is like like the greatest like he's like the punk rock James Brown like he's the greatest as a as a lightning rod on stage and there is a meaning to the band's music the transcends it being a great rock and roll band.
The other is it's a great rock and roll band like that's how like people like oh how how do the politics like if you don't have that vehicle and it's this chemistry that naturally happens in the way the four of us played together almost from the very first rehearsal certainly from the very
first couple of shows to that which was I think Woodstock 99 that that it gives off an aggressive aggressive energy that allows this kind of this this feral release there's something about music that is you know music there was music before there was spoken language and there's something in the like
our reptilian brain that responds to a communal gathering with rhythm you know and that's just something that's in from campfires campfires and mammoths and when you get that combination of of of rhythm and a rhyming couplet and and a and a gathering of the tribe like that and you do it
right that's something like that happens were you nervous at all before 99 Woodstock the before that actual concert yeah no I mean the the that concert devolved you know I will give you a couple other instances though that where there were or where there was a real barrier to a fear barrier
one was in the early 2000s I began doing playing acoustic songs under the moniker the night watchman and I would go to I began signing up at open mic nights under that name so I wouldn't sign up under Tom Morello because there'd be an expectation of playing bulls on parade and I would play
these you know Dylan-esque Woody Guthrie-esque political folk songs and you know at this point my career I had played in front of millions of people live and I was terrified playing in front of eight people who weren't particularly listening to my songs anyway with a with a with a latte machine
grinding in the background but like would I remember the lyrics because I felt very vulnerable when I'm on stage with rage against the machine or audio slave if my guitar were to snap in half the show would still be great they're gonna they're gonna be fine but when it's just you and your guitar and you know the intimacy of that moment it was terrifying and I you know through time learn to do that let's pull up a video of night watchman so I think it's a good contrast to what we've seen already.
My list of demands I slip from shadow to shadow I saw things I should not see The moon rose high over the garden, the garden of Kissemony So I wasn't worried about the audience tearing out seats and writing and that's very different to very... It's a very stark contract Before, say, a performance like that or any performance for that matter, what are your rituals or routines preceding that?
Well, there's still a bit of an anxiety barrier and while all of my rock and roll work has done stone sober There's a level of technique involved in that that I must be very, very present for. There's a lot of Jameson involved in the Night Watch performance that's truth be told Jameson therapy, I heard about that It's like there's been...
There's a bit of the anxiety about remembering lyrics and this and the other that goes away when it sort of dampens down those voices I forget your lyrics, but I began doing that because I love playing rock bands and rock bands allow a chemistry that no one person can put forward on their own
I like the purity of the solo singer songwriter thing too And it's also you can do it guerrillas that like I played at hundreds, dozens, thousands of protests and marches and you just need the acoustic guitar and a plain ticket or a bicycle or a ride over there
I really like that kind of independence of spirit and I always was a fan of heavy music And when I discovered the early Dylan, the Springsteen Nebraska record, the Woody Guthrie stuff, the Johnny Cash acoustic records, that it dawned on me that there's no heavier music than some of that Metallica Black album is super heavy but Springsteen's Nebraska goes toe to toe with it with no amplifiers inside What led to the end of Frigian's decision? Well, Regents was actually...
Well, it was a band that professed solid area in our music, we were never able to manifest it almost from day one within our own ranks And I wish that I could tell you that the conflicts were political ones, they were just you watch Spinal Tap Every rock band, there's only four or five boxes to check, we had three of the four. But I mean, my contribution to it was like I was always super type A and had sort of the musical, the political, the record goal in mind and would not...
And would sometimes turn a deaf ear to the feelings of my bandmates, I've learned that lesson through the years that that's a very important thing And I think that right first or none of the rest of it matters. And so in 2000's that quit the band and we formed a band called AudioSlave But Rage reunited in 2007 and played shows for a few years, which was very nice too The question that I've wanted to ask all night was how do you end up having a reunion with your father?
Well, I basically met my father when I was 34 years old. He had not had anything to do with our family growing up and throughout my life My mom had sent to the PO box that they had in Nairobi in the early 60s You know, updates on me, you know, like your son graduated from high school, your son went to college, your son got a record deal this and the other And it never heard back, decades of not hearing back So we went to Kenya for the first time, my first time to Kenya
I was 34 years old and my mom had written to my dad, who she hadn't heard from in decades, said, you know, please meet us at the airport And he was just flying into Nairobi and my mom tells me, like, mom, he could be dead 25 years and certainly doesn't have the same PO box as he did back then
She's like, oh, I'll bet he'll be there in a minute, so he'll land, he's not there in a minute, but we arrive at the hotel intercontinental where there's a note from him Sorry, I couldn't meet you at the airport, I'll pick up for dinner tomorrow at 8, which was stunning And I realized not only am I going to see my father for the first time in a very long time tomorrow, but that he had received all of that stuff through the years And I'm not comment, not it
So we met and it was crazy because, you know, with those of you who are blessed with having two parents, you've seen them before And I've seen mine, so, you know, I looked a lot like some combination with the two of them and, you know, we went fairly well, somewhat awkwardly, but he had received, he commented on some of the music, not the music so much, but some of the lyrics and the music
And he had remarried and I had three half brothers who we were never allowed to meet and did not know that we existed And that wasn't awesome, so, you know, we exchanged a few church letters after that
And I thought, well, at least I got to meet my dad and that's that. It turns out that one of my half brothers, unbeknownst to me, was attending Georgetown University This is in a time when, search engines were being discovered and whatnot, and he was a computer guy And he put in his father's name to some developing search engine and to his surprise, a hundred articles referencing a man with his father's name and a similar biographical background was referred to by a guy named Tom Morello
who was the guitar player of a band called Rage Against the Machine and he, and it coincidentally, it was the same week when Rage was on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine So he went to the news stand and saw a guy in that band that he just read about who looks more like his dad than he does
And he managed to find me and, you know, we had an interesting discussion and the toothpaste started to get out of the tube And I began to meet my, it turns out there were a couple of first cousins who were attending Pepperdine University And so I met them, my brother, Saganius, who discovered me, calls up our dad back in Kenya with a phone call my dad thought was never going to And that was crazy So this will give you some indication into how the Kenyan male would react to such a thing
And so, dad, what do you know about a guy named Tom Morello? And this is how my dad responds to me If he doesn't talk about it, it doesn't get talked about Yeah, and that's the end, that's the end, that's the end So, but, you know, my then-girl friend and now wife were very charming People and we're now friends with the family Like the brothers of come, they stay at our house, everybody's great, and we go to my brother's graduation at Georgetown
The attendees at the party will be myself, my fiance, my brother Saganne, our dad, and his wife, who doesn't know anything about anything that's going on Okay, go wrong Yeah So we're sitting at dinner and my brother is taking great relish at each step of the way
And the reveal of all is about to happen And he announced- So he's like the illusionist Yeah, I got away He announces at that dinner that this is his brother And at first people think that, oh, like, you're broke, he's like, no, my brother, biological brother, like my dad's son, brother, mom
She couldn't have been more gracious given what must have been a pretty stressful dinner for her, and he maintained his silence throughout Wow Yeah It all turned around, and he welcomed me to the family, he apologized to my mom and thanked her for raising a good kid And was-and kind of opened the door to- Yeah What cat-what catalyzed that shift in him?
I think it may have been the passing of his younger brother, who was an advocate, but then his older brother is the uncle who we know And again, there's a sort of a hierarchical at-is-my uncle's 80th birthday, and he announced that his younger brother, my dad, would now introduce his family to everyone And I think he was just trapped then
But he took a lot, but he did, at the end of the day, he did the right thing, and he sat me down, he asked for my forgiveness And he's-since I've had kids, he's very much in there a lot, and they've-they've melted him in a way that is really lovely
He just had his 88th birthday now, and he came to my wedding and stuff, so it's been-it's been really, really lovely to connect with that side of the family that I never thought that I would have So we're gonna shift gears a little bit, go to audience questions Sure If you weren't a guitar player, what would you do for a living?
Well, my twin passions have been-I've always been music and politics It would certainly not be something in conventional two-party politics, but I would probably be working as a community organizer or something like that So next one's from Facebook If you had to teach someone guitar in three months, what would the curriculum be?
Yeah, yeah I was a guitar teacher for a while during my semi-homeless days And what I taught the lesson that I learned when I took those bad guitar lessons where they wanted me to do the boring stuff I applied that when teaching brand new guitar players In the first guitar lesson with every student regardless of their skill level, I would teach them to write a song They would write a song in that first guitar lesson and try to like smash that barrier between these mythical gods who make music
And there's you who one day might hope to touch their shoes Like, you're a songwriter today I'm gonna teach you two chords, you decide what order they go in and how long you play each one Boom, you've written a song-you like-you and the Beatles now are both songwriters And there's a-I would see in them this-like holy crap Like I can write something tomorrow, you might write another one And that's what I'd give them as their homework Like you write another one for next time
And then well, you're gonna have a catalog of six songs in the first three weeks of your playing guitar And we can work on the other stuff along the way, but-and it's called playing guitar And that sort of enthusiasm comes from early successes What are the biggest wastes of time that you see novices making like dildgeon ones? Yeah, yeah, what are the wrong things to focus on?
Yeah, it depends on what you want to do and who you want to be Because there's a-I believe there's a clear delineation between musicians and artists And if you-like I said, when you start playing guitar, what you want to do is you want to sound like- So you're trying to be a musician, I'm-I love Angus Young, I want to play Angus Young songs At some point, are you going to go beyond-you have to make an determination?
And many people are delighted and content to be able to learn and play their favorite songs And jam along with the radio But if you have a vision that goes beyond, you know, Aping the technique of your favorites, then you have to take a different step
And that is a step into risk and a step into the unknown To say, this is what has come before, now I'm going to write my own songs I'm going to take a risk that people are going to hate those songs And I'm going to take a risk of putting myself out there
It's not like, hey, check it out, I can play Van Halen It's like, hey, check it out, I wrote this song that includes my Van Halen influence And this, that, and the other, and here it is And that's the only way that, you know, art grows and it's as an artist that's the only way to grow
What would you say, I guess maybe that's the answer But the follow-ups, that would be if you're, say, teaching a ninth grader, from tenth grader Really talented And they're like, I want to be a creator, I want to be an artist And they get up there and they just, ba, yeah Crickets, maybe booing Everyone, yeah, you're not alone What would you tell them before or after?
Well, I'd tell them, first of all, you're bombing with one thing you have in common is with every one, every, I'd say name the five artists who you love the most And I would ensure them that all of them have bombed as bad or worse as they just did then And then it's a matter of, sort of, continue, what did you learn from this?
And, you know, maybe there's a lot of like, you know, basement, you know, music heroes You have to play with other people that helps you in a way, you have to play in front of other people And that helps you in ways, and that you do that over time and you will amass a, you will have the opportunity to discover who you are as a musician and or as an artist What books, if any, have you gifted the most to other people?
Certainly, the one book that I've gifted the most in my life was a book that I first went on was 15 and I reread it almost yearly to a book called Watership Down And Watership Down, and it's, you know, I've read books that have been, you know, more serious political tomes in my time
But the heroism, courage, and friendship exhibit in that book among a number of rabbits, about rabbits, but it's about much more than that And it's, it is the single most breathtakingly exciting book that I've ever read as well, Watership Down Richard Adams is strong endorsement for that book right now Do you have a quote or quotes that you live your life by or think of?
Hmm, it's very interesting questions Give me a minute, and we can come back to short No, no, no, I'm going to have something for you There is a quote from written by Joe Strummer of the Clash I cut this, I wrote this down, put on my refrigerator as a, you know, as a youth It says, are you taking over, or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards, or are you going forwards?
And I would look at that on my refrigerator and I would try to answer those four questions for myself every day That is good That is really good What purchase of $100 or less in this is all rough In recent memory has most positively impacted your life
In recent memory, well I can tell you one purchase of $40 Canadian dollars I'm not sure what the exchange rate is But I bought a guitar off of pawn shop wall in Toronto years ago in the early 90s I just like the look of it I don't think it's made of plywood, it's not even like really made of wood
And that was the only guitar I used on a song called Tyre Me on the Rage Against the Machine Evil Empire Record, which was the band's first Grammy That was $40 Canadian dollars, well spent Can you tell us about profits of rage? Profits of rage is the band that I am in now It consists of B-Real from Cypress Hill, Chuck D and DJ Lord from Public Enemy And Timmy C and Brad Wilk from Rage Against the Machine and Audio Slave And it's a band that was formed in the tumult of the 2016 election
Is a band that will continue into the future The two things that we can be certain of is that looking forward Is that there will be injustices in the world We can also be certain there will be resistance to those injustices And that resistance needs a soundtrack And it will be provided by Profits of rage Thank you Should we both have a video?
Sure We're fighting, I hold the fight, we're both I keep going, I keep going, I keep going You're the main role, they're the main role And it's good That... Dangerous times, the man dangerous songs And when we formed this band, that was our first ever public performance Which was a free show for the homeless people on Skid Row We wanted this band to, from the onset to not just talk the talk but to walk the walk
Our first eight shows, any show which we charged a dollar for All of them went to local homeless charities in the cities that we were in And the shows that were free shows were on Skid Row And we're at Norco, Penitentiary in Southern California And at the protest outside of the RNC
So it's a band, it's in set from day one we wanted it to Live it like we were going to play it And so that's a very exciting band to be in If you had a huge billboard you could put a few words, short message on it For the world to see What would you put a few words?
Yeah, short, just a short message People are driving, texting, being idiots Yeah Woop, there it is You can work with that Or the Chicago Cubs are the 2016 World Champions, that's not even a two I think there are a lot of artists out there, new creators who want to impact the world And maybe they're intimidated, maybe they don't think they can What would you say to those people?
All that you do is you take a Glance at history And the first thing to do is ask yourself, has, you're saying, artist exclusively Has any art ever affected you? That's the first question, and I know for me it was bands like Public Enemy in the Clash But they didn't, they didn't necessarily change my mind about things And they connected me to a bigger world than the one of Libertyville, Illinois
And they think, oh, there's other people that see things the way that I do They're not my teachers, they're not the governor of my state But they're musicians who, and they have an audience And when I go to see their show, all of a sudden there's a community that's beyond
My suburb or the, you know, my job at the dairy queen or wherever And so I would say that And you can broadcast your soul artistically Be careful because somebody may be listening and that you can make a connection that you wouldn't otherwise Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Morello, thank you very much Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off And that is 5 Bullet Friday Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun Before the weekend?
And I'm going to have to spend half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter My super short newsletter called 5 Bullet Friday Easy to sign up, easy to cancel It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered
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Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field And then I test them and then I share them with you So if that sounds fun again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off For the weekend, something to think about If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.log slash friday Type that into your browser tim.log slash friday Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one Thanks for listening