I'm Tom Morello, host of Maximum Firepower. A weekly podcast focusing on the music, the moments, and the movements that have shaped my world view and left an indelible mark on me as an artist and activist. I'm Tom Morello and you're listening to Maximum Firepower. My podcast here, my guest today is Mary Morello, my mom, the 98-year-old matriarch of the Morello family sitting in her living room right now. How are you, mom? I am fine, thank you.
I'm glad to hear. So on Maximum Firepower what we've been doing is kind of doing top 10 lists or like top five lists. So my mom, at 98-years-old, she retired public high school teacher from suburban Illinois remains the most radical and the most popular member of the Morello family. She co-hosts my one-man revolution show on SiriusXM Lithium and is renowned for her legendary on-stage introductions of my various bands through the years.
And from my mom's standard intro, mom, do you want to say your standard intro? Please welcome the best fucking band in the universe. Yes, that's it. Now she would often get on stage in my various incarnate, my mom's very supportive. So whatever band I'm in she believes is the best fucking band in the universe.
After one such introduction, one fan said she was a little old lady but she was so damn cool and made me proud to start circling that mosh pit as she walked off stage to the sound of wailing sirens. It was like a general signaling the start of a war.
So this day I hear from her former students. Many say she was the most important educator in their lives and pushed them to see beyond the borders of our conservative homogenous suburb. She helped them to learn and to care and to advocate for people less fortunate. She was a great person to help people to express by race and class from Cabrini, green and Chicago to the migrant fields of California.
The first time that mom that you ever introduced me to activism was when we were supporting Caesar, Chavez, grape boycott. And I remember I loved grapes and we went to the grocery store and he said we cannot buy grapes because it's going to help farm workers in California. How can we as suburbanites in Illinois help them and you explained it to me. It was a lesson I never forgot. I forgot it too. I said it's a lesson I never forgot. Well I'm glad you didn't forget it.
My mom never took crap from anyone but as a teacher she taught with humor and acceptance inspiring generations of students which is not surprising giving her history. In the 1930s she helped feed hobos during the Great Depression and supported the coal miners struggle to organize. In the 40s she helped raise war bonds to defeat the fascists in World War II. In the 50s she taught international students at Northern Illinois University and opposed racist Jim Crow laws.
And as a single woman with modest means she has traveled to over 60 countries. We'll get to that later. In the 1960s she aided anti-colonial movements while living in Africa. In the 70s she was a radical teacher in a conservative high school inspiring students to challenge the system and aided United Farm Workers and the Urban League.
In the 80s she went on nine peace missions to the Soviet Union and to Cuba. In the 1990s she opposed the Persian Gulf War and founded an international organization to oppose music censorship called Parents for Rock and Wrap which landed her on Oprah and CNN. In the 2000s she helped homeless people in recovering addicts get their high school diplomas at the Salvation Army in Waukegan, Illinois and marched in Chicago against wars for oil.
In the 2000s she volunteered at local soup kitchens here in LA and to this day she works with doctors without borders and mid-east peace organizations. Bono occasionally calls her up for advice. Mom you talked to Bono a couple times a year right. Yes. And he calls up and asks for advice you guys talk about Syria or something like that right.
I remember one time it was your birthday and I was a way on tour and you were I called you up and I'm like who called you on your birthday and gave me this one and this relative and this friend and this that and the other like and there was this one guy who called.
I don't remember who was he had an accent but we talked a long time about Syria and we disagreed about a few things and I talk I'm like who's that and she's like I don't remember his name but I know I know I'm but what I don't know his name so but we had a long talk about Syria. And then the next day I got a text from Bono is like I called your mom and wish her happy birthday yesterday and man she just gave me an earful about Syria she's a trip. I guess so.
My mom is fiercely independent and when I offer a son's helpful advice about diet exercise or pet care her response is invariably I'm going to do what I want to do but thank you isn't that right mom. Yes.
She's also a kindly and loving grandparent but she remains an unrepentant revolutionary in thought indeed in 1986 she undertook perhaps the most radical position a parent can take allowing her child equipped with an Ivy League degree to leave for Hollywood to live in a squat with the aim of playing heavy metal music and fomenting descent. I want you to be happy and have a good life was her only advice.
And mom's the greatest and to this day I still practice in her basement isn't that right mom yes you occasionally provide editorial comment about the music that I'm making. Yes. It's an unvarnished editorial comment I assure you that's true. Okay but what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about five of the favorite places that you visit as I said my mom is a single woman with very very modest means.
Left the small town of Marseille Illinois a town about five thousand people are farming and coal mining town like the first person to ever leave the town to ever go anywhere and do anything and my mom traveled the world over the course of the next twenty twenty five years or so. First tell me about I asked her earlier what were some of her favorite places and she said that Germany was one tell me about Germany and why you love it so much.
I don't know well I taught in a German school and I spoke German and that was something I wanted you and I don't know Germany sort of had a basic something that I liked. Now you taught there immediately after World War II and you lived in the town of Viesbaden for five years where you taught and now you and I was some I think rage against the machine to our in 2010.
You were visiting us in Europe and you and I took a day trip to Viesbaden and it was really really nice to see that place but cut to maybe ten years later profits of rage and I were playing in Viesbaden and our hotel was literally around the corner from the place where you had stayed for five years and I went and visited and called you from there. Yes that was nice.
So always nice to return to Viesbaden. Now my experiences in Germany have been many and have been awesome from day one whether it was with rage or with audio slave or my solo career or profits of rage. The German audiences especially there's two festivals called Rock in Park and Rock on Ring which are these huge festivals where they just go absolutely bonkers for the different bands that I've been in. So I like Germany too.
I like George. And you know we're part German like I'm 50% Canyon 25% Italian 12 and a half percent Irish and then the rest is some sort of German English mix. Alright next country Jamaica. Yeah I like Jamaica. I always helped Jamaican students in the U.S. and I went to Jamaica multiple times and I was saved with the parents of people I knew. Now I remember going to Jamaica a few times when I was grown I always thought maybe you had a secret boyfriend down there. No I don't think so.
We went to Jamaica when I was 15 years old on a trip which was really nice but the most incredible part about that trip was on the way back. We were flying air Jamaica back to Chicago and over the PA system I was 15 years old and over the PA system came a voice that sounded exactly like Muhammad Ali and that voice said I am Muhammad Ali and I am flying this airplane but don't worry because I'm the greatest at flying airplanes too. I remember that.
And then the voice said I'm sure all of you want my autograph so I'm going to come down the aisle and sign anything you want. And sure enough it was Muhammad Ali. Now I don't believe he was actually flying the plane. I believe he was just sitting up with the pilots in the cockpit but the plane was well flown so he could have been the greatest hard to know. So he did come down the aisle and he signed my air Jamaica ticket and I was absolutely astounded. That's nice.
Alright so our next country that we're going to talk about is a country by the name of Kenya. Mom tell me about your Kenyan experiences. You are part Kenyan. That's right. So you go all the way back to the beginnings of people in Africa. That's right we're mankind originated. Isn't that nice? You know they have the bones in the museum in the national museum in Kenya like of the bones that Dr. Leaky found or whatever the ones that sort of point to the fact that mankind started in East Africa.
That's nice. My mom and dad met in Kenya in 1963 and my mom was the same year that Kenya became independent. My family was involved in the Kenyan independence struggle. My great uncle is Jomo Kenyatta who is the leader of that struggle in Kenya's first president. But my mom was there on the night of independence. And do you remember what happened on that night mom? Not really. Well you've told me the story and I remember it so I'm going to share it if that's okay. You share it.
Okay. So there's this big soccer stadium where it's after this long, mal-mal guerrilla struggle and a lot of intense negotiations. Great Britain has decided that they can no longer keep control of Kenya and they're going to have to turn it over to African rule. And rather than they make sort of a bargain a deal rather than have it fall into some sort of socialist Soviet influence.
They make some sort of deal with Jomo Kenyatta that it's all going to work out and Kenya is going to become independent. But the actual night, this then the big soccer stadium there, the British flag has flown over Kenya for 50 years or however long it's been a colony. And the soccer stadium is filled with Africans and a few British dignitaries, but Jomo Kenyatta is there.
The mal-mal guerrillas have come out of the forests to be there as well and are celebrated with the British soldiers looking at them side-eye. And at midnight the lights go out in the stadium. Do you remember any of this mom? No. Okay. Well, the lights go out in the stadium and then at 12-01 the lights come back on and the British flag is down and the new Kenya flag is up. And everybody cheers including you.
And you reported that you were wearing a beautiful white dress, but it was rainy and muddy and you got mud on your dress and you were very disappointed. I was okay. Okay. Let's go to our, I've only played one gig in Kenya. We were visiting family there and it was like some coffee house where there was a band on stage and I got up and shredded and then played a couple of night watchman songs and no one had any idea what was going on. Next up you said, why don't we go with Spain?
Now you taught, what my mom would do is she would, because she was a teacher, she would go and she would teach in other countries. So it was five years in Germany, a year in Spain, a couple years in Japan, but you were in Spain for a while and you said that was one of your favorite places. Yes. Why so? I don't know because I could speak Spanish maybe. And you were there for about a year. Yes. Well, I've had some very good shows in Spain as well, especially in Basque Country.
They love my particular brand of rock and roll there. Yes. All right, and the beaches there are lovely as well. All right, we're going to, let's, now. During the 80s and early 90s, you made nine different peace missions to Russia and Cuba. So we're going to talk about both of them. So you went to Cuba, Russia when it was the Soviet Union. And I remember as you were taking Russian language lessons and learning the Cyrillic alphabet, because you were interested in traveling to the Soviet Union.
Yes. Can you tell me something about those travels? Well, I think people should be free to go anywhere and know what it should put anything in their way. Yeah. And you went, I remember you taking like these trips down the rivers where you and these Soviet delegations would sort of discuss rather than what the governments of the countries were thinking, but rather what the people of the countries were thinking. We did that. We had a good time.
I think there was some like boyfriend on that boat too. It was really some shady business. You're like smoking. There's some photographs of you smoking cigarettes with a guy who was in like the band on the boat. I don't remember that. Or so you say. So I say. I remember also like you went to Mongolia and you like we're in a year sleeping in a year and drinking yak whiskey or some crazy thing like that. I guess. My mom was not much of a photographer. She had like an Instamatic camera.
So she would take these kind of Instamatic photographs of these spectacular places where the photographs perhaps did not match the majesty of the things that were going on. But you were like riding these little like horse like Genghis Khan war ponies around drinking yak whiskey and sleeping in a yurt. I guess. You see there's photographic evidence of that. This is a Union town. A Union town. All down the line. I'm Tom Morello and this is Tom Morello's maximum firepower.
My guest today is Mary Morello my mom the 98 year old matriarch of the Morello family. So then Cuba is one of your favorite places in the world and I know that you've been there a number of times. Because I'm a good communist. You are a good communist. So. Well you want to tell me about now one of the I remember a couple of things when you went to Cuba. One of the things that Cuba is very much known for is their excellent medical facilities and whatnot.
And they like during the pandemic they sent doctors throughout Africa to help sort of with the pandemic. During Hurricane Katrina they offered first responders and doctors to come help bail out New Orleans when George W was slow on the trigger to help out there. Those requests were denied. But when you were there you spent some time with the Chernobyl children as they called them. That they were children who had been affected adversely by the radiation leak at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
And they all came to Cuba where they could get the best medical care and you spent some time with them. Yes. That was nice with the kids. Now you and I have been to Cuba several times. The first time we were there for some conferences we were there depending on what governments in power we were there perhaps without the appropriate visas and having meetings and whatnot. And we met Asata Shakur. Do you remember that?
Yes. We were in exile there and we were like some backyard party and all of a sudden I'm like that's Asata holy shit. Every Zoom Tristan. That was very interesting. There was also a time where audio slave played a show in Cuba. It was obviously it was the first American rock and roll band to ever play a show in the country of Cuba. Yes. And there was nice. It was nice and you were there for that one too.
And we had to spend four days how they did it was you couldn't you can't like book a show in Cuba if you're an American band because it's like not allowed. So it was a cultural exchange and the US Treasury Department and the Cuban Ministry of Culture broker to deal. So that the our part of the exchange was we would play a concert on the Malacan which is kind of along the water there. And their part of the deal was like for four days beforehand we would visit cultural sites and things like that.
So we went to this it used to be this like fancy you know billionaire's country club back in the days before the revolution. And that was this free jazz school so we went and enjoyed jazz music. We jammed with musicians along the Malacan. There's some great rappers and whatnot visited historical sites. And then we had no idea how many people might come to the show because there's not like the normal promoter apparatus there.
And we didn't know if anybody had ever heard of you know rage against the machine or sound garden or anything. So my wife and I actually went out passed out flyers at local bars in Havana. Like hey if you ever heard of rage or sound garden well there's got a band together and you know Chris Cornell and he's very handsome. Yes they'll be playing some songs that you might be familiar with and it's on Friday night on the Malacan.
Come on it's free and it turned out you know how many people came to the concert. I don't know. It was 70,000 people came to the concert. It was quite a night. It was really like a pretty special night. We smashed the rock and roll blockade of Cuba. It was wonderful. It was wonderful. Okay so mom I want to go back to when you were running your organization parents for rock and rap.
Which was an organization which was a counter organization to the PMRC the parents music resource center that was founded by Al Gore's wife and some they were known as the Washington wives who were trying to censor rap music and heavy metal music and whatever music they found objectionable. And at least one Midwestern parents stood up against them. That was you and founded an organization called parents for rock and rap.
Which at one point had members in 25 countries or something members all over the United States to combat censorship. So mom what was the impetus for your love of free speech and your quest to keep rock and rap music uncensored? Whoever made the rock music was talented and wanted people to hear it. Yes and they were trying to stop that.
Yes. Okay so but one of the interesting side effects of this was that you became friends with a lot of rappers who were in the news at the time for their music that the PMRC was attempting to censor. For example like two live crew whose music was considered too dirty to be played on the radio or to get a stick around and iced tea who as both as a rapper and as a member of the group body count was in the news regularly for his alleged controversial lyrics.
Now you became friends with iced tea because you were on a bunch of radio shows together. So my mom was on she was on Oprah she was on CNN she was on radio shows all the time defending rock and rap music and she would sometimes appear on these programs with iced tea. So when my mom came to visit me in Los Angeles and iced tea's band body count was playing at a club she wanted to go to the show. You remember that?
Yeah. So we went to the show I brought my mom to the show and she was the only retired high school teacher at the show and we were going to get in the show waiting and lining it into the show. And when we were getting in the guy was like checking IDs the security guy made a snarky comment about a woman of your age and comportment wanting to come into the body count show and do you remember what you said to him? Yes. Do you want to tell everybody what it was? Show some respect you dick.
That's exactly what you said and then we went into the show. Now you were like I want to be in the front row for this show because he was your friend of yours and I'm like you don't understand it a body count show there's a pit and it's going to be swirling around in lots of like sweaty men with their elbows flying. He said I don't care Tom I want to be in the front row.
So you were up against the railing at this club it was a club show probably held about like 500 people less than that probably 300 people. And there was a big swirling pit and you were up against the railing and it was my job to protect you so I had like one hand on the railing on this side one hand on the railing was taking all of the punishment. Thank you.
Well it was my pleasure but maybe we could have watched there's I see as we're watching this right now I see is actually on a commercial TV in a meaning that the matrix is real. So anyway so that was one and but then you visited rage against the machine when we were on tour on Lollapaloo's in 1993 in New Orleans and you remember what happened at that show.
I'll jog your memory the night before some of my bandmates were out on the town Tim and Brad were out on the town and there were some New Orleans police that were harassing a homeless man. Does any of this ring about a little bit yet so they were harassing a homeless man and I believe that Timmy said something like don't you have something better.
To do than harass this homeless man and they arrested him and then Brad said what are you doing that was unfair and they arrested him and they arrested the two friends that they were with to this starting to ring about.
A long time ago so like 30 years ago and your memory is pretty good for me and 98 years old I'm going to tell you what happened next so they arrested those guys and they spent the night in jail and we had to do some like weird New Orleans bribery to get him up we had a show the next day at like one in the afternoon.
Being the first band on stage at Lollapaloo's and you were there so they were arrested we got him out of jail that night we're getting ready to play the show now rage against the machine is is the first band on stage so everybody who's there there's been no music until now and we're about to come on stage and you as you have done many times we're getting set to introduce the band but you did not just introduce the band as you step to the microphone you delivered a message to the children of the warling.
Do you remember what that message was. Yes. Okay I'm going to ask you and so my mom gets the microphone and she leads she tells the story of what happened the night before and then she leads the crowd in this chant. Fuck the New Orleans police.
It's exactly what you said and you said it about 25 times in a row and you led the crowd in a chant of it and you were very happy that you were not arrested and dragged away and we were all very surprised that you were not arrested and dragged away but all the same. It was a very Mary Morello heroic moment. Thank you.
And then lastly one of the things that my mom in her travel ambition first let's do Japan because you did spend some time teaching in Japan during this now this is during the Korean War right. Yes. On a US military base in Japan. Yes. In Sendai. Yes. And so give me some impressions or memories of your time teaching the yes is the children of US officers. Yes. And so what was your time like in Japan. I like Japanese society so I was at home.
Well I've had some good shows in Japan through the years with different bands including playing a Mount Fuji festival which was in a typhoon. I know. There was a big typhoon and it was like it was food fighters rage chili peppers on that particular day and as we were playing the typhoon was rising so it was a steam and Mount Fuji's in the background and a typhoon is coming down I think the chili peppers didn't get to finish their set. I think so. It was an exciting day all all the same.
Okay so then lastly mom you wanted to as a single woman of modest means travel the world so you wanted like literally go around the world at one point right. Yes. And so what vehicle did you use to go around the world. I don't remember. A steamer. Or is that what I do. Yes you went like you're like book not like a passenger ship but you booked passage on like a steam like a working vessel. Well I was good.
Yes and you stopped it along the way you stopped in many exotic countries like Indonesia and places like that. Yes. And do you have any memories from that around the world steamer travel. No except I liked it and I liked the places I went. And you said in some places there was danger there was some like guerrilla activity in one place and so you had to like not go up a particular river or something. Yes. Well mom you have many many adventures and at 98 years old I wish you many more. Thank you.
Well mom it is always you are a lifelong fighter for social justice and against censorship and probably the best hype person that and you know. Type person that any band has ever had. Thank you. Well we appreciate you and thank you so much for being on the program and he farewell message for all the listeners out there. Go after whatever you want and see that you get it. Here you go. All right well thank you for those final words Mary Morello.
It's great being your son and great having you on the show and I just appreciate you so much. You know this but I appreciate you so much. My mom was always like I said the only one you know the only basement town that will allow my bands to play when I moved to Hollywood cheap you know with a Ivy League degree in my pocket to go play heavy metal music she was like cool.
See it Thanksgiving and has been totally supportive my entire life and career and for all of you parents out there one more reminder that a solid baseline for parenting is unconditional love and go to every one of their little league games. You never missed one mom and I appreciate that too. Thank you. All right all right this has been Tom Morello's maximum firepower Mary Morello has been my guest. Thank you very much until next time brothers and sisters take it easy but take it.
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