Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Tom Morello

Transcript

Tom Morello · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Tom Morello arrived in Los Angeles from Libertyville, Illinois in
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the mid-80s with a Harvard political science degree in his
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: pocket and a guitar strung across his back, determined to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: be the next great guitarist on the scene. Instead, he
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: was locked out of the L.A. glam scene that had
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: taken hold on the Sunset Strip and spent years working
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: as a secretary to a state senator by day and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: playing clubs on the east side by night. Then after
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: deciding to create his own destiny, he co-founded Rage Against
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the Machine with Zack DeLaRocca in 1991, and everything changed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: The band fused hip-hop, punk rock, metal, and politics into
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: something that had no precedent and became one of the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: biggest rock bands of the 90s in the process. After
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a nearly decade-long career, Rage has spent the last 25
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: years on and off again, but Morello has rarely stood still.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: He started Audioslave, gigged as the Night Watchman, recording folk
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: protest records... toured as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Street Band and has collaborated with artists as far-ranging as
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Chuck D, Be Real, and Johnny Cash. Now for the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: first time in his decades-long career, he's made a true
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: solo album. Everyone Gets Everything They Want blends high-energy rock
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and social consciousness and features his 15-year-old son Roman as
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a collaborator throughout. On today's episode, I talk to Tom
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Morello about making Everyone Gets Everything They Want and about
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the long road that led to Morello tells the story
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: of his early years in Los Angeles, the divide between
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the East side and the sunset strip, his time with
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the East side band and so much more. This is
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Tom Morello. I've been on a, um, Van Halen kick,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: which actually I want to talk to you about. Cool, cool, cool.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Van Halen.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I discovered the first album through a skate video when
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I was a kid. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I picked it up at the record store. And I
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: loved it so much that I just never, this has
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: never happened before because most times you discover an album,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you're like, I want to go deeper. Okay. but it
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: seemed like such a perfect album. It was never. Like
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you're good.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: I don't know if I ever need to go. I've
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: got my Van Halen.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I knew the singles, of course. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: And I never quite understood until recently that 1984 was
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: like the pinnacle.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: That's when they broke. That's the commercial pinnacle. Commercial pinnacle, right.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Commercial pinnacle, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Because they listen to the first album, like this should
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: be This is everything. Anyone would ever, you know. So
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: it kind of blew me away. So I never dug
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: deep into it.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: The first record changed the world. I mean, it was 1978,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: I think, when there was nothing like that. And I
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: remember hearing it on the radio in Chicago. I think
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Run With The Devil was the first song that I heard.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: And I just couldn't believe it that the band came
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: so fully formed like that.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: What station was that in? The Loop. The Loop.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: In Chicago.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, The Loop, yeah. It's like the rock station. And
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: they were playing, at that time, Priest and things like that?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Probably, yeah, yeah.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, meh.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Like, leaning maybe sort of Styx, REO, you know.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, AOR.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: Leaning a little Doobie Brothers and whatnot. But there was
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: enough hard rock, you know, Billy Squire content in there
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: that when Van Halen came along, it was an entirely new.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Matter, yeah.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So was that, like, were you into, like, Styx and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: all that?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: No, no, I was metal.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I was metal. You know, it was.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: You know, it started with Kiss and Alice Cooper. And
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: then it was ACDC, Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, you know, Aerosmith,
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Hard Rock. And then came Van Halen, which was, you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: a watershed moment. I had not really started playing guitar yet,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: but I just like was wowed by the spectacular overall
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: thing that they were selling me sonically.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Because that's 78, I guess. So about how
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: much much later do you start?
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I started playing when I was 17, so in 81
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: is when I started playing.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: At that point, I guess also Randy Rhoads is kicking. Sure.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: The reason I started playing was I took a couple
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: of guitar lessons when I was 13 years old. I
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: bought a $ 50 guitar and a $ 50 amp, and I
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: marched into Rigoni Music on Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville, Illinois,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: and I I had bought like a Kiss songbook and
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: a Led Zeppelin songbook. And I wanted to learn Black
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Dog and Detroit Rock City. That felt like a great
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: place to start. And they said, no, no, son, you're nowhere.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: You have to learn how the C major scale, or
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: actually learn how to tune the guitar. Seemed like a
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: huge waste of time, huge waste of time.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: But I thought, you know what? I'll pay my dues.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Paid my $ 5 for the lesson, groaningly tuned my guitar
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: all week, getting ready to put on like my seven
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: inch heels and whatnot to rock out. Next week, I'm like,
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: is it Detroit Rock City or is it Black Dog? No,
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: it's the C major scale.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: And I was done. And I was done. And I
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: just thought, I'm never going to be a musician. I
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: hate this. I hate it. And the guitar sat in
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: the closet for four years, untouched.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: My mom would occasionally say, remind me why we blew
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: $ 50 on that thing. And then it was the Sex
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Pistols cassette, which brought me into the fold. And I
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: was in a band within 24 hours of purchasing Nevermind
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: the Bollocks. I did not know how to play a
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: note on the guitar. I did not know how to
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: play a chord on the guitar. I had a guitar
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: of dusty moldering guitar in my closet. And I just
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: marched into the Libertyville high school drama club after hearing
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: that cassette and said, a punk band is forming. I'm
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: the guitar player. If you'd like to be in the band,
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: raise your hand. No experience required. And a couple hands
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: went up, and I was in a band. I was
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: in a band. Did they play instruments?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: There was an.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Aspiring drummer who did not have a drum set, so
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: he played on a chair. There was a saxophone player
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: who raised his hand.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: He was in.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And then a sort of.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: A Mick Jaggery wannabe drama club singer guy who was fantastic.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: That was our band. The Electric Sheep was the name
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: of the band.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And what was the repertoire?
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: The repertoire was, well, we didn't have the... ability to
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: learn anyone else's music. So we were forced to write
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: our own and which, you know, and crazily the, you know,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: a guy who soon joined that band was Adam Jones,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: who's currently the guitar player in tool. He was in
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: the electric sheep. He was your youngest. He was in
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: that band too. There were three bands in my. high
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: school and we were the worst.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: So there was destiny and they were beautiful young men
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: with beautiful hair who played the beautiful hits of the day.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And the girls swooned. Uh, and then they played all
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: the school dances.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Then there was epitaph and they were bad boys and
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: they were not playing any stupid fucking school dances. They
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: were playing garage parties with weed, beer. They had holes
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: in their jeans. You see those dudes in the hallway
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: and you got out of their damn way because they
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: were playing ACDC and Black Sabbath and looked like they
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: knew how to fight. And then there was the drama
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: club band, The Electric Sheep. And we wrote our own music.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: And I remember, you know, we'd played like some garage
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: party somewhere and I'm sitting in PE one day and
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: dude comes like a kid I hardly know because, hey,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: you're Tom Morello.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: You playing that band, the electric sheet. I've been looking
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: all over for you. You guys suck.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: He had to find me. I'm like, thanks. I'm putting
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: on my tube socks. Thanks bro. So, but the formative,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: the formative moment where I realized that the Holy spirit
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: of rock and roll was in me, there was a, um,
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: a variety show about the sixties called the sixties all
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: shook up.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: And the electric sheep audition for that.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: We played one of our original songs, you know, which
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: we kind of hacked our way through and They brought
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: us back and said, hey, the show is in four months.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Can you learn Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf? And
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: before anybody else, before any other jackass in the band
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: could open their mouth and honestly report that there's no
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: chance we can learn it.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, no problem. We'll take the gig.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: So we had four months to learn the song. And
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Destiny was also in the show. They were playing some
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: like Crosby, Stills, Nash, some beautiful, beautiful song. So rehearsals
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: go like this. Me and Adam are on stage, right?
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: Trying to tune our guitars, just grimacing, unable to, they
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: were not like guitar tuners. I don't know why you
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: didn't have guitars. We couldn't tune our guitars. And on
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: the other side, the Destiny dudes were sitting on stools.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: They were like a jukebox.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Like every attractive woman in the school was shouting out
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: their favorite songs by bread and by, you know, whatever, whatever,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: R & B jams. And they knew, they knew them
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: all or they could figure them out on the spot.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: They could figure them out on the spot. So Adam
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: and I are grimacing over here, right? So the night
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: of the night of the show comes and destiny plays
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: and they're fantastic.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: They're fantastic. And they're people swoon.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: They push out the riser and the, we begin to
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: play our rendition of born to be wild. And the
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: keyboard player comes in on the wrong chord. Bass player
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: comes in the wrong note. It's going terribly. Like it's a,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: does I've ever been like in your, somewhere you just
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: go like, this is a disaster.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: I'm a disaster is what I was thinking.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Like I'm a disaster.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: And so, but I realized the first verse went really,
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: really bad, but as the chorus was approaching. I said something,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: we have to do something to turn the tide. And
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: while we were not playing very well, my guitar was
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: certainly out of tune. I did have a track and
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: field background and I was on a riser. So when
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: the chorus came, I did like a, I leapt and
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: I could leap high and I leapt high off the rider,
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: did sort of like a kick, you know, like sort
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: of a kick in the air and the roof came
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: off the place.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Now we were not playing well. but they sensed rock
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: and roll was happening.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: And that rock and roll might be something different than
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: being in tune. And then I smelled blood in the water.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, hold on one second. If you rock out,
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: people like it. And so I began rocking out to
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: thunderous applause. We finished the song and the 800 person
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: theater just went absolutely ape shit. And people, And if
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: there was a battle of bands that night, it was
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: a clear electric sheep victory over Destiny.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: And I just knew, I felt in that moment when
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: that first, when the first jump lands, I was like, oh, like,
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: it's not about an expensive guitar or having a castle
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: on a Scottish lock or even knowing how to play
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: the song, that there's something else that is a vibe
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: that is the thing that connects.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And it's the reason why I love music. And I
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: tasted a little bit of it.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Which is funny because if you weren't in New York
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: or London or where like the hotbed of punk rock
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: at the time was happening, if you didn't see them live,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: like if you listen to, nevermind the Bullocks, it's kind
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of hard to play. It doesn't sound like they're, they
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: sound tight to me. They sound tight, yeah. Very good producer,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I think. So you wouldn't know that like that was,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: that you could just be that. You could be sloppy
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and have attitude.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was, I mean, that was kind of it
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: for me. And then later I did practice and learn
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: how to play Born to be Wild for real.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Did you ever learn Black Dog?
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: I did learn Black Dog later on. Later on, I
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: put in my 20,000 hours, you know, soon thereafter.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Did you want to be like a front person after that?
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, I wasn't the front person. I was
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: not the singer of Born to be Wild. There's another
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: dude who was a singer.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: But that didn't make you feel like I should.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: No, it made me realize that there's a potential in
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: this instrument and in curating an experience that we'll just
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: call it, you know, it sounds flower, but like an
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: artistic experience on a night or in a garage or
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: in a basement that is something that feels very.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Attractive to me.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: I didn't, however, have the calling to be a musician
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: until a couple of years, 19. I was a freshman
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: at Harvard University in one of like the basement studios.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: And there was a moment where I've been practicing a lot.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: And there's a moment where I had like an improvisational break.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: That was a jam and by myself down there to some,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: to some record. And all of a sudden it felt like,
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: like this kind of almost like weightless feeling. Like I was,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: I had tapped into a thing that artists recognize as
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: like a special thing. And it felt, it really felt
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: like a religious calling. Like I had a lot of
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: other interests, politics, art, you know, literature, journalism, and they
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: all faded.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: You know, they all took a couple steps back.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That feeling that you experienced through your career from
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that point through to now. Yeah. How regular is that?
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: That's an excellent question because A lot of you have
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: the 24 hour clock of a musician's life. A lot
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: of it is doing interviews and driving to interviews and
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: traveling to the next city and, you know, and, you know,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: and having a band meeting about.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: T-shirt designs, or are we paying the attorney too much?
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: You know, like a lot of like your life is that,
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: and then even in practice and recording and performance, a
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: lot of it is craft. You know, you have to
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: rehearse the song so you remember the notes when you're
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: playing them live. In the studio, you want to make
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: sure you have a good tone and get a good
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: take of it. All of that is craft. None of
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: that is the thing that I'm talking about. None of
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: that's the thing I'm talking about. Then there are transcendent
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: moments and it can be in any venue. It can
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: be just like backstage warming up. It can be in
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: a huge arena where you decide to extend. I can
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: give you a couple of very specific examples, but like
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: where something happens, it's unexpected. A perfect example of that
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: was the first time I ever played with Bruce Springsteen.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: It was in 2008. I'd known Bruce for a while,
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: been friends for a while, never played together. And it
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: was at the Anaheim Pond. we were playing a song,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: the ghost of Tom Joe. He had an acoustic version
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: of it from his record of that title rage had
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: done a, um, like a big riff rock version of it.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: And he told me, you know, to just be ready
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: to play it acoustic or electric. He'd come see me
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: at this point. I was a singer too. And so
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: I was just ready. So I'm downstairs, I'm listening to
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: the band play it. And to my total dismay, he is, uh,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: raise the key of the song by eight steps significant.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: And And so now I have to like relearn all,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: I'm going to, I'm going to go rehearse with the
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: band in 15 minutes. I have to like relearn the chords,
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: which are now all in different places. My rich milk
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: chocolate baritone voice is no longer able to hit the
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: high notes of this. And I, Bruce Springsteen is my
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: favorite artist. And I recognized that I'm going to blow it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: There's no, I don't have the, like sort of the
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: learning speed to be able to in now seven minutes
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: be able to do this.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I walk on stage. And they're playing this key and
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: it's a disaster.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Like I can't, I'm getting the wrong chords and trying
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: then to watch my hands play while I'm singing in
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: this different key. And I made nervous, anxiety-riddled wreck. And
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: they don't call him the boss for nothing. Bruce comes
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: over and he goes, we're going to do this key, Tommy.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: He calls me Tommy, which is awesome. My mom and
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: people back home call me Tommy. You know, we're going
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: to do this key and it's going to be great.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I think to myself, like, thanks a lot, Jedi Master Yoda.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: I still don't know how to play the thing and
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I can't sing it, but it does calm my nerves
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: for the moment.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: He's just reaffirming that we're going to play eight steps higher. Exactly, exactly.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Let's figure it out. It's just going to happen.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: But then it allows my test-taking skills to kick in. Like, okay,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: there's like 15 people in the E Street band. They
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: can play the chords. I don't need to be another
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: chord player on this. And if you refer to the
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: video of this, which was a popular YouTube clip, I'm
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: faking all the chords on this.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not playing any of the real chords on this.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: And you couldn't tell.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: There's like seven guitar players playing the chords. You know,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: can I authentically... sing a song of social justice.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I can do that.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: Like I can find a way to say those words
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: in a way. And can I play a guitar solo?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I can do that.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: So it calmed my nerves.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: And then because, you know, they sort of sprung a
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: surprise on me at soundcheck, I thought I would spring
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: a surprise of them at the show. So during the soundcheck,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: I didn't give anything away in the guitar solo. I
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: kind of Chuck buried my way through some scribble, scrab,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: blues licks and whatever.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: I said, let's just hold it. Let's just hold it
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: till the show.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: So I'm backstage, like in a little sort of maid's
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: closet with a bottle of Jameson and like, it's time,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: it's now time, it's time to go and come on stage. And,
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: you know, we're doing this. So first of all, Bruce Springsteen,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I'm somewhat surprised that he's friends with the dude from
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Rage Against the Machine. They don't know, they don't know
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: the crossover that I feel the common DNA there, but
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: they're about to learn. And, you know, we play the
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: song and there's sort of a middle section where we
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: exchange guitar solos and it's really sort of beautiful and
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: almost kind of.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: David Gilmour-y melodic in.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: That part, and there's a lot of cheering, and then
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: there's the last verse, and then the guitar solo starts
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: at the end. Now, in rehearsal, it had been about
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: eight bars. But as I begin playing the guitar solo,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Bruce is just like, keep going, keep going, keep going.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: And it's one of those moments where I'm just unconnected
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: to Thinking about anything about like being nervous or anxious
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: about something totally connected to the Like the rhythm track
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: that's behind me and the meaning of the song Tom
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Joad was the main character of John Steinbeck's the grapes
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: of wrath Bruce Springsteen's the ghost of Tom Joad is
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: talking about modern-day immigrants and unhoused people then I'm like
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I'm channeling those ghosts and I just felt like And
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: it just, he just was like, and keep going. Like
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't, if I had anything planned, it was out
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: the window after the first eight, 16 bars. And it
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: just kept going and ascending. And we, you know, we
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: finished it and it was like, literally like the roof
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: came off, off the place. And I was so surprised.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: No one in the room wasn't surprised. Him, me, like
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: that was shitty at soundcheck, right? Like him, me, everybody.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: And then gave him a hug. And, and, uh, I said, Bruce,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I guess that was the right key after all.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And then we played together for the next six years.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, including. Including recently, including this last year. Recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: We did a run this year.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: How was it this last? Great.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, Bruce Springsteen is one of one, you know,
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: at 70, whatever, six years old. You know, he still
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: goes out there like tonight's going to be the best
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: show I ever do. And he's more excited to be
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: there than the person in the front row who flew
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: in from Germany, you know?
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: And it's, you know, there's never been. A Bruce Springsteen
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: tour where we were more ideologically aligned. He had played
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: with me in Minneapolis. I did a benefit show for
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the U.S.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Citizens who were murdered by ICE agents there for their families.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: And Bruce played that show and he felt something in
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: that room that he wanted to take on tour. And
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: so we did 20 dates and it was, you know,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: sort of his most overtly political tour. And, you know,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: I think certainly one of his most impactful ones.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When did folk music start making sense to you?
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I discovered it very, very late. It meant nothing.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: I didn't even know what it was. It was probably
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: in my early 30s, like late 20s, early 30s. I
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: had always been drawn to heavy music. First it was metal,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: then it was punk, then it was hip-hop. It was
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: probably the Springsteen Nebraska record that might have been the
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: introduction that made me go back to the early Dylan records.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: You had known Nebraska from when it was released?
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: No, no, just sort of found it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Found it in the 90s.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Found it, found it, yeah, found it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: And then I was, you know, I did a little
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: research like, oh, this is because he's a fan of Dylan.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: And then you find Dylan and he's a fan of
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Woody Guthrie and Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger played together
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: and Joan Baez. And there's a guy named Joe Hill
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: who sort of is the founding father of punk and
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: political music in the, you know, 19 teens. And I
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: realized that music, that's the heaviest music of all time.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Like there's not a Marshall stack in sight and with
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: the right couplet and the right intent to, that an
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: acoustic guitar and a singer who really, really means it
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: is as heavy as anything in the Sepultura catalog.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Was it hard, though, to be that, like, you're doing
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: rage shows, and you're on tour, and you're just listening to,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: you're doing deep dives on folk music. Was that like
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a bit of a.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, I've always been, like, had diverse tastes, but
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: to me, they felt very much aligned, and they were
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: definitely links in the same chain. You know, I think that,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: you know, the music of Rage Against the Machine doesn't sound...
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: you know, exactly like public enemy, but there are links
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: in the same chain or Nina Simone, there are links
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: in the same chain or Woody Guthrie, there are links
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: in the same chain, you know, where it, to me,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: it's like the, the, the, the genre is we're making
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: music with a purpose to, to stand up against injustice,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: make music on the side of the oppressed, make music
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: to in our lane to try to change the world.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And that's what those, all those acts have in common.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: That was one of the incredible things, it remains one
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: of the incredible things about the Renegades album. It's just, it's,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: it sounds all of a piece.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: But when you, you're like these, you're pulling from so
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: many disparate sources.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure, sure.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: But you realize that there is some sort of common
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: denominator between them. And it made me realize that there
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: is a folk element to hip hop even.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Sure. Absolutely. Counterintuitive.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: In the storytelling and whatnot.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, that was interesting because we made that record
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: with Rick Rubin and, um, we were recording some shows
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: at the grand Olympic auditorium for a live record.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And the idea was we would have like B sides.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: And so people just started throwing out ideas of cover
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: songs that we would just sort of work up. And
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: then it turned, you know, four songs became 12 songs
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: and eventually became that renegades record. But I think it
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: shows like sort of the diversity of, ideas about what
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: like it goes from dc hardcore to bruce springsteen from
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: you know rolling stones to epmd it was a real
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: melting pot of influences that made that band yeah.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: When you were first connected with zach you're coming off
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the lockup yes which was a very different And your
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: sort of interest to that point seemingly had been metal,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: some punk rock.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: And then you have that group Lock Up, which is
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: on Geffen.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: It's on Geffen Records.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: You guys kind of get dropped.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: The story is old as time. The tale is old
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: as time. Sort of bad ending. But you connect with Zach,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and your lead playing sounds largely the same. It maybe
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: sounds a little more constrained on Lock Up than on that.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: But your rhythm playing sounds... Was there a learning curve?
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it wasn't a learning curve. It was it
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: was a shift in North Star.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: I moved to Hollywood to try to be a rock
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: star and to try to be a person who makes albums.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: And then by an incredible luck and fate, I found
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: myself with a record deal with a band called it
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: was my favorite local band. I joined. I was like
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: a junior part. I was like a young about five
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: years younger than everybody else in the band joined that band.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Got a record deal. I never met anybody that had
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: a record deal before.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: You know, everybody back home thinks you're a trillionaire. It's
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: like five roommates on this street where we're doing this
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: thing in Hollywood. And so there's experts involved. There's a
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: producer and producers. This guy's made hit records. There's an
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: A & R person who signed groups that you own
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: their catalog. There's a record company that's got ideas. And
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: we listen to them. I listen to them. some of
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: the stuff that later became more signature guitar sounds in
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: the weird, like the R2D2 barnyard animal noise thing I
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: was playing. They're like, well, don't do that because there's
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: none of that on the radio. We got to get
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: these songs on the radio. And I liked heavier music
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: than that. And they're like, we're looking for, you know,
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: this is what we're like, okay, well, you're the experts
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: and I'm about to be a rock star. I'm a
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: record maker is what I'm, I'm, my dream is coming true.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: I'm a record maker is what I'm about to be,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: you know? And then we had our 15 seconds of
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: fame and the record company stops calling you back. And,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: At this point, I was 26, 27 years old.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: I had failed.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: I was an abject failure at the thing that I
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: had tried. That's the way you felt? Well, I knew
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: I was never going to be a rock star.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: I knew I was never going to make records. I
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: had a chance.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: I'd never met anybody that had a record deal, and
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: I had had one and blown it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm done.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: But I'm still a musician. I knew that. I still
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: very much self-identified as a musician. And so I remember
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: on my little futon in West Hollywood there, made a
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: solemn vow to never play another note of music that
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: I didn't believe in. And that's when I began writing
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: the music that would be my contributions to the first
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Rage Against the Machine record.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: All on your own?
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I had a bunch of those before I
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: knew those guys at all.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: They were huge contributors musically to that record. But I had,
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, I had Bomb Track, Know Your Enemy, Township Rebellion, Freedom.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Like those were ideas that I was like, this is
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: the shit I want to hear. No one else has
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: ever been here. Where was that coming from? Because it's
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: very interesting.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: It's like, it doesn't, as.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't sound like anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Sounds like an amalgamation.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's, I mean, it comes from someone who loves
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin music. you know, and Deep
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Purple and funk music, you know, and like Run DMC
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: is one of my favorite bands. And the idea that
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: there's a world where, like, it's like I had nothing
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: to lose.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: I had failed.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: It was the failure that opened the door to finding
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: myself as an artist with a capital A, you know?
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: And then with the chemistry of that band Rage Against
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: the Machine and everybody else's spectacular contributions to it, you know,
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: that band connected in a way that no, A &
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: R person or no manager could have ever.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Could have predicted or guided you towards. Guided you towards.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: It was a very, very natural, you know, that event
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: arrived fully formed.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I imagine by that point you had enough also understanding
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: of yourself to.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: not listen to advice. Oh, no, understanding myself and of
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: the music industry. You know, like when you, I was very,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: very clear. So two quick stories about the origin story.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: So the first person that ever heard Rage Against the Machine, right?
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: I remember this guy. So we're rehearsing deep in the
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: valley where a lot of great rock's been made through
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: the years and sort of in this industrial complex, this
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: dude works down the way, walks by all the time.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: One day he says like, what are you guys doing
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: in there? Like, we're a band.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: He's like, can I hear it? I'm like, I don't
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: see why not. So we have about like five songs
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: at the time. So Dude comes in and he sits
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: down in place and we play him, you know, four
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: or five songs and, you know, somewhat nervously. And we
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: haven't sort of in the lab here and now someone
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: is hearing it. And so I'm like, what do you think?
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: And he takes his time. He stands up. He looks
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: me in the eye and he says, your music makes
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: me want to fight.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like, is that good?
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: It's a great endorsement. Well, something's happening. No one ever
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: said that about lockup. Nobody ever said that about lockup.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Who was the second person to hear? Oh, okay.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: So the second, so the first time it like it
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: arrived anywhere in the world was in Huntington beach. Uh,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Timmy's some friends of his, like their parents were out
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: of town. So booked a gig in the living room,
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: somebody's house. Like they pushed the armoire over to the side.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: And, uh, we knew five songs at the time.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: So the first song we ever played in front of
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: an audience was the fledging version of take the power back.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: And, And there was a lot of nervous energy.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: We started the song probably like two and a half
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: times faster than it was supposed to be because.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: We were all hyped up.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: And then when the beat dropped, this is a band
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: no one has ever heard except for one dude in
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: the Valley. And when the beat dropped, there was a
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: huge pit in the living room instantly.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Wow. Instantly.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: People are like toppling chairs and like leaping over the bar.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: And I had never felt anything.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: I had been, you know, I'd seen like Jane's Addiction
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: at the peak of that and And it felt like
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: from day one, this is not a band that people like.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: This is not a band that people love. This is
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: a band that people believe in. And it felt like
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: that from when the first drop of the first song.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: So we played our five songs and there was, you know,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: neighbors were like the window, the window, there's people plastered
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: on the window, like, like hooting and hollering.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: And so we play the same five songs again.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Wow. You just ran it back. We ran it back.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: We just ran it back. They ran her back.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: It's incredible. It's funny, the first time you play with
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Rage Against the Machines in Orange County, the first time
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: you play with Bruce Springsteen's Orange County. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Orange County needs a... Didn't really have to ask, but
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: was it weird to be... Because you get dropped in
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: 1990 from Geffen. Yeah. And then 1991, Nirvana blows up. Yeah.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: That must have been a strange.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I remember they were signed to Geffen when we were there.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: And I remember the assistants going crazy over this band
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: and this guy, Kurt Cobain, who I didn't know we
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: didn't know what was about to happen.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Uh, but I remember there was a.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Lot of bubblings about like how great this, this thing was, but, uh,
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: lockup might've been a band that was a little bit
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: ahead of itself with, you know, the lead singer was
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: personally out, but publicly closeted gay man.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: And that was a, it was always an issue. Like
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: don't let on.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Cause you know, you trying to be a rock star
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: and that's just an unacceptable. So it was a band
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: and he was Brian Grillo's his name. And he was
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: a real talent to someone who was very much ahead
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: of his time. And part of that, You know, because
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: when I moved out here, I wanted to just join
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: a metal band.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: That felt like the thing that I knew how to do.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Because you came out here in the mid-80s. Yeah, and
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I could shred my ass off.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: But I was shocked and surprised to find that the
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: music that was popular was not shredding metal bands. It
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: was like Faster Pussycat. And it was kind of like...
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Explain the distinction.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Trash, yeah.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: So I came out here thinking there's going to be
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: a Steve Vai in every corner, and that's going to
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: be my competition.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be... I had all those chops together.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: And I'm ready to enter the guitar slinger sweepstakes. And
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: I didn't have $ 12, but I spent $ 12. I read
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: there was a band called Faster Pussycat playing the troubadour.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: And the place was lying around the block. I'm like, oh,
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: this is going to be the greatest musicians. This is
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: the place where great musicians get careers and they're loved.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: And I mean, they have a style of music that
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: is not dependent on great musicianship.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: That's how I'll frame it.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: Um, and they, you know, they had like a vibe
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: and the women went crazy for them and, and they
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: had cheekbones. And I thought, I can't do that. Like,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: if that's what you have to be, I don't, there's
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: nothing in me that can be that. And I saw
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: other bands. There was a man called jet boy. I
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: said guns and roses at that time, you know, where the,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: and they had like a thing that was an image
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: that was, you know, with the guns and roses, certainly authentic.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: Some of the other bands maybe put on a cape.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: I'm like, like, this might've been a mistake. Like I
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: thought moving to Hollywood, I was going to be rewarded
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: for my ability to play kick-ass guitar. And no one
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: wanted to have anything to do with me. One, I
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: answered an ad for like some metal band that, you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: like wanted lead guitar player and had a pretty good
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: conversation with the bass player.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: It says, come on down. We'll jam. I hang up.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Manager calls back. He's like, yeah, you were talking to
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Johnny there. You got to talk to me. So, so
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: how long is your hair?
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: I'm like, well, it's not very, it's a time I
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: had like a, Lionel Richie, black man's mullet, little mini
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Jerry Crow mullet.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Tony McAlpine.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking Tony McAlpine. I was aiming for Tony McAlpine.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: I'm glad that you know Tony McAlpine. I've got that reference.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: He was the model. It had not grown that long yet.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: But he's like, no, we're a particular image we're looking for.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: I'm like, but you haven't heard me play a single note.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: I might stink, but I might be the best guitar
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: player you've ever heard to be in your band. It's like, no, no, we've,
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: I know what we're looking for. And that's just not it.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: And he said, would you be willing to wear a wig?
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: I'm like, let's not have the wig discussion before we
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: see if I can play an a chord.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Um, and I, I never auditioned for that. And then the,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: it was one night it was actually, it was, uh.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Adam Jones who, you know, now in tool, former electric
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: sheep alumni, he was in town. I was working for
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Senator Alan Cranston at the time as his scheduling secretary,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: which is a.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Part of my very rich resume.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: And he dragged me out of bed to go to
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Al's Bar because he wanted to meet some people there.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Al's Bar was like a real left-of-center punk rock place
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: where your car stereo is going to get stolen. You know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: you got to pay a dude $ 20 to watch your
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: car stereo.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Like, don't have $ 20. I don't want my, damn it,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: you've got me over a barrel.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: So we went down there and there was a band
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: called lockup playing that night. And it was like, this
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: is a different scene here. And they were really, you know,
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: they were like raw. It was somewhere between chili peppers
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: and Jane's addiction.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: That was the vibe. Yeah.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: That was.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I didn't know those bands existed. And then
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I discovered Jane's addiction. I'm like, Oh, hold on. There's
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: a fishbone.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: There's like a different side of town. Like the people
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: who were in that scene became my friends welcomed me readily.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I eventually did join lockup. They didn't care what color
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: my skin was. They didn't care how long my hair was.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: There was just like a, You know, Jennifer Finch, who
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: recently passed from L7, she was in that scene. She
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: was one of the most, one of the first and
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: most welcoming people. She didn't have to be, she was
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: one of the coolest people on the planet. I'm just
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: a freaking brown skin hillbilly from Illinois. And she just was,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: could not have been more warm and welcoming. And that's
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: what I found on that side of town. And in
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: that scene was, was like love and open heartedness.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Well, geographically, how far? So it was easy.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: It was kind.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Of East and West. So the sunset strip up to
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: probably La Cienega. was, you go as far as like
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Crescent Heights with a coconut teaser, which was there. That
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: was kind of the spandex scene, the fresh and salt
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: water mixed maybe at the coconut teaser there where both
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Nirvana and GNR played and Rage later. And then east
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: of that was like the Jane's Addiction world of arts
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: for art's sake. And it was what would become alternative
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: music or the Lollapalooza Nation was bubbling under there.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: And that's where I found a welcoming nest.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I imagine you've met Slash, right?
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Have you talked about... How did he manage as a
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: black guy? I don't know.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: I think that he and I have a very, very...
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: There's something we have in common is that... Maybe somewhat
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: less so for him, but for me... I have changed
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: color over time. When I grew up in Libertyville, Illinois,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: I literally integrated the town. According to the real estate agent,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: one black person lives in the town.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: It's me.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Got a white mom and there's one kid. And every
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: single day I was reminded that I was black. My
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: hair was different. People want to touch your hair. They
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: want to see, you know, like your palms are a
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: different color than the back. There's a lot of like,
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: you know, anthropological study of this, of this guy, this guy.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: This guy.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, there's a noose in my family's garage
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: at one point. And, you know, I was black and
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: there was no doubt to anyone. Time was black cut
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: two years later. I'm in a band whose music appears
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: on radio stations that don't traditionally play black artists or
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: rock and roll magazines that never feature black artists. Um,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: my vernacular in interviews is not stereotypically urban, um, And
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: there is a sizable portion.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: There are people listening to this right now. Like, what's
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: he about to say?
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: There's a sizable portion of people been my audience through
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: the decades that are, when I talk about being African-American
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: are stunned and refuse to believe it.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Like there's a cognitive dissonance.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Like, no, no, no.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Tom Earl's not black.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Like, well, there was the clan must've been mistaken and Liberty.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: But it's very interesting. Like I've changed.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: Cause I wonder if, cause people don't guns and roses
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: fans don't know that slash is black.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: They don't, they don't know. They don't know. They don't know.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: They don't know. Rage Against the Machine fans don't know
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: that Tom Morello's black.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: That is one of the things you and Bruce also
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: have in common, is people perpetually discovering. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: To their chagrin, discovering. Every year there's a fresh wave
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: of people figuring it out.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: No, no.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen is not a liberal. Wait, couldn't the name
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: of it wasn't in support of the Klan?
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I thought they were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: just fascinating.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: It's an interesting commentary on race in the United States
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: of how like, I'm the same shade I was when
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: I was in Libertyville and yet completely different groups, you know,
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: view me in completely different ways.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: In different ways.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: It's a Rorschach test. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Skin color. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: In the country.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I remember there was one little story about it.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: So I went to go see some metal band play
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: at former Universal Amphitheater and Warren Demartini, the guitar player
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: in Rat, good friend of mine, lovely, lovely fella. There
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: was some like metal guitar player who's a fan of
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: Rage Against the Machine and he And so I'm just
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: sitting there, I'm sitting there with my wife backstage, and
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: I see Warren, and he told me that this guy
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: wanted to meet me. And so he's, you know, I
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: see them at the doorway, and he sort of points
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: this way and gestures over, and the dude comes over
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: and talks to the dude behind me who looks like
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: a metal dude, who looks like sort of a Zach
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Wilde kind of guy. And then the guy goes, I'm
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: not Tom Morello, that's Tom Morello. And the look of
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: disappointment on his face.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Was totally like, that can't be Tom Morello.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: That cannot possibly be the guy that makes the guitar
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: sound like that.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: I don't mind it though.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: You don't mind it?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I don't mind it at all. I don't mind.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: I'm very, I'm very comfortable in my nerd skin, my
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: black skin, my whatever.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I'm comfortable in all of it.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I know your grandfather was a Mau Mau, Kenyan rebel.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: My great uncle was Jomo Kenyatta, who was Kenya's first
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: president and the leader of the anti-colonial movement.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: A fascinating character in history.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And your mom's, she's a political activist.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: A lifelong, yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: She just passed at 102 years old. I appreciate that,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: but she lived a humble yet powerful and purposeful life.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I imagine you were steeped in radical politics
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: from a young age. Yes. Meeting Zach, though, I was
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: curious how aware of, like, the Latino political culture in L.A.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: you were before you had met Zach.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: I'd say not so much. Not so much, you know,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: not so much.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: And, you know, that band benefited so greatly from his passion,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: his insightful and just spectacular lyrical catalog and his insight
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: and his fire.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Was it like a learning curve? Was it like
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it must have been a crash course in some way
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: of learning?
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I think politics is fascinating.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: All bands, what makes a band, when a band is great,
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: what makes a band great is chemistry. Everybody brings their
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: own experience, you know, their experience with injustice and racism, this, that,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: and the other. Their degree of kind of street knowledge
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: and book learning and their degree of like where the
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: snare lands is just as important to the political message
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: as any of the rest of it.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: And that band had such a potent history. four-person chemistry
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: that it allowed the ideas and the great lyrics of
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: Zack Della Rocha to connect on a global scale.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: So the new album you put out, The Journey from
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Street Sweeper Social Club.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Sure, with Boots Riley.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: First of all, this is the first release you put out.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: This is the first.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Tom Morello solo rock album. This is my 22nd album
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: of my career. Between Rage, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage, Street
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: Sweeper Social Club, the Acoustic Night Watchmen records, Atlas Underground records.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: This is the first record.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: And it actually came from, over the course of the
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: last five or six years, I've been touring with my
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: backup band, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra. And in the past,
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: I had kind of compartmentalized. Like, this is a Prophets
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: of Rage tour, and this is a Tom Morello solo
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: acoustic tour. And I've been embracing the totality of those
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: 21 records. And playing those Rage Against the Machine riffs
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: for a world that's never needed it more. You know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: it's in the DNA of... the hopeful and the hopeless,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: you know, and needs and needs to be played. Keeping
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: Chris Cornell's memory alive, playing like the audio slave songs
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: and feeling his spirit in the room of someone I
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: miss every day, not issuing the folk music that I
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: love and which was the reason why I am a
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: solo artist playing, you know, when I was on tour
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: with Audio Slave playing arenas on days off, I'd sign,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: I'd play coffee houses and, you know, it's the same
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: passion and intent as anything else I've ever done.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And I wanted to make a record that was.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Going to stand toe to toe riff wise, stand toe
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: to toe ideologically with the best of my work. And
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: it was getting to that point was a bit of
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: a challenge, you know, because like I know how to
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: make a folk record now and I know how to
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: make a band record, you know, but to make a
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: Tom Morello solo record and finding like sort of the
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: right producing partners and leaning very, very heavily on my
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: secret weapon on this record, which is my 15 year
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: old son, Roman Morello, who is a monster. And, you know,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: he began playing in the pandemic, and he can play
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: circles around me now.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Did you help teach him?
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I tricked him into it is how I
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: got him to begin.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: Because, you know, kids don't want to do what your
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: dad does. But there's always instruments around. His introduction, both
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: my kids' introduction, like, they didn't know what I did
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: for a living. I never played one note of Rage
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Against the Machine or Audioslave for them, ever, growing up.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Not once. Really?
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: I want to be their dad. I want to be
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: their Little League dad. I don't want to be like, oh,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: here's my record. Check out my billion streamer.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: That's like....
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: I've never mentioned it. Like, I'm just they're like, oh,
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: that's the guy. He's very friendly and he sleeps late.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: That's that guy. So the first time that they were
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: kind of introduced to it was when Rage was rehearsing
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: for the 2022 tour. And you know, my wife was
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: out doing something and we had a 10 PM rehearsal
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: and I couldn't leave them home alone. So they'd burn
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: the house down. Like you guys got to come to
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: rehearsal and they're moaning. Like what's that?
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: And they're how old at this time?
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: So this is 22. So they're 15, 16 now. So
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: they're like, what, like 11 to 12, something like 11, 12.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: And they've never heard rage against the machine before. So
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: their introduction to rage against machines, they come to rehearsal
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: and we just play the set. You know, and I
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: see them and they're sort of wandering around and, you know,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: impossible to read. So on the ride home, very cautiously
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: ask like, so what'd you think about, you know, what
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: you just saw on her? And my, my older son goes,
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Timmy C's tattoos are awesome.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: That was like the first, that was the first, like, like,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: like kind of superhero. Awesome. And then, and then the
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: next comment was like, Brad Wilkes, a really good drummer.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, he is.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: He's really good drummer. And then the third comment was like,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Zach raps.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, he raps. He raps really good. And they're like,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: they didn't mention my guitar playing at all. But, but
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: I began hearing rage coming out of their rooms, you know,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: and I began hearing like some audio slave come out
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: of the rooms and I think they started poking around
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: at what dad does for a living. And then they,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: you know, we've, we played 19 shows on that tour
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: and they came to all 19 shows and they, got to,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: you know, sort of feel it at its, you know,
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: in full flower.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Did they know Tim at that point? And Brad, like, exactly.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, I've been barbecues and stuff. Like, yeah, I've
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: been around, but like, that's, didn't see him, you know, fully, like,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: doing it.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Doing it.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: But how, how, how I tricked my son Roman into
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: becoming a shredding all-star guitar player during pandemic times. And,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: you know, the kids were on, it was terrible. Kids
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: are on Zoom school and playing Fortnite. And I said,
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: he likes Led Zeppelin. So, Like, give me five minutes
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: of your time, and I'll teach you the first three
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: notes of Stairway to Heaven.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: And he sort of thinks about that, and he says,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I'll give you four minutes.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'll take it.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: So in four minutes, I could teach anybody in this
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: room the first three notes of Stairway to Heaven, right?
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: And then I go back to your fortnight or whatever.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: The next day, I'm like, give me four more minutes.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: We'll learn the next three notes.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: He's like, okay.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: Like, that was sort of fun yesterday. So now he
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: knows the first six notes. If you could hum them
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: in your mind, what the first six notes of Stairway
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: to Heaven are, it's like an iconic hook. And in
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: eight minutes, you too can learn to play the first
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: six notes. And then the next day he asked me,
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: he said, can we learn the next three notes? And
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: it was sort of building on those successes. And then
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: he made his way all the way through the song.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: And he was like, you know, I want to learn
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: the solo. I'm like, okay, great. And then once he
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: got the solo down, all of a sudden, you know,
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: he had a great, I felt a pride.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: You feel like, oh, hold on.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: There's a musician in me that is unlocking itself right now.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: How long did it take to work through? We had
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: a lot.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: We had the two grandmas if that was. We didn't
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: do anything. We had it all day, every day.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: That's insane. I mean, pretty quickly after like the... after
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the ninth note.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: It gets a little more complicated.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: But it's, you know, it's the lesson that I learned
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: when I took those two terrible guitar lessons that made
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: me not want to play music. It's called playing music,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: not working music. Like, what do you want to do?
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: What makes it fun? What makes you want to come
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: back to it? Even if it's for four minutes. And
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: it's that success. Like, I wanted to be, I loved
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: being in the electric sheep. I didn't know how to
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: play a note, but I liked the idea. We wrote
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: a song, like, we'd just be making a bunch of
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: scribble scrab, but it was a song, like, okay, it's fun.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: I'm playing music, you know? And that's what hooked him.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: And, you know, now he's already got his 10,000 hours in,
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: which is crazy.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: So what was the syllabus after that?
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Syllabus, the next one, the next one he wanted to
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: learn was Crazy Train. You know, he wanted to learn
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Crazy Train. So the riff in that is very doable.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: The solo, super hard. But he had been able to
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: do the Stairway to Heaven solo, so this is one
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: he wanted to tackle. And also, you know, I did
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: leverage some rock power to try to encourage him further.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: When he had mastered the Stairway to Heaven solo, I
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: filmed him playing it and sent it to Jimmy Page,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: who then sent back a positive reinforcement for that, and
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: that I think was helpful.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: What do you do with that? What do you do
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: with that? You like Jimmy Page's number?
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Page is number two.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: And you talk?
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we have dinner.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: What does he do? He needs to play. What is
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: he doing?
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: I think that he's, you know, he's sort of an
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: English gentleman right now, you know? He's in the same
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: castle he's been in since, I think, the 70s, you know?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Can you nerd out with him and, like, ask?
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. He's so easy.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: He's so, like, you will, and I do, and I
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: warned Roman, you know, we have dinner. I'm like, you
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: can ask him. He's really going to answer any question
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: you want. Like, so on, you know, Achilles' Last Stand.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: how many guitars are stacked in the pre-chorus. And he
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: knows a lot of that.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: You know, he's pretty.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: He's in the sessions, like, all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: He's always remastering and doing stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, anyway.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: They're the greatest. They're the greatest.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: They're the greatest.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: They're the greatest.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: And to see, and to sort of see a young
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: person who, you know, is immersed in a world of
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: hip-hop and pop music, and, you.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Know, they love Lucky, and they love, you know, Lil Yachty,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: and they love.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: that and then to discover houses of the holy and
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: no quarter and the lesson in that is like great
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: music is great music yeah you know sometimes it's marketed
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: to it's not marketed to a generation in a way
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: that was marketed to another generation it doesn't make it
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: any less.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Great yeah no yeah it's very true.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: So let's talk about this record a little bit more
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: so everyone gets everything they want is the album september
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: 25th that comes out and it's a state of the
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: union address This is a record for people who have
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: had enough. These are anti-racist songs for anti-racists. These are
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: anti-fascist songs for anti-fascists. And the single is currently out now,
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: which is called Date Night, which is about three Dutch
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: teenage girls in World War II who lured Nazis into
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: the woods and killed them. It's anti-Nazi songs for anti-Nazis.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: And surprisingly, that is a controversial position in 2026. You
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: get a lot of pushback on that. And it's, you know,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: when you're opposed to anti-racist songs and anti-fascist songs, anti-Nazi songs,
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: it's not hard.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: To do the math. Yeah. It's a lot of revisionist
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: history these days on everything, including World War II, which
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: you thought sort of.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: We thought that was self.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I thought that was done.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: That was gospel. I thought we knew the whole story.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: That's why I think it's important.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: Like, that's why the reason why I chose this particular
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: song is like, It's celebrating these war heroes. These, Hanny
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Schaaf was 14 years old when she became a guerrilla
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: partisan who was offing Nazis.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: And that's a hero. That's a hero.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: And, but you say that in 2026 and you'll get
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: some pushback about, about that, which is just kind.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: Of crazy to me.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: It's insane. I love the track too with, with Serge. Yes.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Ajourn it. Yeah.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Serge Tankin, longtime friend and comrade.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: He's, he came through and we wrote that in the
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: height of the immigrant purges in Los Angeles where- You know,
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: we're going downtown every weekend to protest and watching, you know,
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: all the stores close and our neighbors terrified and black
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: vans cruising the neighborhoods. And we're like, we got to
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: do what we can with what we got, you know.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: And Serge can always be counted on.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: How did you collaborate with him? Yeah, that one, I
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: think that he was out.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: It was, I basically said it was a Roman Morello riff,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: which is the hot riff in that one. That's your
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: son's riff? Yeah, that's his riff. That's his riff in
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: that one. That's his riff in Date Night, too. And
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: sent it to Serge and said, this is three of
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: us in L.A., me, you, and Roman. We see what's
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: happening every day. What do you think about that? And
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: he sent back that huge, spectacular Tankian hook.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: He just had that?
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he just sent it back within 36 hours, sent
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: that back, and then produced the song up around that.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: But Serge is great and excited to have. He's playing
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: the Power of the People show, too, in D.C. He's
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: always there for me.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: It's also what like feels to me, unless I'm wrong,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: you can correct me if I'm wrong. It feels like
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the first time you're, you're singing in your, your Barrett's. Yeah. Well,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm on the night watch.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: There's like probably like six Americana records where I sing,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: but this is the first time where I'm doing it
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: with Marshall stacks in the background, you know?
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: And that's also your, your, your octave is like, you're lower.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: You're singing lower. I've got that Leonard Cohen. It's like
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: a Leonard Cohen thing.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: If you want to hear, or Barry White, depending on where.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: There's not a lot. There's not a lot of singers.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: There's not a lot of singers.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: But I mean, it's, it's the thing is, The only
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: thing that matters to me in record, like the records
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: that I make is authenticity. Like that's how I sing.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Like I wish I could sing like Robert Plant. That's not,
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: that's not a thing, but I mean, Leonard Cohen, some
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: of my favorite singers, you know, like whether it's Paul
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Robeson or Leonard Cohen have a register that is, you know,
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: that has a certain amount of gravity to it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it just feels like you're sitting, sitting in
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: your voice different on this. I don't know if that's
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: because it's a Tom record.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: It's a, it's a, It's figuring out how, because I've
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: been singing in front of a rock band for years now,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: maybe since 2011 with the Freedom Fighter Orchestra, been playing
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: electric guitars, but making a record that, if this record
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: feels to me like a discovery of a new era,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: it feels to me like the first Rage record, it
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: feels to me like the first Audioslave record, it feels
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: like the first Night Watchman record, where it's like, this
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: is an artistic chapter that is.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Beginning in a way that is so exciting.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Like, I haven't listened, like, I don't listen to a
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: lot of my own music and this record, I love,
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I just love listening to them. Like this feels like
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: it's so exactly what I want to say. It's exactly
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: what I want to play. If you're dropping the needle
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: on a Tom Morello solo rock record, there's some expectation
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: and that expectation, like you better kick my ass. So
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: I wanted to make sure that I was loaded, riff loaded,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: like never before. And it's riff loaded, riff loaded, but also,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: you know, like the one goalpost is maybe like the,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: the heaviest riffs of the rage audio slave world. And
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: then the other goal post is my love of like
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: the Springsteen darkness on the edge of town stuff and
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: their storytelling and the, you know, there's, a piano song
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: on it, you know, and the sort of maybe almost
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: a Pink Floyd element to it.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: And there's a narrative arc to it that's spent a
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: lot of time crafting.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Well, how many songs in did you start to realize
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: you were on? Like, when did you realize you were
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: kind of finding your own? Yeah, that's a good question.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was really, this was a record that
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: I had to fight for.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: Some records arrive and some records you fight for. And this,
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: I had some great riffs and I had some lyrical
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: ideas and I would record songs in different capacities and
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: go like, that's not a song I want to play
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: around the world the next two years, you know? And
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: since next, I got a basket of those that, that
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: are just like done, done, done. And the first song
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: that I went, okay, hold on. The soldier in the
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: army of love was a song I wrote with Roman.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: And I thought, this is a song I can open
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: my shows with for the next 10 years. And we've
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: been open and it's to great effect. And, Like it's
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: a mission statement.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: It's the fifth song on the album.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: That's one in the hamper. That's one in the hamper
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: right there.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: That's one of the hamper. Then, you know, like cut
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: to date night. Like this is a story.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Literally.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: I dragged that story around to Hollywood studios of these
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: three girls. Like this is a, spectacular movie it's a
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: spectacular tv it's real you pitched it pitched it no
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: one want no one wanted to have anything to do
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: with it and i'm like it's a story just who'd
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: you pitch it to every production company ever like it's
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: just i'm passionate about that idea of teenage girls killing
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: nazis and um and in this in this particular time
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: and i just thought well you know what i'm going
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: to tell the story myself i'm going to tell the
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: story myself and it's the reaction that it's had in
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: the netherlands has been pretty crazy like the children of
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: those women are alive and sort of aware.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Of the song and commented on it in great detail,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: which is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Like they can't believe it.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, well, you know, it's like they're known
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: in the Netherlands and somewhat less so everywhere else until
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: hopefully now. Um, and so then like, then I started,
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: you know, uh, you know, a chalkboard of, okay, we've got,
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: we've got soldier army love. We've got date night, the
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: song that opens the record, Beth from electronics, you know,
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: that one was, I just was, we were recording something
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: else and I just was jamming. And that's just a
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: improvised one take of that hot riff right there.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And I asked the engineers, like, did you record that?
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Please tell me you recorded it.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Like, I got it.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: I'm like, we're going to start the record with that.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: And the idea is to come in with like the heaviest,
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: that might be the heaviest riff in my entire catalog
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: to start the record.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: And who's Beth from electronics?
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Beth from electronics. Beth is a real person.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: About five or six years ago, there was a great
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: viral YouTube clip of a Walmart employee quitting her job.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: She films herself.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: Getting on the PA at the Walmart, calling out her boss,
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: calling out the molester supervisor, calling out the horrible capitalist
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: practices of Walmart, giving shout-outs to some of her fellow
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: workers who don't deserve to be treated that way, says,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: fuck this job, I quit, Beth from electronics. I want
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: to make an album that has that kind of energy.
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: We started off with Beth. That's great.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: She says, this is, she starts out saying, this is
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Beth from electronics.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: That's attention.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Walmart shoppers. This is Beth from electronics.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: And are you going out on the road with the
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: same people?
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: We've got, we've got a dialed in now. We've got,
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: you know, Roman's been in my band the last three years.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: And so we said perhaps to massage a lot of
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: touring around, you know, his school schedule. But, um, we've
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: been out the last three summers and, You know, the
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: rest of the year, there's a couple of festival shows
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: and then the big Power of the People show, which
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: we should probably talk about as well. So October 3rd
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: is establishing a new festival called Power of the People
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: outside of D.C., the Merriweather Pavilion in Maryland. And it's
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Public Enemy, Joan Baez,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: Cypress Hill, Jack Black, myself, the Linda Lindas. Dropkick Murphy's,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: the idea is to have a festival show that is
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: branded around saving democracy, protecting voting rights, smiting the fascists,
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: and having a day of celebration of rock and roll
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: and hip hop.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing. And a great place to do it. It
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: harkens back to the 80s. Yeah, exactly. Incredible.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That's the idea. Power of the people.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: A couple different drummers, a couple different bass players on
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: this record, right?
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: So are you going to is that like.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra has a slightly shifting cast,
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: but it's sort of the same relative been relatively steady. And,
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: you know, we bring it out and it's been so
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: great to like this summer. We played almost a million
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: people in Europe, you know, and to be able to
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: do that at this age and to, you know, tackle those,
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: whether it's those the big. french metal festivals or whether
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: it's the more indie alt stuff or you're playing like
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: we did play this i forget the name of the
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: famous german anti-fascist punk club like i've never been happier
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: playing live music you know and never been never felt
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: better about making music it's like this is the difference
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: between one of the reasons between being in a band
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: being a solo artist when you're in a band you
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: get all the pros and cons of chemistry and when
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: a band is great it's because the chemistry is great
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: you cannot do that alone you can't as a solo
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: artist you get purity You get a purity of vision
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: and you get something that is unfiltered by outside. You know,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: the two great examples, like sort of a Springsteen and
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: Led Zeppelin, which we've talked about today. One is an
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: example of band chemistry. One is an example of artistic purity.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: And each of those can be very powerful. I've had
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: the great good fortune in my career to be able
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: to do a lot of both.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Did you play this record for Bruce at all?
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: No, I played him just one, the last track, They
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Can't Kill Us All, which is very Springsteen sort of.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Darkest on the edge of town.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: I love on your lap.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: You call it a dark beauty.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: You call it a dark beauty.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is nice.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: It's pretty good. It's phenomenal. It's great. Pretty good pull quote.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: How did you pull him into it? Because you got
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: him to do Highway to Hell on... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: I meant to ask you, how did you get pulled
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: into that?
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, so the Highway to Hell, so Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder,
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: and I did Highway to Hell on my Atlas Underground
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: Fire record. And this was one of the most fortuitous...
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: I was on tour with Bruce in Australia. We're playing
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: the soccer stadium in Melbourne. Yeah. Eddie Vedder happens to
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: be in town that day doing a solo show the
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: day before after. So he's coming down the show. We
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: had been working up Highway to Hell ever since we
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: were in Perth, the home of Bon Scott. And it
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: was my suggestion. I came back from Bon Scott's grave,
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: sat down, saw Bruce in the bar. I'm like, do
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: you think there's any overlap of the East? I said
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: this very sort of tentatively. Is there any overlap between
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: the E Street Band and ACDC? He said, I'll think
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: about that. So he went upstairs, thought about it. We
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: began rehearsing Highway to Hell. So we had like a
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: pretty decent version of it. So we're in Melbourne and I,
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: you know, I've been texting with Eddie, I knew he
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: was coming down the show. And I said, oh my gosh,
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: like I called John Landau, Bruce's manager said, I got
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: an idea.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: And I tell him the idea. He's like, you got
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: to tell Bruce that idea yourself. I'm like, why?
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: Cause you're afraid to, or what am I going to
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: get in trouble? So I go in there and knock
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: on the door. I was like, so we're in Australia
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: where ACDC owns it. Highway to hell is the national
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: anthem of Australia. How about we open the show with
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: highway to hell with Eddie Vedder. and he had that
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: same look that you just had on your face right
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: there like that sounds like a pretty good idea right
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: so we open the show and it's a peak moment
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: i mean there's moments like this that only mountain climbers
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: and bullfighters get you know where you just like it's
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: a peak human moment for everybody in the room so
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: cut to pandemic time everybody's miserable i just called those
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: dudes up and said why don't we record highway to
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: hell so bruce was in jersey eddie was wherever and
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: And we just did it remotely.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: To recapture some of that vibe.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: And it was Bruce who felt how the hell was
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: the overlap between... Yeah, yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: He picked that song. He picked that song.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I have to defer to Bruce. He knows the E
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Street Band. I'm shocked.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: The E Street Band is the most pliable band perhaps
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: in the history of bands. You know, the guys that
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: played thousands and thousands of shows. I learned 250 Bruce
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: Springsteen songs before I went on tour with them. 250 songs, right?
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: And they still played songs outside of that. He would
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: take requests... But sometimes the request would be from other bands.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: It'd be like a Van Morrison song that I heard
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: on the radio in the 80s. And I'd expect, you
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: know how long I had to learn it? One, two, three, four.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that's like. But the two songs
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: that were the most challenging to make great, and they
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: got great because Bruce doesn't settle for less than great,
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: were Highway to Hell and Clampdown by The Clash.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: We had to work on both those songs.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: Those took a lot of reps because I don't think
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: that metal or punk are really, that's not what those
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: guys were playing in the bars.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: No. Yeah. It was clamped down also, Bruce?
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: I suggested that one in 2014, but he brought it
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: back for this tour.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Wow. And it became a staple.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: It's a great song.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: It's a great anti-fascist anthem.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: How do you work through 250 songs, memorizing 250 songs?
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: First of all, I leaned heavily on the freedom. Some
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: people have that jukebox ability.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: Like you can listen to a song and they figure
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: out the goal. My son does that. It's just maddening.
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: Like you can just figure it out by ear. I
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: don't have that. So I have to study it or
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: I have to look. Now you could like look on
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: the internet. So Carl Restivo, who's been my musical consigliere,
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: the rhythm guitar player and, you know, other singer and
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: freedom fighter, he's got that. So I said, Carl, you're
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: going to teach me 250 Bruce Springsteen songs.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Went over there every day.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: And we just, you know, we do, you know, seven
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: at a time over the course of months and months
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: and months and months and months and charted them and
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: So I showed up knowing 250 songs, and he still
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: played songs outside of that.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. Oh, man.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: On the last U.S. tour, we played.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: 32 shows, 184 separate songs, different songs, in 32 shows.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: 184 songs. That's crazy. That's wild.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: It was crazy.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: This last tour, the set list was pretty locked, was locked,
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: maybe with the exception of Purple Rain in Minneapolis. And
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: it was the same set, you know, 18 out of
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: 22 shows or 20 shows.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Something like that. Wow. So if you have to go
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: out and do like, if you're gonna do an audio
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: slave song or rage song, do you have to relearn?
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: I have to relearn. I have to relearn.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, some of them are more muscle memory though, but,
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: but I, I want to make sure that I wouldn't
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: throw them.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't do it on unrehearsed.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: Cause a lot of times in the studio. we record
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: stuff like you record it and you don't look back.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Like you do a bunch of takes like on a
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: guitar solo.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: Comp this one together. That's the guitar solo.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: And you move on with your life and then you
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: have to like, okay, here comes the tour and the
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: guitar solo is hooky. I've now have to relearn my
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: guitar solo and I'm like a, Like a student.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: What did he play there? How did he get the
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: R2-D2 noise?
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. Well, I appreciate you coming by. I know
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: you don't love doing interviews, so thank you so much, man.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: I appreciate your thoughtful questioning. I'm very delighted to have
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: the discussion with you.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: It's great to chat with you, man. Thank you.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Pleasure. Thank you.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: is Ben Talladay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
• 1:00:06
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• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.