My Life Like A Guitar: Tom Morello

Tom Morello

Thomas Baptist Morello (born May 30, 1964) is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist of the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. He performs as a solo acoustic artist under the pseudonym The Nightwatchman. He is known for his unique guitar style and his outspoken politics.

Tom was ranked #26 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Tom was also one of 20 contemporary guitarists Rolling Stone magazine featured in their "The Top 20 New Guitarists" article along with John Mayer, Derek Trucks, John Frusciante, Warren Haynes and other contemporary guitarists.

Morello was born in Harlem, New York. His mother, Mary Morello, who is part Irish and part Italian, is a founder of Parents for Rock and Rap, an anti-censorship group. She was also a teacher at Libertyville High School. His father, Ngethe Njoroge, was a Mau Mau guerrilla and revolutionary. Morello's great-uncle, Jomo Kenyatta, was the first elected president in Kenya.

Morello grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, at the time a virtually all-white suburb of Chicago. There he attended Libertyville High School. He played French horn in the school band, sang in the chorus, and was active in speech and drama club. (One prominent role was Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.)

He showed his political leanings early. Morello has described himself as having been "the only anarchist in a conservative high school", but has since identified as a nonsectarian socialist.^[4] In the 1980 mock elections at LHS, he campaigned for a fictitious anarchist "candidate" named Hubie Maxwell, who came in fourth place after Jimmy Carter at the overwhelmingly Republican school. Ronald Reagan won the mock election. He also wrote a piece headlined "South Africa: Racist Fascism That We Support" for the school's alternative paper, The Student Pulse.

At age 13, Morello purchased his first guitar at Rigoni Music in Libertyville. He wanted a solid-body Ovation guitar, but he didn't have the money to buy one. Instead, he purchased a Kay guitar. Wanting to learn how to play "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin, he took two guitar lessons, but instead was taught the C-major scale. He decided that playing the guitar was a waste of his time, so he placed it in his closet for the next four years.

Around 1984, Morello first started studying the guitar seriously. He had formed a band in the same year called the Electric Sheep which featured future Tool guitarist Adam Jones on bass. Jones wasn't originally in the band; he was a replacement for a member who quit because he felt his musical skills were far superior to those of the other Sheep. Few if any of the Sheep could really play an instrument at first (Most of their songs consisted of a single chord), but the band was an impetus for Morello to start honing his skills. Instead of performing cover songs, the Sheep wrote original material that included politically charged lyrics. None of the songs composed by the Sheep contained solos; soloing was a skill that Morello began learning in college.

At the time Morello's musical tastes lay in the direction of heavy metal, particularly Kiss, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Morello developed his own unique sound through the electric guitar. Later his music—and musical politics—were greatly influenced by punk rock bands like The Clash, the Sex Pistols and Devo.

Morello graduated in 1982 and began attending Harvard University. There he made a point of practicing every day for up to eight hours without fail, no matter how much studying he had to do. He graduated in 1986 with an honors degree in political science. He moved to L.A., where he briefly worked as an aide to Senator Alan Cranston as he set about trying to join or start a band. (Adam Jones moved to L.A. as well; Morello introduced Jones to some of his future bandmates.)

In 1988 Morello joined Lock Up,a glam rock band that released one album through Geffen Records before splitting up. This record was called Something Bitchin' This Way Comes, which enjoyed only slight success at the time.

Morello had been crushed by the lack of success he experienced in Lock Up. He visited a club in Los Angeles where Zack de la Rocha was rapping. After viewing de la Rocha's lyric books, Tom asked him to front a band. Morello drafted Brad Wilk, a drummer who had unsuccessfully auditioned for Lock Up, and de la Rocha introduced the two to his friend Tim Commerford. The four formed a new band, Rage Against the Machine.

Rage had great success, especially in North America and Europe. Their first, self-titled album, was recognized by fans for Morello's innovative guitar as well as its originality (being one of the first records to combine rock and hip-hop). Morello expressed his attitude toward songwriting during this period as overtly political:

"A good song should make you wanna tap your feet and get with your girl. A great song should destroy copcars and set fire to the suburbs. I’m only interested in writing great songs."

After four years of silence and rumors of break-ups, the band released its second album, Evil Empire. The album moved away from the traditional metal guitar work of the first album; it was experimental in nature and demonstrated Morello's ability to use the guitar in strange ways.

In 1999, the band released The Battle of Los Angeles, their most commercially successful record. In late 2000, they released another album entitled Renegades. Shortly before the release, de la Rocha left Rage, and the band's instrumentalists said they wanted to continue making music together.

Billboard reported on January 19, 2007 that there were rumors that Rage Against the Machine could reunite at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. These rumors were confirmed in a Los Angeles Times article on January 22 and later on the band's official website. On April 29, 2007, the band reunited at the Coachella Music Festival. This was originally thought to be a one-time affair, but it later turned out not to be. The band later played four shows in the Hip Hop festival Rock the Bells with the Wu Tang Clan, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill, and later an additional night in New York City after the first night sold out in twenty minutes. Rage also played their first (non-festival) concert in 7 years at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, supported by Queens of the Stone Age in August 2007. It is unknown whether Rage Against the Machine has reformed officially, but played more live events co-headlining spots at New Orleans' Voodoo Music Experience in late October and the Vegoose festival which ran from October 26–October 28 in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

It was later announced that the band will play two shows in Australia in January 2008. The concerts, in Sydney at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on January 22 and Melbourne at Festival Hall on January 30 respectively, sold out in under 3 minutes, making this a record for the band. It was also announced that Rage will be co-headlining all of the Big Day Out venues in Australia and New Zealand along with Bjork and Arcade Fire.