The Tim Ferriss Show - #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss

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Starting point is 00:02:27 parentheses because the objective is to teach you to fear less, not to be fearless. Fearless features in-depth, long-form conversations with top performers focusing on how they've overcome fears and made hard decisions, embracing discomfort and thinking big along the way. It was produced by Wild West Productions, and I worked with them to make both the video and audio available to you for free, my dear listeners. So thank you, Wild West. You can find the video of this episode, which is gorgeous. I think they did an incredible job on youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss. Remember, two R's, two S's, youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss. And eventually you'll be able to see all of the episodes for free at youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss. And eventually you'll be able to see all of the episodes for free at YouTube.com slash Tim Ferriss. So you can swing over there and see what is currently up.

Starting point is 00:03:10 Before we get started, just a little bit more on Wild West. Spearheaded by actor, producer, and past podcast guest Vince Vaughn, Wild West has produced a string of hit movies, including The Internship, Couples Retreat, Four Christmases, and The Breakup. In 2020, Wild West produced the comedy The Opening Act, starring Jimmymases, and The Breakup. In 2020, Wild West produced the comedy The Opening Act, starring Jimmy O. Yang and Cedric the Entertainer. In addition to Fearless, their television credits include Undeniable with Joe Buck, ESPN's 30 for 30 episode about the 85 bears, and the Netflix animated show F is for Family. Wild West has also produced the documentaries Give Us This Day, Game Changers, subtitle Dreams of BlizzCon, and Wild West Comedy Show. And now, without further ado,

Starting point is 00:03:52 please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation from Fearless. I'm Tim Ferriss, author, entrepreneur, angel investor, and now TV host. I've spent my entire adult life asking questions, then scouring the globe to find the answers. On this show, I'll share the secrets of pioneers who have faced their own fears. We'll dig into the hard times, big mistakes, tough decisions, and how they got through it all. The goal isn't to be fearless.

Starting point is 00:04:20 The goal is to learn to fear less. Welcome to Fearless. I'm your host, Tim Ferriss. And on this very stage, we'll be deconstructing world-class performers of all different types to uncover the specific tactics they've used to overcome doubt, tackle their hardest decisions, and ultimately succeed on their own terms. So my guest tonight is a revolutionary, and I mean that literally. His musical talents have resulted in the sale of more than 25 million albums and garnered two Grammys. Rolling Stone has recognized him as one of the greatest guitarists of all time,

Starting point is 00:04:52 and yet he's only had two formal guitar lessons. He's a founding member of Rage Against the Machine, Audio Slave, The Night Watchman, and Prophets of Rage. Please welcome to the stage musician, singer, songwriter, and author, Tom Morello. Hello. You guys ready for a show? So, thank you so much for taking the time. My pleasure. First and foremost, we're going to start with a video.

Starting point is 00:05:28 Okay. And then we'll work backwards from there. Sounds great. All right. Let's take a look. Thank you. A A smattering of greatest hits in barnyard animal noises to start the thing out. What is it like to try something for the first time and then go present it to others, whether it's to your bandmates or to an audience? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:41 Well, when you pick up a guitar, you do so because you like guitar playing and guitar players. So the natural instinct is to play like your favorites. In my case, it was sort of my punk rock heroes and then Randy Rhoads and some of the heavy metal guitar players. And amassing that technique. It wasn't until

Starting point is 00:06:59 late in my college career when I was saddled with... At the time, everybody liked the Edward Van Halen guitar because it only had one knob on it, the volume knob. That was the coolest thing. I didn't have one of those. I had a guitar with a whole bunch of knobs on it so it was quite uncool. But one of the knobs that did have on it was a pickup selector switch which chooses between the two, you know, which pickup you're going to hear sound out of. And I found that if I manipulated that, the toggle switch with one of the pickups on zero, the other on 10, it worked as kind of a kill switch.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And then I could play notes here. And it sounded like it was a staccato kind of playing that I had never heard a guitar make. Then I began practicing the eccentricities in my playing. And once I got out of the rut of thinking that I needed to sound like other guitar players, the horizons were wide open. And the nail in the coffin of traditional guitar playing for me was an early Rage Against the Machine gig in the San Fernando Valley. We were opening up for two cover

Starting point is 00:07:55 bands and the cover bands had very technically talented guitar players. They could shred like crazy and play beautifully and brilliantly. i thought to myself if i'm on a bill with three other guitar players who have that level of useless technique i don't need to be the fourth one and so i veered the ship dramatically towards concentrating on the eccentricities in my playing and things were very unique and then trying to forge that into music now that did not always meet with popular acclaim both in my band and you know in the world at large um because i would be i play the guitar with a pen or with an allen wrench which is the thing that you use to kind of change the tuning

Starting point is 00:08:35 uh on it or and then i began rather than trying to wearing rather than practicing other guitar players licks i would just look at the world of sound and sometimes i would sit in my apartment and just listen and if there was a lawnmower outside i'd do my best to approximate that if there was a television program with you know about world war ii or about the lions of the serengeti whatever was coming out i would just do my best to approximate it and while i couldn't play those sounds exactly, I was amassing a catalog of noises and textures and rhythms that were totally unconventional, and then building them into the rock and roll songs of Rage

Starting point is 00:09:15 Against the Machine. I remember the exact moment, the exact room where I first heard Rage Against the Machine. I want to say 1992. I was in Japan, first time overseas for the first time as an exchange student, and I was in my bedroom, and some of my friends had sent me the first Rage album, and I remember listening to it, and I was always a metalhead, and I was like, what the fuck is this? The sound is so unique, and we're going to back into that, so we won't

Starting point is 00:09:41 dig into that part of the chronology right now. But I like your hat. It's been a good year. It's been a very good year. So where did your parents meet? I think this might be a good place to start. My mom comes from a small coal mining town in central Illinois called Marseilles, Illinois. It's spelled like Marseille, France, but it's in central Illinois, so it's pronounced Marseilles. And for some reason, my mom, as a single woman in the mid-1940s, left to travel the world by herself for about 20 years. She taught all around the globe and eventually found herself in East Africa teaching in Kenya, where she met my dad.

Starting point is 00:10:16 And you were born in the U.S.? I was born in the U.S., yeah, yeah. So they... They parted ways. And my dad was part of the first U.N. delegation. And then they split. He went back to Kenya. She went back to Illinois. Have you ever explored why your mom decided to travel the world by herself? Yeah, it's a question that she hasn't been able to answer to my satisfaction. My mom is 93 now, and I still ask her that periodically.

Starting point is 00:10:36 But there's something, you know, sort of unique in her constitution that made her boldly, you know, she lived in Spain, Japan, Germany right after World War II, East Africa. She was fearless in her travels, and I've inherited at least a pinch of that. Libertyville. When did you... Yeah, so we lived for, you know, as a single mom now living in the big city. She moved back where she had support from family. And then the challenge then became finding a teacher. My mom was overly qualified to teach world history and U.S. history, not just from her travels, but from her studies.

Starting point is 00:11:09 She had a master's degree, found it difficult to find a place for us to live because this was 1965. And while she, the high schools in the northern suburbs were happy to have her as a teacher, they warned her that we as an interracial family, meaning me, a half African one year old and her an Irish Italian white lady would be unwelcome to dwell within the city. But they should teach there. We have to live somewhere else. to ask permission from the other tenants, letting them know that this was going to be an interracial family. And how they sold us to the locals was basically saying, look, this is not an American Negro. This is a very exotic African child. And that worked swimmingly well until I was old enough to date their daughters.

Starting point is 00:12:01 And then you could be the king of Nigeria, and no dads are going to be in there. They're like, all right, plus one for exotic, but I have bad news. So that was my introduction. I literally integrated the town of Libertyville, Illinois, according to the real estate. Prior to my arrival, there were no people of color residing within its borders. And that was at one?

Starting point is 00:12:20 That was at one, yes. How would you describe growing up in that town? Yeah, yeah. Well, it was, I mean, on the one hand, it's this idyllic Chicago suburb. There's, you know, you can ride your bike, there's, you can fish, there's fields to play football in, and it has a tremendous public high school system, public school system, but then every once in a while, there might be, you might find a noose in your family's garage. Did that actually happen? Yeah. Yeah. When I was, I saw a couple of nooses growing up. One was in the garage when I was 13. Other was when I was 15, just walking past the Brown's chicken. And, and so that was, you know, that was a part of the, part of the, those were

Starting point is 00:12:58 threads in the cloth of, of growing up there, which I kind of took for granted. I had great friends and great experiences, but it was not a racist-free environment. How did your mom, if she did, encourage you to respond to racism? Well, yeah, I mean, my mom remains the most radical member of the Morello family to this day. And I was at a daycare place. I was probably four years old, and there was an older kid, a couple years older,

Starting point is 00:13:25 who was race taunting me and beating me up or being very physical with me on a daily basis. I would come home to my mom, and she, at four years old, taught me about a fellow by the name of Malcolm X. She said, you must stand up. You must stand up. The story gets pretty dramatic. So she said, you have to stand up for yourself. You have to stand up against racism wherever and whenever it rears its head. I'm like, Mom, I'm four. And she gave me, like, the person had a particular litany of epithets that they were calling me. And so she gave me, I had to memorize something to say back.

Starting point is 00:14:03 I forget. It was like, you know cracker ass cracker I don't know what it was. I didn't know what any of the words meant I'm like this sounds like there's gonna be trouble tomorrow and And then she like, you know, she's like balled up my fist and said you go at him like this sounds horrible It's a big kid horrible so I go there like dreading daycare than the following day and I you know, and I'm there and the kids on me and they're n day, and I, you know, and I'm there, and the kid's on me,

Starting point is 00:14:25 and they're N-Wording me, and they're attacking me, and I'm like, you... acker, ass-smacker, whatever, I can't really remember. Yeah. And I take a nice start going at him, and it causes such a ruckus. I'm losing the physical battle, but it causes such a ruckus that the person who ran the daycare for the first time paid attention to the disagreement,

Starting point is 00:14:44 and I got to, with smug satisfaction, that the person who ran the daycare for the first time paid attention to the disagreement, and I got to, with smug satisfaction, watch as the young racist child's mouth was washed out with soap in front of the whole crew. And I went, there might be some of this Malcolm X stuff. What effect did that have on you? I know that sounds like a very generic, maybe boring question, but as someone who didn't grow up with that. Yeah, well, people ask, like, how were you politicized? And it wasn't from reading, you know, Noam Chomsky in high school. It was recognizing that there was grave injustice on the playground. And that's something that was, it's part of my DNA, was that I had a very sort of strong base of support in my home and a feeling of self-worth that came in sharp contrast to,

Starting point is 00:15:30 you know, like, and I had many good friends. This was not, you know, it was not, there was clan in Libertyville, but there was, it was a lot of great friends, a lot of great teachers, a lot of supportive people. But I, you know, did come up regularly against people who did not think because of the color of my skin, I was smart as they were i was as good as they were that i was as you know decent a person as they were and but i came i had the my spine was steeled by the love care and resilience of my family to know that i'm just as good as anybody in the room and you know

Starting point is 00:16:00 and uh so well And so it was with confidence that I went into the, you know, sometimes the troubled stuff that came up. Do you self-identify as black? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I thought, I mean, while I'm genetically half white, as the only black guy in an all-white town,'re pretty i was the blackest black black ever got none more black man so when did music enter the picture yeah i did um i loved rock and roll from the time you know maybe 11 or 12 years old and you know kiss was my Kiss was my first concert, and it, you know, it dovetailed with my love of comic books and sort of the superhero elements, but then the aggression

Starting point is 00:16:51 of the electric guitars of, you know, the bands like ACDC and Black Sabbath, I was, you know, full 7-Eleven suburban parking lot metal all up and down the line. And I love music, and I actually played in a band when I was 13 years old as a singer. Before my voice changed, I was able to do a pretty good Robert Plant impression. But when it descended into the rich milk chocolate baritone you hear today, it was clear that I was not going to be auditioning for ACDC, so I had to switch to guitar. I mean, I've had the experience, I think, like a lot of kids. My first album ever bought was Master of Puppets. Oh, sure. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to be Kirk Hammett.

Starting point is 00:17:29 Lo and behold, demoralized a few weeks later, I stopped. Yes, there's a lot of opportunity to be demoralized when beginning guitar. When I first purchased my guitar at 13, it took me four years to actually play it. But I took a couple of guitar lessons and I wanted to learn Led Zeppelin and Kiss songs. So I plunked down my $5 at the music store and said, teach me these. And they said, no, son, today we have to learn to tune the guitar. That sounded like a huge waste of time to me. So I said, well, you know, I'll put in my dues. I'll put in a week's worth of dues and learn how to tune this thing. So I came back the next week and said, now it's time for Detroit Rock City, right? He's like, no, this week we're going to learn the C major scale. I'm like, I'm out.

Starting point is 00:18:07 That is some BS, man. That's a waste of everybody's time. And so the guitar sat in the closet for four years. And at 17, I had the punk rock revelation that many do. Until that point, all the bands I loved, it was completely inaccessible. I had a basement in suburbia on which to practice, and these guys had castles on Scottish locks. And groupies and limos and guitars that cost $10,000. I had a $50 guitar in a basement.

Starting point is 00:18:38 When I got the Sex Pistols cassette, I was literally in a band within 24 hours of purchasing the cassette without knowing how to play one note on the guitar. I ran into the Libertyville Drama Club and announced, we're going to be a band. I've got a guitar, so I'm going to be the guitar player. The first three of you that raised their hands are in the band, regardless of musical experience. So three guys raised their hands. And then at that point how did you well we wrote songs there were there were three bands in my high school and um uh one of them was destiny and those that was the pretty boy band they got all the ladies they played sticks kansas journey and they just owned the school and then there was the bad boy band epitaph and now they covered black sabbath acdc

Starting point is 00:19:23 and they would they would not stoop to play a school function. It was garages with ripped jeans and weed. And we all admired them from a distance. We were all afraid of them and admired them. And then there was the Electric Sheep, my band, the drama club band. And we didn't have the technical ability to play other band songs. So we had to write our own. So from day one, we were writing our own. And from that band, two of the founding members of that band went on to form Rage Against the Machine and Tool,

Starting point is 00:19:50 so we were vindicated in the end. Did you want to be a guitarist, or was it just... I wanted to be a part of it in some way. And then I had a guitar. And then the thing about punk was, it's like there was no longer a barrier. It's like the bands that I liked, like The Clash and The Sex Pistols,

Starting point is 00:20:10 with no musical experience, my level of technical ability was not too far distance from theirs, and yet they were my favorite bands, making the best music that I had ever heard. So I had a formative experience seeing the band The Clash, which was my favorite band of all time, playing at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. And in my high school band, The Electric Sheep, I had a sort of a cheap music man amp on a chair in my mom's basement where we

Starting point is 00:20:31 would practice. I saw The Clash play at the Aragon Ballroom. I'm used to seeing these bands play these huge venues with walls of Marshall stacks, some of which are dummy cabinets. But I saw Joe Strummer on stage at the Aragon Ballroom. He had the exact same cheap Music Man amplifier that I did on a chair on stage at the Aragon Ballroom. And that was the revelation that made me realize it's not, oh, I can do this someday. It's like, I'm doing it. He's doing it. We're all doing it. We're all just in bands.

Starting point is 00:20:57 And that felt pretty good. What was the process like of teaching yourself guitar? The guitar at first was an instrument to be in a band and then it later became a calling. Like I had a many varied interests but it was when I was about 19 years old where it's sometimes you choose the things and as a thing chooses you and I really felt the guitar chose me. I had no choice in the matter and then I applied my OCD to the instrument and was practicing it sometimes up to eight hours a day, 365 days a year. Are you doing it by ear? Are you just trying to mimic?

Starting point is 00:21:28 Entirely by ear, yeah. I never really had the ability to, I never had the strength, like learning songs off record. The other thing, you know, to sort of do a psych 101 analysis of why I fell so deeply into that, I think as a grown-up looking back, it was a matter of control. There are a lot of things sort of in growing up that I did not have control over. There was sort of a race issue. There was maybe a, you know, romantic,

Starting point is 00:21:54 you know, sort of a deficit issue. Things that you just didn't have control over. I had control over this. Like, it's my will and my will alone that will determine the outcome of what happens if I apply myself to this. Like, it's just me that makes the decision here. And that was very, very appealing. And then when you start playing two hours a day, you notice the tide rises quickly. So you bump that to four hours a day and all of a sudden, everyone around you is marveling at

Starting point is 00:22:17 you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you go to eight hours a day, that's when it kicks in. Pretty helpful. When you go to eight hours a day, that's when it kicks in. Now, clearly a well-spoken guy. How did Harvard turn to the picture? Well, I was the first person from Libertyville, Illinois, to ever go to Harvard. No one had ever applied before. After I got in, the floodgates opened, and now it's recognized as the passion of intellect and culture. You all suspected it might have been. Yeah, I mean, you just need one exception to the rule, right?

Starting point is 00:22:51 And to show what's possible. What were the most important things, if anything, that you took from that experience at Harvard? At Harvard. One, there are some lifelong friendships that came out of it. And also, the reality of you have to take risk if you're going to change the world there was a big anti-apartheid demos we we built a shantytown

Starting point is 00:23:14 in harvard yard during the graduation when all the um you know the alum come and are asked for you know to give a lot of money back to the university and we completely ruined harvard yard by a soweto-like shantytown in the middle of it, and we're all threatened with expulsion or this, that, or the other. You just have to make a choice. Are you going to do the safe thing, or are you going to do the thing that's right? So you graduate.

Starting point is 00:23:37 Did you continue with the poli-sci? Yeah, I graduated in political science. But like I said, it was a calling. I had interest, but music and rock and roll was a calling and i knew as soon as i graduated i was going to move to hollywood because that's where the rock magazines told me i needed to go to pursue my dreams so then what so i load i loaded up the chevy astro van and drove and drove into the sun with all my crap in the back and a dream in my pocket about About $1,000 and a dream. Was your mom supportive?

Starting point is 00:24:07 I should have paid better attention in EC-10 because $1,000 lasted about four days when I moved here. And all of a sudden I was destitute. What did your mom do? Yeah, my mom was very supportive. Given her history of kind of bucking convention, it was not surprising. But she was completely supportive. I got a Harvard degree and I'm going to go move to Hollywood to try to play rock and roll.

Starting point is 00:24:28 She's like, great. Rock on. Did you have any plan B in your head? There was no plan B. I arrived in Hollywood with big ideas about how I was going to form my dream band. I didn't know exactly what it was going to be, but I knew the groups that I liked then were Run DMC, Aerosmith,

Starting point is 00:24:44 Public Enemy. Like, I wanted it to be political. And so I naively put out ads in all the local press saying, shredding guitar player seeks awesome Marxist front man. Influences, Run DMC, and Iron Maiden. I did not get a lot of replies to that. Not a lot of replies to that. So I had on my apartment in Normandy, I put a little thing outside the door with basically job applications to join my band.

Starting point is 00:25:18 My band that does not exist and that no one's heard me play a note of music, but somehow you're going to walk up these stairs in the apartment in Normandy, sit on the landing, and what are your contacts in the music industry? That went very, very, very, very poorly. Let's talk about the exotic dancing. I got one thing to say about that.

Starting point is 00:25:35 The rain ain't going to pay itself. So I have so many questions. You've got a bachelorette party. I've got a cassette tape of Brick House. So I know this show. I gave you this whole thing on Fearless. I just want to ask a thousand questions about this. So the first is, what was your stage name?

Starting point is 00:26:00 There was no stage name. It was a duo. It was a bachelorette party. Yeah, it was a duo. It was like we had like sort of a... It was a bachelorette party. It was a duo. Yeah, it was a duo. It was like me and another dude. We had like a routine. What were...

Starting point is 00:26:10 Do you have any like signature moves? They're lost to the, you know, the dusty annals of time. The burning mound of VHS tapes that you confiscated. There were signature moves. Like, you know, it was... You know, we would arrive in suits and, you know, with some lame excuse as to why we've barged in on this bachelorette party. Oh, excuse me. We thought this was the such and such. Shoe brick house. And then just off to the races.

Starting point is 00:26:32 When did you first hear Lockup? I was playing in some, I joined some bands just to be in bands that were not particularly good bands. But there was a band, a local band called Lockup. It was playing in a place called Al's Bar in downtown LA. It was a life-changing moment. I saw what then became my favorite local band. It was a band that combined elements of the Chili Peppers. And it was funky.

Starting point is 00:26:57 It was hard. But it was new. It was what alternative music would later become, but was bubbling around in the underground in Los Angeles. Later, I happened to be rehearsing in the same place as this band Lockup. They heard me playing through the walls. When they got rid of their guitar player, we connected, and I joined that band. And that band eventually got signed to Geffen Records,

Starting point is 00:27:15 which was my foot in the door to the record industry. When you guys got signed, what was the response? Well, I mean, it's the brass ring. It's the thing you've heard about. You think, you know, when you're in suburban Illinois, when you get a record deal, that you're a millionaire. Yeah. Exactly the opposite.

Starting point is 00:27:33 You know, if you were penniless before, now you're in debt and penniless to the record company. And every cliched, bad dicking that happens to artists happen to that band they you know they try to manipulate and change the band sound and make it more commercial uh money wise we're completely screwed over uh at the end of the day we had like a second guaranteed album that we're gonna you know we didn't make it on the first one but we're gonna we're gonna try this time they just we're going to drop the band right now, and you don't have the money to sue us, so too bad.

Starting point is 00:28:09 Wow. And that was that. And I thought, well, I tried. And I had my grab at the brass ring. It didn't work out. So that being the case, I'm just going to make music. I'm a musician. That's what I am.

Starting point is 00:28:22 I'm just going to make music that I believe in and not care about getting a record deal or any of that anymore. So Rage Against the Machine. Coming together with those band members, how did Zach come into the fray? Well, Zach and Tim have known each other since they were kids and grew up together.

Starting point is 00:28:36 And it was just sort of a fortunate combination of musical convergence. Brad and I played together for a while, then he went, he knew Eddie Vedder. He left to play with a fledgling version I played together for a while. Then he went, he knew Eddie better. He left to play with a fledgling version of Pearl Jam for a minute. So during that time I met Tim and Zach and Brad came back and finally we got in a room in August of 1991. I think it was the first time the four of us were in a room together.

Starting point is 00:28:57 How did you develop some of what we saw in the beginning? Were you already there or were you looking for inspiration? Yeah. A lot. I mean the, the, the left of center guitar playing that the, the barnyard animal noise stuff, while I had some of those arrows in my quiver, it really wasn't until Rage Against the Machine

Starting point is 00:29:15 when I was the DJ in the band. It was a band, we proudly put on the records all sounds made by guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, because there are a lot of sounds on those records that are not traditionally associated with guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, because there are a lot of sounds on those records that are not traditionally associated with guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. And I was very much influenced by Terminator X of Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad that produced those records, and by Jam Master Jay, and by Dr. Dre. And the sounds on those records, rather than practicing Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix licks, I would try to approximate the sounds that I heard on those records. And while I wasn't always able to get them exactly

Starting point is 00:29:49 right, it just put my mind in a completely different place and made me look at the instrument of guitar in a very different way. It's a relatively new instrument on the planet, and there's no reason to assume that it has predetermined limits based on the records in your collection. And it's just basically a piece of wood with some wires and a few electronics that makes sound, and you try to make sound in different ways and then make music out of that sound. That became, I started practicing in an entirely different way, and it helped form a sound that felt like it was authentic.

Starting point is 00:30:22 If you're challenging the boundaries of any genre, music, you're saying what came before is not all that there has to be. There can be something beyond that that is yet unimagined. If you do that in a musical context, you can also do that in a societal context. And so part of the exploring those sounds was not just because I like to hear a guitar

Starting point is 00:30:41 make a quacking noise, because it's trippy and fun to do, but also it really challenges the boundaries of what has come before on the instrument and perhaps leads to the idea that we can challenge boundaries beyond that music. When did you know it was working? Yeah. And then how did your experience with Lock Up change how you did this? Yes, yes. Well, I knew it was working. The first time we ever performed in front of

Starting point is 00:31:01 other humans was at a house party in huntington beach and i had been in a lot of bands and i had never seen i've been in a lot of bands and been in a lot of shows seeing a lot of bands i never saw an audience respond to music the way that people responded to rage against machine at the first show ever played it was like the parents were out of town that you know we knew five songs it was at a maybe a friend of Tim and Zach's living room in Huntington Beach. We played the first song we ever played in front of people, a song called Take the Power Back. And a pit started in the living room. They thrashed the living room, went ape shit for five songs.

Starting point is 00:31:37 Then we just played those same five songs again, and they went double ape shit. I never felt anything like it. And that's how it was from day one. I mean, the chemistry of that band was like that from day one and the reaction was like that from day one. Now, when it came to interacting with the evil music industry

Starting point is 00:31:59 that I'd been burned by, I think it was very helpful to have that experience because I knew what it was like. Having a record deal doesn't mean anything doesn't mean anything so there was nothing to hold over our heads they would call up you know record companies managers publishing company everybody would call up and say you know we'd like to take the band to lunch and say we're not interested unless you fax me over a document that says in every any transaction we ever have the band has 100 creative control

Starting point is 00:32:27 over what they do and veto power over anything that you do then we'll have lunch with you did you guys have a financial cushion or anything like that at that point i mean i had a futon cushion but I did not have a financial cushion. No, between us then, I think we had one job and two cars. Was there any disagreement in the group about how to take those calls or not take those meetings? I mean, we talked about that stuff. I had been through it before.

Starting point is 00:33:03 I was maybe a few years older. But the decisions were collaborative. We talked about that stuff. I had been through it before. I was maybe a few years older. But the decisions were collaborative. There is an excitement when heads of record companies come down and offer you the world. But we dampened down that excitement and took our time making the decision. When did you pull the trigger? Well, we met. There was a fellow by the name of Michael Goldstone who had signed Pearl Jam, who was Ascendant at the time.

Starting point is 00:33:29 And he saw us play, and he said something that no one else had said. People were wanting to sign the band, basically like a two-song cassette. And he came in and he said, I'm not sure I want to sign your band. I thought that was an interesting thing for someone to say. And that opened a discussion, and he was very interesting. He was the fifth Beatle for the beginning. He was a very important collaborative partner. Let's take a look, if we can. I just want to take a look at one of the videos we have

Starting point is 00:33:49 for Rage Against the Machine. Come with me now Come with me now I remember thinking at one point when I had seen footage of a number of performances and every time I saw it I remember thinking to myself, this is the only band where I'm wondering if the audience is going to tear the stadium auditorium to pieces. What was the magic there? What was the nerve that you struck? But if you had to speculate, I mean... I think that the shows were just so insane. Like, they were so incendiary.

Starting point is 00:35:08 And, like, Zach is a tremendous musician and lyricist, but as a front man, he's, like, the greatest. Like, he's like the punk rock James Brown. Like, he's the greatest as a lightning rod on stage. And there is a meaning to the band's music that transcends it being a great rock and roll band. The other transcends it being a great rock and roll band the other is it's a great rock and roll band like that's how like people like oh how do the politics like if you don't have that vehicle of it and it's this chemistry that naturally happens in the way

Starting point is 00:35:36 the four of us played together almost from the very first rehearsal certainly from the very first couple of shows to that which was i, I think, Woodstock 99, that it gives off an aggressive energy that allows this kind of, this feral release. There's something about music that is, you know, there was music before there was spoken language. And there's something in the, like, our reptilian brain that responds to a communal gathering with rhythm. And that's just something that's in from campfires and mammoths.

Starting point is 00:36:14 And when you get that combination of rhythm and a rhyming couplet and a gathering of the tribe like that, and you do it right, something like that happens. Were you nervous at all before 99 Woodstock? Before that actual concert? Yeah. No, I mean, that concert devolved over the course of time. I will give you a couple other instances, though, where there was a real barrier to, a fear barrier.

Starting point is 00:36:44 One was in the early 2000s i began doing uh playing acoustic songs under the moniker the night watchman uh and i would go to uh i began signing up at open mic nights under that name so i wouldn't sign up under tom morello because there'd be an expectation of playing bulls on parade um and i would play these you know dylan-esque woody guthrie-esque political folk songs. And at this point in my career, I had played in front of millions of people live, and I was terrified playing in front of eight people who weren't particularly listening to my songs anyway

Starting point is 00:37:15 with a latte machine grinding in the background. But would I remember the lyrics? Because I felt very vulnerable. When I'm on stage with Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave, if my guitar were to snap in half, the show would still be great. They're going to be fine. But when it's just you and your guitar and, you know, the intimacy of that moment, it was terrifying. And I, you know, through time learned to do that.

Starting point is 00:37:38 Let's pull up a video of Night Watchmen. Because I think it's a good contrast to what we've seen already. Yeah. I think it's a good contrast to what we've seen already. I gathered my thoughts With my head in my hands My next of kin My list of demands I slipped from shadow to shadow I saw things I should not see The moon rose high

Starting point is 00:38:34 Over the garden The garden Of Gethsemane So I wasn't worried about the audience tearing out seats and rioting in that. It's a very different, it's a very stark contrast. Before, say, a performance like that, or any performance for that matter, what are your rituals or routines preceding that to get yourself? Well, there's still a bit of a anxiety barrier.

Starting point is 00:39:15 And while all of my rock and roll work is done stone sober, there's a level of technique involved in that that I must be very, very present for. There's a lot of Jameson involved in the Night Watchmen performances, truth be told. Jameson therapy. I've heard about that. It's like Golden Crate. There's a bit of the anxiety about remembering lyrics and this, that, and the other that goes away when it sort of dampens down those voices. Enough liquid courage. You're going to forget the lyrics.

Starting point is 00:39:50 But those, I mean, I began doing that because, well, I love playing in rock bands. And rock bands allow a chemistry that no one person can put forward on their own. I like the purity of the solo singer-songwriter thing, too. And it's also, you can do it guerrilla style. i've played it you know hundreds dozens thousands of of protests and you know marches and you just need an acoustic guitar and a plane ticket or a bicycle or a ride over there i really like that kind of independence of spirit and i and i always was a fan of heavy music and when i discovered the early dylan the springsteen nebraska record the woody guthrie stuff, the Johnny Cash acoustic records, that it dawned on me that there's no heavier music than some of that. Like, you know, Metallica Black Album is super heavy, but, you know, Springsteen's Nebraska goes toe-to-toe with it, with no amplifiers in sight.

Starting point is 00:40:40 What led to the end of Rage Against the Machine? Well, Rage Against the Machine has had two lives. While it was a band that professed solidarity in our music, we were never able to manifest it, almost from day one, within our own ranks. And I wish that I could tell you the conflicts were political ones. They were, you know, you watch Spinal Tap, all the stuff. Every rock band, there's only four or five boxes to check. We had, you know, three of the four.

Starting point is 00:41:12 But, I mean, my contribution to it was like I was always super type A and had sort of the musical, the political, the record goal in mind and would sometimes turn a deaf ear to the feelings of my bandmates i've learned that lesson through the years that that's a very important you have to get that right first or none of the rest of it matters um and so in you know in 2000s i quit the band and we formed a band called audio slave and but rage reunited in 2007 played shows for a few years which was very nice to the question that i wanted to ask all night was how did you end up having a reunion with your father? Well, I basically met my father when I was 34 years old.

Starting point is 00:41:51 He had not had anything to do with our family growing up. And throughout my life, my mom had sent to the P.O. Box that they had in Nairobi in the early 60s, you know, updates on me. You know, like your son graduated from high school, your son went to college, your son got a record deal, this, that, and the other, and had never heard back, decades of not hearing back.

Starting point is 00:42:13 So we went to Kenya for the first time, my first time to Kenya. I was 34 years old, and my mom had written to my dad, who she hadn't heard from in decades, said, you know, please meet us at the airport. So we're flying, you know, into Nairobi. And my mom tells me, like, Mom, like, he could be dead 25 years and certainly doesn't have the same P.O. box as he did back then. She's like, oh, I'll bet he'll be there to meet us.

Starting point is 00:42:35 So we land. He's not there to meet us. But we arrive at the Hotel Intercontinental where there's a note from him. Sorry, I couldn't meet you at the airport. I'll pick you up for dinner tomorrow at eight, which was stunning. And I realized not only am I going to see my father for the first time in a very long time tomorrow, but that he had received all of that stuff through the years and had not commented on it. So we met and it was crazy because, you know, those of you who are blessed with having two parents you've seen them before and seen mine so you know i look a lot like some combination of the two of them uh and uh you know we went it went you know fairly well somewhat awkwardly but he had received he

Starting point is 00:43:17 commented on some of the music not the music so much but some of the lyrics and the music and um he had remarried and i had three half brothers who we were never allowed to meet and did not know that we existed. And that wasn't awesome. So, you know, we exchanged a few terse letters after that. And I thought, well, at least I got to meet my dad. And that's that. It turns out that one of my half brothers, unbeknownst to me, was attending Georgetown University. This is at a time when search engines were being discovered and whatnot. And he was a computer guy. And he put in his father's name to some developing search engine. And to his surprise, 100 articles referencing a man with his

Starting point is 00:43:59 father's name and a similar biographical background was referred to by a guy named Tom Morello, who was the guitar player of a band called Rage Against the Machine. And he, and it coincident, and serendipitously, it was the same week when Rage was on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. So he went to the newsstand

Starting point is 00:44:16 and saw a guy in that band that he just read about who looks more like his dad than he does. And he managed to find me, and we had an interesting discussion, and the toothpaste started to get out of the tube, and I began to meet my... It turns out there were a couple of first cousins

Starting point is 00:44:38 who were attending Pepperdine University, and so I met them. My brother, Sageni is his name, who discovered me, calls up our dad back in Kenya with a phone call my dad thought was never going to. Isn't that crazy? So this will give you some indication into how the Kenyan male would react to such things. So, Dad, what do you know about a guy named Tom Morello? And this is how my dad responds.

Starting point is 00:45:11 If he doesn't talk about it, it doesn't get talked about yeah and that's the end that's the end that's the end so um but you know my uh then girlfriend and now wife were very charming people and we were now friends with the family like the brothers have come they stay at our house everybody's great and we uh go to my brother's graduation at Georgetown. The attendees at the party will be myself, my fiancé, my brother, Sageni, our dad, and his wife, who doesn't know anything about anything that's going on. What could go wrong? So we're sitting at dinner, and my brother is taking great relish at each step of the way in the reveal. The reveal. And now the biggest reveal of all is about to happen.

Starting point is 00:45:52 And he announces. So he's like the illusionist. He's like, oh, wait. He announces at that dinner that, you know, that this is his brother. And at first, you know, people think that, oh, like your bro. He's like, no, my brother, like biological brother, like my dad's son brother. And at first, you know, people think that, oh, like your bro. He's like, no, my brother, like biological brother, like my dad's son, brother, mom. She couldn't have been more gracious given what must have been a pretty stressful dinner for her. And he maintained his silence throughout. It all turned around and he welcomed me to the family.

Starting point is 00:46:25 He apologized to my mom and thanked her for raising a good kid. And kind of opened the door to... What catalyzed that shift in him? I think it may have been the passing of his younger brother, who was an advocate. But then his older brother is the uncle who we know. And again, there's sort of a hierarchical. This was my uncle's 80th birthday. And he announced that his younger brother, my dad, would now introduce his family to everyone.

Starting point is 00:46:58 And I think he was just trapped then. But at the end of the day, he did the right thing. And he sat me down. He asked for my forgiveness and and he's since i've had kids he's very much in their life and they've they've melted him in a way that is really lovely he just had his 88th birthday now and he came to my wedding and stuff so it's been it's been really really lovely to connect with that side of the family that i never thought that i would have so we're gonna shift gears a little bit and go to audience questions. Sure.

Starting point is 00:47:26 If you weren't a guitar player, what would you do for a living? Well, my twin passions have always been music and politics. It would certainly not be something in conventional two-party politics, but I would probably be working as a community organizer or something like that. This next one's from Facebook. If you had to teach someone guitar in three months, what would the curriculum be? Yeah, I was a guitar teacher for a while during my semi-homeless days. And what I taught, the lesson that I learned,

Starting point is 00:47:59 when I took those bad guitar lessons where they wanted me to do the boring stuff, I applied that when teaching brand new guitar players. In the first guitar lesson with every student, regardless of their skill level, I would teach them to write a song. They would write a song in that first guitar lesson and try to smash that barrier between there's these mythical gods who make music and there's you who one day might hope to, you know, touch their shoes. Like, you're a songwriter today.

Starting point is 00:48:27 I'm going to teach you two chords. You decide what order they go in and how long you play each one. Boom, you've written a song. You and the Beatles now are both songwriters, you know? And there's a, I would see in them this, like, holy crap, like, I can write something. Tomorrow you might write another one. And that's what I'd give them as their homework. Like, you write another one for next time.

Starting point is 00:48:45 And then you're going to have a catalog of six songs in the first three weeks of your playing guitar. And we can work on the other stuff along the way, but it's called playing guitar. And that sort of enthusiasm comes from early successes. What are the biggest wastes of time that you see novices making yeah like diligent ones yeah yeah uh what are the wrong things to focus on it depends on what you want to do and who you want to be

Starting point is 00:49:11 because there's there's a uh i believe there's a clear delineation between musicians and artists and if you like i said when you start playing guitar what you want to do is you want to sound like so you're trying to be a musician i'm i Angus Young. I want to play Angus Young songs. At some point, are you going to go beyond? You have to make a determination. And many people are delighted and content to be able to learn and play their favorite songs and jam along with the radio. But if you have a vision that goes beyond, you know, aping the technique of your favorites, then you have to take a different step. And that is a step into risk and a step into the unknown to say, this is what has come

Starting point is 00:49:52 before. Now I'm going to write my own songs. I'm going to take a risk that people are going to hate those songs. And I'm going to take a risk of putting myself out there. It's not like, hey, check it out. I can play Van Halen. It's like, hey, check it out. I wrote this song that includes my Van Halen influence and this that and the other and here it is and

Starting point is 00:50:10 that's the only way that you know art grows and it's as an artist that's the only way to grow what would you say i guess maybe that's the answer but the follow-up to that would be if if you're say teaching a ninth grader or tenth grader really talented and they're like i want to be a creator i want to be an artist and they get up there and they just bomb yeah yeah crickets maybe booing everyone yeah right so you're not alone what would you tell them before or after yeah well i tell them first of all you you're bombing with one thing you have in common is with everyone i'd say name the five artists who you love the most, and I would ensure them that all of them have bombed as bad or worse as they just did then.

Starting point is 00:50:50 And then it's a matter of sort of, what did you learn from this? And, you know, maybe there's a lot of like, you know, basement, you know, music heroes. You have to play with other people. That helps you in a way. You have to play in front of other people. That helps you in ways. And that you do that over time and you will amass a, you'll, you will have the opportunity to discover who you are as a musician and or as an artist. What books, if any, have you gifted the most to other people? I, well, certainly the one book that I've gifted the most in my life was a book that I first wrote when I was 15 and I reread it almost yearly.'s a book called watership down uh and watership down and uh it's uh you know i've read books that have been you know more serious political tomes in my time but the heroism courage and friendship

Starting point is 00:51:39 exhibited in that book among a number of rabbits it it's about rabbits, but it's about much more than that, is, and it's, it is the single most breathtakingly exciting book that I've ever read as well. Watership Down. Watership Down. Richard Adams, a strong endorsement for that book right there. Do you have a quote or quotes that you live your life by or think of often? It's very interesting questions. Give me a minute. And we can come back to it. Sure. No, no, no.

Starting point is 00:52:08 I'm going to have something for you. There is a quote from, written by Joe Strummer of The Clash. I cut this, I wrote this down and put it on my refrigerator as a, you know, as a youth. It says, are you taking over or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards or are

Starting point is 00:52:30 you going forwards? And I would look at that in my refrigerator and I would try to answer those four questions for myself every day. That is good. That's really good. What purchase of $100 or less, and this is all rough, in recent memory has most positively impacted your life? In recent memory? Well, I can tell you one purchase was for $40 Canadian dollars. I'm not sure what the exchange rate is. But I bought a guitar off a pawn shop wall in Toronto years ago in the early 90s. I just liked the look of it.

Starting point is 00:53:10 It wasn't, I don't think it's made of plywood. It's not even really made of wood. And that was the only guitar I used on a song called Tire Me on the Rage Against the Machine Evil Empire record, which was the band's first Grammy. That was $40 Canadian dollars well spent. All right. Empire record, which was the band's first Grammy. That was $40 Canadian dollars well spent. Can you tell us about Prophets of Rage?

Starting point is 00:53:31 Prophets of Rage is the band that I am in now. It consists of Be Real from Cypress Hill, Chuck D and DJ Lord from Public Enemy, and Timmy C and Brad Wilk from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. And it's a band that was formed in the tumult of the 2016 election.

Starting point is 00:53:53 It's a band that will continue into the future. The two things that we can be certain of is that, you know, looking forward, is that there will be injustices in the world. We can also be certain there will be resistance to those injustices. And that resistance needs a soundtrack. And it will be provided by prophets of grace. Should we pull up the video? Sure. Sampai jumpa di video selanjutnya. Keep going! When it bites, I hold the bite, the bite. When it falls, I keep my way up high.

Starting point is 00:54:56 And I keep it. You're the man. I'll take the man that I'm holding. Dangerous times demand dangerous songs and when we formed this band uh that was our first ever public performance which was a free show for the homeless people on skid row uh we uh it was the we wanted this band to from you know from the onset to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk. Uh, our first three of our first eight shows, any show, which we charged a dollar for all of them went to local homeless charities in the cities that we were in and, and the shows and the shows that were free shows were on Skid Row and we're at Norco, um, penitentiary in

Starting point is 00:55:41 Southern California. Um, and at the protests outside of the RNC. So it was like, it's a band we wanted. It's from day one, we wanted it to, you know, like live it like we were going to play it. And so that's a very exciting band to be in. If you had a huge billboard, you could put a few words, short message on it for the world to see.

Starting point is 00:56:02 What would you put? A few words. Yeah, short, Just a short message. People are driving, texting, being idiots. Whoop, there it is. We can work with that. Or the Chicago Cubs are the 2016 world champions. I think there are a lot of artists out there,

Starting point is 00:56:24 creators who want to impact the world. And maybe they're intimidated. Maybe they don't think they can. What would you say to those people? All they have to do is take a glance at history. And the first thing to do is ask yourself, you're saying artists exclusively? Has any art ever affected you?

Starting point is 00:56:45 Right. You know, that's the first question. And I know for me, it was bands like public enemy in the clash that they didn't, they didn't necessarily change my mind about things, but they made me, they connected me to a bigger world than the one of Libertyville, Illinois made me think, oh, there's other people that see things the way that I do. They're not my teachers. They're not my, they're not the governor of my state, but they're musicians who, and they have an audience. And when I go to see their show, all of a sudden there's a community that's beyond my suburb or my job at the Dairy Queen or wherever. And so I would say that anytime you broadcast your soul artistically, Be careful because somebody may be listening

Starting point is 00:57:25 and that you can make a connection that you wouldn't otherwise. Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Morello. Thank you very much. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me

Starting point is 00:57:43 every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off

Starting point is 00:58:31 for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #591: Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine Fame — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss

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