Tom Morello

28:23Where was that coming from? Because it's very interesting. It's like it doesn't, as you know, it doesn't sound like anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like an amalgamation. Yeah, it's, I mean, it comes from someone who loves Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, you know and deep purple and funk music you know and like run dmc is one of my favorite bands and and the idea that that there's a world where like if it's like i had nothing to lose i had failed it was the failure that opened the door to finding myself as an artist with a capital a you know and then with the chemistry of that band rage against machine and everybody else's spectacular contributions to it you know that band connected in a way that no a and r person or no manager could have ever could have predicted or guided you towards.

29:08It guided you towards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a very, very natural, you know, that band arrived fully formed. I imagine by that point you had enough also understanding of yourself to not listen to advice. Oh, no, understanding of myself and of the music industry. You know, like when you, I was very, very clear. So two quick stories about the origin story. So the first person that ever heard Rage Against the Machine, right, I remember this guy. So we're rehearsing deep in the valley where a lot of great rock's been made through the years and sort of in this industrial complex this dude who works down the way walks by all the time one day he says like what are you guys doing in there like we're a band he's like can i hear it i'm like i don't see why not so we have about like five songs at the time so dude comes in and he sits down and plays and we play him you know four or five songs and you know somewhat nervously and we have him sort of in the lab here and now someone is hearing it and so like what do you think and he takes his time he stands up he looks me in the eye and he says your music makes me want to fight like is that good yeah it's a great endorsement well something's happening no one ever said that about lockup nobody ever said that about lockup yeah who was the second person here oh okay so the second so the first time it like it arrived anywhere in the world was in huntington beach uh timmy's some friends of his like their parents were out of town so booked a gig in the living room somebody's house like they pushed the armoire over to the side right and uh we knew five songs at the time so the first song we ever played in front of an audience was the fledgling version of take the power back and and there was a lot of nervous energy we started the song probably like two and a half times faster than it was supposed to be because we were all hyped up and then when the beat dropped on this is a band no one has ever heard except for one dude in the in the valley and when the beat dropped there was a huge pit in the living room instantly instantly people are like toppling chairs and like leaping over the bar and i had never felt anything like i had been you know i'd seen like jane's addiction at their at the peak of that and and it felt like from day one this is not a band that people like this is not a band that people love this is a band that people believe in and it felt like that from one of the first drop of the first song so we played our five songs and there was you know the neighbors were called like the window the window there's people plastered on the window like like hooting and hollering and so we play the same five songs again wow you just ran it back it's incredible it's funny the first time you play with rage against the machines in orange county the first time you play with bruce springsteen's orange county yeah yeah yeah orange county needs a didn't have a dad's but was it weird to be because you get dropped in 1990 from geffen yeah and then 1991 nirvana blows up yeah that must have been a strange yeah yeah I remember they were signed to Geffen when we were there.

31:56And I remember the like the assistants going crazy over this band and this guy, Kurt Cobain, who I didn't know. We didn't know what was about to happen. But I remember there was a lot of bubblings about like how great this this thing was. But Lock Up might have been a band that was a little bit ahead of its head with the lead singer was personally out, but publicly closeted gay man. Right. And that was a it was always an issue. Like, don't let on because, you know, you trying to be a rock star and that's just an unacceptable. So it was a band and he was Brian Grillo's his name and he was a real talent to someone who was very much ahead of his time.

32:28And part of that, you know, because when I when I moved out here, I wanted to just join a metal band. That felt like the thing that I knew how to do. Because you came out here in the mid 80s. Yeah. And I could and I could shred my ass off. But I was but I was shocked and surprised to find that the music that was popular was not shredding metal bands. It was like Faster Pussycat. And it was those kind of like explain the distinction. Trash. Yeah. So I came out here thinking there's going to be a Steve Vai in every corner, and that's going to be my competition. I'm going to be, I have, I had all those chops together, and I'm ready to enter the guitar slinger sweepstakes.

33:02And I, you know, I didn't have$12, but I spent$12. I read there was a band called Faster Pussycat playing the troubadour, and the place was lying around the block. I'm like, oh, this is going to be the greatest musicians. This is the place where great musicians get careers, and they're loved. and I mean they have a style of music that is not dependent on great musicianship that's how I'll frame it um and they you know they had like a vibe and the women went crazy for them and and they had cheekbones and I thought I can't do that like if that's what you have to be I don't there's nothing in me that can be that and I saw other bands there was a man called Jet Boy I said Guns and Roses at that time you know where the and they had like a thing that was an image that was you you know, Guns N' Roses is certainly authentic.

33:49Some of the other bands maybe put on a cape. I'm like, this might have been a mistake. Like, I thought moving to Hollywood, I was going to be rewarded for my ability to play kick-ass guitar. And no one wanted to have anything to do with me. One, I answered an ad for like some metal band that, you know, like wanted lead guitar player and had a pretty good conversation with the bass player. Says, come on down, we'll jam. I hang up, manager calls back. He's like, yeah, you were talking to Johnny there. You got to talk to me. So how long is your hair? I'm like, well, it's a time I had like a Lionel Richie black man's mullet, little mini Jerry Crow mullet.

34:24Tony McAlpine. I'm thinking Tony McAlpine. I was aiming for Tony McAlpine. I'm glad that you know Tony McAlpine. I've got that reference. He was the model. It had not grown that long yet. But he's like, no, we really look, a particular image we're looking for. I'm like, you haven't heard me play a single note. I might stink, but I might be the best guitar player you've ever heard to be in your band. He's like, no, no, I know what we're looking for, and that's just not it. And he said, would you be willing to wear a wig? I'm like, let's not have the wig discussion before we see if I can play an A chord.

34:53And I never auditioned for that. And then it was one night, it was actually, it was Adam Jones, who, you know, now in Tool, former Electric Sheep alumni. He was in town. I was working for Senator Alan Cranston at the time as his scheduling secretary, which is a part of my very rich resume. And he dragged me out of bed to go to Al's Bar because he wanted to meet some people there. Alice Bar was like a real left to center punk rock place where your car stereo is going to get stolen. You know, you got to pay a dude$20 to watch your car stereo. I don't have$20. I don't want my damage. You've got me over a barrel.

35:28So we went down there and there was a band called Lock Up playing that night. And it was like, this is a different scene here. And they were really, you know, they were like raw. It was somewhere between Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction. That was the vibe. Yeah, that was. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't know those bands existed. And then I discovered Jane's Addiction. I'm like, oh, hold on. There's a fishbone. There's like a different side of town. Like the people who were in that scene became my friends. Welcomed me readily. I eventually did join lockup. They didn't care what color my skin was. They didn't care how long my hair was.

35:55There's just like a, you know, Jennifer Finch, who recently passed from L7. She was in that scene. She was one of the most one of the first and most welcoming people. She didn't have to be one of the coolest people on the planet. I'm just a friggin brown skin hillbilly from Illinois. And she was could not have been more warm and welcoming. And that's what I found on that side of town and in that scene was was like love and open heartedness. Geographically, how far? Yeah. So it was it was kind of east and west. So the Sunset Strip up to probably La Cienega was was you go as far as like Crescent Heights with a coconut teaser, which was there.

36:29That was kind of the spandex scene, the fresh and salt water mixed, maybe at the coconut teaser there, where both Nirvana and G &R played and Rage later. And then east of that was like the Jane's Addiction world of arts for art's sake. And it was what would become alternative music or the Lollapalooza Nation was bubbling under there. And that's where I found a welcoming nest. That's fascinating. I imagine you've met Slash, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you talked about how did how did he manage as a black guy? I don't know. I think that he and I he and I have a very, very there's something we have in common is that maybe somewhat less so for him.

37:08But for me, I have changed color over time. When I grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, I literally integrated the town, according to the real estate agent. One black person lives in the town. It's me. Got a white mom and there's one kid. And every single day I was reminded that I was black. My hair was different. People want to touch your hair. They want to see, you know, like your palms are a different color in the back. There's a lot of like, you know, anthropological study of this guy. Like you're not geo great. Of this guy, yeah. You know, there's a noose in my family's garage at one point.

37:41And, you know, I was black. And there was no doubt to anyone until I was black. Cut to years later, I'm in a band whose music appears on radio stations that don't traditionally play black artists. Or rock and roll magazines that never feature black artists. My vernacular in interviews is not stereotypically urban. And there is a sizable portion. There are people listening to this right now. Like, what's he about to say? There's a sizable portion of people been my audience through the decades that are when I talk about being African-American are stunned and refuse to believe it. Yeah. Like there's a cognitive dissonance like, no, no, Tom Roll's not black.

38:18Yeah. Like, well, there was the Klan must have been mistaken at Liberty. But it's very like I've changed. I wonder if because people don't Guns N' Roses fans don't know that Slash is black. They don't. They don't know. They don't know. They don't know. They don't know. Rage Against the Machine fans don't know that Tom Morello is black. that is one of the things you and bruce also have in common is people perpetually discover yes yeah yeah discover to their chagrin discovering like every year there's a fresh wave of people yeah no no bruce springsteen is not wait couldn't the name of wasn't in support of the clan yeah yeah yeah i thought they were yeah yeah yeah but it is i think it's it's just fascinating it's an interesting commentary on race in the united states of how like i'm the same shade I was when I was in Libertyville and yet completely different groups, you know, view me in completely different ways.

39:11In different ways. Yeah. It's a Rorschach test. Yeah. Yeah. Skin color. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the country. I remember there was one little story about it. So I went to go see some metal band play at former Universal Amphitheater and Warren D. Martini is a guitar player and a good friend of mine. Lovely, lovely fella. There was some like metal guitar player who's a fan of Rage Against the Machine. And and so I'm just sitting there. I'm sitting there with my wife and backstage and I see Warren and he told me that this guy wanted to meet me. And so he's, you know, I see them at the doorway and he sort of points this way and gestures over and the dude comes over and talks to the dude behind me who looks like a metal dude, who looks like sort of a Zach Wilde kind of guy.

39:49And then the guy goes, I'm not Tom Morello. That's Tom Morello. And the look of disappointment on his face was totally like, that can't be Tom Morello. That cannot possibly be the guy that makes the guitar sound like that. I don't mind it, though. You don't mind it? I don't mind it at all. I don't mind it. I'm very comfortable in my nerd skin, my black skin, my whatever. I'm comfortable in all of it. I know your grandfather was a Mao Mao Kenyan rebel. Well, my great uncle was Jomo Kenyatta, who was Kenya's first president and the leader of the anti-colonial movement. A fascinating character in history.

40:24Yeah, yeah. And your mom's a political activist. A lifelong, yeah. She just passed at 102 years old and I appreciate that, but she lived a humble yet powerful and purposeful life yeah but so so i imagine you were steeped in in radical politics from from a young age meeting zach though i was curious how aware of like the latino political culture in la you were before you had met zach and i'd say not so much yeah not so much you know not so much and and you know that band benefited so greatly from his passion, his insightful and just spectacular lyrical catalog and his insight and his fire. Yeah.

41:03Yeah. Was it like a learning? Was it what did you did it was like it must have been a crash course in some way of I don't know. I think I mean, all bands, what makes a band when a band is great, what makes a band great is chemistry. Everybody brings their own experience, you know, their experience with injustice and racism, this, that and the other, their degree of kind of street knowledge and book learning and their degree of like where the snare lands is just as important to the political message as any of the rest of it you know what i mean and and that band had such a potent four-person chemistry that it allowed uh the the ideas and the great lyrics of zach diller rocha to connect on a global scale yeah so the new album you put out yeah the journey from street sweeper social club with boots riley you know uh first of This is the first release you put out.

41:49This is the first Tom Morello solo rock album. This is my 22nd album of my career between Rage, Audio Slave, Prophets of Rage, Street Sweeper Social Club, the Acoustic Night Watchman records, Atlas Underground records. This is the first record. And it actually came from over the course of the last five or six years. I've been touring with my backup band, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra. And in the past, I had kind of compartmentalized my like, this is a Prophets of Rage tour. And this is a Tom Morello solo acoustic tour. And I've been embracing the totality of those 21 records and the playing those rage against the machine riffs for a world that's never needed it more.

42:26You know, it's in the DNA of the hopeful and the hopeless, you know, and needs and needs to be played. keeping Chris Cornell's memory alive, playing like the Audioslave songs and feeling his spirit in the room of someone I miss every day, not eschewing the folk music that I love and which was the reason why I am a solo artist playing. You know, when I was on tour with Audioslave playing arenas on days off, I'd play coffee houses. And, you know, it's the same passion and intent as anything else I've ever done. And I wanted to make a record that was going to stand toe-to-toe riff-wise, stand toe-to-toe ideologically with the best of my work.

43:05And it was getting to that point was a bit of a challenge, you know, because like I know how to make a folk record now and I know how to make a band record, you know, but to make a Tom Morello solo record and finding like sort of the right producing partners and leaning very, very heavily on my secret weapon on this record, which is my 15 year old son, Roman Morello, who is a monster. And, um, you know, he began playing in the pandemic and he can play circles around me now. Did you help teach him? Yeah. Well, I tricked him into it is how I got him to begin. Cause you know, we, you know, kids don't want to do what you're doing, but there's always instruments around his introduction, both my kids introduction.

43:40Like I, they didn't know what I did for a living. They, I never played one note of rage against the machine or audio slave for them ever growing up. Not once. I want to be their dad. I want to be their little league dad. I don't want to be like, oh here's my record check out my billion streamer i've never mentioned it like i'm just they're like oh that's the guy he's very friendly and he sleeps late that's that guy um so the first time that they were kind of introduced to it was when rage was rehearsing for the 2022 tour and you know my wife was out doing something and we had a 10 p.m rehearsal and i couldn't leave them home alone because they'd burn the house down like you guys got to come to rehearse and they're moaning like what's that and they're how old at this time so this is 22 so they're 15 16 now so they're like what like 11 and 12 something like 11 and 12 and they've never heard rage against the machine before so their introduction to rage against machines they come to rehearsal and we just play the set you know and i see them and they're sort of wandering around and you know impossible to read so on the ride home very cautiously ask like uh so what'd you think about you know what you just saw on her and my my older son goes timmy sees tattoos are awesome that was like the first that was the first they're like like like kind of superhero awesome and then and then the next comment was like brad wilk's a really good drummer i'm like yeah he is he's a really good drummer and then the third comment was like zach raps like yeah he raps he raps really good and they're like they didn't mention my guitar playing at all but but But I began hearing Rage coming out of their rooms, you know, and I began hearing like some audio slave come out of their rooms and I think they started poking around at what dad does for a living.

45:19And then they, you know, we played 19 shows on that tour and they came to all 19 shows and got to, you know, sort of feel it's at its, you know, in full flower. Did they know Tim at that point and Brad? Like, exactly. Had they been barbecues and stuff like that? Yeah, but like that's, didn't see him, you know, fully like doing it. Yeah. But how I tricked my son Roman into becoming a shredding all-star guitar player during pandemic times. And, you know, the kids were on, it was terrible. Kids are on Zoom school and playing Fortnite. And I said, he likes Led Zeppelin. So, like, give me five minutes of your time and I'll teach you the first three notes of Stairway to Heaven.

46:00And he sort of thinks about that and he says, I'll give you four minutes. Like, okay, I'll take it. So in four minutes, I could teach anybody in this room the first three notes of Stairway to Heaven, right? And then I go back to your fortnight or whatever. The next day I'm like, give me four more minutes. We'll learn the next three notes. He's like, okay. Like that was sort of fun yesterday. So now he knows the first six notes. If you could at least hum them in your mind, what the first six notes of Stairway to Heaven are. It's like an iconic hook. And in eight minutes, you too can learn to play the first six notes.

46:27And then the next day he asked me, he said, can we learn the next three notes? And it was sort of building on those successes. And then he made his way all the way through the song. and he was like, you know, I want to learn the solo. I'm like, okay, great. And then once he got the solo down, all of a sudden, you know, he had a, I felt a pride. You feel like, oh, hold on. There's a musician in me that is unlocking itself right now. How long did it take to work through? That is insane. We had a long, we were there, we were a lot, we had the two grandmas at the house. We didn't do anything. We had it all day, every day.

47:02That's insane because I mean, pretty quickly after like the, after the ninth note it gets a little more complicated but it's the lesson that I learned when I took those two terrible guitar lessons that made me not want to play music it's called playing music, not working music like what do you want to do, what makes it fun what makes you want to come back to it even if it's for four minutes and it's that success I loved being in the electric sheep I didn't know how to play a note but I liked the idea We wrote a song like we'd just be making a bunch of scribble scrab, but it was a song like, OK, it's fun.

47:38I'm playing music, you know, and that's what hooked him. And, you know, now he's already got his 10 ,000 hours in, which is crazy. So what was the syllabus after that? Syllabus, the next one, the next one he wanted to learn was Crazy Train. You know, I want to learn Crazy Train. So the riff in that is very doable. The solo super hard, but he had been able to do the Starway to Heaven solo. So this is one he want to tackle. And also, you know, I did leverage some rock power to try to encourage him further. When he had mastered the Stairway to Heaven solo, I filmed him playing it and sent it to Jimmy Page, who then sent back a positive reinforcement for that, and that I think was helpful.

48:17What do you do with that? They're friends now. What do you do with that? I like friends now. You got Jimmy Page's number? I got Jimmy Page's number, too. And you talk? Sometimes we have dinner. What does he do? He needs to play. what is he doing he's i i think that he's you know he's a sort of an english gentleman right now you know he's in the same castle he's been in since i think the 70s you know and can you nerd out with him and like ask yeah yeah he's the he's so easy he's so like yeah you will and i do and i and i warned roman you know we have dinner i'm like you can ask them he's really going to answer any question you want like so on you know achilles last stand how many guitars are stacked in the pre-chorus and he knows a lot of that you know he's pretty he's in the sessions like all the time.

48:57Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's always remastering and doing stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway. They're the greatest. They're the greatest. They're the greatest. And to see, and to sort of see a young person who, you know, is immersed in a world of hip hop and pop music and, you know, they love Lucky and they love, you know, Lil Yachty and they love that. And then to discover Houses of the Holy and No Quarter. And the lesson in that is like great music is great music. Yeah. You know, and sometimes it's marketed to, it's not marketed to a generation in a way that it was marketed to another generation. It doesn't make it any less great.

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52:16See what Optum's up to at Optum.com. So let's talk about this record a little bit more. So Everyone Gets Everything They Want is the album. September 25th it comes out. And it's a State of the Union address. This is a record for people who have had enough. These are anti-racist songs for anti-racists. These are anti-fascist songs for anti-fascists. And the single that's currently out now, which is called Date Night, which is about three Dutch teenage girls in World War II who lured Nazis into the woods and killed them. It's anti-Nazi songs for anti-Nazis. And surprisingly, that is a controversial position in 2026.

52:52You get a lot of pushback on that. And it's, you know, when you're opposed to anti-racist songs and anti-fascist songs, anti-Nazi songs, it's not hard to do the math. Yeah, it's about a revisionist history these days on everything, including World War II, which you thought sort of would be... We thought that would sell. I thought that was done. I thought it was gone. Nope. That was gospel. I thought we made the whole story. Yeah. That's why I think it's important. Like, that's why, the reason why I chose this particular song is like, it's celebrating these war heroes. These, Hanny Schaft was 14 years old when she became a guerrilla partisan who was offing Nazis.

53:27And that's a hero. That's a hero. And, but you say that in 2026 and you'll get some pushback about that, which is just kind of crazy to me. It's insane. Crazy. I love the track too with Surge. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Adjourn it. Yes. Serge Tankin, longtime friend and comrade. He's he came through and we wrote that in the height of the immigrant purges in Los Angeles where, you know, we're going downtown every weekend to protest and watching all the stores close and our neighbors terrified and black vans cruising the neighborhoods. And we're like, we got to do what we can with what we got, you know, and Serge can always be counted on.

54:06How did you collaborate with him? Was it? Yeah, that one, I think that he was out, I basically said it was a Roman Morello riff, which is the hot riff in that one. That's your son's riff? Yeah, that's his riff in that one. His riff in Date Night 2. And sent it to Serge and said, this is three of us in L.A., me, you and Roman, we see what's happening every day. What do you think about that? And he sent back that huge, spectacular, tankian hook. He just had that? Yeah, he just sent it back within 36 hours, sent that back, and then produced the song up around that. But Serge is great. and excited to have.

54:38He's playing the Power of the People show too in D.C. He's always there for me. It's also what feels to me, unless I'm wrong, you can correct me if I'm wrong, it feels like the first time you're singing in your Barrett's. Yeah, well, I mean, on the Nightwatch, there's probably like six Americana records where I sing, but this is the first time where I'm doing it with Marshall Stacks in the background, you know? And also your octave is like you're lower. You're singing lower, right? I've got that Leonard Cohen thing, if you want to hear, or Barry White, depending on where. There's not a lot of singers that sing in that ring.

55:09There's not a lot of singers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, the thing is, the only thing that matters to me in the records that I make is authenticity. That's how I sing. I wish I could sing like Robert Plant. That's not a thing. But I mean, Leonard Cohen, some of my favorite singers, whether it's Paul Robeson or Leonard Cohen, have a register that has a certain amount of gravity to it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it just feels like you're sitting, sitting in your voice different on this. I don't know if that's because it's a Tom record. It's a it's figuring out how because I've been singing in front of a rock band for years now, maybe since 2011 with the Freedom Fighter Orchestra, been playing, you know, electric guitars, but making a record that if this record feels to me like a discovery of a new era, it feels to me like the first Rage record.

55:58It feels to me like the first Audioslave record feels like the first Night Watchman record where it's like this is an artistic chapter that is beginning in a way that is so exciting. Like I haven't listened. I don't listen to a lot of my own music. And this record, I love I just love listening to them. Like this feels like it's so exactly what I want to say. It's exactly what I want to play. If you're dropping the needle on a Tom Morello solo rock record, there's some expectation. And that expectation like you better kick my ass. So I wanted to make sure that I was loaded, riff loaded, like never before.

56:30And it's riff loaded. It's absolutely riff loaded. But also, you know, like the one goalpost is maybe like the heaviest riffs of the rage audio slave world. And then the other goalpost is my love of like the Springsteen darkness on the edge of town stuff and the storytelling and the, you know, there's a piano song on it, you know, and the sort of maybe almost a Pink Floyd element to it. And there's a narrative arc to it that spent a lot of time crafting. How many songs in did you start to realize you were on? Like, when did you realize you were kind of finding your own? That's a good question, yeah, because I was really, this was a record that I had to fight for.

57:04Some records arrive, and some records you fight for. And this, I had some great riffs, and I had some lyrical ideas, and I would record songs in different capacities and go like, that's not a song I want to play around the world the next two years, you know? And next, I got a basket of those that are just like done, done, done. And the first song that I went, okay, hold on, the soldier in the army of love was a song i wrote with roman and i thought this is a song i can open my shows with for the next 10 years and we've been open and it's to great effect and like it's a mission statement so i'm like okay what's the fifth song on the album that's why yeah like that's one in the hamper that's one in the hamper right there okay that's one the hamper then you know like cut to date night like this is a story literally i dragged that story around to hollywood studios of these three girls.

57:50Like, this is a spectacular movie. It's a spectacular TV. It's real. You pitched it. Pitched it. No one wanted to have anything to do with it. And I'm like, it's a story just... Who'd you pitch it to? Every production company. It's just I'm passionate about that idea of teenage girls killing Nazis. Amazing. And in this particular time, and I just thought, well, you know what? I'm going to tell the story myself. I'm going to tell the story myself. And the reaction that it's had in the Netherlands has been pretty crazy. Like the children of those women are alive and sort of aware of the song and have commented on it in great detail, which is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

58:26They can't believe it. And I'm like, well, you know, it's like they're known in the Netherlands and somewhat less so everywhere else until hopefully now. Yeah. And so then, like I started, you know, a chalkboard of, OK, we've got we've got Soldier Army Love. We've got Date Night, the song that opens the record, Beth from Electronics. You know, that one was, I just was, we were recording something else and I just was jamming. And that's just an improvised one take of that hot riff right there. And I asked the engineers, like, did you record that? Please tell me you recorded. He's like, I got it.

58:56I'm like, we're going to start the record with that. And the idea is to come in with like the heaviest, that might be the heaviest riff in my entire catalog to start the record. And who's Beth from Electronics? Beth from Electronics. Beth is a real person. about five or six years ago, there was a great viral YouTube clip of a Walmart employee quitting her job. She films herself getting on the PA at the Walmart, calling out her boss, calling out like the molester supervisor, calling out the horrible capitalist practices of Walmart, giving shout outs to some of her fellow workers who don't deserve to be treated that way.

59:32Says, fuck this job, I quit. Beth from electronics. I want to make an album that has that kind of energy. We started off with Beth. That's fucking great. That's great. Yeah, she starts off saying, this is Beth from Electronics. Attention Walmart shoppers, this is Beth from Electronics. And are you going out on the road with the same people you put the record together with? Yeah, we've got it dialed in now. Roman's been in my band the last three years, and so we have to massage a lot of touring around his school schedule, but um we've been out the last three summers and you know the rest of the year there's a few the couple festival shows and then the big power of the people show which we should probably talk about as well so october 3rd is establishing a new festival called power of the people outside of dc the meriwether pavilion in maryland and it's uh foo fighters bruce springsteen dave matthews public enemy joan baez cypress hill jack black uh myself the linda lindas dropkick murphys The idea is to have a festival show that is branded around saving democracy, protecting voting rights, smiting the fascists, and having a day of celebration of rock and roll and hip hop.

1:00:43Yeah, amazing. And a great place to do it. It harkens back to the 80s. Yeah, exactly. Incredible. Exactly. That's the idea. Power of the people. A couple different drummers, a couple different bass players on this record, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you going to, is that like? Yeah, the Freedom Fighter Orchestra has a slightly shifting cast, but it's sort of the same relative, been relatively steady. And, you know, we bring it out and it's been so great to like this summer. We played almost a million people in Europe, you know, and to be able to do that at this age and to, you know, tackle those, whether it's those the big French metal festivals or whether it's the more indie alt stuff or you play it like we did play this.

1:01:26I forget the name of the famous German anti-fascist punk club. Like, I've never been happier playing live music, you know, and never been, never felt better about making music. It's like, this is the difference between one of the differences between being in a band, being a solo artist. When you're in a band, you get all the pros and cons of chemistry. And when a band is great, it's because the chemistry is great. You cannot do that alone. You can't. As a solo artist, you get purity. You get a purity of vision and you get something that is unfiltered by outside. You know, two great examples, like sort of a Springsteen and Led Zeppelin, which we've talked about today.

1:02:00One is an example of band chemistry. One is an example of artistic purity. And each of those can be very powerful. I've had the great good fortune in my career to be able to do a lot of both. Did you play this record for Bruce at all? No, I played him just one, the last track, They Can't Kill Us All, which is very, in Springsteen, sort of, darkness on edge of town. I love on your lap. You called it a dark beauty. You called it a dark beauty. Yeah, which is nice. It's a pretty good, pretty good pull quote. How did you pull him into it? because you got him to do Highway to Hell on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:02:27I was meant to ask you, how did you get pulled? Okay, so the Highway to Hell, so Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, and I did Highway to Hell on my Atlas Underground Fire record. And this was one of the most fortuitous, we were, I was on tour with Bruce in Australia. We're playing the soccer stadium in Melbourne. Eddie Vedder happens to be in town that day doing a solo show the day before after. So he's coming down on the show. We had been working up Highway to Hell ever since we were in Perth, the home of Bon Scott. and it was my suggestion I came back from Bon Scott's grave, sat down and saw Bruce in the bar, I'm like, do you think there's any overlap of the East, I said it very sort of tentatively, is there any overlap between the East Street Band and ACDC he said, I'll think about that so he went upstairs, thought about it, we began rehearsing Highway to Hell, so we had like a pretty decent version of it, so we're in Melbourne and I, you know, had been texted with Eddie on news coming down the show and I said, oh my gosh like, I called John Landau Bruce's manager, I said, I got an ID and I tell him the ID and he's like, you gotta tell Bruce that ID yourself.

1:03:24I'm like, why? Because you're afraid to? Or what am I going to get in trouble? So I go in there and knock on the door. I was like, so we're in Australia where ACDC owns it. Highway to Hell is the national anthem of Australia. How about we open the show with Highway to Hell with Eddie Vedder. And he had that same look that you just had on your face right there. It's like, that sounds like a pretty good idea. So we open the show and it's a peak moment. I mean, there's moments like this that only mountain climbers and bull fighters get, you know, where you're just, like, it's a peak human moment for everybody in the room.

1:03:56So cut to pandemic time. Everybody's miserable. I just called those dudes up and said, why don't we record Highway to Hell? So Bruce was in Jersey, Eddie was wherever, and we just did it. We did it remotely. That's why I recaptured some of that vibe. And it was Bruce who felt Highway to Hell was the overlap between. Yeah, yeah. He picked that song. He picked that song. I have to defer to Bruce. He knows the East Street Band. Yeah. I'm in shock. The East Street Band is the most pliable band, perhaps, in the history of bands. You know, the guys that played thousands and thousands of shows. I learned 250 Bruce Springsteen songs before I went on tour with them.

1:04:31250 songs, right? And they still played songs outside of that. He would take requests. Sometimes the requests would be from other bands. It'd be like a Van Morrison song that I heard on the radio in the 80s. And I expect, you know how long I had to learn it? One, two, three, four. I don't know what that's like. but the two songs that were the most challenging to make great and they got great because bruce doesn't settle for less than great were highway to hell and clampdown by the clash oh yeah we had to work on both those those took a lot a lot of reps because i don't think the metal or punk are really that's not what those guys were playing in the bars no yeah it was clampdown also bruce i i suggested that one in 2014 but he brought it back for this tour wow uh and it became a staple and it's a great anti-fascist anthem.

1:05:15How do you work through 250 songs, memorizing 250 songs? First of all, I leaned heavily on the freedom. I'm not, some people have like that jukebox ability. Yeah. Like you can listen to a song and they figure out the, oh, my son does that. It's just maddening. Like you can just figure it out by ear. I don't have that. So I have to study it or I have to look. Now you could like look on the internet. So Carl Restivo, who's been my musical consigliere, the rhythm guitar player and, you know, other singer and freedom of orchestra, he's got that. So I said, Carl, you're going to teach me 250 Bruce Springsteen songs.

1:05:44Went over there every day, and we do seven at a time over the course of months and months and months and months and months, and charted them. So I showed up knowing 250 songs, and he still played songs outside of that. Oh, man. On the last U.S. tour, we played 32 shows, 184 separate songs, different songs, in 32 shows. 184 songs? That's crazy. That's wild. That's crazy. This last tour, the set list was pretty locked, was locked, maybe with the exception of Purple Rain in Minneapolis, and it was the same set, you know, 18 out of 22 shows, or 20 shows, something like that, yeah. Wow. So if you have to go out and do, like, if you're gonna do an Audioslave song or a Rage song, do you have to relearn?

1:06:28I have to relearn. Are those still muscle memory doing that? I have to relearn. I mean, some of them are more muscle memory, but I'd want to make sure that I wouldn't throw my, I wouldn't do it unrehearsed, yeah. Because a lot of times in the studio, we record stuff like you record it you don't look back like you do a bunch of takes like on a guitar solo okay comp this one together that's the guitar solo and you move on with your life yeah and then you have to like okay here comes the tour and the guitar solo is hooky i now have to relearn my guitar solo and i'm like a like a student what did he play there how did he get the r2d2 noise yeah that's amazing well i appreciate you coming by i know i know you don't i know you don't love do an interview so thank you so much man i appreciate your thoughtful questioning i'm happy i'm very delighted to have the discussion with you it's great it's great to chat with you man yeah thank you pleasure thank you broken record is produced and edited by leah rose with marketing help from eric sandler and jordan mcmillan our engineer is ben tolliday broken record is a production of pushkin industries if you love this show and others from pushkin consider subscribing to pushkin plus pushkin plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month.

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