Janine Jackson interviewed guitarist Tom Morello about music as protest for the May 30, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Rolling Stone (5/20/25)
Janine Jackson: We know the roll by now: Trump blurts out his latest hateful fever dream, and then anyone seeking favor scrambles to, if not make it make sense, make it happen. Among the latest is a demand that the Federal Election Commission launch a “major investigation” of Bruce Springsteen, who described the Trump White House as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” in a UK concert, even after Trump tweeted that Springsteen “ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT,” and “we’ll all see how it goes for him.”
If there’s a “musicians to threaten” list going around, our guest is for sure on it. I suspect he’d be curious if he weren’t. Guitarist Tom Morello has been a member of bands Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, along with myriad other projects, including supergroup Prophets of Rage with Chuck D, and his solo work as the Nightwatchman. He’s also, I understand, co-directing a documentary, and who knows what else. He joins us now by phone from LA. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tom Morello.
Tom Morello: Thank you very much for having me, Janine. Nice to hear your voice.
JJ: This is all as ham-fisted as everything Trump does, and yet that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
TM: Sure.
Tom Morello: “I’ve always had the firm belief…that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make.” (Creative Commons photo: Ralph_PH)
JJ: Intimidation doesn’t have to hit its ostensible target to have effects. So maybe no one thinks Taylor Swift, for example, is shaking in her boots, but less-powerful and less-protected artists might feel some kind of way. So how would you speak to artists trying to make their way, about how you see the potential role of, in particular, musicians in Trumpian times?
TM: Yeah. I mean, I’ve always believed that dangerous times demand dangerous music, and especially in these troubled times, music, joy and even laughter have suddenly become acts of resistance. There may come a time in the not-so-distant future, we may be at it right now, where the ideas expressed in our songs, and the people who write them and play them, and maybe even those who sit in the audience, may find themselves censored, smothered, evicted and erased. But not today.
I’ve always had the firm belief, and expressed over 22 albums in my career, that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make, and so I try to encourage both myself and my audience to head out into that world and confront injustice wherever it rears its ugly head, whether it’s in your school, in your place of work, or in your country at large: the threats of the Trump administration is to not just artists, but it’s a McCarthyite fervor that seems to be on the rise. And there’s two ways to respond to it. One is to duck and cover. And the other is to meet the moment.
I’ve been very encouraged; the way that Bruce Springsteen has continued—his response to Trump’s diatribe was to release an album of the show that infuriated Trump. I played a couple of days ago at my alma mater, Harvard University, with a set that not only supported Bruce, but supported the university stance of not bending the knee and kissing the ring and allowing private education facilities to be under the governance of a proto-fascist regime.
So people have to make up their minds who they are and what they’re going to be. My take has always been, if you do have convictions, you need to weave them into your vocation, and let the chips fall where they may. If you don’t have convictions, then by all means, don’t pretend to have them for Tom Morello.
JJ: Boston Media described the atmosphere at your recent set at Boston Calling as “cathartic defiance.” I suspect you’re happy with that.
Boston.com (5/26/25)
TM: I felt that, and I think that it’s cathartic because we live in a world where people don’t know if anyone’s feeling the same way that they do, if anyone’s willing to speak out when the right-wing choir is so loud, it’s like, will anyone stand against it? And when you play a set of my own music, Rage Against The Machine songs, some Bruce Springsteen songs, and rile them up with a good Fred Hampton—like fervor in between songs, people recognize that, “Oh, we are not alone,” and that music is a force that can really steel the backbone of people in times of turmoil and struggle.
JJ: I was bemused by one headline I saw that called that set “expletive-laden,” and that was the headline, and I thought, “Wow, we’ve got ‘grab them by the pussy’ in office, but it’s still worth noting when people don’t show decorum.”
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny. The fact that that’s news, with the rollback of democracy and the mass murder of children and whatnot, if someone uses a cuss word, that that’s going to make the headline, feels absolutely ridiculous.
JJ: It’s ridiculous. Well, all right. Mother’s Day, which just passed, has become about buying flowers for underappreciated women, but some will know that it began as Mother’s Day for Peace, when activists were calling for husbands and sons not to be killed in war. Its founders hated that it became a Hallmark holiday.
Part of what I see you doing is waking present-day listeners to the history of protest music, and music as protest. Using Woody Guthrie‘s “This Land Is Your Land” is a great example of censored, semi-understood, sanitized history. Why does that song mean so much to you?
AlterNet (5/26/25)
TM: Sure, sure, sure. Well, I learned “This Land is Your Land,” like most of us did, in the third grade, where they censored out the verses that explained what the song was really about. “This Land is Your Land” is a radical anthem about economic leveling. It was written by Woody Guthrie, and Woody Guthrie knew that music could be a binding force. It could be an elevating power, an uplifting, unifying and transcendent thing, that music can be both a defensive shield and a weapon for change. Authoritarians and billionaires think that this country belongs to them. Woody Guthrie’s song insists that this land is your land.
JJ: And yet the very verses—it’s remarkable, in the sense that we learned to sing it and celebrate it and say, “Yeah, we all believe in this, but not this part that we’re not going to talk about.” It seems emblematic in some ways.
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah:
Woody Guthrie
As I was walking, I saw a sign there
And that sign said “private property.”
On the other side, it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,
Near the relief office, I see my people.
And some are grumbling and all are wondering
If this land is still made for you and me.
And then he sings the chorus, “This land was made for you and me,” answering his own question in a very powerful way.
YouTube (8/17/15)
JJ: I’m pretty sure that anyone singing that today would be told to shut up and sing.
I want to take you, just for a second—I’ve been to Rage shows, and I have seen oceans of young white men scream full-voice, “Some of those who work forces! Are the same who burn crosses!” since before George Floyd, before Michael Brown, before “I can’t breathe.” It’s…interesting, I will say. And it must mean that you’ve seen, for many, many years, a kind of energy, in a kind of place that I suspect many folks didn’t think existed.
TM: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of different buckets the people who enjoy Rage Against The Machine exist in. Some are people who come to the music because they pre-diagnosed to agree with the politics of it.
Some simply enjoy it for the raw power and the aggression and the screaming guitar solos and whatnot, and have no idea what’s going on in the lyrics, that sort of shout along. They’re more than welcome.
Then there are those that are drawn to the songs because of the heaviness of the music, or the aggression of the music, and they come away with a different set of ideas, because that band has a different set of ideas than the other bands that play similar music. Sometimes you see that Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, where their eyes are opened.
Loudwire (7/11/22)
And then there’s the unique bucket of those that believe the songs are right-wing anthems, and are shocked to find that the members of Rage Against The Machine have politics very, very different from their own.
JJ: It’s got to be strange. It’s got to be strange. You know, if I put up a Facebook post and it gets more than 20 views, I get nervous: I’m not trying to be a spokesperson, I’m just trying to speak. You cannot answer every objection to what you’re doing. You cannot come along with every record and interpret it for people. So you have to relax and let it speak, right?
TM: Yeah. The Rage Against The Machine music, and the music in my 22-album career, it’s not a Noam Chomsky lecture. The idea is to make art that is compelling, and makes people jump up and down, or shake their butts or whatever, and then there is a message that’s contained in it. And you can check all the boxes, or one of the boxes, and it’s totally all right.
JJ: Right. Right. Well, you’re a musician because you love music, and you are political because you’re political, and these things come together. So, I mean, unless it’s an article about what strings you prefer, there’s really hardly a way for a music critic to talk about your career, and your various projects, without talking about social and racial justice, or what many insist on calling “politics,” as though that were somehow a separate, denatured category of interest. So I just said, “Shut up and sing.” That’s never made sense as a complaint with you, but it’s really dumb, whoever it’s aimed at?
TM: Well, I mean, “shut up and sing” is exclusively reserved for artists whom you disagree with. It’s not “shut up and sing” if you’re politically aligned. It’s when the cognitive dissonance occurs—like, “I really like this music, but I can’t stand the fact that I’m having my nose shoved in my own prejudices.”
Real Time with Bill Maher (6/10/16)
JJ: You’ve been interviewed, you’ve been spoken to a lot, and I can imagine some of the things that reporters come at you with. I remember, years ago, you went on Bill Maher, and had that experience. I wonder, do you ever feel like you need to redirect? I find sometimes I have to say, “Well, I’m not going to respond to that question. I’m going to say something different.” Do you ever need to redirect reporters, mid-conversation?
TM: I would say that I wish sometimes that there was more thoughtful reporting than what I’m exposed to, because to most people who cover music, I’m a unicorn. They don’t have a lot of artists that they’re exposed to that have a lifetime of political engagement. So a casual music journalist tends to ask the same seven questions, over the course of 30 years. I actually look forward to stuff that’s a little bit more on the Bill Maher end of the spectrum, where it’s a little bit more sparring, or it’s a little bit more thoughtful or more in-depth. Because they’re like, “So what’s it like being in a political band?” —that level of discourse.
JJ: Exactly. Well, I would say a word that I would use to describe you, Tom, is “jovial.” You’ve made yourself this big fat target, and you seem to be enjoying yourself, like, “This is what I trained for.” To what do you attribute this willingness to be misunderstood, and even hated?
TM: Well, I mean, I’m not jovial because people hate, let me just make that very, very clear.
WMMR (5/30/24)
JJ: No, clear, clear. You’ve been jovial the 30 years I’ve known you.
TM: Yeah, I think that’s independent. It’s independent. I mean, part of it is having a really, really clear North Star. From 16- or 17-years-old, I can attribute a large measure to my mom, Mary Morello, who is currently 101 years old, and still the most radical and popular member of the Morello family. But there’s always been this social justice North Star that is unbending and uncompromising, and I know what I was put here to do.
I didn’t choose to be a guitar player. That chose me. So I’m kind of stuck finding a way to express my convictions in my vocation, and just no two ways about it. Countless opportunities go away when you say the things I say, play the things I play and believe the things that I believe, and it’s totally fine. There’s a contingent of the audience that is smaller than it would be otherwise. But when people make music, make any art, that is widely and generally loved and absorbed by the vast majority of the population, it tends to be shitty art, and I’ve never been interested in that.
JJ: Jim and I used to say we live our life between two Marx quotes: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” and “I have spoken and saved my soul.”
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JJ: It’s a difficult engagement; for many people, it’s more difficult today than it ever has been, but for many of us, it’s been difficult our whole lives, and knowing when to speak, and how to also keep ourselves safe, and all of that.
Spin (2/11/25)
But I’ll say, I’ll just read a quote from you:
It’s not a time to shy away from resistance. It’s a time to lean in. On a cultural front, that’s what these shows are, my small contribution to withstanding the fascist gale that is blowing.
Just talk, finally, Tom Morello, about how you see the present moment, your role within it, and what you’d like folks to think about.
TM: Well, having been engaged in activism of some sort for, my gosh, 40+ years now, it’s a realization that each of us are a link in the chain. Those of us that have a conviction that the world can be a more peaceful, a more equal, a more just place: The arc of history may bend towards justice, but sometimes it swings back the other way, and that doesn’t mean that you should despair. That means you should realize what is moving the meter are people, no different than anyone listening right now. When there’s been progressive, radical, even revolutionary change, it has come from people no different from anyone listening to this right now.
So while that may sound daunting, the good news is that those people who have moved the meter, from Spartacus to today, have been no different from the people—like, no more money, power, influence, courage, intelligence, creativity. It’s a matter of standing up in your time, and doing it to the best of your ability, and recognizing that, in this particular historical moment, it’s a little bit now or never. If you’ve got feelings, you’ve got to express them. Apply yourself in your place of work, in your school, in your union, in your town, in your country right now. The cavalry is not coming. You’re it.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with guitarist, activist, now filmmaker Tom Morello. Thank you, Tom. Love to your mother. Thank you for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
TM: Thank you so much. Say hi to the family for me.
JJ: I will do.