Tom Morello Quotes & Sayings

Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine. — Tom Morello

My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anti-colonial movement. — Tom Morello

There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages. — Tom Morello

I came late to the genre of folk music. — Tom Morello

I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owningfounding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave. — Tom Morello

My music is made for the people who are willing to stand up to change this world themselves. — Tom Morello

I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop. — Tom Morello

What draws people to the instrument is the love for guitar players that play a certain way. I mean, even though it wasn't intentional, it was hard to avoid copying Eddie Van Halen. He was basically the *bleep* back then. — Tom Morello

Poverty is curable, but it's just not done, because it's not profitable. And that is the kind of violence that's perpetuated on humanity. — Tom Morello

I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders. — Tom Morello

Music and the arts feed our souls, but a decent wage puts food on the table. Musicians, fans of music, and grassroots political organizations are a potent force to fight for social justice. — Tom Morello

If aliens came down and challenged us to a Battle of the Bands to decide the fate of Planet Earth, I would feel very confident putting early Van Halen forward as our champion. — Tom Morello

For the millennium [New Year's Eve], you really have a choice to make. You either have to be naked with your head on fire and a shotgun in Bali or else you have to spend time with friends or family around the fireplace. And I'm choosing option B — Tom Morello

The problem is not cop killers ... it's killer cops. — Tom Morello

When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change. — Tom Morello

Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music. — Tom Morello

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider. — Tom Morello

I think you might be considered a terrorist for asking the question! It can be so broadly defined now. And the thing is, you're not privy to those decisions. Anyone who expresses any opinion can be considered a terrorist. — Tom Morello

I'd say that one area where my political views have remained unchanged is that, I am opposed to the government spying on everybody. — Tom Morello

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it. — Tom Morello

What is poverty, if not violence. Like, the number of people who die every year from starvation and from hunger and poverty is in the tens of millions. — Tom Morello

Bashing the elite is what I'm all about in my music because they absolutely don't deserve the privileged position that they're in, and we're seeing this around the globe right now. — Tom Morello

We've been able to have our cake and eat it, too. Every song, every T-shirt, is absolutely a pure expression of what we want to do. And it connects. — Tom Morello

A musician's or artist's responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth, — Tom Morello

A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs. — Tom Morello

There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist. — Tom Morello

Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there. — Tom Morello

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue. — Tom Morello

I feel fortunate to have made records during an era where people actually bought music. But I have friends in struggling up-and-coming bands that will certainly never be able to pay the rent, because music has been devalued. — Tom Morello

I've always been on a personal mission to save the guitar. — Tom Morello

I don't want to leave this mess around my children to clean up. I want to swing absolutely as hard as I can to straighten things out before they get to the age where it starts hurting them. — Tom Morello

When you wanna rock hard, children, lean on F#. — Tom Morello

The real estate agent had to go door-to-door in the apartment building we wanted to rent, asking if it was OK for this interracial family - my mom is white and I was a 1-year-old half-African kid - to live in the apartment building. — Tom Morello

I think it's crucially important to be present in the lives of your children. They are my most important cause that I fight for. But I also feel an added responsibility that I want to leave them a better world than this one that we have now. — Tom Morello

If you want to change the world right now, it's not so much a secret how you do it. You put the secrets of a criminal government on the Internet. — Tom Morello

Being a musician is a given for me-I didn't have much choice in the matter. — Tom Morello

America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve. — Tom Morello

Tonight, it's the rock and roll all night and party every day hall of fame — Tom Morello

Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against The Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades — Tom Morello

Sacrifice and neon lights slave ships don't wait. Love many, trust few, and don't be late — Tom Morello

I have another name for what they're terming whistleblowers, and that's righteous heroes. From Bradley Manning to Snowden. They're people of conscience who are unwilling to turn a blind eye to the crimes of our government. And thank goodness for them. — Tom Morello

Always question the authority. — Tom Morello

Amazingly talented singer who sang like an angry angel — Tom Morello

I didn't grow up with my Kenyan family. I grew up in a small, conservative suburb of Chicago. — Tom Morello

I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time. — Tom Morello

The most powerful music is music with purpose. — Tom Morello

I find it ironic that now water is more expensive than music. On the one hand, record companies can't go crying when they've gouged consumers for decades, charging exorbitant prices for CDs that cost 29 cents to make. On the other hand, when music is free, musicians starve. — Tom Morello

You can kiss my Kiss-loving ass because Kiss was never a critic's band. It was a people's band. — Tom Morello

In a world of bands called Limp Bizkit and Hoobastank, Electric Sheep rolls off the tongue like a Shakespearean love sonnet. Leave me alone. — Tom Morello

In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write. — Tom Morello

The skin you're in makes choices for you. — Tom Morello

We offer a stark contrast to the bland escapism that chokes the charts, — Tom Morello

In my own way, I was a rebellious kid. — Tom Morello

Whenever I set out in a new direction, whether it's with a new band or being a frontman or writing a comic book or entering into movie scoring or anything like that, I wouldn't say that I do it fearlessly. — Tom Morello

Of course, music is an art form, and it's not all that competitive. But we don't ever intend to be the second-best band on a stage at any show. — Tom Morello

Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage. — Tom Morello