Tom Morello: Rebel Without A Pause

Having ‘fought the power’ for two intermittent decades with political rock group Rage Against The Machine, guitarist Tom Morello seems suitably primed to endeavour in his own personal music manifesto. Under the guise of The Nightwatchman, Morello has kept his political torch burning since 2003, a time when he also moonlighted for the distinctly apolitical Audioslave. Socio-economic change doesn’t sleep for this man.

As The Nightwatchman, Morello has been voicing his ‘two-cents’ in a manner far removed from that of his better known parent outfit. Rather than the vehement rap-rock hybrid of Rage, The Nightwatchman has been reverting back to the classic template of Gaelic-infused rebel songs. It was certainly a head-scratcher for the rock kids who had been following Morello’s work at the time, but with third album World Wide Rebel Songs in the pipeline, fans have had plenty of time, and material, to adjust.

However, as The Skinny chats with the man himself, he is in the midst of talking up his recently released companion EP Union Town, a collection of eight protest songs written in response to the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill. This proposed bill was accused of potentially eroding the collective bargaining powers of public workers, a matter close to Morello’s heart whose mother was a union high-school teacher for almost thirty years.

The backlash from the bill spilled out onto the streets of Madison, Wisconsin in February this year and somewhat at the forefront was Morello himself. “I played at the protests where there were 100,000 people on the streets daily through February and into March,” he marvels. “It was hugely inspiring, so I wanted to do a benefit record that would have some of my original union songs and some classic union anthems, compile them and give 100% of the proceeds to the cause.”

Which is exactly what his Union Town EP did back in May. However, even with demonstrations still ongoing, Morello is keen to shine a wider spotlight on the issue. “There’s still concerted attacks on the rights of working families in the United States by the corporations and the politicians they own,” he rails. “The thing about the class war in the United States is that, for the most part, it’s only fought by one side. Madison was an example of our side fighting back. My hope is that this record can be a soundtrack for the union struggle to come.”

In terms of timing, these protests took place in an even wider context that helped spur on Morello’s deeply-held beliefs. “One of the things that was inspiring to the people in Wisconsin was the people standing up for their rights in the Middle East,” he explains. “And now you’re seeing that in Spain too. People are standing up against tyrants.”

It is in this context that the third Nightwatchman album will be released. It will come as no surprise that its title, World Wide Rebel Songs, wasn’t an act of serendipity. “Absolutely,” says Morello on the obvious implication that this album will address more of a global issue. “The title-track itself was inspired by a benefit show I played in Los Angeles for Korean guitar makers fired from their jobs because they tried to unionise.”

However, the day before the show itself, the catastrophic Haiti earthquake struck, changing the mood and the focus of the protest. “They gave away 100% of the proceeds from their benefit concert to help the emergency relief effort in Haiti,” says Morello. “That’s international solidarity at its best. Workers in Korea, standing up for people in Haiti at a show in Los Angeles. World Wide Rebels Songs is infused with that kind of vibe.”

The last time The Skinny spoke with Morello he claimed, perhaps apocryphally, that his alter-ego leapt into action the day after George Bush’s 2004 re-election. Enough was understandably enough, yet some two-and-a-half years into the Obama presidency, what’s The Nightwatchman’s verdict on the new regime? “I certainly think it’s been a step in the right direction for a country where racism is in our DNA,” he laughs. “It’s something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, but we’re involved in more wars now than we were under George W. Bush. We still have Guantanamo Bay. We bailed out these corporations with billions of tax-payers hard-earned money. We gave to the banks who torpedoed our economy. That’s not the type of country I want to live in, so we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

It’s work The Nightwatchman is doing one record at a time and, it seems, work he is feeling more comfortable with these days. World Wide Rebel Songs finds Morello breaking out the wah-wah pedal and shredding that fret-board once more in his own unmistakable form. “I’ve become much more comfortable and open-minded about playing big riffs and crazy solos under the Nightwatchman moniker than I was originally,” he admits. “At first it was very important for me to keep them separate, to have the stark acoustic songs on the one hand and have the big riff rock numbers on the other, but with this record I’ve definitely combined the two.”

Of course protest songs and folk music often go hand in hand. Was this a further reason to pick up the acoustic and leave the Fender Stratocaster in the case, at least to begin with? “Yeah, but it was also to establish a new artistic identity,” Morello clarifies. “I didn’t want every show I played to have people yelling out for Bulls on Parade whilst I was standing there with a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar.” He pauses for thought. “Although I do a pretty mean Delta blues version of Guerilla Radio on the acoustic guitar. You should YouTube it sometime.”

Pretty mean it certainly is, and such clips show how much audiences have taken to Morello’s cause. What are his own thoughts on why this distinctly older style of protest music is still hitting the mark decades later? “There’s just a resonance to these old songs,” he states simply. “People forget their history pretty quick. The reason we have weekends free is because of hard fought battles by the unions. The reason children don’t work in coal mines anymore or why women don’t make one-tenth of what men do is because of hard fought battles by the unions. If you forget that, if you forget those struggles and if you forget the songs then the next thing you know we’re going to be back in the stone-age, which is exactly what a lot of these right-wingers want.”

We can be thankful then that Morello is fighting our corner for a better world. “These are songs of rousing hopelessness,” he laughs. “With my music and my shows I try to create a little bit of the world you’d like to see. It’s honest, it’s dark, it’s loud. You’ve got to tell it like you see it and like you feel it. [It’s about] those moments on the streets of Madison, or those selfless Korean workers, where you really see a bit of the world you’d like to see. I felt it in the field at Finsbury Park when Rage played our free show there. I feel it in the room when I play these Nightwatchman songs. There is definitely hope.”