Tom Morello’s lengthy musical CV includes political agitators Rage Against the Machine and Prophets of Rage, hard rock band Audioslave, and an acoustic-leaning solo project, Nightwatchman. For the tour in support of his 2018 solo album The Atlas Underground—which features collaborations with Bassnectar, Big Boi, Killer Mike, Portugal. The Man, Steve Aoki, K.Flay, Pretty Lights and others—the guitarist and songwriter has put together a visually and sonically immersive production. Morello checked in with the Weekly to discuss what fans can expect, what he’s up to next and his most memorable Vegas appearances.
For the design on your tour, you’re working with Sean Evans, who has worked extensively with Roger Waters. How did you two cross paths, and what were you sort of aiming for with the production? Sean and I have been friends for some time; we actually met through Roger. I greatly admired both [Roger Waters’] The Wall Tour and the Us + Them tour—not just for the great music, but because in each of those tours there were, like, 40 ideas I had never seen in a rock ’n’ roll show before.
When I completed The Atlas Underground record—a record that has a lot of collaborators on it that would not be joining me on tour—I was like, what is a creative way to make a tremendously impactful visual and sonic experience? So I called Sean. This is the most ambitious tour of my entire career, and aside from all of the Marshall Stack-shredding guitar playing, it’s both additionally beautiful and provocative.
What were the challenges translating the record to this kind of live production? Even when I first sat down to make the record, Sean and I began speaking, because I knew this day was coming (laughs). I knew that I wanted to tour, and I knew that I had a vision for the kind of impact I wanted the show to have. But you can’t expect Mumford & Sons and Wu-Tang Clan to all just pile into the tour bus and follow me around the country (laughs). It’s part interactive art installation, part fireball moshpit show. Throughout the evening, it veers crazily between those two.
It was incredible how Roger Waters’ Wall tour unfolded. There was such a strong narrative through line to it. From the earliest school bands I’ve played in, I haven’t just been the guitar player. I’ve always been like a curator, in a way, of the setlist and the visuals. I think one of the strengths of bands like Rage Against the Machine was the lack of overwhelming visuals. It’s four guys rocking you in a very punk rock way. And this, while I want the guitar to be at the forefront, I want it to be a different kind of show than I’d ever done before, and one that was both exciting and challenging for me and the audience.
Was there any sort of narrative or story that you wanted to convey with this show? The theme that runs through the record is social justice ghost stories—telling tales of the fallen and martyred of the past to inform the struggles of the present. At the end of the day, it’s a rock ’n’ roll show. And my first job is, by the end of the night, to have everybody screaming and drained. But the through line is what makes it very unique, for me, and it makes it really exciting every night to spring it on the audience.
How did you choose what to include from your catalog beyond The Atlas Underground stuff? It was important to me to have Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and Street Sweeper [Social Club] and Nightwatchman elements in it. It’s a Tom Morello show, and there are 19 records in my discography. I wanted them to be represented. I’ve gone through my catalog with a fine-toothed comb and found the biggest, gnarliest [rock riffs]. They are all present and accounted for in the show.
I noticed that Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley” has also been appearing. When I was practicing my eight hours a day as a teen, “Mr. Crowley” was a jam that I just put on repeat and shredded on top of to try to get my Randy Rhoads on.
My 8-year-old started playing guitar recently, and he’s got a few Randy Rhoads licks under his belt already, so I’m very proud.
You’ve also been doing live shows with Prophets of Rage recently. We just finished a three-continent summer tour: Europe and Asia, and we ended up here in Los Angeles. That’s been great. Being able to play with the legends Chuck D and B-Real, as well as my longtime compatriots Timmy C [bassist Tim Commerford] and [drummer] Brad Wilk, it’s awesome to just go and rock those huge summer festivals. We played one show in Poland this year that [drew] 750,000 people. That was the first show of the tour.
Some of the wildest shows that I’ve ever been involved in were this summer. In Greece, it was just crazy; we played Indonesia for the first time. It’s great to be able to continue rocking with those guys. And we have another album in the works of new songs.
I was wondering if you were working on any new material. We’ve been working on Prophets of Rage stuff for a while. We released a couple of songs over the course of the last six months, but we’ve got a proper record that’s coming along—slowly, but coming along.
Obviously, there’s no shortage of political things to draw from for the record, unfortunately. There’s plenty of topical issues of the day, none bigger than the looming environmental catastrophe. But the core message at all of my shows over the course of the last two decades has been that the world is not going to change itself. That is up to you. And the people who have changed the world in the past didn’t have any more power, courage, money or creativity than anyone reading this article right now. They stood up in their place in time for a more just and humane planet. And that’s what we need to do right now.
Are you working on anything else you want to mention? There’s going to be a sister record to The Atlas Underground. I’m working with a new, exciting batch of collaborators now that I’m home from the Prophets of Rage tour. I’m not sure exactly when that new music will come out, but I’ve always envisioned this as a two-album project. And I loved touring it so much earlier in the year; I’m really looking forward to getting on the road and springing this on people.
I’ve toured in many incarnations in the past, from Rage to Audioslave to Prophets of Rage to the Nightwatchman stuff. People don’t really know what to expect when they come in the room on this show. And it’s been such a treat just watching them go, like, “Holy sh*t.” This is very different, but frighteningly rocking at the same time.”
When you started touring solo, was there any sort of transition from being in a band? When I first started touring solo, it was acoustic; it was my political folk Nightwatchman songs. When we were on tour with Audioslave playing arenas, on nights off, I would sign up for open-mic nights and strum three acoustic songs with a latte machine whirring in the background. It felt like in some ways I had maxed out on the electric guitar riff writing and shredding. I had done that on many records, had done that in stadiums and arenas around the planet. And this felt like a challenge of really going more inward and finding out a different area of my creativity.
And since 2007, I’ve been exploring those parallel routes. When a band is good, it’s good because of the chemistry. It’s because a combination of people can create something that none of you could create alone. When a solo artist is good, it’s good because of the purity of vision, and that you can get something that is undistilled and couldn’t happen with other voices in the room.
With this Atlas Underground tour and the album, I try to have the best of both worlds. It’s a guiding vision of mine—there’s like a north star to guide it. But the individual collaborations have very unexpected results. So it’s been really satisfying on both fronts.
You have that balance, too. You can go between both as well. As a creative person, it sounds so fulfilling.
It really is. I sort of imagined, when I first picked up an electric guitar, [that] I’m going to be in one band for my whole life. But due in part to the infrequency that Rage Against the Machine made records, it left these years and years between albums where I started playing with other people. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s this world of other ways to play and rock.” I can be on a metal record or a folk record. I’ve played with Emmylou Harris. There’s no end to the possibilities, and it really feels very free in that way. And I think that’s how music was meant to be.
Do any past Las Vegas performances stand out in your memories? Rage opened for U2 on the opening night of their PopMart Tour in 1997. That was a very memorable night; it was certainly the biggest venue we had played up to that point. It was a really exciting night.
My first trip ever to Vegas, I was permanently cured of gambling by losing rent money at the roulette table. I put it all on black, and with one roll of the roulette wheel, my rent money was gone. I was mortified; I never gambled again—until Perry Farrell’s 50th birthday, many years later.
We performed, and they gave us this gift bag, which had, like, $1,500 of chips in it or something like that. And I was ready to leave, but just before I left the hotel, I thought, “It’s like it’s free money, whatever.” So I put it on black—[and] I won. And I’m like, “I’m now retired from gambling, because I’m finally up” (laughs).
TOM MORELLO with 93Punx. November 3, 7 p.m., $30-$45. Brooklyn Bowl, 702-862-2695.
