Tom Morello - The Progressive Interview - Interview

Progressive, The, Jan, 2004 by Elizabeth DiNovella

Growing up, alternative media was not part of my life. It wasn't where I got my news. I got my news from Clash albums, frankly. I thought the Sandinista record had more accurate and vivid portrayals of U.S. policy in Central America than Tom Brokaw was giving on the news. And it fired my imagination as well.

Q: Can you be subversive and patriotic?

Morello: Was the women's suffrage movement subversive? Yes. Was it patriotic? Yes. Was the civil rights movement subversive? Yes. Was it patriotic? Yes. Was the quest to have an eight-hour workday or to get children out of coal mines subversive? Yes. Those ideas were insane when they were first raised. But they were clearly patriotic, with a small p. I think that dissent and broadly defined subversion is a crucial historical strain in America. All progressive change has come from that.

Q: Are you feeling any backlash for speaking out against the war in Iraq?

Morello: No more than usual. I guess some artists like the Dixie Chicks had a tremendous media back lash. But having controversial left opinions is nothing new to me in my work. Especially with the war in Iraq, I thought it was very important to help galvanize young people who are in my audience.

There's only been a few times in my history as a musician and an activist where I've ever felt "the Man" push back. One of them was the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Clear Channel banned all Rage Against the Machine songs from all their radio stations. They faxed this memorandum to all the stations that listed specific songs that could not be played, including John Lennon's "Imagine" and the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me." The only artist whose entire catalog was singled out was Rage Against the Machine.

Q: How do you reconcile being anti-corporate and being on a major label?

Morello: Rage Against the Machine sold fourteen million records of totally subversive revolutionary propaganda. The reason why is that the albums were released on Sony and got that sort of distribution.

You have two choices. I admire bands like Fugazi that take the other route. They are completely self-contained and independent. But if you do that, then you have to be a businessman. Then I have to sit there and worry about the orders to Belgium and make sure they get there. That is not what I'm going to do.

We've had, in Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, complete artistic control, 100 percent over everything. Every second of every video, every second of every album, every bit of advertisement comes directly from us. I don't even look at it as a tradeoff. You live in a friggin' capitalist world. If you want to sell 45s out of the back of your microbus, God bless you. And maybe that works better, I don't know. I'll see you at the finish line.

Elizabeth DiNovella is Culture Editor for The Progressive.