RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: BACK ON PARADE By Adrienne Collier Photo by Lisa Johnson RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE'S self-titled debut album(Epic Records) shipped gold, particularlyremarkable since they received no major airplay. Now TheMachine is up and running again with their-long awaited new album EVIL EMPIRE and first release Bulls OnParade. Because this band despises the trappingsof superstardom and prefer to keep their focus on the socialmessages in their music, Rage Against The Machine have kepttheir distance from the press, but guitarist TOM MORELLO waskind enough to give IN JERSEY ROCKSthis majorly exclusive interview! IN JERSEY ROCKS: Tell us about your background. TOM MORELLO, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE:I grew up in asmall town called Libertyville, Illinois, but I didn'tfollow the traditional rock band path. I was in the localdrama club; I played Dungeons And Dragons, I liked StarTrek, and I was into Marxist politics. The very first band Iplayed in had Adam Jones, the guitarist in Tool, in it. He,Maureen Hermann of Babes in Toyland, and I all went to thesame high school. I went on to Harvard University, where Imajored in social studies and did my thesis on studentprotest in South Africa. And from there, I went to L.A.because I wanted to join a rock band! IN JERSEY ROCKS: How did you get interested in playingguitar? TOM: I was thirteen when I first picked it up. Iwanted to learn how to play Detroit Rock City by Kiss andBlack Dog by Led Zepplin, so I gave this guy five dollarsand told him that's what I wanted to learn. But he said,"No, little Tommy--first we have to learn how to tune theguitar." I thought that was a huge waste of time when therewere so many cool songs to be learned! But I tuned theguitar, and when I went back the next week, he said, "Now wehave to learn how to play a C major scale." That was it--nomore guitar lessons for me! I didn't play for four years.Then I got the Sex Pistols record, and like so many otherangst-filled, alienated suburbanites, I said, "I can dothat, too." There were times when I was practicing eighthours a day and reading nothing but guitar magazines. It'svery flattering that those same magazines have paid enoughattention to our work to want to do articles on me now. IN JERSEY ROCKS: How did Rage Against The Machineform? TOM: From reading hard rock magazines, I understoodthat Los Angeles was the place where you had to go. So Imoved there with no roots, no friends, just a list of namesfrom the Harvard Alumni Association! I expected that I wouldfind a big pool of great musicians, and that I could findsome with whom I could meld my interest in politics. Nothingcould have been further from the truth--I got there at theheight of the glam era when Poison and Faster Pussycat wereon top. Because my hair wasn't long, and because of thecolor of my skin, I couldn't get in a band to save my life!That resulted in years of frustration, but I finally foundout about bands that didn't have that overtly sexist,homophobic, Sunset Strip crotch rock mentality--theFishbone/Red Hot Chili Peppers/Jane's Addiction scene. Ifinally joined a band called Lockjaw. We got a major recorddeal, released an album, and broke up. Then along came RageAgainst the Machine. IN JERSEY ROCKS: Where was your very first gig? TOM: In a friend's living room! His parents wereout, so he had a bunch of people over. We had only fivesongs at that point, and barely knew them. But we playedthem, and we tried to go home. But the audience wasn't goingto have any of that, so we had to play our five songs allover again. They ended up wrecking the place! IN JERSEY ROCKS: What was your initial impression of yourfrontman Zack De La Rocha when you first met him? TOM: It was at this tiny, cramped rehearsal spacewith a P.A. system you could hardly hear. Zack came with acouple of his friends, and started rapping. But because ofthis horrible P.A., I had no idea of what the lyricalcontent was, and there wasn't enough room for him to expresshimself in the way he does onstage. The next time we gottogether, I got to look through his lyric book, and I got tosee that Zack is every bit as intense in rehearsal as he isonstage. I was blown away by the magnitude of hisferocity. IN JERSEY ROCKS: How did you put your now-famous demotogether? TOM: We did the demo because we wanted to put out ourown record. I'd had such a bad experience with Lockjaw'slabel, I didn't even want us on an independent label! So wewere going to form Rage Against The Machine Records. Wewrote fifteen songs, and recorded twelve of them in what wassupposed to be a sixteen-track studio, but three of thetracks didn't work. We did it quick and rough, and soldabout five thousand copies of it at our shows and throughthe underground. The version of Bullet In The Head that's onthe first album was taken from that demo--it was one of thosemagic takes that you just aren't going to be able tore-create! IN JERSEY ROCKS: How did you end up with Epic Records? TOM: We were fortunate, because my old friend AdamJones was in the big local band at the time--Tool! We got toopen shows for them and play for full houses, and we got amajor label offer after our second show. Most of the otherlabels that were sniffing around us seemed to be into theband for the wrong reasons--they liked our energy, but theydidn't really understand anything beyond our riffs. We gotEpic's attention through a club doorman who used to workwith an A&R guy at the label. They really seemed to understandwhere we're coming from, and they were willing to put inwriting that we had 100% creative control over every aspectof our careers, which was paramount to us. IN JERSEY ROCKS: What kind of equipment do you use? TOM: There's no rack gear whatsoever in mysetup--just a few greasy effects pedals. My main guitar issort of a homemade Frankenstein-type thing. It was custommade, but they did such a terrible job--and overcharged mefor it!--that through the years I've completely reassembledit from loose ends. My other guitar's a Fender Telecaster.And I just got a new guitar--it's Telecaster-shaped, butit's hollow-bodied and made of steel, and it has a greatsound. I approach the guitar in a very unorthodox way--I tryto provide sonic patterns as opposed to the traditionalwanking guitar solos. Yes, there are occasional flurries ofnotes, but we've come to alternate them with bigZeppelin-esque type riffs, a hip-hop type feel where youhave a strong groove, and some weird guitar on top of that.One of the things we gave up on long ago was trying to playin tune with each other! IN JERSEY ROCKS: Because your band hasn't done a lot ofpress, many people think you're too serious and toopolitical. Would you say that Rage Against The Machine has afun side? TOM: (Indignantly) We like to have fun! In asoundcheck one day, we were playing Working Man by Rush, andthe guys in Quicksand joined in, so we had six guitarsgoing! Sure, there's enough going on in the world that youcould easily be pissed off 24 hours a day. But from amusical standpoint, we like doing other things. (Bassist)Brad Wilk and I are on the Kiss My Ass tributecompilationalbum. We did an annoying version of Doctor Love withMaynard Keenan from Tool and Billy Gould from Faith NoMore. IN JERSEY ROCKS: You were chosen as an opening act onlast year's Lollapalooza tour. What was the T-shirtcontroversy on the tour all about? TOM: We sell our T-shirts for ten dollars, thelong-sleeved ones for thirteen. The Lollapalooza people saidno to that, because the Lollapalooza shirts were going for23 dollars, and they were afraid that choosing between thatand a Rage shirt would hurt their sales. So we decided notto sell any T-shirts at all, and Zack told every audiencewhere most of the money for the Lollapalooza shirts wasgoing--to the promoters and the landowners of the venues.Their sales declined dramatically throughout thetour! IN JERSEY ROCKS: And what happened when the Lollapaloozatour got to Philadelphia? TOM: We appeared onstage completely naked withelectrical tape over our mouths with the letters PMRCwritten on our chests. We let the guitars feed back forabout fourteen minutes and left without playing one note. Itwas our way of letting the audience know that if they didn'ttake the issue of censorship into their own hands, theywould not be able to hear artists like us. A lot of peoplewere pissed off about it, but that was the point. We did afree show in Philadelphia to make up for it. IN JERSEY ROCKS: How is Rage Against the Machine handlingall of this sudden fame and success? TOM: I'm not sure exactly how much fame is involvedat this point. We're really a band that judges success invery different terms from other bands. It has less to dowith selling records than it does with motivating ouraudiences to accomplish things within the activist realm. Onthis tour, for instance, we've been passing out informationon ways how folks can physically break censorship in theirhome town. And there's the case of Leonard Peltier, theNative American who's spent two years in jail for allegedlykilling two FBI agents. He was framed for the crime becausehe was one of the leaders of AIM, the American IndianMovement, a militant Native American rights group. Wemeasure our success in terms of what we can do to reallyaddress those issues. And in the process, we play somefrenzied, live rock music! Tillbaka