Tom Morello: A Guitar, Three Chords, & the Truth
If you were ever at an open mike in a town that hosted rock band Audioslave, and a mysterious man stepped up to play acoustic guitar and sing pro-union songs, a man who looked like Local 47 (Los Angeles) member Tom Morello, he would like to set the record straight—yes, it was him, working undercover as The Nightwatchman.
Now that Audioslave guitar hero Morello has earned his stripes as a guitarist/songwriter/activist in the mold of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan of Local 802 (New York City), or Phil Ochs, he is comfortable sharing the limelight with his alter ego. In fact, Morello recently persuaded The Nightwatchman to go into the studio to record some of his union hall ballads.
The result is a new CD—One Man Revolution—full of what Morello calls “fighting songs and freedom songs” for workers to sing together. Some are specifically written for the southern Californian grocery workers whom he has helped numerous times, songs “to energize them on the picket line when it gets cold at night.”
Starting from Scratch
The Nightwatchman has been getting a lot of press recently, although he wasn’t always such a friend of the camera and the reporter’s notebook.
As an ax wizard with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, Morello would have looked out of character with an acoustic guitar, and he never sang on stage. So when he got the urge to sing his activist folk songs, he would look through newspapers to find open mikes in towns he was touring through and sign up under his pseudonym. “I played at country and western bars, anarchist meetings—I just turned up and played my songs,” recalls Morello. “It was a nice balance to playing arena rock, and it helped me hone my skills.”
For Morello these incognito sessions as The Nightwatchman were a way to prepare his acoustic set without drawing too much attention. “I started from scratch,” he adds. “In fact, it was producer Rick Rubin who told me that my songs were fine, but I needed to get 100 gigs under my belt to make them into a record. Playing with Billy Bragg and Steve Earle [of Local 257 (Nashville, TN)] helped me figure out my stage act, and now that I’ve played The Nightwatchman’s songs on the Dave Letterman show and in the middle of a teargas riot—I’m fearless!”
Every once in a while at the open mikes, someone would say, “Hey, isn’t that Tom Morello.” “But then they’d say, ‘Nah, couldn’t be,’” he says, mischievously. Clearing up one last mystery, Morello explains that his alter ego’s name “just felt appropriate and it differentiated this work from Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine—my day jobs, which made me The Daywatchman!”
Dylan in Reverse
One of the most notorious sudden changes in musical direction occurred at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan, by then world-famous for his acoustic socio-political songs, took the stage with members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and played his first electric set, to what can best be described as a mixed reception.
“I’ve done a Dylan in reverse!” exclaims Morello, describing his move from hard rock to acoustic folk. “I like to think that I’m playing what Dylan would have played had he not turned his back on political music.” There are, of course, many other influences for The Nightwatchman, including Guthrie, Ochs, Bragg, Joan Baez, and Richie Havens.
“My favorite guitar player and activist is Joe Hill,” continues Morello. “It was Hill who said that a pamphlet is read once, but a song can be sung over and over. And I grew up listening to punk bands such as The Clash. Their music made me feel part of a wider activist community. I like to think my music is a link in a chain that goes from Hill to Guthrie to Dylan to The Clash to System of a Down.”
Morello also mentions Bruce Springsteen of Local 47 (Los Angeles) and Local 399 (Asbury Park, NJ) and Neil Young of Local 47, two artists comfortable switching between electric and acoustic formats. “Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad tour showed me the power of one musician with an acoustic guitar, and I think One Man Revolution is the heaviest record I’ve been involved with.”
Minister of Culture
The Nightwatchman’s songs of social justice and community action—such as “Let Freedom Ring” and “House Gone Up in Flames”—aren’t the only expression of Morello’s political conscience. Another is The Axis of Justice, a nonprofit organization that brings together young musicians and grass-roots activists (online at www.axisofjustice.org).
“The Axis of Justice grew up with The Nightwatchman project,” says Morello. “I like to think that The Nightwatchman is the Axis of Justice’s ‘minister of culture’!” The Axis of Justice, Morello says, is a way for him to be involved at the street level. It serves the community of struggling workers and the working poor with soup kitchens, and it gets involved with local and national issues, such as the plight of migrant farm workers, global warming, and the Iraq War.
Morello is quick to point out that he’s not a Johnny-come-lately to activism. “I’ve been speaking out on issues since I was 16,” he recalls, “when I nearly got kicked out of school for producing an underground newspaper.” He also mentions another close call with school authorities, this time at Harvard. “I nearly got kicked out for helping to construct a shanty town in Harvard Yard to protest their dealings with companies that supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa.”
“Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave weren’t exactly bashful about speaking out, either,” Morello continues. “I believe when you pick up a guitar, you don’t put down your first amendment rights. So music and political activism are my twin passions. I am a proud member of Local 47 and have taken part in countless struggles for workers’ rights—it’s in my blood.” Morello is referring to his father, who was part of the Kenyan movement to end British colonialism, and his mother, who was involved with the Civil Rights movement. “She ingrained in me the need to always stand up for the underdog.”
Bleating Lambs
The change from successful rock guitarist to folk singer is a bold career move. Musicians with Morello’s social conscience have not always had an easy time, either politically or artistically. John Lennon was shadowed by the FBI, Ochs struggled to find a mainstream audience and died believing he was a failure, and Dylan felt so artistically constricted by the folk movement that he had to acrimoniously split from it in order to grow as an artist.
But Morello doesn’t foresee such problems, partly thanks to activist artists who paved the way. “It’s hard to say what has changed since those days,” says Morello, thinking of the positive critical reception One Man Revolution has garnered. “There are certainly elements of my music that have drawn interest—the music has to be good and the lyrics uncompromising, I think. Sincerity is also important.”
Rage Against the Machine, Morello observes, came of age when record labels “felt they didn’t have all the answers.” The labels saw that kids loved indie acts, such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. “So the labels went with alternative music. Personally, I’m not elitist about music, though, and growing up I listened to The Clash and to Kiss, to Fleetwood Mac and to Public Enemy.”
As an indie artist, Morello has seen plenty of fellow musicians “fall victim to the cabal of record companies, lawyers, and managers.” He knows not every professional musician joins the Federation, but they should. “Musicians need a much greater measure of solidarity, I think. There is now a new model of doing business, with issues such as digital rights and payments. Without the Federation, musicians are just bleating lambs in the wilderness.”
Morello, who won the 2006 Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, says he will continue to help and represent other unions as well. “I’ve helped workers, janitors, and farm workers in Southern California, and I was tear-gassed along with a bunch of steelworkers in Miami,” he says. “I say the future of the union movement will be decided in a Von’s supermarket parking lot, not in Congress.”
The Nightwatchman will continue to sing what he calls “new union songs that capture the spirit of Joe Hill and Cesar Chavez—‘Union Song’ was the one song people said not to put on my CD, but we need more songs like that, to remind people we are in the struggle together.
